The Poet's Complaint

Rhythms of old age and false teeth

My friend the piper and musician Callum Armstrong asked me to write about Anacreon, having here demonstrated on the ancient Poseidonia aulos (double pipe), together with Rosa Fragorapti on lyre, the metre of “anacreontics”. This catchy rhythm, used par excellence by the poet-songwriter Anacreon of Teos (c. 573-495 BC), grows out of a pattern of long and short syllables (called ‘ionics’) which creates a line of duplicated rhythm:

Anacreon characteristically gives this a rhythmical twist - a ‘Scotch snap’ or syncopation in modern terms - so that it becomes a bit livelier:

This rhythm may be represented by my mnemonic “As a word Anacreontics / has a ring of orthodontics”.

Orthodontics aren’t wholly inappropriate, in fact. In one ode in this metre, two stanzas long, Anacreon complains that he’s now long in the tooth and death is just round the corner. In my isorhythmic English translation, which I read in the metre of the Greek text, the penultimate line of each stanza (here shown in italics) reverts to the double ionic rhythm as a kind of run-up to the final resolution in anacreontics:

See my temples greyed already
and my head with hair all whitened:
happy youth no more is with me,
but my agèd teeth are crumbling
and the charm of life is shortened.

Now I often sigh with worry
at the thought of fearsome Hades
for the depths of Hell are grievous,
and the pathway down is painful—
and the fact is those who go there
never more return to sunlight.

πολιοὶ μὲν ἡμὶν ἤδη
κρόταφοι κάρη τε λευκόν,
χαρίεσσα δ᾿ οὐκέτ᾿ ἥβη
πάρα, γηραλέοι δ᾿ ὀδόντες,
γλυκεροῦ δ᾿ οὐκέτι πολλὸς.            
βιότου χρόνος λέλειπται·

διὰ ταῦτ᾿ ἀνασταλύζω
θαμὰ Τάρταρον δεδοικώς·
Ἀίδεω γάρ ἐστι δεινὸς
μυχός, ἀργαλῆ δ᾿ ἐς αὐτὸν
κάτοδος· καὶ γὰρ ἑτοῖμον
καταβάντι μὴ ἀναβῆναι.