#simonides

[sarafangirlart]

So there was this free library thingy where you can donate old books and even take some for free (there wasn’t even anyone managing it lol) and I found this book, I’ve been hearing a lot about Mary Renault’s writing so I thought hey why not? And it seems to have been a gift to someone, all the way back to 1979 so it’s weirdly personal even tho I don’t know these ppl.

It’s a book about Simonides who’s the guy who wrote that poem of Danaë in the box, so this book was calling to me like the Green Goblin mask lol

[myeba02]

Ever-flowing rivers, the flowers of spring 🌼 the flame of the sun, and the golden moon and the eddies of the sea. What human life is desirable without pleasure? Without it not even the life of the gods is enviable. Noble messenger of sweet-scented spring, blue-black swallow! Simonides _ Geek poet

[gennsoup]

Like the bee, she consorts with flowers to concoct her dream of a scented, pollen-yellow honey.

Simonides, On Poetry

[fsawt]

blorbo from my plays

[catilinas]

hey. what?????? what???????????? like the context of this poem is already pretty damn haunted and then it gets mislabelled as being about simonides (dead) while being by simonides (alive)????????????????????????

[feedergoldfish]

The Turn of a Dragonfly's Wing Being but man, forbear to say Beyond to-night what thing shall be, And date no man's felicity.           For know, all things           Make briefer stay Than dragonflies, whose slender wings       Hover, and whip away.

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Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC) via my favorite poetry site First Known When Lost.

[sarafangirlart]

“Classicist Robert Meagher (1995) points out that at the dawn of Greek civilization, men were blaming women for evil and for animality. This theme crops up as early as the seventh century B.C. in the work of the poet Semonides, in the first known piece of literature specifically written about the fair sex. In his lengthy poem Woman, Semonides identifies the female sex with kakon, or base evil, and says that Zeus created woman from animals: lazy donkeys, gross apes, stinging bees, and dirty pigs reposing on dung heaps. In much early writing, woman is depicted not as only one of many evils but as the worst kakon invented by the gods to torment mortal men. Woman’s primary iniquity is bound up with her inherent deceitfulness, synonymous with her superficial attractiveness, which baits the trap for man.”

[sarafangirlart]

"Yes, women are the greatest evil Zeus has made, and men are bound to them hand and foot, with impossible knots by god.

-Semonides, types of Woman