CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
May 2018
My Walk of Simichidas: Remembering the seventh Idyll of Theocritus Such nectar as you Nymphs mixed for us to drink that day by the altar of Demeter by the threshing floor. May I set once more the great winnowing fan on her corn heap, while the laughing goddess bears sheaves and poppies in either hand. (153-157) The day is already warm, the harvest sun well up (it must be), as I leave town. The road I’m on is scattered-suburban and traffic is relatively busy, coming towards me, on its way to Kos. Private houses stud the wayside, usually quite large and beautiful. There are some commercial buildings. Am I on the correct road? The parallel Ammoudia road, close to the sea and looking over towards Bodrum and modern-day Turkey, conceivably could be the one. But I clear my mind of doubts and carry on. It is a smooth, modern road, but I think of the words of the goatherd to Simichidas: “As you go, each pebble sings spinning from your shoes.” There are no pebbles here. There is just the rising August heat. Presently I reach a crossroads and am directed by a soldier towards the town of Zipari. With frank Greek curiosity he asks my age, and I tell him. On the left, but out of sight now, is the fresh-water spring Vourina, on the lower reaches of Mount Dikeo. It is a bone of contention among students of the Seventh Idyll. Is this the spring which in lines 6-9 of the Idyll is celebrated as caused by the foot of Chalcon, ancestor of the hosts of Simichidas, or is its name an archaeological revival of the nineteenth century? Is it not even possible that this Vourina lost its name in the slow passage of time, only to have had it restored in the eighteen hundreds? Or could it be that Vourina is to be identified with the scene of the harvest festival in the Haleis described in the closing lines of the poem, as argued by M. Puelma? I don’t think so. I belong to the school of Patton, Gow and Dover. Two springs feature in the Seventh Idyll. Vourina, now on my left, is employed in the poem to heroise the ancestor of Phrasidamus and Antigones. Given its relative height it is hardly such a practical place 2
as to be a centre for a harvest festival, with its fragrant reeds, four-year-old wine, beans, winnowing fans, Demeter and all. Meanwhile, its pure waters pour richly for the town of Kos, and for local farmers who siphon it off and, surprisingly, fill white bathtubs nearby, while more is conveyed downhill to the Asclepion a kilometre or so below. It is approaching midday. An Aldi (or a Lidl) appears on the left and I drink a welcome and well-chilled portokolada. The girl asks my age. Now, somewhere along here Simichidas meets Lycidas, a meeting “arranged by the Muses”. The smiling goatskin-clad Lycidas appears, carrying an olivewood herdsman’s crook and smelling strongly of rennet. “Are you going uninvited to a vineyard?” he jokes. Simichidas compliments Lycidas as “the best of pipers”. He and his friends are heading for the farm of friends who are holding a harvest festival in honour of the goddess Demeter. He invites Lycidas to “cowherdise”, though he half-modestly admits that compared to others he competes like a frog amongst cicadas. The laughing Lycidas accepts the friendly challenge. The Cowherdising The ‘meludrion’ of Lycidas is a love poem, a lover’s wish that Ageanax may arrive safely when he sails to Mytilene. When he does, the poet will celebrate with Ptelean wine and (well!) roasted beans, and music played by two pipers. It is a poem of grace and longing and deep emotion: The halcyons – and of all the birds whose living’s of the seas the sweet green Daughters of the Deep love none so well as these – 0 they shall still the Southwind and the tangletossing East, and lay for him wide Ocean and his waves along to rest. Ageanax late though he be for Mitylene bound heav’n bring him blest wi’ the season’s best to haven safe and sound. (57-62)