Quote:
Originally Posted by Julie Steiner
I still don't understand why someone would not only keep, but wear, flowers from a rejected lover, so maybe the source of the poet's tears is the beloved's non-exclusivity or distance, rather than outright rejection.
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Tarán again on the genre of
paraklausithyron:
"The epigrams of Asclepiades which we have examined dealt with the comos by suggesting in one way or another the hazardous march through the night to the beloved’s house. Our present poem refers to the next stage, when the lover is already standing in front of the house and complaining about not being admitted indoors. It was common custom on such occasions to hang at the door of the beloved the garlands that the lover had worn at the symposium and during the revel; at the same time the
exclusus amator would sing a song of complaint. This song, the παρακλαυσίθυρον, is what Asclepiades seems to have wished to reproduce in this epigram as well as in two other compositions which we shall examine later. It has the form of an address to the garlands, which are asked to drop the lover’s tears on his beloved’s head when he opens the door to go out of the house. … Asclepiades devotes the second hexameter to a description of the garland which increases the suspense by delaying the action of the epigram (the lover’s request) [and] informs the reader of the unhappy end of the comos, that is, it confirms and summarizes the situation previous to the one depicted in the poem, when the reveller begged admission and was rejected."