iuvenis ego Mileto
profectus ad spectaculum Olympicum, cum haec etiam loca provincae clarae
visitare cuperem, peragrata tota Thessalia Larissam perveni. ac dum urbem
perarrans tenuato viatico paupertati meae fomenta quaero, medio in foro senem
conspicio. insistebat lapidem magnaque voce praedicabat, si quis mortuum
custodire vellet, magnum praemium accepturum esse. et cuidam praetereunti ‘quid
hoc’ inquam ‘audio? hic mortui solent aufugere?’
‘tace,’ respondit ille. ‘nam puer et satis peregrinus es, meritoque nescis in Thessalia te esse, ubi sagae ora mortuorum semper demorsicant, quae sunt illis artis magicae supplementa.’
contra ego ‘quali custodela’ inquam ‘opus est?’
‘iam primum’ respondit ille ‘ totam noctem eximie vigilandum est apertis et inconivis oculis semper in cadaver intentis, nec acies usquam devertenda est, cum illae pessimae sagae latenter arrepant, forma in quodvis animal conversa. nam et aves et canes et mures, immo vero etiam muscas, induunt.’
As a young man having set out from Miletus to the Olympic Games, since I wanted to visit these places of the famous province as well, I travelled through the whole of Thessaly and reached Larissa. And while wandering through the city, my travel money having diminished, I’m looking for remedies for my poverty and catch sight of an old man in the middle of the forum. He was standing on a stone and proclaiming with a loud voice that if anyone wanted to guard a dead man, he would receive a big reward. I say to the chap as he goes past ‘What’s this I hear? Do the dead here usually run away?’
‘Be quiet,’ the man replies, ‘for you are a boy and a mere foreigner, and naturally you do not know that you are in Thessaly, where witches always bite pieces out of the faces of the dead which are for them extra ingredients to their magic art.’ In reply I say ‘What sort of protection is needed?’
‘First of all’, he replied, ‘you must stay awake for the whole night, your eyes open and unsleeping always fixed on the corpse, nor must you ever turn away your gaze when really evil witches creep up secretly, their shape changed into some animal. For they take the form of birds and dogs and mice and indeed even flies.’
The man ends with a warning that if someone fails to deliver the body intact in the morning, he is forced to replace missing pieces of flesh with pieces sliced from his own face.
his cognitis animum meum commasculo et statim accedens senem ‘clamare’ inquam ‘iam desine. adest custos paratus.’ vix finieram et statim me perducit ad domum quandam, ubi demonstrat matronam flebilem fuscis vestimentis conectam. illa surrexit et ad cubiculum me induxit. ibi corpus splendentibus linteis coopertum manu revelavit. ubi singula anxie demonstravit, exiit.
Having found this out, I strengthened my resolve and, immediately approaching the old man, I say ‘Now stop shouting. Your guard is here ready for action.’ I had scarcely finished when he immediately he led me along to a certain house where he shows me a woman weeping, wrapped in dark clothes. She got up and led me to a bedroom. There with her hand she revealed the body covered in shining white sheets. When anxiously she showed me its features, she left.
Thelyphron begins his vigil.
sic desolatus ad cadaveris solacium, perfrictis oculis et paratis ad vigiliam, dum animum meum permulcebam cantatoinibus, usque ad mediam noctem pervigilabam. tum autem mihi formido cumulatior cum repente intropens mustela contra me constitit oculosque in me fixit. tanat fiducia in tantulo animal mihi turbavit animum. denique sic illi ‘abi’ inquam ‘scelesta bestia, antequam meam vim celeriter experiaris! abi!’
Thus left alone to comfort the corpse, having rubbed my eyes and prepared them for guard duty, while I was soothing my nerves by singing, I stayed awake until the middle of the night. Then, however, I was having an increasing dread when suddenly a weasel creeping in stopped in front of me and fixed its eyes onto me. Such a great self-confidence in so small an animal upset my resolve. Finally I speak to it in this way: ‘Go away you wicked beast, before you quickly experience my force. Go away!’
mustela terga vertit et e cubiculo protinus exit. sine mora somnus tam profundus me repente demergit, ut ne deus quidem Delphicus ipse facile discernere posset ex duobus nobis iacentibus, quis esset magis mortuus.
tandem prima luce expergitus et magno pavore perterritus cadaver accurro, et admoto lumine revelatoque eius vultu, omnia diligenter inspicio: nihil deest. ecce uxor misera flens introrumpit: cadavere inspecto reddit sine mora praemium.
