[Carl Copeland]

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

Sweet, my friends, is the smile that comes over the features of Laïs.
     Sweet the tears that she sheds, gently averting her eyes.
Yesterday she, after resting her head a long while on my shoulder,
     suddenly heaved a deep sigh, hiding her feelings no more.
Kissing her then as she wept, I felt tear after tear, as if welling
     fresh from a watery spring, fall from our interlocked lips.
“Why are you weeping?” I asked her. “Whatever it is, you must tell me.”
     “Fear that you’ll leave me,” she said. “All of you men break your word.”


Edits
L8: Men are untrue to their word > All of you men break your word (Thanks, Julie!)


Original

Ἡδύ, φίλοι, μείδημα τὸ Λαΐδος· ἡδὺ καὶ αὐτῶν
     ἠπιοδινή των δάκρυ χέει βλεφάρων.
χθιζά μοι ἀπροφάσιστον ἐπέστενεν, ἐγκλιδὸν ὤμῳ
     ἡμετέρῳ κεφαλὴν δηρὸν ἐρεισαμένη.
μυρομένην δὲ φίλησα· τὰ δ᾽ ὡς δροσερῆς ἀπὸ πηγῆς
     δάκρυα μιγνυμένων πῖπτε κατὰ στομάτων.
εἶπε δ᾽ ἀνειρομένῳ· “τίνος εἵνεκα δάκρυα λείβεις;”
     — “δείδια μή με λίπῃς· ἐστὲ γὰρ ὁρκαπάται.”

Perseus clickable version: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper... 2008.01.0472


In lieu 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:

Sweet, my friends, is Lais’ smile, and sweet again the tears she sheds from her gently waving eyes. Yesterday, after long resting her head on my shoulder, she sighed without a cause. She wept as I kissed her, and the tears flowing as from a cool fountain fell on our united lips. When I questioned her, “Why are you crying?” She said, “I am afraid of your leaving me, for all you men are forsworn.”

Sweet, my friends, is Laïs’ smile; sweet also are the tears that flow from her very eyes as they gently roll. Yesterday, after long resting her head on my shoulder, she sighed without any reason. She wept as I kissed her, and the tears, as from a cool fountain, fell from our united lips. When I asked her, “Why are you crying?” she said, “I am afraid that you will leave me; for you men are all oath breakers.”

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Carl—

This one seems much more obviously to have been about the speaker’s mistress.

I noticed that in the first line, you changed κατ to και. This makes more sense. Was it just a silent emendation? The Perseus Project version gives κατ´ αυ των (which would mean something like “following again [the softly rolling tears]. Your version makes more sense.

I wondered if you rendered δε φίλησα (οr δ´ εφιλησα, as it appears in the Perseus Project version) as “hiding her feelings no more.” I couldn’t figure out the meaning of the two δε constructions in that line.

Nice job! Reminds me of Ophelia’s song in Hamlet.
Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

Well spotted, Glenn! With my poor Greek, I’d never presume to make corrections. This is obviously a variant reading that I got from somewhere. Now I’ll have to track it down.

[Glenn Wright]

If the δ´ εφιλησα reading is correct, it is a 1st person singular simple past aorist, so it should show up somewhere as “[but] I loved,” but I can’t find it.

[David Callin]

Very nice, Carl. The only thing I wonder about is the tears falling from the lips. That doesn't sound right, does it? Although I see it also appears in one of the other translations.

Cheers

David

[Carl Copeland]

Thanks, David. The tears are apparently falling onto their lips and from there dripping further, but that two-step made me (and Paton, I suppose) uncomfortable enough to change it to “fall on” originally. I may be persuaded to revert to that.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I wondered if you rendered δε φίλησα (οr δ´ εφιλησα, as it appears in the Perseus Project version) as “hiding her feelings no more.”

“Suddenly … hiding her feelings no more” is my expanded and interpretive translation of “ἀπροφάσιστον.” Paton’s “without a cause” and Tueller’s “without any reason” are covered more or less by “suddenly.” (The sigh does have a cause; it’s the suddenness that makes it seem uncaused.) But I felt that another meaning—“without disguise, without evasion, honestly”—was also in play.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

If the δ´ εφιλησα reading is correct, it is a 1st person singular simple past aorist, so it should show up somewhere as “[but] I loved,” but I can’t find it.

