And with his many wiles doth seize
And challenge me to sport with him.
But she—and she from Lesbos comes,
That populous and wealthy isle—
Laughs at my hair and calls it grey,
And will prefer a younger lover.
And he says, too, that Sappho says this to him—
You, O my golden-throned muse,
Did surely dictate that sweet hymn,
Which the noble Teian bard,
From the fair and fertile isle,
Chief muse of lovely womanhood,
Sang with his dulcet voice.
But it is plain enough in reality that this piece of poetry is not Sappho's. And I think myself that' typo?] Hermesianax is joking concerning the love of Anacreon and Sappho. For Diphilus the comic poet, in his play called Sappho, has represented Archilochus and Hipponax as the lovers of Sappho.
Now it appears to me, my friends, that I have displayed some diligence in getting up this amorous catalogue for you, as I myself am not a person so mad about love as Cynulcus, with his calumnious spirit, has represented me. I confess, indeed, that I am amorous, but I do deny that I am frantic on the subject.
And why should I dilate upon my sorrows,
When I may hide them all in night and silence?
as Æschylus the Alexandrian has said in his Amphitryon. And this is the same Æschylus who composed the Messenian poems—a man entirely without any education.
73. Therefore I, considering that Love is a mighty and most powerful deity, and that the Golden Venus is so too, recollect the verses of Euripides on the subject, and say—
Dost thou not see how great a deity
Resistless Venus is? No tongue can tell,
No calculation can arrive at all
Her power, or her dominions' vast extent;
She nourishes you and me and all mankind,
And I can prove this, not in words alone,
But facts will show the might of this fair goddess.
The earth loves rain when the parch'd plains are dry,
And lose their glad fertility of yield
From want of moisture. Then the ample heaven,
When fill'd with rain, and moved by Venus' power,
Loves to descend to anxious earth's embrace;
