Idyll 10

10. The Workmen, or Reapers Milon

Bucaeus, you laborer, what ails you now, poor wretch?

You can neither drive your swath straight, as you did before,

nor keep pace in the reaping with your neighbor, but fall behind

like a sheep that has hurt its foot on a thorn and lags the flock.

What will you be at evening and from midday on,

you who now, just beginning the furrow, do not bite your way through?

Battus

Milon, you late-reaping man, chip off the unyielding rock,

has it never befallen you to long for someone away?

Milon

Never. What longing has a working man for things outside his work?

Battus

Then it never befell you to lie awake for love?

Milon

And may it never; it is a bad thing to give a dog a taste of tripe.

Battus

But I, Milon, have been in love now near eleven days.

Battus

You draw from a full cask, that is plain; while I have not even vinegar enough.

Battus

And so before my door all is left undug since the sowing.

Milon

And which of the girls is doing you this harm?

Battus

Polybotas' daughter,

who the other day was piping to the reapers at Hippocion's.

Milon

The god has found out the sinner; you have long had what you longed for.

A grasshopper of a girl will lie by you all night.

Battus

You are beginning to mock me; but Wealth is not the only blind one,

so is heedless Love. Do not talk so big.

Milon

I am not talking big; only lay the grain low,

and strike up some love-song for the girl. So you will work

the more pleasantly; and indeed you were once a musical fellow.

Battus

You Pierian Muses, sing with me of the slender

girl; for whatever you touch, goddesses, you make fair.

Lovely Bombyca, all men call you the Syrian,

lean and sunburnt, but I alone call you honey-pale.

The violet too is dark, and the lettered hyacinth,

yet in the garlands they are reckoned first of all.

The goat pursues the clover, the wolf the goat,

the crane the plough, and I am mad for you.

Would that I had all that they say Croesus once possessed;

then we would both stand dedicated, golden, to Aphrodite,

you holding your flutes, and a rose, or an apple too,

and I with new attire and new shoes on both my feet.

Lovely Bombyca, your feet are like knucklebones,

your voice like nightshade; but your ways I have no words to tell.

Milon

How fine the songs the cowherd had been making all unknown to us.

How well he measured out the form of his harmony.

Alas for my beard, that I have grown so vainly.

But hear these too, the lines of godlike Lityerses.

Demeter, rich in fruit and in ears of grain, may this crop

be easy to work and as fruitful as may be.

Bind the sheaves tight, you binders, lest a passer-by

say: These are men of fig-wood, and this hire too is wasted.

Let the cut end of your stubble-rows face

the north wind or the west; so the ear grows full.

Those who thresh the grain should shun the noonday sleep;

at that hour above all the chaff parts best from the straw.

Begin to reap when the lark is rising,

and leave off when it sleeps, and rest in the heat.

Enviable, my boys, is the frog's life; he cares not

for one to pour him drink, for he has it in plenty.

Better, you stingy steward, to boil the lentils thoroughly;

take care you do not cut your hand splitting the cumin too fine.

Such songs men who toil in the sun should sing;

but your starveling love, Bucaeus, is fit to be told

to your mother as she wakes at dawn in her bed.