The weasel turns its back and straightaway goes out from the bedroom. Without delay, such a deep sleep suddenly overwhelms me that not even Apollo himself could easily distinguish between the two of us lying there who was the more dead.
At length, having been woken at dawn and utterly scared with great terror, I run up to the corpse and, bringing a light near and revealing his face, I examine him carefully: nothing is missing. See, his poor wife bursts in weeping: having examined the corpse, she pays me my reward without hesitation.
While I was recovering my strength in the street next to the house, the body was brought out. Because it was the body of one of the leading citizens, it was carried in a procession around the forum according to local custom. As this was taking place, an old man suddenly appeared. He was weeping and tearing out his fine white hair. He ran up to the bier and embraced it. Amid sobs and groans he cried out:
‘per fidem vestram’ inquit ‘cives, per pietatem publicam, perempto civi subsistite et extremum facinus istius feminae nefariae scelestaeque severiter vindicate. haec enim nec ullus alius miserum iuvenem, sororis meae fillium, in adulteri gratiam et ob praedam hereditariam exstinxit veneno.’
illa, lacrimis effusis quamque sanctissime poterat adiurans cunctos deos, tantum slceus abnuebat. ergo senex ille: ‘veritatis arbitrium in divinam providentiam ponamus. Zatchlas adest Aegyptius propheta notissimus, qui mihi promisit se pro magno praemio spiritum istius cadaveris paulisper ab inferis reducturum esse corpusque animaturum.
‘For the sake of your honour’, the old man says, ‘citizens, for the sake of public duty, help this murdered citizen and punish severely the vilest of crimes done by that wicked woman. For this woman and no other person has killed with poison this wretched young man, my sister’s son, for the gratification of adultery and on account of a profitable inheritance.’
She, with tears falling down her cheeks and as piously as she could calling all the gods to witness, began to deny so great a crime. Therefore that old man said ‘let us put the judgement of the truth to divine providence. The Egyptian Zatchlas is present, a very well-known prophet who has promised me that he, for a sizeable reward, will bring back from the dead the spirit of that corpse for a little while and will bring the body back to life.’
The prophet was stirred into action. He took a special herb and laid it three times on the mouth of the dead man. Then he took another and put it on his breast. Then he turned to face the east and in silence prayed to the scared disc of the rising sun. The people waited in expectation of a miracle.
immitto me turbae et pone ipsum lectulum lapidem insistens omnia curiosis oculis spectabam. iam tumore pectus cadaveris extolli, iam spiritu corpus impleri. et surgit cadaver et profatur ‘cur, oro, me post Lethaea pocula iam Stygiis paludibus innatantem ad momentariae vitae officia reducitis? desine iam, precor, desine, ac me in meam quietem permitte.’
I push myself into the crowd and standing behind the stone bier itself, I began watching everything with curious eyes. At one moment, the chest of the corpse was being raised by a swelling, at another the body was being filled with breath. The corpse both gets up and speaks out: ‘Why, I beg, are you bringing me back, after drinking from the waters of Lethe and as I now embark onto the Stygian pools, for the duties of a short-lived life? Cease now, I pray, and allow me back into my rest.’
haec vox de corpore audita est, sed propheta aliquanto commotior ‘quin narras’ inquit ‘populo omnia de morte tua?’
Respondet ille de lectulo et imo cum gemitu populum sic adloquitur: ‘malis novae nuptae artibus peremptus et addictus noxio poculo, torum terpentem adultero reddidi. dabo vobis documenta veritatis perlucida, et quod prorsus alius nemo cognoverit vel ominaverit indicabo.’
The voice was heard from the body, but the prophet, somewhat more forcefully, said ‘Why don’t you tell the people everything about your death?’
He replies from the bier and with a deep groan addresses the people thus: ‘murdered by the evil arts of my new bride and a victim of her poisoned cup, I yielded by warm bed to her adulterer. I will give you clear proof of the truth and I will show you what no one else could find out or predict.’
tunc digito me demonstrans: ‘nam cum corporis mei custos hic sagacissimus exsertam vigilam mihi teneret, sagae quaedam exuviis meis imminentes forma mutata apparuerunt. cum industriam sedulam eius fallere non potuissent, postremo iniecta somni nebula eum in profundam quietem sepeliverunt. tum me nomine excitare coeperunt neque prius desierunt quam dum hebetes artus mei et membra frigida ad artis magicae obsequia segniter nituntur. hic autem, qui vivus erat, et tantum sopore mortuus, idem mecum nomen forte habet.
