8
Goodbye, then, to strength, speed, beauty and all manner of physical excellence! Let your god of love, O Tean poet, Anacreon (frg. 23 Bergk): the poem is lost. glance at my grizzled chin and flit by me if he will on his gold-gleaming pinions: Hippoclides will not mind! Hippoclides of Athens, one of many suitors for the hand of the daughter of Clisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, was preferred above them all. But at the feast which was to have announced his engagement he danced so well and so unwisely that Clisthenes was disgusted and said ‘Son of Tisander, you have danced yourself out of the match!” “Hippoclides does not mind!” was the answer he received. “Hence the proverb,” as Herodotus says (6, 126-131). Now should certainly be the time for eloquence to flourish and flower and reach its fulness, to drag as many as it can by the ears and to let fly many arrows. At least there is no fear that its quiver will unexpectedly run short!
8
You see what encouragement I apply to my age and my infirmities. This it is which gave me the heart to drag my pinnace, long ago laid up, to the water, provision her as best I could and set sail on the high seas once more. Be it your part, ye gods, to blowme fair, for now if ever do I need a breeze that fills the sail, a good companion.Odyss. 11,7; 12, 149. If anyone thinks me worthy, I would have him apply to me the words of Homer: How stout a thigh the old man’s rags reveal! Odyss. 18, 74
