Two Poems About Childbirth, Greek Anthology VII.742 & VII.743

Non, Timoclea, tuorum lumen amisisti oculorum,

pueros geminos-pariente utero enixa:

oculis vero (in) pluribus nunc spectas fervidissimum currum

solis, priore-te facta perfectior.

 

οὐκέτι Τιμόκλεια τεῶν φάος ὤλεσας ὄσσων

κούρους δοιοτόκῳ νηδύι γειναμένη:

ὄμμασι δ᾽ ἐν πλεόνεσσιν ἀθρεῖς πυριθαλπὲς ῾ὄχημα

ἠελίου, προτέρης οὖσα τελειοτέρη.

--Greek Anthology vii.742; translated into Latin by Hugh Grotius (1860)

Timoclea, you have lost your eyesight no longer,

Now that you have given birth to twin boys.

Now you are even more perfect than you were before!

For now you look upon the sun’s light with more than two eyes.

 

 

 *****

  

Viginti Hermocratea et novem liberos enixa

neque unum neque unam vidi mortuam.

Non enim sagittis-configit meos filios Apollo,

non graviter-lugendas Diana rapuit puellas:

sed contra haec quidem solvit mearum partus adveniena

Phoebus autem ad pubertatem mares duxit

illaesos morbis. En quomodo vinco nec-immerito

liberis et lingua modesta Tantalidem.

 

εἴκοσιν Ἑρμοκράτεια καὶ ἐννέα τέκνα τεκοῦσα

οὔτε ἑνὸς οὔτε μιᾶς αὐγασάμην θάνατον.

οὐ γὰρ ἀπωίστευσεν ἐμοὺς υἱῆας Ἀπόλλων,

οὐ βαρυπενθήτους Ἄρτεμις εἷλε κόρας:

ἔμπαλι δ᾽ ἁ μὲν ἔλυσεν ἐμὰν ὠδῖνα μολοῦσα,

Φοῖβος δ᾽ εἰς ἥβαν ἄρσενας ἀγάγετο

ἀβλαβέας νούσοισιν. ἴδ᾽ ὡς νίκημι δικαίως

παισὶν καὶ γλώσσῃ σώφρονι Τανταλίδα.

--Antipater, Greek Anthology vii.743; translated into Latin by Hugh Grotius (1860)

 

I, Hermocratea, have given birth to twenty-nine children, and none of them have died!

Apollo has not struck down my sons;

Diana has not snatched away my daughters, full of weeping;

On the contrary, Diana has blessed each of my times in childbirth,

And Phoebus has raised my children into manhood illness-free.

In this way I have prevailed over Niobe,* both in [the amount of] my children and in a more modest tongue. 

* According to mythology, Niobe bragged that she was better than Leto [the mother of Apollo & Artemis] because she birthed seven times as many children. Enraged, Apollo murdered all of her sons, and Artemis murdered all of her daughters.

ANTIPATER of SIDON	MAP:
Name:  Antipater of Sidon Date:  2nd century BCE Works:  <fragments>	REGION  4
BIO:	Timeline:
Antipater of Sidon was a Greek poet who lived during the 2nd century BCE.  Little is known about him, and only a handful of his poetry was preserved in the Greek Anthology.	HELLENISTIC GREEK

<Anonymous>	MAP:
Name:  ???? Date:  Works:  Greek Anthology; Anthologia Graeca; Florilegii Graecii	REGION  UNKNOWN
BIO:	Timeline:
The Greek Anthology is a modern collection of Greek lyric poetry compiled from various sources over the course of Greco-Roman literature. The current collection was created from two major sources, one from the 10th century CE and one from the 14th century CE. The anthology contains authors spanning the entirety of Greek literature, from archaic poets to Byzantine Christian poets.	Byzantine Greek