Mimnermus

Mimnermus (Greek: Μίμνερμος Mímnermos) was a Greek elegiac poet from either Colophon or Smyrna in Ionia, who flourished about 632–629 BC (i.e. in the 37th Olympiad, according to the Suda).

Quotes

Text and translation: John Maxwell Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, Vol. 1 (1931), pp. 94–5

• Τίς δὲ βίος, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄτερ χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης;
    τεθναίην ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι,
  κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δῶρα καὶ εὐνή,
    οἷ᾽ ἥβης ἄνθ εα γίγνεται ἁρπαλέα
  ἀνδράσιν ἠδὲ γυναιξίν· ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ὀδυνηρὸν ἐπέλθῃ
    γῆρας, ὅ τ᾽ αἰσχρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ κακὸν ἄνδρα τιθεῖ,
  αἰεί μιν φρένας ἀμφὶ κακαὶ τείρουσι μέριμναι,
    οὐδ᾽ αὐγὰς προσορῶν τέρπεται ἠελίου,
  ἀλλ᾽ ἐχθρὸς μὲν παισίν, ἀτίμαστος δὲ γυναιξίν,
    οὕτως ἄργαλέον γῆρας ἔθηκε θεός.
  • But what life would there be, what joy, without golden Aphrodite? May I die when I be no more concerned with secret love and suasive gifts and the bed, such things as are the very flowers of youth, pleasant alike to man and woman. And when dolorous Age cometh, that maketh a man both foul without and evil within, ill cares do wear and wear his heart, he hath no more the joy of looking on the sunlight, to children he is hateful, to women contemptible, so grievous hath God made Age.
  • Fragment quoted by Stobaeus, Florilegium, 63, 16
  • Other translations:
    What’s Life or Pleasure wanting Aphrodite?
      When to the goldhaired goddess cold am I,
    When love and tender gifts no more delight me,
      Nor stolen dalliance, then I fain would die.
    Ah fair and lovely bloom the flowers of youth;
      On men and maids they beautifully smile;
    But soon comes doleful eld who void of ruth
      Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile;
    Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn
      Scarce reck the very sunshine to behold;
    Unloved by youths, of every maid the scorn,
      Such the hard lot God lays upon the old.
    —John Addington Symonds Jr., Miscellanies (1871), p. 410
    What’s life or pleasure wanting Aphrodite?
      When to the gold-haired goddess cold am I,
    When love and love’s soft gifts no more delight me,
      Nor stolen dalliance, then I fain would die!
    Ah! fair and lovely bloom the flowers of youth;
      On men and maids they beautifully smile:
    But soon comes doleful eld, who, void of ruth,
      Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile:
    Then cares wear out the heart; old eyes forlorn
      Scarce reck the very sunshine to behold—
    Unloved by youths, of every maid the scorn—
      So hard a lot God lays upon the old.
    —John Addington Symonds Jr., Studies of the Greek Poets (1873), p. 72
    O Golden Love, what life, what joy but thine?
      Come death when thou art gone and make an end!
    When gifts and tokens are no longer mine,
      Nor the sweet intimacies of a friend.
    These are the flowers of youth. But painful age,
      The bane of beauty, following swiftly on,
    Wearies the heart of man with sad presage
      And takes away his pleasure in the sun.
    Hateful is he to maiden and to boy,
    And fashioned by the gods for our annoy.
    —Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, The Greek View of Life (1896), p. 36

• Ἠέλιος μὲν γὰρ πόνον ἔλλαχεν ἤματα πάντα
  οὐδέ κοτ᾽ ἄμπαυσις γίγνεται οὐδεμία
  ἵπποισίν τε καὶ αὐτῷ, ἐπεὶ ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠὼς
  Ὠκεανὸν προλιποῦσ᾽ οὐρανὸν εἰσαναβῇ:
  τὸν μὲν γὰρ διὰ κῦμα φέρει πολυήρατος εὐνὴ
  κοιΐλη, Ἡφαίστου χερσὶν ἐληλαμένη
  χρυσοῦ τιμήεντος, ὑπόπτερος, ἄκρον ἐφ᾽ ὕδωρ
  εὕδονθ᾽ ἁρπαλέως χώρου ἀφ᾽ Ἑσπερίδων
  γαῖαν ἐς Αἰθιόπων, ἵνα οἱ θοὸν ἅρμα καὶ ἵπποι
  ἑστᾶσ᾽, ὄφρ᾽ Ἠὼς ἠριγένεια μόλῃ:
  ἐνθ᾽ ἐπεβήσεθ᾽ ἑῶν ὀχέων Ὑπερίονος υἱός.
  • For the Sun’s portion is labour every day, nor is there ever any rest either for him or his horses when rosy-fingered Dawn hath left the Ocean and climbed the sky; for over the wave in a delightful bed forged of precious gold by the hand of Hephaestus, hollow and with wings, he is carried in pleasant sleep on the face of the waters from the Hesperians’ country to the land of the Æthiop, where his horses and swift chariot stand till early-begotten Dawn appear, and then the son of Hyperion mounts his car.
  • Fragment of the Nanno quoted by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 469f
  • Other translations:
    Surely the Sun has labour all his days,
      And never any respite, steeds nor god,
    Since Eos first, whose hands are rosy rays,
      Ocean forsook, and Heaven’s high pathway trod;
    At night across the sea that wondrous bed
      Shell-hollow, beaten by Hêphaistos’ hand,
    Of wingèd gold and gorgeous, bears his head
      Half-waking on the wave, from eve’s red strand
    To the Ethiop shore, where steeds and chariot are,
    Keen-mettled, waiting for the morning star.
    —Gilbert Murray, A History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897), p. 81

Unsourced

• We are all clever enough at envying a famous man while he is yet alive, and at praising him when he is dead.
  • Reported in: John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), no. 8511

About

• Si, Mimnermus uti censet, sinè amore jocisque
  Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque.
  • If, as Mimnermus believes, without love and jests
    There is no joy, may you live amid love and jests.
  • Horace, Epistles, I, 6
  • D. E. Gerber, Greek Elegiac Poetry (1999), p. 79

• You promise heavens free from strife,
    Pure truth, and perfect change of will;
  But sweet, sweet is this human life,
    So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;
  Your chilly stars I can forgo,
  This warm kind world is all I know.
  You say there is no substance here,
    One great reality above:
  Back from that void I shrink in fear,
    And child-like hide myself in love:
  Show me what angels feel. Till then
  I cling, a mere weak man, to men.
  You bid me lift my mean desires
    From faltering lips and fitful veins
  To sexless souls, ideal quires,
    Unwearied voices, wordless strains:
  My mind with fonder welcome owns
  One dear dead friend’s remember’d tones.
  Forsooth the present we must give
    To that which cannot pass away;
  All beauteous things for which we live
    By laws of time and space decay.
  But Oh, the very reason why
  I clasp them, is because they die.
  • William Johnson Cory, "Mimnermus in Church" (1858)