Again, well spotted. I’d forgotten how this happened, but since neither of the two scholarly translators has “I loved,” I figured there must be a reason. It turns out that the verb can also mean “show outward signs of love, esp. kiss (not in Hom.).”

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Carl. Sorry to have neglected this so long.

"the smile that comes over the features of Laïs" is beautifully metrical, but it waters down (no pun intended) the progression from sweet smile to sweet tears to the mix of tears and mouths. Is there a way to make the smile reference more mouth-specific, even though smiles do involve more of the face than that? If the answer is "No," that's fine. Just thought I'd ask.

I think your "gently averting her eyes" is a reasonable rendering of the gentle eye-rolling bit. The Autenrieth lexicon's entry for the base verb here (click on "Autenrieth" to expand) supports you, I think.

“Whatever it is, you must tell me” seems awfully filler-ish, probably because "Why are you crying?" is so much shorter than the literal Greek, which says "On account of what are you pouring forth tears?" Perhaps not very idiomatic, but hey, it's a poem. Also, that reference to a reason seems to echo the "without a cause" and "without any reason"— which has been the prevailing male interpretation to my own and my daughter's tears, so i tend to picture the narrator as annoyed rather than solicitous. (Then again, I'm also thinking that the lips are likely to be dripping with snot as well as with tears. Blechh.)

"Men are untrue to their word" omits the (somewhat accusatory) second person of the original ("You men are oath-breakers"). Would you consider something like "All of you men break your word"? The narrator is telling this story to his friends for a reason, and I think it's because Laïs has addressed her speech to a second person plural (you men), and the singular narrator wants to know how a group of men will respond to this story's punchline.



A general note of caution: much as I love the Perseus Project, they sometimes have uncorrected transcription errors, so take their versions' authority with a grain of salt, even if they have taken their text from an authoritative source.

The Ausonius poem I recently translated had several punctuation errors (periods rendered as commas), and even a word on the wrong line, so that I wasted an hour or so trying in vain to get the two lines involved to scan.

LL2-3 of Epigram XXXIII, PDF version here (bolding below is mine):

     quique Iovem fecit ; tertia palma ego sum.
sum dea quae rara et paucis OCCASIO nota.

LL2-3 of Epigram 33, Perseus Project version here (bolding below is mine), based on the same print edition:

quique Iovem fecit; tertia palma ego sum. sum
dea quae rara et paucis occasio nota.

They also had an error in the title of the poem (nominative plural OCCASIONES instead of genitive singular OCCASIONIS). You can easily see that if you follow the two links above. When I emailed them to report it, I got an automated message saying that they are already aware that users are experiencing slow loading speeds and occasional timeouts, if that's what I was notifying them of. They are in the midst of a major update.

Conclusion: The Perseus Project is great, but it's still a good idea to double-check their version against a PDF photo-facsimile version, especially if tiny breathings, accents, or punctuation marks are involved. These aren't always rendered correctly when transcribed or scanned.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

Sorry to have neglected this so long.

I’m in no hurry, Julie, and your comments are worth waiting for.

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

"the smile that comes over the features of Laïs" is beautifully metrical, but it waters down (no pun intended) the progression from sweet smile to sweet tears to the mix of tears and mouths. Is there a way to make the smile reference more mouth-specific, even though smiles do involve more of the face than that?

A subtle and interesting suggestion. Something like “the smile that comes over (appears on) the lips of my Laïs”? Worth thinking about.

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

I think your "gently averting her eyes" is a reasonable rendering of the gentle eye-rolling bit.

It’s an interpretation, but I couldn’t get her eyes to “roll” without it looking comical.

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

"without any reason" … has been the prevailing male interpretation to my own and my daughter's tears, so i tend to picture the narrator as annoyed rather than solicitous.

My reading—likely influenced by something I read somewhere—is kinkier: the man is savoring the “sweetness” of this moment, having broken down her defenses and demonstrated her vulnerability and his power to keep her or leave her.

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

"Men are untrue to their word" omits the (somewhat accusatory) second person of the original ("You men are oath-breakers"). Would you consider something like "All of you men break your word"?

An excellent point, and I’m trying it out.

Your note of caution on the Perseus Project is well taken, but in both cases that Glenn spotted, Perseus has accurately digitalized the 1920 Loeb edition. I was obviously working with a different version, possibly from an 1820 Russian publication; at the time I was more interested in how the epigram had been treated in the Russian Golden Age.

Thanks for the very thoughtful commentary, Julie!