I receive an rss feed on my lj friends list from a British phD student. He posted this:
http://archaeoastronomy.co.uk/?p=405
If you're stuck in a lift…
There's that common question that people ask “Who would you most want to be stuck in a lift with?”, to which the correct reply is “A lift engineer.” While I was lying in bed a similar question came to me. Imagine you're struck with a rare but incurable neurological disorder which will actually leave you unaffected apart from one problem. You will only be able to see the text of one classical author. All others will be a blur. You get to choose which author it you'll still be able to read. It might seem odd but sometimes you have to make choices like this in the real world. Which author would it be? Actually I've just realised it's another way of asking who's you're favourite classical author, or more accurately which ancient author is the most indispensible? Things seem so much more profound when you're half asleep.
Anyway who would it be?
Well. The first author who comes to mind is Cicero, because he is, of course, my boyfriend and stuff. << >> (I have a tshirt that says it in Latin! You can't take it away from me!)
However, the thing I love most in classical writings, more than Cicero's bravado (yeah, really), his astounding egotism, his deep pretensiousness, and his absolute assurance in his own words...more than that, the Greek and Latin languages are loved for their beautiful richness, their flavors, their nuances. Cicero does wonderfully, and sometimes his grammar makes me stare and exclaim "A genius you were!" while concurrently (and at times not at all briefly nor silently) cursing him.
However...
As Dawn in her saffron mantle rose from the River of Ocean to bring daylight to the immortals and to men, Thetis reached the ships with the god's gifts in her hands. She found her son Achilles prostrate with his arms round Patroclus. He was weeping bitterly, and many of his men stood round him wailing. The gracious goddess went up to them and taking her son's hand in her own she said to him: 'My child, the man who lies here was struck down by the will of Heaven. No grief of ours can alter that. So let him be now, and receive this splendor armour I have brought you from Hephaestus, armour more beautiful than any man has ever worn.
With this, the goddess laid the arms before him in their elaborate loveliness. They rang aloud and all the Myrmidons were struck with awe. They did not dare to look at them, and backed away. But the more Achilles looked, the more his passion rose, and from underneath their lids his eyes flashed fiercely out like points of flame. He picked up the god's splendid gifts and fondled them with delight. And when he had taken in all their beauty, he turned to Thetis and said: 'Mother, this armour of the god's - this is indeed the workmanship we might expect from Heaven. No mortal could have made it. I will go to battle in it now.'
- Iliad, Book XIX, Homer
(Penguin Classics, transl. by E.V. Rieu)
and
Gone too, beholden to you,
The sacrifices, choirs, psalms,
Hymns of praise. And now no more
The celebrations in the dark
Of feasts at night for the gods.
Gone are the gilded effigies
In wood, the twelve-mooned cakes
Offered under the Phrygian moon.
I wonder, my lord, I wonder
If you give a single thought
From your celestial throne
To the leaping flames and the lights
Of my city burning still.
- Trojan Women, Euripides
(Euripides: Ten plays, transl. by Paul Roche)
and
Perhaps someone might say, "Socrates, can you not go away from us and live quietly, without talking?" Now this is the hardest thing to make some of you believe. For if I say that such conduct would be disobdience to the god and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you.
- The Apology, Plato
(Loeb Classical Library, transl. by Harold North Fowler)
and
CLYTEMNESTRA (to the Furies):
You sleep? What use are you asleep?
It is because of you that I am dishonored by the dead,
they charge me with the killings, accuse me,
and the dead are relentless in resentment.
I have no place, I am shunned in shame,
they indict me with the harshest blame,
I who suffered the cruelest pain from my closest kin.
There is no angry god to avenge me,
slaughtered by those mother-killing hands.
See my wounds - let them tear your hearts!
All those honeyed liquids and sweet libations
I poured for you, you lapped them up,
the dark nocturnal feasts I burned at the hearth,
in the dead of night, at the ungodly hour.
Now I see it all trampled underfoot.
He has gone, just skipped away like some fawn,
sprung from the midst of your hunting net,
turning back only to grin and mock you.
Hear me, I am pleading for my soul!
Mind me, underworld goddesses,
a dream of Clytemnestra is calling you.
- The Furies, Aeschylus
(Aeschylus: Oresteia, transl. by Peter Meineck)
I think it would have to be either Homer or Aeschylus. It would most certainly be a Greek author. I waver between one and the other; they are both so fantastic, their writing so beautiful to behold, so rich, so filled with deep waves of emotion and turmoil. I do not know that I could choose.
I think, in the end...it would break my heart, for I adore Aeschylus so, but I would go with Homer.