Living
Maxims of Theognis: My mind is distressed respecting
Translated by Rev. J. Banks (Bohn, 1856) · From Hesiod, Callimachus and Theognis (Bohn, 1856)
My mind is distressed respecting your friendship: for I can neither love nor hate you: knowing as I do that ’tis hard to hate, after one has been a friend to a man; and hard to love a man without his concurrence. Look therefore now to another; to me at least there was no constraint to do this: namely, the kindnesses, for which aforetime you were grateful to me.
This translation is printed as prose in its source edition.
Codex Note
Literal prose translation by the Rev. J. Banks (Bohn, 1856), printed as prose: the plain-sense companion to Frere’s verse version. Banks’s hyphenated compounds are his own.
Cite this poem
MLA
Megara, Theognis of. “Maxims of Theognis: My mind is distressed respecting.” Translated by Rev. J. Banks. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/theognis/328/.
Chicago
Megara, Theognis of. “Maxims of Theognis: My mind is distressed respecting.” Translated by Rev. J. Banks. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/theognis/328/.
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