[Carl Copeland]

With dogs coming up in several current threads, I thought it was time to let this one off its chain.


5.266—Paulus Silentiarius (6th century A.D.)

Many a man, so they say, overcome by a dog’s rabid venom,
     looks in the water and there glimpses the beast looking back.
Eros has surely gone mad, sinking fangs in my flesh until madness
     cruelly ravaged my heart. Look where I may now, it’s you,
you whose alluring reflection I see in the waves by the seashore,
     you in the eddying stream, you in the wine-bearing cup.


Edit
L2: sees the mad > glimpses the


Original

Ἀνέρα λυσσητῆρι κυνὸς βεβολημένον ἰῷ
     ὕδασι θηρείην εἰκόνα φασὶ βλέπειν.
λυσσώων τάχα πικρὸν Ἔρως ἐνέπηξεν ὀδόντα
     εἰς ἐμὲ καὶ μανίαις θυμὸν ἐληΐσατο.
σὴν γὰρ ἐμοὶ καὶ πόντος ἐπήρατον εἰκόνα φαίνει
     καὶ ποταμῶν δῖναι καὶ δέπας οἰνοχόον.

Perseus clickable version: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper... 2008.01.0472


In lieu of a crib, here are Paton’s early-20th-century prose translation and a recent update by David Tueller, both for the Loeb Classical Library:

They say a man bitten by a mad dog sees the brute’s image in the water. I ask myself, Did Love go rabid, and fix his bitter fangs in me, and lay my heart waste with madness? For thy beloved image meets my eyes in the sea and in the eddying stream and in the wine-cup.*

They say a man bitten by a dog’s rabid barb sees the brute’s image in water. Perhaps rabid Love fixed his bitter fangs in me and ravaged my heart with madness, for your lovely image appears to me in the sea, in rivers’ eddies, and in the cup that stewards my wine.*


* Katharine Washburn comments: “Goblets passed around at banquets frequently were inscribed with a small, obscene sketch of lovemaking at the bottom. Conventional medical wisdom in antiquity believed that the human victim of rabies feared water because he saw reflected in it the image of the animal which infected him.”

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Carl—

As a dog lover, I’m having quite a time jumping from dog-as-grief to dog-as-obsessive love, but both you and Paula use the metaphor to good advantage.

I had not heard the story about rabies victims seeing the reflection of the animal that infected them in liquids, but did know that the other name for rabies, hydrophobia, comes from the Greek for fear of water. According to the story, shouldn’t the speaker see Eros’s image in the sea, stream, and winecup? I wonder how much success with the ladies Paulus enjoyed by comparing them to mad dogs in his pickup line.

Very skillfully done. I hear “mad” as a long syllable, but otherwise your elegiac couplets are flawless and your translation very faithful to the original. Bravo!

Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

Thanks, Glenn!

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

As a dog lover, I’m having quite a time jumping from dog-as-grief to dog-as-obsessive love, but both you and Paula use the metaphor to good advantage.

Don’t forget Alexandra’s mad Supermoon dog and Mignon’s post about Lorca’s Assyrian dog.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

According to the story, shouldn’t the speaker see Eros’s image in the sea, stream, and winecup?

Yeah, Paulus is conflating Eros with his beloved, who was nonetheless female, I presume. Homosexuality had gone underground in Christian Byzantium, and Paulus was a high court official.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I hear “mad” as a long syllable …

Good point. I translated this some years ago and didn’t think about that when I dusted it off. I’ll just have to explain it as a variation. The original epigrams are riddled with them, but I generally find it easier to regularize the meter.