Idyll 14

14. The Love of Cynisca, or Thyonichus Aeschinas

Many greetings to the good Thyonichus.

Thyonichus

And the same to you,

Aeschinas.

Aeschinas

How long it has been.

Thyonichus

Long? But what is your trouble?

Aeschinas

Things go not too well with me, Thyonichus.

Thyonichus

That is why you are thin,

and this mustache so heavy, and your locks unkempt.

Just such a man came the other day, a Pythagorean,

pale and barefoot; and he said he was an Athenian.

He too was in love, I think—with toasted meal.

Aeschinas

You are forever joking, good fellow; but me the graceful Cynisca

insults; and I shall go mad one day before I know it, by a hair's breadth.

Thyonichus

Such you always are, dear Aeschinas, quietly hot,

wanting everything to your own moment; but tell me, what is the news?

Aeschinas

The Argive, and I, and the Thessalian horse-tamer,

Apis, and Cleunicus the soldier, were drinking

at my place in the country. I had killed two chickens

and a suckling pig, and opened for them a jar of Biblian wine,

fragrant, four years old, almost as fresh as from the press.

Onion, shellfish, snails were brought out. The drinking was pleasant.

And as it went on, we resolved that each man should toast

unmixed to whomever he pleased; only he had to name the name.

We drank as we named, as had been agreed;

but she said nothing, though I was there. What state do you think I was in?

Will you not speak? You have seen a wolf, someone joked. How clever, she said,

and caught fire; you could easily have lit a lamp from her.

There is Lycus—Wolf—there is Lycus, the son of Labas our neighbor,

tall and tender, thought handsome by many.

For him she was melting with that famous love.

And this had come somehow quietly to my ear before;

but I had not looked into it, grown a man for nothing.

By now the four of us were deep in our cups,

and the man of Larisa began to sing my Wolf from the start,

a Thessalian air, with malice; and Cynisca

wept suddenly, more abundantly than a six-year-old girl

weeps by her mother, longing for her lap.

Then I—you know me, Thyonichus—struck her on the cheek

with my fist, and again a second time. She gathered up her gown

and was off and out the quicker. My ruin, do I not please you?

Is another sweeter in your lap? Go and warm some other

dear one. For him your tears flow like apples.

The swallow, having given a morsel to her nestlings under the eaves,

flies swiftly back to gather more food for life;

quicker than that she ran from the soft chair,

straight through the porch and the double doors, where her feet led her.

There is a saying, they tell: the bull went off into the wood.

Twenty; then eight; then nine; then ten more;

today is the eleventh; add two, and it is two months

since we parted. I might be cropped Thracian fashion for all

she knows. Now all is Lycus; for Lycus even the door stands open by night.

But I am worth no man's word, nor counted at all,

a wretched Megarian in the most dishonored rank.

If only I could fall out of love, all would go as it should.

But now, where from? Like the mouse, Thyonichus, they say, I have tasted pitch.

And what the remedy is for a helpless love,

I do not know. Except that Simus, who loved the daughter of Epichalcus,

sailed away and came home cured, a man of my own age.

I too will sail across the sea; no worst of soldiers,

nor first perhaps, but an even, ordinary one.

Thyonichus

I could wish things had gone as you desired, Aeschinas.

But if you are really minded to go abroad,

Ptolemy is the best paymaster a free man could have.

Aeschinas

And in other respects, what kind of man is he?

Thyonichus

Considerate, a lover of the Muses, amorous, the height of charm,

knowing his friend, and still more the man who is not his friend;

giving much to many, refusing none who ask,

as befits a king; though one must not ask on every occasion,

Aeschinas. So if it suits you to pin

your cloak's end on your right shoulder, and, standing firm on both feet,

to dare to await the bold spearman's charge,

then off with all speed to Egypt. From the temples we all grow

old, and onward to the chin creeps

time, whitening it; one must do something while the knee is green.