Then, pointing me out with his finger, he said: ‘For when this keen-witted guard of my body was holding his intensive vigil for me, certain witches, eager for my remains, appeared in changed form. When they were not able to deceive his determined diligence, finally they threw upon him a cloud of sleep that buried him into a deep slumber. Then they began to wake me by name and they didn’t stop until my sluggish limbs struggled slowly to obey the commands of their magic art. This man, however, who was alive and only dead asleep, by chance has this same name as me.
ad suum nomen igitur ignarus exsurgit, et, in exanimis umbrae modum ultro gradiens, ianuam adit. quamquam fores cubiculi diligenter occlusae erant, per quoddam foramen prosectis naso prius ac mox auribus prosectarum formatam aurium ei applicant nasumque similem prosecto comparant. et nunc stat miser hic, praemium non industriae sed lanienae consecutus.’
At the sound of his name, therefore, he unwittingly gets up and, in the manner of a lifeless ghost walking mechanically, approaches the door. Although the door of the bedroom had been carefully locked, through e certain hole, his nose and ears having been cut off, he suffered the mutilation instead of me. Them the witches attach to him wax formed into the shape of the cut-off ears and provide a similar nose the one cut off. And now the wretched fellow stands here, having earned a reward not for his diligence but for a mutilation.
his dictis perterritus temptare formam incipio. manu nasum perhendo: sequitur; aures pertracto: deruunt. ac dum turba directis digitis et nutibus me donatat, inter pedes cirumstantium frigido sudore defluens effugio. nec postea sic debilis ac sic ridiculus ad patriam redire potui, sed capillis hinc inde deiectis aurium vulnera celavi, nasi vero dedecus linteolo isto decenter obtexi.
Thoroughly petrified by these words, I begin to examine my face. I grasp my nose with my hand: it comes away; I touch my ears: they fall off. And while the crowd identifies me with pointing fingers and nods, I escape between the feet of the bystanders, dripping with cold sweat. Nor afterwards, so maimed and so ridiculous, could I return to my native land, but with my hair grown long on both sides I hid the wounds of my ears, and what is more, the humiliating condition of my nose, I covered up decently with this patch.
‘tace,’ respondit ille. ‘nam puer et satis peregrinus es, meritoque nescis in Thessalia te esse, ubi sagae ora mortuorum semper demorsicant, quae sunt illis artis magicae supplementa.’
contra ego ‘quali custodela’ inquam ‘opus est?’
‘iam primum’ respondit ille ‘ totam noctem eximie vigilandum est apertis et inconivis oculis semper in cadaver intentis, nec acies usquam devertenda est, cum illae pessimae sagae latenter arrepant, forma in quodvis animal conversa. nam et aves et canes et mures, immo vero etiam muscas, induunt.’
As a young man having set out from Miletus to the Olympic Games, since I wanted to visit these places of the famous province as well, I travelled through the whole of Thessaly and reached Larissa. And while wandering through the city, my travel money having diminished, I’m looking for remedies for my poverty and catch sight of an old man in the middle of the forum. He was standing on a stone and proclaiming with a loud voice that if anyone wanted to guard a dead man, he would receive a big reward. I say to the chap as he goes past ‘What’s this I hear? Do the dead here usually run away?’
‘Be quiet,’ the man replies, ‘for you are a boy and a mere foreigner, and naturally you do not know that you are in Thessaly, where witches always bite pieces out of the faces of the dead which are for them extra ingredients to their magic art.’ In reply I say ‘What sort of protection is needed?’
‘First of all’, he replied, ‘you must stay awake for the whole night, your eyes open and unsleeping always fixed on the corpse, nor must you ever turn away your gaze when really evil witches creep up secretly, their shape changed into some animal. For they take the form of birds and dogs and mice and indeed even flies.’
The man ends with a warning that if someone fails to deliver the body intact in the morning, he is forced to replace missing pieces of flesh with pieces sliced from his own face.
his cognitis animum meum commasculo et statim accedens senem ‘clamare’ inquam ‘iam desine. adest custos paratus.’ vix finieram et statim me perducit ad domum quandam, ubi demonstrat matronam flebilem fuscis vestimentis conectam. illa surrexit et ad cubiculum me induxit. ibi corpus splendentibus linteis coopertum manu revelavit. ubi singula anxie demonstravit, exiit.
