THE BUSH OF HELEN

[helenic]

Theocritus Idyll 18:

The poet describes how he and his mates run through the meadows gathering garlands of flowers in honour of Helen, whom they all fancy. The hang the flowers and wreaths of lotus-vine on a plane-tree as a sort of public ritual to commemorate how much they fancy her, even though she's married already. The poet worships her, and yearns in particular for her breasts, "as a new-born lamb yearns for the teats of the mother-ewe" (Hellenistic lyric poets: Dodgy Similes R Us). He anoints the soil below the tree with oil in some sort of symbolic love act, and then graffitis the bark of the tree in Dorian letters, which read:

(line 48) "WORSHIP ME, I AM THE BUSH OF HELEN."

Oh my god, I want that line tattooed in Greek above my pubic hair so very, very much.

Comments

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

*mild hysterics*

Huzzah for appalling and strangely naive 19th century translators!

(Shame it was just phuton for the Greek, although I'm quite glad you answered that before I had to ask the question.)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

actually bush is my translation; A. Lang translates it tree. But it could so mean bush. Totally.

I wish LJ supported SGreek or SuperGreek, damnit.

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

Yes, I support your alternative translation, and I think we should campaign to have it inserted into the next edition of Theocritus. Or even write our own. He's such a dodgy little bugger I'm certain he would approve of the pun, even if it didn't scan in the Greek.

Do tattooists support SGreek or SuperGreek?

And do you have a copy of SuperGreek? The Faculty computers won't let me steal theirs :(

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I could totally translate Theocritus. Or Callimachus. Or Pindar. Or any of those lamentably out of date Loebs, really. What do you mean "scan" in the Greek? The Greek surely stays the same!

I don't know whether tattooists support fonts; I was envisioning taking in a printout if I ever wanted any text, whether it was NTR or SuperGreek.

I don't, unfortunately, have SuperGreek. You can download Silver Greek from google, which is what I use - it's almost as good?

I need more Classical icons.