hippolytus 555–64

I'm poking around for bee-themed quotes to make stickers for my laptop, and this one from Euripides' Hippolytus struck me hard enough that I wanted to see it in the Greek. I've hardly done a comprehensive survey, but still, this is the first reference I've seen to bees that shows them in a negative light.[1] And you know, I said I wanted to get weirder with it, so this is me, getting weirder with it ("it" here being translation).

I think this might be the first translation I've put anywhere remotely public in which I made any creative choices that could possibly be described as "fun". That kind of sucks; I should do this more often.

Euripides, Hippolytus 555–64

ὦ Θήβας ἱερὸν
τεῖχος, ὦ στόμα Δίρκας,
συνείποιτ' ἂν ἁ Κύπρις οἷον ἕρπει·
βροντᾶι γὰρ ἀμφιπύρωι
τοκάδα τὰν διγόνοιο Βάκ-
χου νυμφευσαμένα πότμωι
φονίωι κατηύνασεν.
δεινὰ γὰρ τὰ πάντ' ἐπιπνεῖ, μέλισσα δ' οἵ-
α τις πεπόταται.

O walled city of Thebes (full of grace), o mouth of Dirce, corroborate my account of the way Cypris walks: by betrothing the bearer of twice-born Bacchus to the thunder which burns at both ends, she put the woman to bed with her bloody lot. For she inspires all things counter, spare, strange—she buzzes about, busy as a bee.

(It's remarkable how difficult it is for me to not include the ultra-literal translation I did first. It feels almost irresponsible,[2] which is frankly absurd. The very fact of its difficult-ness made me more determined to do it.)

notes

greek

στόμα Δίρκας: this "mouth of Dirce" refers to a stream at Thebes which was said to have created as a memorial to Dirce by Dionysus, of whom she was a devoted follower.

τοκάδα: a striking word to use for Semele, mother of Dionysus. Τοκάς might sound familiar to Christians: one of the early ecumenical councils (the First Council of Ephesus) was to litigate whether the Virgin Mary was Theotokos (God-bearer) or only Christotokos (Christ-bearer). Τοκάς and τόκος may sound similar (and, I am sure, arise from the same root word, τίκτω), but the former is used primarily in reference to animals, as of mother goats at Theocritus' Idyll 8.63.

english

(full of grace): I feel like "holy" for ἱερὸν doesn't really get the vibe of it: it refers to something imbued with god. Since this passage is largely about the mother of a son of (a) god, I decided to go for the phrasing from the Hail Mary ("Hail Mary, full of grace...").

inspires: I was especially please with this: ἐπιπνεῖ means "to breath into" or, more metaphorically, "to excite, arouse" and that tracks really well with "inspire", which comes from the Latin inspiro (meaning "to breath into" or, more metaphorically, "to excite, arouse").

counter, spare, strange: I can never decide how to translate δεινός ("wonderful, terrible, awesome"), so I was going to double or triple up, and once I had decided on that I figured what the hell, this can be a Gerard Manley Hopkins reference if I want it to be.

busy as a bee: πεπόταται is a frequentative;[3] using it to build a sense of motion is the only way I can make sense of the bee comparison here.

  1. So far, they've served as archetypal examples of hard workers (e.g. in Vergil's Aeneid bk. 1) and as metapoetic metaphors for the producers of sweet words (e.g. in Theocritus' Idyll 7), but those are both fairly positive.^
  2. Though if your one and only source for Euripides' Hippolytus is this, you've got way bigger problems than me rendering ὦ Θήβας ἱερὸν τεῖχος as "walled city of Thebes, full of grace".^
  3. A verb that indicates repetitive action. In English, these typically end in -le or -er: thus "to spark" becomes "to sparkle".^