Having found this out, I strengthened my resolve and, immediately approaching the old man, I say ‘Now stop shouting. Your guard is here ready for action.’ I had scarcely finished when he immediately he led me along to a certain house where he shows me a woman weeping, wrapped in dark clothes. She got up and led me to a bedroom. There with her hand she revealed the body covered in shining white sheets. When anxiously she showed me its features, she left.
Thelyphron begins his vigil.
sic desolatus ad cadaveris solacium, perfrictis oculis et paratis ad vigiliam, dum animum meum permulcebam cantatoinibus, usque ad mediam noctem pervigilabam. tum autem mihi formido cumulatior cum repente intropens mustela contra me constitit oculosque in me fixit. tanat fiducia in tantulo animal mihi turbavit animum. denique sic illi ‘abi’ inquam ‘scelesta bestia, antequam meam vim celeriter experiaris! abi!’
Thus left alone to comfort the corpse, having rubbed my eyes and prepared them for guard duty, while I was soothing my nerves by singing, I stayed awake until the middle of the night. Then, however, I was having an increasing dread when suddenly a weasel creeping in stopped in front of me and fixed its eyes onto me. Such a great self-confidence in so small an animal upset my resolve. Finally I speak to it in this way: ‘Go away you wicked beast, before you quickly experience my force. Go away!’
mustela terga vertit et e cubiculo protinus exit. sine mora somnus tam profundus me repente demergit, ut ne deus quidem Delphicus ipse facile discernere posset ex duobus nobis iacentibus, quis esset magis mortuus.
tandem prima luce expergitus et magno pavore perterritus cadaver accurro, et admoto lumine revelatoque eius vultu, omnia diligenter inspicio: nihil deest. ecce uxor misera flens introrumpit: cadavere inspecto reddit sine mora praemium.
The weasel turns its back and straightaway goes out from the bedroom. Without delay, such a deep sleep suddenly overwhelms me that not even Apollo himself could easily distinguish between the two of us lying there who was the more dead.
At length, having been woken at dawn and utterly scared with great terror, I run up to the corpse and, bringing a light near and revealing his face, I examine him carefully: nothing is missing. See, his poor wife bursts in weeping: having examined the corpse, she pays me my reward without hesitation.
While I was recovering my strength in the street next to the house, the body was brought out. Because it was the body of one of the leading citizens, it was carried in a procession around the forum according to local custom. As this was taking place, an old man suddenly appeared. He was weeping and tearing out his fine white hair. He ran up to the bier and embraced it. Amid sobs and groans he cried out:
‘per fidem vestram’ inquit ‘cives, per pietatem publicam, perempto civi subsistite et extremum facinus istius feminae nefariae scelestaeque severiter vindicate. haec enim nec ullus alius miserum iuvenem, sororis meae fillium, in adulteri gratiam et ob praedam hereditariam exstinxit veneno.’
illa, lacrimis effusis quamque sanctissime poterat adiurans cunctos deos, tantum slceus abnuebat. ergo senex ille: ‘veritatis arbitrium in divinam providentiam ponamus. Zatchlas adest Aegyptius propheta notissimus, qui mihi promisit se pro magno praemio spiritum istius cadaveris paulisper ab inferis reducturum esse corpusque animaturum.
‘For the sake of your honour’, the old man says, ‘citizens, for the sake of public duty, help this murdered citizen and punish severely the vilest of crimes done by that wicked woman. For this woman and no other person has killed with poison this wretched young man, my sister’s son, for the gratification of adultery and on account of a profitable inheritance.’
She, with tears falling down her cheeks and as piously as she could calling all the gods to witness, began to deny so great a crime. Therefore that old man said ‘let us put the judgement of the truth to divine providence. The Egyptian Zatchlas is present, a very well-known prophet who has promised me that he, for a sizeable reward, will bring back from the dead the spirit of that corpse for a little while and will bring the body back to life.’
