Back from Syracuse

The Stoic slave-philosopher Epictētus (ca. 50–135 CE) as depicted in Edward Ivie’s 1715 Latin translation of his writings in his student Arian's Enchiridion. His name is derived from epíktētos (ἐπίκτητος), meaning "acquired."

For Babette Salamon

Plato made three trips to Syracuse:

the first to see Mount Etna's fiery crater

—"It was not to savor Sicilian fine cuisine, O noble Aristidēs, as you claim!"—

the second in hope of finding in that city's tyrant Dionysus the Great a philosopher-king;

and third to rescue his friend Dion from imprisonment by the latter's heir, Dionysus II.

Who, however, set Plato up for slavery.

What sort of slave might such a savant be?

Like wise Epictētus, inventory . . .

whose very name was just a simple tag

that read: “Property.”

Put on the auction block in Aegina,

Plato was spotted there by Anniceris,

a Libyan on his way to Ellis

to compete in the four-horse chariot race,

who, finding the philosopher for sale,

snapped him up for eighty owls

(with five obols waived in unpaid fines)

—a bargain price for so much gist!

and returned him to the Athenian Propylaea,

thus earning greater merit than any chariot race could win,

as Olympiodorus observed in Alexandria a millennium after this.*

Even the poor slaves in Sounion's mines†

were made by word of Plato's rescue, it may be, perhaps a soupçon gayer.

“Back from Syracuse so soon?”

a  colleague wisecracked when Heidegger

returned from kissing Goebbels’

ring,

Unter den Linden in Berlin's

Office of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Spin.

Ancient ruins at Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece, where Epictetus spent his life after being banished from Rome.

*See Olympiodorus (ca. 500–570 CE), Life of Plato and On Plato First Alcibiades 1–9, trans. Michael Griffin (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 74–75.

†In the fifth century BCE, the silver mines near Cape Sounion paid for the Athenian triremes that won the battle of Salamis against the Persians, thus preserving Athenian democracy. “Shafts were driven down into the ground and galleries opened where slaves, chained, naked, and branded, worked the seams illuminated only by guttering oil lamps” (Wikipedia).

Monday, January 6, 2025

Doggerel

"Namoore of this, for Goddes dignitee,

Quod oure Hooste, "for thou makest me

So wery of thy verray lewednesse

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This may wel be rym dogerel," quod he.

—Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Tale of Sir Thopas" in The Canterbury Tales

“Doggerel” in French is vers de mirliton—a kazoo, you know.

In Spanish, it’s copia de ciego.

Knüttelvers is its German name,

An Arzneimittel (drug), I've read,

It'll wack you upside the head

And brain. In Dutch, alas, it’s kreupelrijm,

Putting legs into this crowded game.

It’s poesia burlesca, though, in Portuguese,

A language ever sure to please!

In Russian, it's нескладный

In Mandarin, 打油诗

Andドゲレル in Japanese.

If you can’t tell how these last three rhyme,

I pray you not to waste my precious time!

Your frontal lobes are quite unfit to scan

—a tragic case of unpoetic man.

And if you dare call my verses “doggerel,”

I shall in retaliation yell: “Why, go to Hell!

'Stand not upon the order of your going

[so Macbeth begs], but go at once,'

Not fit, as Auden said, 'to teach your grandmama to suck eggs,

much less critique her arts-and-craftsy sewing.'”

Honi soit qui mal y pense!

Little Old World

Poster for Mario Soldati's 1941 film Piccolo mondo antico, based on Antonio Fogazzaro's 1895 novel of that title, which I saw at the Pacific Film Archive with the director—who had become a friend of ours—when he was teaching at Berkeley in the 1970s.

They mean no harm by it, of that I’m sure,

The silent ones, we plunging on, the unknown future

Already 2025! Who’d have thought I’d still be alive,

So far now from the piccolo mondo antico.

Receding further every day into the depths of time,

There’s nowhere left to go, nothing to do, although

I, for some reason, go on writing, line by line

Emerging as from the air; I note the things down,

Then edit them a bit, wondering whether today’s the day to quit.

Will there be a signal, do you suppose? Some firm gentle voice that says,

Be quiet now: there’s no one left who knows.

The Lines and the Beast

"The fate of little writings accords with the capacity of the reader."*

—Terentianus Maurus

I can’t control

These rabid lines

They’ll have their way

Such are the times

The rhyming beast

Must have its feast

I don’t know why

Much though I try

*Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli, verse 1286 of De litteris, de syllabis, de metris by Terentianus Maurus (ca. second century CE). We may deduce from his name that the author was an African from Mauretania, the western half of the ancient Maghreb.

The Saint and the Emperor

Although identified by the Metropolitan Museum in New York as "African Magus, one of the Three Kings from an Adoration Group. German, before 1489," it seems to me that this perhaps rather (or also) represents the African soldier–saint Maurice, or Maurikios, whose image was common in Germany prior to the global rise of African slavery.

There was also an East Roman general and emperor of that name, who was likely of North African ancestry, although evidently a native Greek speaker. He and his family were brutally put to death by a usurping general, murders that Maurikios's friend the Iranian ruler Khosrow II went to war to avenge.

Solidus issued by the Byzantine emperor Maurikios (582–602 CE)

Saturday, January 4, 2025