Three Greek Fragments

Fragment on a papyrus strip burial wrapping [dated ca. 490 BC, Ionic]

Our group met in a cave on Naxos to hear the speech of Paralethes the Sophist: “Here before you I have placed two jars. One contains strips of paper on which are words copied from scrolls I gathered in my travels throughout the entire world. Some forty years ago I had the idea that if language has a beginning there must have been a word first uttered by man.  This thought struck me like lightning and I have devoted my life to tracking down this Logos like a fox to its hiding hole. As a result, my fortune is gone, my eyesight dimmed, and my body is ravaged. I learned many barbarian languages, I studied the texts of every city, on the theory that this word must still exist somewhere in the desert of writing, like a cool spring gushing out of the sands of endless time. It must have been a word of such solidity and vividness that no one would ever think to discard, alter or contrive a substitute for it. No scribe would ever strike it out of his text. So after collecting many hundreds of thousands of words, a task that cost me years of bitter tedium, I began to sift through my silt for a glimmer of gold. My rule was as follows: I discarded those clearly of recent invention. Also those that were once in fashion, then disappeared. Also those that appeared only in a few texts, and not in others. I discarded words made of prefixes and suffixes. Also words that have only abstract meaning, and ordinary words such as you, me, it, there, up, down which give us directions in space. Here, in this jar, are all the words that remain. I have reached the foot of a wall I cannot break. Each of you will now reach into the jar and draw out a slip of paper. We will then draw pebbles from the other jar, in which there is only one white pebble to signify the verdict of Apollo as to which of these words is the first uttered by a human being.” According to Simonides, the words were: TONGUE, MOUTH, EYE, LIGHT, DARK, HAND, SUN, HOUSE, FIRE, SWEET, WATER, VULVA, GIRL, WIND, URN, BELLY, FOOT, NAVEL, BLOOD, CUT, HORSE, TRACK, PHALLUS, WELCOME, FEAR, LAUGH, BITTER, THROAT, BONE, MARROW, DEAD, DREAM, FATHER, SKY, EARTH, GOD, ENEMY, LIFE, BURY, BEYOND . . . .


The Slave Messenger

Mageras stood up and said that men are all like the illiterate slave-messenger of the fable, whose death-sentence was tattooed on the scalp while he slept off a drunken orgy. We do not know where to find the inscription that would give us the true measure of our lives, nor would we be able to grasp an iota of its sense if we were to discover it by accident, for example while hunting for lice. We think the message we understand and memorize is the true one. But the real meaning of our lives is destined for the eyes of another – a barbarian King who will read it and, with a brusque wave of the hand, order his eunuch to cut off our heads. Naxlides, smiling, replied that Mageras must believe that the gods write in signs. But how can that which does not exist know how to read and write? Besides, he added, why would a barbarian King need permission of a sign in order to cut off a slave’s head?

The Enigma of Desire

A Sophist walked into the marketplace and, throwing the purple robe over his shoulder, spoke as follows: -All men dream. Those confused by the gossip of slaves and women believe that dreams contain signs from the gods showing how to avert catastrophes or foretelling blessed events. But this is rank falsehood. I alone have found the law of dreams. The listless crowd that had gathered before the Sophist exclaimed as if with one voice: - Tell us! - A dream is a wish the dreamer did not know he had, which the dream portrays as having been satisfied. Dreams are the royal gate into the city of things that men desire all unawares. - Go on! - After listening to hundreds of your dreams, O citizens, I have found that all of you wish to sleep with your mothers and sisters (truly, you want to ravish all women, beautiful or ugly, except for your wives), kill your fathers, eat and drink at sumptuous banquets, and fly above the earth like birds. Thessalides, an actor in satyr plays, suddenly spoke above the booing of the crowd: - What about nightmares that wake me up in a panic? According to you, all men also want to appear naked before a theater audience not knowing their lines, fail in their school examinations, be unable to bend a bow or lift a shield in battle, drift aimlessly in a boat at sea dying of thirst, and wander lost and hungry through the streets and squares of great Thebes! The Sophist smiled, and when the applause and jeers of the crowd had died down he asked: – Tell me, Thessalides, was it or was it not you that I saw dancing before the Phallus in last years’ procession to the god [Dionysos], slashing your arms and legs with a knife and whipping your body with vine branches until it was besmirched with blood and dirt? Thessalides lowered his eyes. Then another jeering voice shouted from the back of the crowd: - Tell us, O Sophist. What do the slaves and women want?