One of my favorite fragments of Greek lyric is Anakreon fr. 398:
ἀστραγάλαι δ’ Ἔρωτός εἰσιν
μανίαι τε καὶ κυδοιμοί.
Which is a short declarative sentence you can give to anyone who has learned to recognize the first two cases of classical Greek nouns—the verb is helpful, but not strictly necessary—except that μανία is a migraine of a word to translate.1 It is generally rendered as madness or frenzy, but it's specialized. You can be ἄφρων, out of your mind, or ἠλεός, distraught, and still not be μαινόμενος, in the grip of μανία. Its connotations are possession, being god-ridden. Plato in the Phaedrus distinguishes four kinds: prophetic, which comes from Apollo; telestic (initiatory, ritual), from Dionysos; poetic, from the Muses; and erotic, from Aphrodite and Eros. νῦν δὲ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἡμῖν γίγνεται διὰ μανίας, θείᾳ μέντοι δόσει διδομένης, he asserts, in fact the greatest of good things come to us through μανία, when it is given, of course, as a gift from the gods.2 What he does not mention, because he was Plato and his anxieties about mimetic art are legendary, is that we might also kill someone with it. Μανία is what animates Agave when she wrenches off her son's head and calls it ἕλικα νεότομον, μακάριον θήραν, a fresh-cut vine-shoot, blessed prey. She is a woman μαινόμενα, one of the μαινάδες. It is not a domestic state of mind.3 These are the games played with our hearts. So I can translate:
The knucklebones of Eros are
frenzies and fighting
without losing points on my pop quiz, but that does very little for the sense of uncontrol, that our lives are a game of chance in a boy-god's hands. He tosses and catches indifference or passion for his amusement, carelessly destructive as a child, or perhaps we set ourselves to gamble with him each time we fall in love: and being mortals, are bound to lose. Anything can happen, the physical shock of κυδοιμός, the furious fancies of μανία.
The dice Eros plays with
are ecstasies and riots.
But that's not quite right, either. There must be articles, if not dissertations on the taxonomies of madness in classical Greek, but since none of them seem to have created a functional single-word translation for μανία, they don't help me very much. I put it in a poem anyway. But I'm still thinking.
1. I don't want to shortchange kudoimos, which is an uncommon word in lyric: it appears in Homeric epic, where it means the din and chaos of battle, commotion and uproar. If you want to know what astragaloi (Anakreon uses the feminine form) look like, here are some in their players' hands.
2. He is careful to differentiate between μανία caused by human illness (νοσημάτων ἀνθρωπίνων) and μανία which is a god-sent alteration from the everyday (θείας ἐξαλλαγῆς τῶν εἰωθότων νομίμων), to which category the four above-named kinds belong. Plato's is not a universe where the gods can casually fuck you up, which is one of the reasons I prefer archaic Greek lyric and Euripides.
3. It is not, however, the same as λύσσα, the rabid madness which, personified in Euripides' Herakles, drives the hero to murder his wife and children, fatally unable to distinguish them from his sworn enemies. There is some overlap; the Chorus in the Bacchae refer to the θοαὶ Λύσσας κύνες, the swift hounds of madness that will chase the daughters of Kadmos down and set them on their disguised nephew/son. But in Herakles, Lyssa's choreography of the killings plays not like Dionysos in Thebes, but like a brutal parody of his mysteries right down to the Chorus' horrified description—πρὸς αἵματ᾽, οὐχὶ τᾶς Διονυσιάδος βοτρύων ἐπὶ χεύμασι λοιβᾶς, all tearing flesh and no godhead.
ἀστραγάλαι δ’ Ἔρωτός εἰσιν
μανίαι τε καὶ κυδοιμοί.
Which is a short declarative sentence you can give to anyone who has learned to recognize the first two cases of classical Greek nouns—the verb is helpful, but not strictly necessary—except that μανία is a migraine of a word to translate.1 It is generally rendered as madness or frenzy, but it's specialized. You can be ἄφρων, out of your mind, or ἠλεός, distraught, and still not be μαινόμενος, in the grip of μανία. Its connotations are possession, being god-ridden. Plato in the Phaedrus distinguishes four kinds: prophetic, which comes from Apollo; telestic (initiatory, ritual), from Dionysos; poetic, from the Muses; and erotic, from Aphrodite and Eros. νῦν δὲ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἡμῖν γίγνεται διὰ μανίας, θείᾳ μέντοι δόσει διδομένης, he asserts, in fact the greatest of good things come to us through μανία, when it is given, of course, as a gift from the gods.2 What he does not mention, because he was Plato and his anxieties about mimetic art are legendary, is that we might also kill someone with it. Μανία is what animates Agave when she wrenches off her son's head and calls it ἕλικα νεότομον, μακάριον θήραν, a fresh-cut vine-shoot, blessed prey. She is a woman μαινόμενα, one of the μαινάδες. It is not a domestic state of mind.3 These are the games played with our hearts. So I can translate:
The knucklebones of Eros are
frenzies and fighting
without losing points on my pop quiz, but that does very little for the sense of uncontrol, that our lives are a game of chance in a boy-god's hands. He tosses and catches indifference or passion for his amusement, carelessly destructive as a child, or perhaps we set ourselves to gamble with him each time we fall in love: and being mortals, are bound to lose. Anything can happen, the physical shock of κυδοιμός, the furious fancies of μανία.
The dice Eros plays with
are ecstasies and riots.
But that's not quite right, either. There must be articles, if not dissertations on the taxonomies of madness in classical Greek, but since none of them seem to have created a functional single-word translation for μανία, they don't help me very much. I put it in a poem anyway. But I'm still thinking.
1. I don't want to shortchange kudoimos, which is an uncommon word in lyric: it appears in Homeric epic, where it means the din and chaos of battle, commotion and uproar. If you want to know what astragaloi (Anakreon uses the feminine form) look like, here are some in their players' hands.
2. He is careful to differentiate between μανία caused by human illness (νοσημάτων ἀνθρωπίνων) and μανία which is a god-sent alteration from the everyday (θείας ἐξαλλαγῆς τῶν εἰωθότων νομίμων), to which category the four above-named kinds belong. Plato's is not a universe where the gods can casually fuck you up, which is one of the reasons I prefer archaic Greek lyric and Euripides.
3. It is not, however, the same as λύσσα, the rabid madness which, personified in Euripides' Herakles, drives the hero to murder his wife and children, fatally unable to distinguish them from his sworn enemies. There is some overlap; the Chorus in the Bacchae refer to the θοαὶ Λύσσας κύνες, the swift hounds of madness that will chase the daughters of Kadmos down and set them on their disguised nephew/son. But in Herakles, Lyssa's choreography of the killings plays not like Dionysos in Thebes, but like a brutal parody of his mysteries right down to the Chorus' horrified description—πρὸς αἵματ᾽, οὐχὶ τᾶς Διονυσιάδος βοτρύων ἐπὶ χεύμασι λοιβᾶς, all tearing flesh and no godhead.
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