Young men praise Tempe and praise the island of Delos,
The birthplace of Apollo, and praise Apollo's
Shoulder that wears the quiver
And the lyre his brother made.
What must come to anyone, to understand anything of Apollo, is the war one's own mind has waged to compel his choice between these im-plements. On behalf of the one side, we have suggested, lie the sure-fire schemes of seducing boys - selecting them with exquisite care for their suggestibility - and on the other are only the ar-guments of information and of civilisation. But we have proposed, from an impromptu class in dance in an art museum in the snow, to a tour of sailors' quarters in a Russian training ship, a question to resolve this tired antithesis: Do you love them?
Apollo guard us from the wretched plague,
From hunger and from war the cause of tears ..
Horace
Odes, I, 21
David Ferry, translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997©
Jeremy Young
Ah the fabled isle of Delos where I made a pilgrimage primarily to find the answers to Apollo's duality. then moving on to Olympia and Delphi to try and unravel the riddle even further. After consulting the Oracle at Delphi one was given the answer, that Apollo was any man you wanted him to be.
ReplyDeleteAw, Dink, you drew the wrong fortune cookie. :(
ReplyDeleteDamn! I wonder if it was the right Oracle?
ReplyDeletemabe one should go to Mykonos for the right oracle... or at least to Paros!
ReplyDelete:)
Quibbling over the right oracle, gents, strikes me as rather risky, given their genius for avenging an apostasy. I don't think it's part of the deal with oracles, to request a second opinion. But who am I, not to refer this question to our learned lyricist of the Cyclades?
ReplyDeleteTassos, have you an oracle to recommend, who makes house calls?