Apuleius' Metamorphoses
I'm sure my long breaks between posts is more annoying than suspenseful and probably cutting down on my readers. If I have any. Oops.
Liber I:11-16
[11]"'WHAT YOU MENTION IS ATONISHING,' I SAY, 'AND NO less savage, my Socrates. Of course, you have thrown me, too, no small worry; rather truly, fear, not with a needle-prick of worry but with a thrown lance, lest that old woman learn our conversations themselves having used that same work of divine power. And so, let us stretch out in sleep earlier and, when our tiredness has been removed by sleep, let us flee in the predawn of night and get as much distance as possible from there.'
"While I am still proposing this, good Socrates, pressed upon by unaccustomed intoxication and cronic fatigue had been put to sleep and was already snoring rather loudly. Indeed I, with the door shut and with the bolts firm, with the little cot placed behind the hinge and piled up satisfactorily, I retreat over top of it. And at first I stay awake for a while on account of fear, then around about the third vigil1, I close my eyes a little bit. I was just falling asleep and suddenly, with a blow greater than that you would believe thieves to make, the doors opened; indeed, rather, they were entirely knocked down with the hinges smashed and removed. The little cot, otherwise rather short and with one foot chopped off and rotting, is knocked down by the violence of such blows; I had also been expelled from it and thrown to the ground and, falling back on me upside down, the cot covers and hides me.
[12]"Then I sensed certain emotions to appear naturally in the opposite. For as tears often come out of joy, so too in this excessive terror I was unable to hold my laughter, from Aristomenes a tortoise was made. And then, thrown down to the floor, protected by my clever cot, from the corner of my eye I wait for the thing which might happen, I see two older women. One was carrying a shining lamp, the other a sponge and unsheathed sword. In this state, they surrounded Socrates, sleeping well. The one with the sword begins, 'This one is, sister Panthia, dear Endymion2, this is my catamite 3, who ridiculed my tender age by day and by night, this one who, my loves having been endured, not only slandered me with abuses, truly still prepared an escape. But I, naturally, deserted like Calypso by the trick of Ulysses4, will cry in eternal solitude.' And with her right hand extended and me pointed out to her sister Panthia, 'But this,' she says, 'is the good counselor Aristomenes, who was the originator of this escape and now close to death, already sinking prostrate to the ground under his little cot he lies and watches all of this, he thinks he will repeat my outrages safely himself. Later, rather at once, indeed rather even now, I will make him so that he regrets both previous sarcastic remarks and present curiosities.'
[13]"As I hear these things, miserable, I leaked cold sweat, I am shaken by inner trembling, so that even the restless little cot, with my current state, danced under my back's quivering. But good Panthia says, 'Therefore why, sister, don't we first tear this one appart Bacchicly5 or cut off his man-parts with his limbs fixed?'
"To this Meroe--in these circumstances certainly I was sensing her name really agreed with Socrates' stories then--'No,' she says, 'let this one at least survive, who may bury the body of this poor little guy with a little earth.' And that having been said, with the head of Socrates having been moved away in her other hand, she plunges the whole sword through the left side of the throat all the way to its hilt, and diligently catches the eruption of blood with a little bag brought close, so that no drop was visible anywhere. I saw these things with my eyes. For still, so that she not change, I think, from the ritual of sacrifice, with her right hand inserted through that wound to the entrails deep within, Meroe, with a good feeling about, brought out the heart of my wretched companion, while he poured out his voice from his throat, cut by the weapon attack, rather an uncertain shriek, through the wound and bubbled up his spirit. Holding up a sponge with which she was opening that wound greatly, Panthia says, 'Hey you sponge, born in the sea, be careful that you pass through a river.' When these words had been announced, they leave and together with the little cot having been removed, sitting down with legs wide apart over my face, they unloaded their bladders, until they washed me thoroughly with the moisture of filthiest urine.
[14]"Just when they passed through the doorway, the doors rose again intact to their former state: the hinges fall back to the holes, the doors return to the doorposts, the bolts return to the lock. But I, as I was, still stretched out on the ground, inanimate, naked and cold and bathed in (urine?)6, as if newly born from my mother's womb, yes and in fact half-dead, but still outliving myself and last-born, or certainly now a candidate for fixing to the cross, 'What,' I say, 'will I do, when this guy appears murdered in the morning? To whom will I seem, while telling, to tell a likely truth? "You could have at least yelled to be helped, if so great a man as you could not resist a woman. A man has his throat cut under your eyes and you are silent? But why didn't the band of robbers kill you in the same way? Why did her savage cruelty spare the witness, perhaps on account of evidence of the crime? Therefore, because you have evaded death, now return to it."'
"I turned these words back again and again with myself, and night passed into day. And so it seemed the best thing to do was to escape secretly before daybreak and take up the road fetched with nervous steps. I take up my little bundle, I draw back the bolt with a muffled key; but those good and faithful doors, which had been opened of their own accord in the night, now scarcely and most laboriously, then with repeated insertions of its key, opened.
[15]"And I say, 'Hey you, where are you? Release the inn doors; I want to go before daybreak.'
