The Life of Delicate-Hearted Girls; Agathias, Greek Anthology V.297

Non tanti iuvenum divexant corda labores,

Heu quanti miseras nos muliebre genus.

Sunt illis aequaeva cohors, quorum audet in aures

libera vox curas exonerare suas;

sunt varii lusus: & nunc per compita cursant,

nunc animos ad se picta tabella vocat.

Nobis nec lucem fas cernere: condimur intra

claustra domus, tabes non ubi caeca vorat.

 

Ἠϊθέοις οὐκ ἔστι τόσος πόνος, ὁππόσος ἡμῖν

ταῖς ἀταλοψύχοις ἔχραε θηλυτέραις.

τοῖς μὲν γὰρ παρέασιν ὁμήλικες, οἷς τὰ μερίμνης

ἄλγεα μυθεῦνται φθέγματι θαρσαλέῳ,

παίγνιὰ τ᾽ ἀμφιέπουσι παρήγορα, καὶ κατ᾽ ἀγυιὰς

πλάζονται γραφίδων χρώμασι ῥεμβόμενοι

ἡμῖν δ᾽ οὐδὲ φάος λεύσσειν θέμις, ἀλλὰ μελάθροις

κρυπτόμεθα, ζοφεραῖς φροντίσι τηκόμεναι.

--Agathias, Greek Anthology v.297; translated into Latin by Hugo Grotius (1798)

It isn’t as hard to be a guy as it is to be one of us delicate-hearted girls.

Guys have age-mates, whom they can vent their stress to,

They have sports, and can see art whenever they want.

We can’t even go outside, but stay locked away indoors,

Locked in a dungeon of our own anxiety.

AGATHIAS	MAP:
Name:  Agathias Date:  536 – 582 CE Works:  Histories Poems	REGION  5
BIO:	Timeline:
Agathias was a 6th c. poet and scholar from Mysia (western coast of modern Turkey). His most famous work, the Histories, records the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinian I.   Several of his poems are preserved in the Greek Anthology.	POST-CONSTANTINOPLE

<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 / Late Greek