6.08.2012

You Reap What You Sow (in Greek)


I reread in a scholion to Pythian Four a copy of a supposed oracle to Battus the First (a/k/a the Stammerer), the founder of Cyrene. I was rushed before and had not paused to note that it contained at its end an exhortation that gives the Greek equivalent of "you reap what you sow":

οἷά τἀνὴρ ἕρξει, τοῖον τέλος αὐτὸν ἱκάνει.



The slight irony in this is that the Greek colonists at Cyrene reaped what they did not sow, i.e. silphium (pictured on the coin above). They harvested the nature plant to extinction.

No comments:

Post a Comment