Mimnermus on Old Age

 Greek texts follow my translations.

 

      I was long unsympathetic to the lanky elegaics of Mimnermus.  Of the bits that have survived the centuries, many lament the ills of old age with what even when I was young struck me as shameless and misleading agism.  Surely, thought an idealist wisp within, every age must have its own beauty and satisfaction.  I was not attracted by grumping about old age, though Shakespeare, of course, was as dark when he depicted the aged as “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

    Apart from this theme Mimnermus seems to have written a heroic piece in the Homeric style on Smyrna’s resistance to Gyges and the Lydians, and his fragments reveal a few aphoristic lines, while in antiquity his chief reputation was as a love poet.  His fellow elegist Propertius commented that “in amore” Mimnermus outdoes Homer. [1]  An entire book of love lyrics titled Nanno after a flute girl (or αὐλητρίς) of his acquaintance was known in antiquity.  Though the bulk of the poet’s work has vanished in the dust-bins of the past, what survives testifies, if only in contrast, to an intense love of life, a profoundly secular world-affirming attitude that makes the decay of the physical body all the more catastrophic.

     Today’s taste would have doubtless preferred those erotic verses, but due perhaps to an old-fashioned taste for moralizing, most for what we can read of Mimnermus’ extant remains reflects on the disaster of old age, the deteriorated state of the text now mirroring that of the aged.  Today we are cushioned from the ravages of our later years by eyeglasses, hearing aids, medication for cholesterol and hypertension, and our culture so emphasizes self-affirmation that the pains of aging are in part obscured until not long before the inevitable conclusion.  But the one who long avoids the direct gaze of what Mimnermus called “dread old age” is likely to be unprepared when the ambush marking one’s last chapter begins to unfold.  The poet’s words must surely strike me differently now as I move into the second half of my eighth decade than they would have done, had I translated him in my twenties, though just how I can scarcely tell. 

 

 

1.

Oh, where is life and joy sans golden Aphrodite?

I’d die if I no longer cared for love!

Romantic plots and tender gifts and then the bed!

Such things, the very bloom of youth, are fine

to men and women both.  Then comes on dread old age,

which places ugly evils on a man,

for always hateful cares do press about his heart

(nor can he still delight in warm sun’s rays).

He frightens little children, the women turn away.

For all god made old age a time of pain.

 

 

2. 

We’re like the leaves that sprout in flowery spring;

we see them spread so fast beneath the sun.

Like them our blossom-time is short,

we nothing know from gods of good or bad.

Dark doom is standing always at our side,

who offers on the one hand wretched age

and on the other death.  The fruit of youth

is brief as when sun warms once again

the earth, and when the prime has passed one by,

it’s better to be dead than to still live,

for many evils come to us, sometimes the family falls,

and one must suffer all the ills of want.

A man may long for children and have none.

His one desire denied, he goes below.

To everyone Zeus sends a swarm of pain. 

 

 

3. 

The onetime fairest when his time is past

gets neither love nor fame from his own sons. [2]

 

 

4.

Tithonus got from Zeus old age that will

not end, a fate more grievous far than death.

 

 

5. 

A flood of sudden sweat pours down my limbs

I shake to see my generation age.

Our youth – so sweet and fine – would it were long!

 But short-lived as a dream Is youth, and age

unsightly, painful, hangs above our heads.

Unloved, disgusting, old men  are forgot.

The old lack praise and beauty, soon they are unknown,

unhonored, vile, and soon forgot as well.  

The old will see both sight and thinking fade.

 

 

6.

Before I’m struck with illness and with pain,

I hope at sixty death might catch me up. [3]

 

 

  

 

1.  “Plus in amore valet Mimnermi versus Homero/ carmina mansuetus lenia quaerit Amor.” Propertius 1.9 (11-12)

 

2.  Harsh as this sounds, Mimnermus could to point to today’s nursing homes as evidence of parental abandonment. 

 

3. Solon responded to this, proposing that eighty might be a better maximum age.  See Diogenes Laertius i. 60.

 

 

 

 

 

texts and sources:

 

 

1.  from Stobaues’ Anthology, CURFRAG.tlg-0255.1

 

τίς δὲ βίος, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄτερ χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης,