The prophet was stirred into action. He took a special herb and laid it three times on the mouth of the dead man. Then he took another and put it on his breast. Then he turned to face the east and in silence prayed to the scared disc of the rising sun. The people waited in expectation of a miracle.
immitto me turbae et pone ipsum lectulum lapidem insistens omnia curiosis oculis spectabam. iam tumore pectus cadaveris extolli, iam spiritu corpus impleri. et surgit cadaver et profatur ‘cur, oro, me post Lethaea pocula iam Stygiis paludibus innatantem ad momentariae vitae officia reducitis? desine iam, precor, desine, ac me in meam quietem permitte.’
I push myself into the crowd and standing behind the stone bier itself, I began watching everything with curious eyes. At one moment, the chest of the corpse was being raised by a swelling, at another the body was being filled with breath. The corpse both gets up and speaks out: ‘Why, I beg, are you bringing me back, after drinking from the waters of Lethe and as I now embark onto the Stygian pools, for the duties of a short-lived life? Cease now, I pray, and allow me back into my rest.’
haec vox de corpore audita est, sed propheta aliquanto commotior ‘quin narras’ inquit ‘populo omnia de morte tua?’
Respondet ille de lectulo et imo cum gemitu populum sic adloquitur: ‘malis novae nuptae artibus peremptus et addictus noxio poculo, torum terpentem adultero reddidi. dabo vobis documenta veritatis perlucida, et quod prorsus alius nemo cognoverit vel ominaverit indicabo.’
The voice was heard from the body, but the prophet, somewhat more forcefully, said ‘Why don’t you tell the people everything about your death?’
He replies from the bier and with a deep groan addresses the people thus: ‘murdered by the evil arts of my new bride and a victim of her poisoned cup, I yielded by warm bed to her adulterer. I will give you clear proof of the truth and I will show you what no one else could find out or predict.’
tunc digito me demonstrans: ‘nam cum corporis mei custos hic sagacissimus exsertam vigilam mihi teneret, sagae quaedam exuviis meis imminentes forma mutata apparuerunt. cum industriam sedulam eius fallere non potuissent, postremo iniecta somni nebula eum in profundam quietem sepeliverunt. tum me nomine excitare coeperunt neque prius desierunt quam dum hebetes artus mei et membra frigida ad artis magicae obsequia segniter nituntur. hic autem, qui vivus erat, et tantum sopore mortuus, idem mecum nomen forte habet.
Then, pointing me out with his finger, he said: ‘For when this keen-witted guard of my body was holding his intensive vigil for me, certain witches, eager for my remains, appeared in changed form. When they were not able to deceive his determined diligence, finally they threw upon him a cloud of sleep that buried him into a deep slumber. Then they began to wake me by name and they didn’t stop until my sluggish limbs struggled slowly to obey the commands of their magic art. This man, however, who was alive and only dead asleep, by chance has this same name as me.
ad suum nomen igitur ignarus exsurgit, et, in exanimis umbrae modum ultro gradiens, ianuam adit. quamquam fores cubiculi diligenter occlusae erant, per quoddam foramen prosectis naso prius ac mox auribus prosectarum formatam aurium ei applicant nasumque similem prosecto comparant. et nunc stat miser hic, praemium non industriae sed lanienae consecutus.’
At the sound of his name, therefore, he unwittingly gets up and, in the manner of a lifeless ghost walking mechanically, approaches the door. Although the door of the bedroom had been carefully locked, through e certain hole, his nose and ears having been cut off, he suffered the mutilation instead of me. Them the witches attach to him wax formed into the shape of the cut-off ears and provide a similar nose the one cut off. And now the wretched fellow stands here, having earned a reward not for his diligence but for a mutilation.
his dictis perterritus temptare formam incipio. manu nasum perhendo: sequitur; aures pertracto: deruunt. ac dum turba directis digitis et nutibus me donatat, inter pedes cirumstantium frigido sudore defluens effugio. nec postea sic debilis ac sic ridiculus ad patriam redire potui, sed capillis hinc inde deiectis aurium vulnera celavi, nasi vero dedecus linteolo isto decenter obtexi.
Thoroughly petrified by these words, I begin to examine my face. I grasp my nose with my hand: it comes away; I touch my ears: they fall off. And while the crowd identifies me with pointing fingers and nods, I escape between the feet of the bystanders, dripping with cold sweat. Nor afterwards, so maimed and so ridiculous, could I return to my native land, but with my hair grown long on both sides I hid the wounds of my ears, and what is more, the humiliating condition of my nose, I covered up decently with this patch.
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