The vine’s/madder’s revenge on the goat/gazelle (1)

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A very common literary pastime in Greek and Roman antiquity was the versification of anecdotes and jokes. Many of the epigrams in the Palatine Anthology belong in this category. The following one is by Euenus (Ant. Pal. 9.75; translation by Sir William Marris):

“Ay, gnaw me to my root
And yet will I bear fruit
For a libation, goat,
When priests shall cut thy throat”

Euenus was copying Leonidas of Tarentum, who had written a more ponderous epigram on the same subject (Anth. Pal. 9.99). We also find this theme in the story of Ahiqar (8.4 in the Arabic Version; the Armenian version has a goat, while the corresponding section is not preserved in Aramaic):

“O my boy! thou art like the gazelle who was eating the roots of the madder, and it said to her, ‘Eat of me today and take thy fill, and tomorrow they will tan thy hide in my roots.’”

The story appears in the Aesopic tradition as well. Clearly it did not get there from the epigrammatists. On the contrary, the epigrammatists were versifying a popular fable that they found in oral circulation.

Sources (list of abbreviations)
Ahiqar (Arabic Version) 8.4
Anthologia Palatina 9.75
Anthologia Palatina 9.99

Bibliography

Erik van Dongen

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