#daily classics

As night fades, we are born again, day upon day; of our previous life, nothing still remains to us; we leave the road we trod yesterday, never to return; we begin today the rest of our life. So don't tell yourself all those years are too much, old one: they're past and they mean nothing to you today.

These women with the voices of gods were raised by the Helikon and Macedonian Pieria's peak, on a diet of songs: Praxilla, Moiro, Anyte's poetry (the female Homer); Lesbian Sappho with her fair hair in beautiful tresses; Erinna, glorious Telesilla, and you, Korinna, who sang of Athene's shield when she rushed to war; Nossis with her woman's tongue, and sweet-sounding Myrtis: these are the craftswomen of everflowing verse. Nine Muses on great Olympos, and for each a woman born on Earth: to we mortals, an eternal delight.

Andromakhe still we hear lamenting; All Troy to ruins still we see falling; And Aias warring; and under the city walls Hektor bound and from the horses trailing, Through Homer's song: the bard whom not one country honours, but every land in all the world.

This Praxilla in her Hymns tells of Adonis being asked by Those Below what was best of the things he had left behind when he died. He replied thus: "The best thing I left was the light of the sun; second, the shining stars and the moon's orb; and then the cucumbers and apples and pears in season."

The Epigram That Doesn't Want You To Read It

Arsinoe, to you I dedicate this linen headband, through which the winds pass. With it, beloved, you wanted to wipe away the glistening sweat in my sweet dream, pausing in your busy work: thus you, Philadelphos, appeared to me with a sharp spear in one hand, my mistress, and holding a hollow shield in your left. You asked me for this white band; I, the maiden Hegeso of the Makedonians, give it.

As soon as he took the mortal blow, he immediately filled his hand with his own lifeblood, and hurled it into the air, and said, "You've won, Galilean."