[Carl Copeland]

5.258—Paulus Silentiarius (6th century A.D.)

Better your wrinkles, Philinna, than all of the succulent freshness
     proper to youth in its prime. Cupped in my hands, I would hold
apples that droop from your boughs with the weight of their season
     sooner than fondle a girl’s firmer and shapelier breasts.
Yours is an autumn, Philinna, surpassing the springtime of others.
     Yours is a winter that warms more than the summer of youth.


Original

5.258—Paulus Silentiarius

Πρόκριτός ἐστι, Φίλιννα, τεὴ ῥυτὶς ἢ ὀπὸς ἥβης
     πάσης· ἱμείρω δ᾽ ἀμφὶς ἔχειν παλάμαις
μᾶλλον ἐγὼ σέο μῆλα καρηβαρέοντα κορύμβοις
     ἢ μαζὸν νεαρῆς ὄρθιον ἡλικίης.
σὸν γὰρ ἔτι φθινόπωρον ὑπέρτερον εἴαρος ἄλλης,
     χεῖμα σὸν ἀλλοτρίου θερμότερον θέρεος.


In place of a crib, here are Paton’s early-20th-century prose translation and a recent update by David Tueller, both for the Loeb Classical Library:

Your wrinkles, Philinna, are preferable to the juice of all youthful prime, and I desire more to clasp in my hands your apples nodding with the weight of their clusters, than the firm breasts of a young girl. Your autumn excels another’s spring, and your winter is warmer than another’s summer.

Your wrinkles, Philinna, are preferable to the youth of any other face; I desire more to clasp in my hands your apples, drooping at the points, than the pert breasts of a young girl. For your autumn is superior to another’s spring, and your winter is warmer than another’s summer.


Note that I improvised in L3. “Clusters” would probably be more accurate than “season,” but while clusters of apples work, I couldn’t deal with clusters of breasts. David Tueller used what seems to be an earlier definition of the word—“uppermost point, head, end,” as in “high-pointed sterns of ships”—but he confessed to me in an email some years ago that he wasn’t comfortable with the Greek here either.

Speaking of games of telephone, this poem was translated rather freely into Russian by Konstantin Batyushkov in 1820, and Pushkin responded in verse in the late 1820s.