Simonides, An Inscription
Crossing the Gulf of Corinth
Simonides
All these victors from the Tyrrhenian wars
were on their way to Apollo at Delphi
with their first plunder
when they found their grave
on one night, in one ship, in one deep sea.
I was reading an anthology of ancient Greek poetry when I came across this poem by Simonides, a poet of 556-468 B.C. It is, I think, remarkable both for its economy and its haunting lyricism. The poem is an epitaph ‘on certain men who were ship-wrecked,’ as an early twentieth century classicist put it.
I begin by giving you two translations. The first, which I have reproduced above, is a translation by Willis Barnstone. I wondered how ‘accurate’ the translation was, so I found this earlier (scholarly) translation, done by J.M. Edmonds in Lyra Graeca [1922]. Edmonds’s short note says merely, the men died “in the Corinthian Gulf on the way to Delphi with an offering from the spoils of the victory at Cumae in 474; the inscription was on a cenotaph [empty tomb or monument to one/those who has/have died].”
Here is Barnstone:
Crossing the Gulf of Corinth
All these victors from the Tyrrhenian wars
were on their way to Apollo at Delphi
with their first plunder
when they found their grave
on one night, in one ship, in one deep sea.
Here is the more literal translation done by Edmonds. Note that the last line is pretty much similar to Barnstone, which to me attests that this is what the Greek poet wrote:
All these men on their way to Apollo with first-fruits of the Tyrrhenian spoil, had their burial of one sea, one night and one ship.
For those of you who read Greek – I do not – here is the original.
τούσδ᾿ ἀπὸ Τυρρηνῶν ἀκροθίνια Φοίβῳ ἄγοντας
ἓν πέλαγος, μία ναῦς, εἷς τάφος ἐκτέρισεν.
My friend, the classicist John Franklin, tells me there are two versions in Greek, which he translates in this fashion: 1.) Once as these men were bringing spoils from Sparta for Phoebus one sea, one night, one boat gave them burial. 2.) [Above] As these men were bringing spoils from the Etruscans for Phoebus one sea, one ship, one tomb gave them burial.
The poem is, as I said, economical. Men who had just won a major military victory were crossing the sea on their way home. They carried with them, on a boat, the spoils of victory. Gold? Fine textiles? Statuary? Military armaments? The poem does not say. Only spoils, or plunder, undifferentiated.
And the ship sank. Was it a storm? I imagine it was, though the short poem does not tell us.
What it says, though, is all in that wondrous final line. One night, one ship, one sea.
Thus to all things, all glories, all of life. The whole edifice of life as we think we know it goes down. One night, one ship, one sea. We never know when it is coming, the end of things: The ship goes down when we least expect it. And of that event there is little to recount: One night, one ship, one sea.
What is lost, what lives are lost, what are their histories? What were their victories?
One night, one ship, one sea.
All goes under, all disappears.
Many years ago I taught a survey of American literature, and as representative of our early days I taught two texts by Puritans. One of them was the most famous of all American sermons (unless you count “I Have a Dream” a sermon, which I do, in which case Martin Luther King wins the palm), “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” by Jonathan Edwards. I don’t particularly recommend reading the sermon, which is chock-full of the possibility of damnation:
The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the Fire; he is of purer Eyes than to bear to have you in his Sight; you are ten thousand Times so abominable in his Eyes as the most hateful venomous Serpent is in ours.
But in the sermon is a passage that has been, to me, both searing and eminently memorable. Here is what he said:
Unconverted Men walk over the Pit of Hell on a rotten Covering, and there are innumerable Places in this Covering so weak that they won’t bear their Weight, and these Places are not seen. The Arrows of Death fly unseen at Noon-Day; the sharpest Sight can’t discern them…
That the very ground beneath our feet might give way, as a rotten floor on the second story of a barn, covered with hay, might suddenly give way and leave us to plunge down and down to our death: That the very ground may break beneath our weight and plunge us into death and perdition, that is an image that is unforgettable.
In Simonides’s poem, the soldiers, secure in their boat, flushed with victory, bearing the riches that accrue to the victors, suddenly go down beneath the waters and drown. The opening of the poem shows us, if we pay attention, all the wonders that life can bring. And then, and then, suddenly all is lost. In the darkness of the night, the ship founders and sinks, and the water of the sea covers all. “One night, one ship, one deep sea.”
The poem shows us the fragility of life. It shows us tragedy – what seems so auspicious and celebratory turns suddenly and irrevocably to destruction. It shows us what Samuel Johnson would call, many centuries later, “the vanity of human wishes.” All in that one line.
Ezra Pound, trying to define what makes a poem a poem, found his way by means of an old German-Italian dictionary. (Who in the English-speaking world but Pound would have such an arcane work at hand?) “Dichten=condensare.” To make a poem is to condense.
I know of no other line as condensed as this poem’s ending. Men find their grave on one night, on one ship, on one sea.
Twenty-five centuries before this present day, Simonides saw what all who are human confront. He did not need Shakespeare, or Heidegger, to reveal that truth to him. Death can come at any time, even when we least expect it. And now, in our time, he continues to reveal that truth to us.