Pindar and Anacreon/Anacreon/Ode 38

by Anacreon

ODE XXXVIII.—ON HIMSELF.

True, ah! true, I'm growing old;
Why should not the truth be told?
Still, from youths I never shrink
When the business is to drink.
When the joyous troop advance,
Still I join the merry dance:
I no useless sceptre bear;^[1]
But on high my bottle rear.
Should the grape some hero fire,
Should he wars and fights desire,
Let him fight then, if he please,
I prefer my peaceful ease.
Bring me, then, my gentle page,
Wine that glows with strength and age.^[2]

True, I'm old; but you shall see
Old Silenus, full of glee,^[3]
Acted to the life by me.

1. Among the ancients, the leader in the Bacchanalian dances bore a rod or sceptre.
2. However degenerated in other respects, the modern Greeks still know "where the best Chian, and what it may cost them;" at least if we may judge from the following extract:—
   
   "The red wine is the most esteemed in the island: a small part only is exported, the Greeks making too good a use of it themselves. It cannot greatly sooth or propitiate a Turk's feelings towards the despised and infidel Greeks to see them quaffing with keen delight the rich juice of the grape, and giving loose in the moment to unbounded gayety; while he, poor forbidden follower of Islam! must solace himself gravely with the pure fountain, his meager sherbet, or at most a cup of the coffee of Mocha."—Carne's Letters from the East, vol. i., p. 63.
3. Silenus was the foster-father and tutor of Bacchus, represented as a little, flat-nosed, bald, fat, tun-bellied, old, drunken fellow, riding on an ass. His picture is thus drawn by Ovid:—
   
   

   "Around the Bacchæ and the Satyrs' throng,
   Behind, Silenus drunk lags slow along;
   On his dull ass he nods from side to side,
   Forbears to fall, yet half forgets to ride."—Eusden.