Palladas

Palladas (fl. 4th century AD) was a Greek poet of the Roman period.

Quotes

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  • This is life, and nothing else is; life is delight; away, dull care! Brief are the years of man. To-day wine is ours, and the dance, and flowery wreaths, and women. To-day let me live well; none knows what may be to-morrow.
  • Anthologia Palatina, V, 72 (Tr. W. R. Paton)

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  • Woman is the wrath of Zeus, given to men in the place of fire, a grievous exchange. For she burns up and withers man with care, and brings hasty old age on youth. Even Zeus does not possess Hera οf the golden throne unvexed; indeed he hath often cast her out from the immortals to hang in the mist and clouds; Homer knew this, and hath described even Zeus as being wrath with his wife. Thus never is a woman at concord with her husband, not even when she lies beside him on a floor of gold.
  • Anthologia Palatina, IX, 165 (Tr. W. R. Paton)

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  • Homer shows us that every woman is wicked and treacherous; be she chaste or a whore, in either case she is perdition. Helen’s adultery caused the murder of men, and Penelope’s chastity caused death. All the woes of the Iliad were for the sake of one woman, and Penelope was the cause of the Odyssey.
  • Anthologia Palatina, IX, 166 (Tr. W. R. Paton)

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  • Zeus, in place of fire, bestowed another fire, woman. Would that neither woman nor fire had come into being! Fire, it is true, is soon put out, but woman is a fire unquenchable, flaming, ever alight.
  • Anthologia Palatina, IX, 167 (Tr. W. R. Paton)

• Γραμματικοῦ θυγάτηρ ἔτεκεν φιλότητι μιγεῖσα
  παιδίον ἀρσενικόν, θηλυκόν, οὐδέτερον.
  • A grammarian’s daughter, having known a man, gave birth to a child which was masculine, feminine, and neuter.
  • Anthologia Palatina, IX, 489 (Tr. W. R. Paton)
  • W. S. Marris, "A Question of Gender", The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (1938), p. 655:

    The dominie’s daughter eloped with a suitor,
    And the baby was masculine, feminine, neuter.

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  • The smith transformed Love into a frying-pan, and not unreasonably, as it also burns.
  • Anthologia Palatina, IX, 773 (Tr. W. R. Paton)

• Σκηνὴ πᾶς ὁ βίος, καὶ παίγνιον· ἤ μάθε παίζειν,
  τὴν σπουδὴν μεταθείς, ἢ φέρε τὰς ὀδύνας.
  • All life is a stage and a play: either learn to play laying your gravity aside, or bear with life’s pains.
  • Anthologia Palatina, X, 72 (Tr W. R. Paton)
  • Robert Bland & John Herman Merivale, The Monthly Magazine, vol. xix (1805); Translations Chiefly from the Greek Anthology (1806), p. 70:

    This life a theatre we well may call,
      Where every actor must perform with art;
    Or laugh it thro’ and make a farce of all,
      Or learn to bear with grace his tragic part.

  • H. T. Riley, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Quotations, Proverbs, Maxims, and Mottos (1891), p. 549:

    Life is a stage, a play: so learn thy part,
    All cares removed, or rend with griefs thy heart.

    Cp. Shakespeare, As You Like It, II, vii, 139: "All the world's a stage"; Sir Walter Raleigh: "What is our life? A play of passion"

• Πάντες τῷ θανάτῳ τηρούμεθα, καὶ τρεφόμεσθα
  ὡς ἀγέλη χοίρων σφαζομένων ἀλόγως.
  • We are all kept and fed for death, like a herd of swine to be slain without reason.
  • Anthologia Palatina, X, 85 (Tr. W. R. Paton)
  • T. F. Higham, "Sentence of Death", The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (1938), p. 643:

    Death’s herd are we, and all the world a sty.
    For Death we’re primed and butchered,—god knows why!

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  • ?
  • Anthologia Palatina, ?, ? (Tr. W. R. Paton)
  • Walter Leaf, Quatrains from the Greek (R. & R. Clark, Ltd., 1919), p. 27:

    Weeping I came to life, weeping I go;
    All life I found one weeping tale of woe.
    Ah piteous weeping race of feeble men,
    Swept under earth to lie and rot below!

• ?
  • ?
  • Anthologia Palatina, ?, ? (Tr. W. R. Paton)
  • Walter Leaf, Little Poems from the Greek (Richards Press, Ltd., 1922), vol. ii, p. 65:

    Soon wilt thou pass to earth; waste not thy breath;
    Hush, man! and while thou livest ponder death.