Orationes 20

O Zeus, what am I to do? Am I to keep silent while Smyrna lies in ruins? And from what source could I have taken on a nature of adamant to do so, or what fortitude could I summon to endure it? Or am I to lament? But to what tune could I set my song, and from where could I find the boldness for so great a task? For if all the tongues of Greeks and barbarians, both of those still living upon the earth and of those who have ever been from the whole of time, were gathered together into one by speech, they would still be too weak so much as to lay hold of this matter, far less to do justice to its worth. O I, who have looked upon and heard the greatest of the greatest of sorrows! O Time, who bears all things, what a vision of a city you found and fashioned with your art, and then have spent and used up! O all things so unlike what they were before! Of old there were the dances of the Curetes, the nurslings and births of gods, the Pelopes who crossed over from this place, the Peloponnese settled as its colony, and Theseus the founder of the regions beneath Sipylus, and the birth of Homer, and contests and trophies and victories before the rulers and throughout all nations, and the surveys of the learned, who set it down in writing as the fairest of all cities. And indeed, the things one saw were beyond all telling. To one approaching,

there came at once a lightning-flash of beauty, and the proportions of its grandeurs, its measures and arrangements as of a single harmony: its feet planted upon the shores and harbors and groves, its middle part rising as far above the plain as it fell short of the heights above, while its southern extremity, gradually mounting, by a uniform ascent of the whole imperceptibly tapered up to a citadel that held a lookout over both the sea and the city. And there was something neither to be uttered in words nor firmly grasped by sight, but ever eluding one I know not how, and always setting before one a longing to seize it: that radiance that stood over the whole city, not destroying the eyes, as Sappho said, but increasing and nourishing and watering them with cheerfulness all at once; in no way like the hyacinth flower, but such as neither earth nor sun ever yet displayed to men. And as a statue exquisitely wrought offers a sight to one who walks all around it, so it belonged to you, formerly the loveliest of cities, but now untimely cut off, that from whatever point one ever beheld you, the fairest form would seem to present itself: now suddenly shining forth into view as one drew near, now appearing to one who came straight opposite, now from the suburbs, from the straits, from the open sea, from the land, from the deep. Such were the sights before one even entered. As for the gatherings and the companionships, what satiety did they ever bring to men? And how little did they leave for any other city to come even near them! O fountains, and theaters, and lanes, and covered and open colonnades! O form of the all-resplendent marketplace; O streets named after gold and the temples, every one of them a marketplace in its own right, set out block by block! O harbors longing for the embraces of the dearest of cities; O countless beauties of the gymnasia; O graces of temples and of precincts—into what part of the earth have you sunk? O ornaments of the seaboard; O all those things that were but dreams! What springs of tears can suffice for so great a calamity? What concerts and choral songs together

could suffice to bewail the city that of all cities is fairest in its dances, most hymned, and thrice longed-for by men? O downfall of Asia; O cities that remain; O all the earth, and all the sea both within the Pillars of Heracles and beyond them; O circle of the stars; O Sun who looks upon all things, what a spectacle you have endured to behold! O now mere child's play, the sack of Ilium; mere child's play, the disasters of the Athenians in Sicily, and the razing of Thebes, and the destructions of armies and the settings of cities, and all that fire and wars and earthquakes have wrought down to this day! O city that formerly outshone and hid all other cities in beauty and in the Muses, but now has hidden away even the fall of Rhodes. You were destined, it seems, to be sung by the Greeks among second and yet more grievous calamities. O day of funeral offerings for all who share our race; O day of ill omen common to all the Greeks, what a head of our people you have carried off! What an eye you have plucked out! O ornament of the earth; O theater of Hellas; O fabric woven by the Nymphs and the Graces! O I, who have endured all things, where on earth do I now sing my dirge? Where is my council-chamber for me? Where are the assemblies and the tumults of young men and old who gave their all? There was once a city upon Sipylus, which legend says was sunk beneath the lake. O Smyrna, how from long ago was this prelude sung for you! What a fortune you have inherited, one that least of all befitted you! Now ought all the birds to plunge into fire, and the city furnishes them in abundance; now ought the whole mainland to shear off its hair, for assuredly her tress is gone; now ought rivers to flow with tears, now ought merchant ships to sail out with black sails. O Meles, flowing through a wilderness! O present strains that answer back, in discord, to the songs of former days! O song of swans and chorus of nightingales, to make lament! Surely if the Gorgons too still survived, they would have mourned not Medusa, nor their own eye, but the eye of Asia. What Bosphorus, or what cataracts, or what Tartessus did your fame, O blessed one, not reach? By what Massilia shall this mourning

be bounded? Or by what Borysthenes? What Greek is so far outside of Hellas, what barbarian so untamed and so impregnable to the darts and the love-charms of Smyrna, that he did not love her even by report, and will not be grieved by report as well? It is said that the daughters of the Sun, mourning their brother at his death, exchanged their nature for that of poplars, and that their tears congealed into amber; but for you, O most charming of cities, it is fitting that the very trees should sing their dirge.