"The doorkeeper, lying on the ground behind the inn doors even now half-asleep, says, 'What? Don't you know the roads are infested with robbers, why do you start a journey at this time of night? For even if you, aware of some crime, naturally want death for yourself, we do not have a gourd for a head that we would die for you.'
"'The light changes in not long,' I say. 'And besides, what can robbers take from a traveller from the greatest poverty? Or don't you know, fool, a naked person cannot be stripped by ten wrestling coaches?'
"To this that groggy and half-asleep guy, having rolled on his other side, said, 'But from what do I know you might be fleeing for protection with that guy's, your fellow traveller with whom you spent the night late, throat having been cut?'
"I remember that moment of time, the earth gaping at me from deep Tartarus and to have seen in these places the dog Cerberus hungering for me straight ahead. And I was remembering good Meroe, having departed, to have spared my throat not with mercy but with the brutality to save me for the cross. [16]Having returned to the room again, I was thinking with myself about a makeshift kind of death. But when Fortune furnished no other deadly weapon than only my little cot, 'Now finally, little cot,' I say, 'dearest to my soul, who, partner and witness, has gone through so many troubles with me which have occurred in the night, whom alone I can cite as witness of my innocence in my charge, you furnish the weapon to welcome me hastening to the Underworld.' And with this said, I attacked to untie the rope which was woven to it, and part of the cord having been thrown and fastened to a beam, which having been put under a window on the other side, I reached, and the other part firmly forced into a knot, the height for death having been climbed on the little cot and with my head having been inserted, I put on the noose. But then, with one foot pushing away the support with which I am held up, so that breath to the maw would be cut off by the tight part of the rope by having been drawn down with the burden, suddenly the otherwise crumbling and old rope breaks, and I, falling from on high, fall on top of Socrates--for he was lying next to me--and I tumble onto the ground with him.
1 About 11 o'clock, I think. The Ancient Romans were funny and inexact about time.
2 The goddess Luna fell in love with Endymion and doomed him to eternal sleep atop Mt. Latmos (or Patmos) just so she could hold him. Endymion is also simply a name for a handsome young man.
3 Or translated "my Ganymede," the young boy who was Zeus' lover. A cadamite is a man's young lover (it's a Greek thing).
4 Consult Homer's Odyssey. :)
5 Worshippers of Bacchus/Liber/Dionysus were women in animal skins who worked themselves into a frenzy and ripped animals (sometimes men) apart to internalize the god. They believed Bacchus was life liquid, which includes substances like wine and blood.
6 Dictionary writers don't like dirty words. They usually give the Greek, then, when you look up the Greek, they gives you the Latin. This word was absent all together and the nearest equivalent had something to do with things sacrificed, so...yeah.
Liber I:11-16
[11]"'WHAT YOU MENTION IS ATONISHING,' I SAY, 'AND NO less savage, my Socrates. Of course, you have thrown me, too, no small worry; rather truly, fear, not with a needle-prick of worry but with a thrown lance, lest that old woman learn our conversations themselves having used that same work of divine power. And so, let us stretch out in sleep earlier and, when our tiredness has been removed by sleep, let us flee in the predawn of night and get as much distance as possible from there.'
"While I am still proposing this, good Socrates, pressed upon by unaccustomed intoxication and cronic fatigue had been put to sleep and was already snoring rather loudly. Indeed I, with the door shut and with the bolts firm, with the little cot placed behind the hinge and piled up satisfactorily, I retreat over top of it. And at first I stay awake for a while on account of fear, then around about the third vigil1, I close my eyes a little bit. I was just falling asleep and suddenly, with a blow greater than that you would believe thieves to make, the doors opened; indeed, rather, they were entirely knocked down with the hinges smashed and removed. The little cot, otherwise rather short and with one foot chopped off and rotting, is knocked down by the violence of such blows; I had also been expelled from it and thrown to the ground and, falling back on me upside down, the cot covers and hides me.
[12]"Then I sensed certain emotions to appear naturally in the opposite. For as tears often come out of joy, so too in this excessive terror I was unable to hold my laughter, from Aristomenes a tortoise was made. And then, thrown down to the floor, protected by my clever cot, from the corner of my eye I wait for the thing which might happen, I see two older women. One was carrying a shining lamp, the other a sponge and unsheathed sword. In this state, they surrounded Socrates, sleeping well. The one with the sword begins, 'This one is, sister Panthia, dear Endymion2, this is my catamite 3, who ridiculed my tender age by day and by night, this one who, my loves having been endured, not only slandered me with abuses, truly still prepared an escape. But I, naturally, deserted like Calypso by the trick of Ulysses4, will cry in eternal solitude.' And with her right hand extended and me pointed out to her sister Panthia, 'But this,' she says, 'is the good counselor Aristomenes, who was the originator of this escape and now close to death, already sinking prostrate to the ground under his little cot he lies and watches all of this, he thinks he will repeat my outrages safely himself. Later, rather at once, indeed rather even now, I will make him so that he regrets both previous sarcastic remarks and present curiosities.'
[13]"As I hear these things, miserable, I leaked cold sweat, I am shaken by inner trembling, so that even the restless little cot, with my current state, danced under my back's quivering. But good Panthia says, 'Therefore why, sister, don't we first tear this one appart Bacchicly5 or cut off his man-parts with his limbs fixed?'