τεθναίην ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι,

κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δῶρα καὶ εὐνή,

οἷ᾽ ἥβης ἄνθ εα γίγνεται ἁρπαλέα

5ἀνδράσιν ἠδὲ γυναιξίν: ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ὀδυνηρὸν ἐπέλθῃ

γῆρας, ὅ τ᾽ αἰσχρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ κακὸν ἄνδρα τιθεῖ,

αἰεί μιν φρένας ἀμφὶ κακαὶ τείρουσι μέριμναι,

οὐδ᾽ αὐγὰς προσορῶν τέρπεται ἠελίου,

ἀλλ᾽ ἐχθρὸς μὲν παισίν, ἀτίμαστος δὲ γυναιξίν,

10οὕτως ἄργαλέον γῆρας ἔθηκε θεός.

 

 

2.  from Stobaeus’ Anthology CURFRAG.tlg-0255.2

 

ἡμεῖς δ᾽ οἷά τε φύλλα φύει πολυανθέος ὥρῃ

ἔαρος, ὅτ᾽ αἶψ᾽ αὐγῇς αὔξεται ἠελίου,

τοῖς ἴκελοι πήχυιον ἐπὶ χρόνον ἄνθεσιν ἥβης

τερπόμεθα πρὸς θεῶν εἰδότες οὔτε κακὸν

5οὔτ᾽ ἀγαθόν: κῆρες δὲ παρεστήκασι μέλαιναι,

ἡ μὲν ἔχουσα τέλος γήραος ἀργαλέου,

ἡ δ᾽ ἑτέρη θανάτοιο: μίνυνθα δὲ γίγνεται ἥβης

καρπός, ὅσον τ᾽ ἐπὶ γῆν κίδναται ἠέλιος:

αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν δὴ τοῦτο τέλος παραμείψεται ὥρης,

10αὐτίκα δὴ τεθνάναι βέλτιον ἢ βίοτος:

πολλὰ γὰρ ἐν θυμῷ κακὰ γίγνεται: ἄλλοτε οἶκος

τρυχοῦται, πενίης δ᾽ ἔργ᾽ ὀδυνηρὰ πέλει:

ἄλλος δ᾽ αὖ παίδων ἐπιδεύεται, ὧν τε μάλιστα

ἱμείρων κατὰ γῆς ἔρχεται εἰς Ἀΐδην:

15ἄλλον νοῦσος ἔχει θυμοφθόρος: οὐδέ τίς ἐστιν

ἀνθρώπων ᾧ Ζεὺς μὴ κακὰ πολλὰ διδῷ.

 

 

3.  from Stobaeus’ Anthology CURFRAG.tlg-0255.3

 

τὸ πρὶν ἐὼν κάλλιστος, ἐπὴν παραμείψεται ὥρη,

οὐδὲ πατὴρ παισὶν τίμιος οὔτε φίλος.

 

 

4.  from Stobaeus’ Anthology CURFRAG.tlg-0255.4

 

Τιθωνῷ μὲν ἔδωκεν ἔχειν κακὸν ἄφθιτον ὁ Ζεὺς

γῆρας, ὃ καὶ θανάτου ῥίγιον ἀργαλέου.

 

 

5.  from Stobaeus’ Anthology CURFRAG.tlg-0255.5

 

[αὐτίκα μοι κατὰ μὲν χροιὴν ῥέει ἄσπετος ἱδρώς,

πτοιῶμαι δ᾽ ἐσορῶν ἄνθος ὁμηλικίης

τερπνὸν ὁμῶς καὶ καλόν, ἐπεὶ πλέον ὤφελεν εἶναι:

ἀλλ᾽ ὀλιγοχρόνιος γίγνεται ὥσπερ ὄναρ

5ἥβη τιμήεσσα: τὸ δ᾽ ἀργαλέον καὶ ἄμορφον

γῆρας ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς αὐτίχ᾽ ὑπερκρέμαται

ἐχθρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ ἄτιμον, ὅ τ᾽ ἄγνωστον τιθεῖ ἄνδρα,

βλάπτει δ᾽ ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ νόον ἀμφιχυθέν.

 

 

6.  from Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers CURFRAG.tlg-0255.11

 

αἲ γὰρ ἄτερ νούσων τε καὶ ἀργαλέων μελεδωνῶν

ἑξηκονταέτη μοῖρα κίχοι θανάτου.