"To this Meroe--in these circumstances certainly I was sensing her name really agreed with Socrates' stories then--'No,' she says, 'let this one at least survive, who may bury the body of this poor little guy with a little earth.' And that having been said, with the head of Socrates having been moved away in her other hand, she plunges the whole sword through the left side of the throat all the way to its hilt, and diligently catches the eruption of blood with a little bag brought close, so that no drop was visible anywhere. I saw these things with my eyes. For still, so that she not change, I think, from the ritual of sacrifice, with her right hand inserted through that wound to the entrails deep within, Meroe, with a good feeling about, brought out the heart of my wretched companion, while he poured out his voice from his throat, cut by the weapon attack, rather an uncertain shriek, through the wound and bubbled up his spirit. Holding up a sponge with which she was opening that wound greatly, Panthia says, 'Hey you sponge, born in the sea, be careful that you pass through a river.' When these words had been announced, they leave and together with the little cot having been removed, sitting down with legs wide apart over my face, they unloaded their bladders, until they washed me thoroughly with the moisture of filthiest urine.
[14]"Just when they passed through the doorway, the doors rose again intact to their former state: the hinges fall back to the holes, the doors return to the doorposts, the bolts return to the lock. But I, as I was, still stretched out on the ground, inanimate, naked and cold and bathed in (urine?)6, as if newly born from my mother's womb, yes and in fact half-dead, but still outliving myself and last-born, or certainly now a candidate for fixing to the cross, 'What,' I say, 'will I do, when this guy appears murdered in the morning? To whom will I seem, while telling, to tell a likely truth? "You could have at least yelled to be helped, if so great a man as you could not resist a woman. A man has his throat cut under your eyes and you are silent? But why didn't the band of robbers kill you in the same way? Why did her savage cruelty spare the witness, perhaps on account of evidence of the crime? Therefore, because you have evaded death, now return to it."'
"I turned these words back again and again with myself, and night passed into day. And so it seemed the best thing to do was to escape secretly before daybreak and take up the road fetched with nervous steps. I take up my little bundle, I draw back the bolt with a muffled key; but those good and faithful doors, which had been opened of their own accord in the night, now scarcely and most laboriously, then with repeated insertions of its key, opened.
[15]"And I say, 'Hey you, where are you? Release the inn doors; I want to go before daybreak.'
"The doorkeeper, lying on the ground behind the inn doors even now half-asleep, says, 'What? Don't you know the roads are infested with robbers, why do you start a journey at this time of night? For even if you, aware of some crime, naturally want death for yourself, we do not have a gourd for a head that we would die for you.'
"'The light changes in not long,' I say. 'And besides, what can robbers take from a traveller from the greatest poverty? Or don't you know, fool, a naked person cannot be stripped by ten wrestling coaches?'
"To this that groggy and half-asleep guy, having rolled on his other side, said, 'But from what do I know you might be fleeing for protection with that guy's, your fellow traveller with whom you spent the night late, throat having been cut?'
"I remember that moment of time, the earth gaping at me from deep Tartarus and to have seen in these places the dog Cerberus hungering for me straight ahead. And I was remembering good Meroe, having departed, to have spared my throat not with mercy but with the brutality to save me for the cross. [16]Having returned to the room again, I was thinking with myself about a makeshift kind of death. But when Fortune furnished no other deadly weapon than only my little cot, 'Now finally, little cot,' I say, 'dearest to my soul, who, partner and witness, has gone through so many troubles with me which have occurred in the night, whom alone I can cite as witness of my innocence in my charge, you furnish the weapon to welcome me hastening to the Underworld.' And with this said, I attacked to untie the rope which was woven to it, and part of the cord having been thrown and fastened to a beam, which having been put under a window on the other side, I reached, and the other part firmly forced into a knot, the height for death having been climbed on the little cot and with my head having been inserted, I put on the noose. But then, with one foot pushing away the support with which I am held up, so that breath to the maw would be cut off by the tight part of the rope by having been drawn down with the burden, suddenly the otherwise crumbling and old rope breaks, and I, falling from on high, fall on top of Socrates--for he was lying next to me--and I tumble onto the ground with him.
1 About 11 o'clock, I think. The Ancient Romans were funny and inexact about time.
2 The goddess Luna fell in love with Endymion and doomed him to eternal sleep atop Mt. Latmos (or Patmos) just so she could hold him. Endymion is also simply a name for a handsome young man.
3 Or translated "my Ganymede," the young boy who was Zeus' lover. A cadamite is a man's young lover (it's a Greek thing).
4 Consult Homer's Odyssey. :)
5 Worshippers of Bacchus/Liber/Dionysus were women in animal skins who worked themselves into a frenzy and ripped animals (sometimes men) apart to internalize the god. They believed Bacchus was life liquid, which includes substances like wine and blood.
6 Dictionary writers don't like dirty words. They usually give the Greek, then, when you look up the Greek, they gives you the Latin. This word was absent all together and the nearest equivalent had something to do with things sacrificed, so...yeah.