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Διομήδειος ἀνάγκη.

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Διομήδειος ἀνάγκη.

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A Diomedian necessity.

This proverb is used for when people do things out of necessity, under compulsion as opposed to acting of their own free will. According to one interpretation, Diomedes of Thrace compelled his guests to sleep with his daughters who were, so the story goes, very unattractive. But some say instead that the saying refers to Diomedes, the son of Tydeus; according to fragments from the so-called Little Iliad,  Odysseus attempted to kill Diomedes on their night raid to steal the Palladium so that he could get all the glory for himself but Diomedes thwarted his plan and then bound Odysseus, compelling him to walk back to the Greek camp by hitting him with the flat of his sword. More details at Wikipedia: Diomedes and the Palladium.

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Ἔργα νέων, βουλαὶ δὲ μέσων, εὐχαὶ δὲ γερόντων.

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Ἔργα νέων, βουλαὶ δὲ μέσων, εὐχαὶ δὲ γερόντων.

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Deeds (are) for the young, plans for the middle-aged, and prayers for the old.

This is one of the fragments of Hesiod, and there is a hilarious story in Strabo about Athenodorus Cananites which features a parody of this saying: ἔργα νέων, βουλαὶ δὲ μέσων, πορδαὶ δὲ γερόντων — the word πορδή means "fart" (and, yes, the Greek and English words are both from the same Indo-European root!). You can read the whole story in Strabo here; just click on "load" to see the English translation side by side with Strabo in Greek.

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Γλυκὺς ὕπνος τοῦ δούλου.

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Γλυκὺς ὕπνος τοῦ δούλου.

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Sweet is the sleep of the slave.

The words come from the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. Here is the full verse in the King James version: The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. From the Greek root γλυκ- we get all the scientific terms formed with glyc- in English like hypoglycemia or nitroglycerin.

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Ζήνωνος ἐγκρατέστερος.

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Ζήνωνος ἐγκρατέστερος.

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More self-controlled than Zeno.

The Zeno in this saying is not the Zeno famous for his paradoxes (that's Zeno of Elea), but instead Zeno the Stoic philosopher, called Zeno of Citium. This proverbial saying about the Stoic Zeno is reported by Diogenes Laertius. The word ἐγκρατέστερος is the comparative form of  ἐγκρατής, hence the genitive complement: Ζήνωνος. From Greek ἐγκρατής comes the English word Encratites, which referred to early ascetic Christians who practiced sexual abstinence and did not eat meat.

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Κακὸς ἀνὴρ μακρόβιος.

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Κακὸς ἀνὴρ μακρόβιος.

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The wicked man lives a long time.

Compare the English saying, "Only the good die young." (Or the less well-known English saying, "A creaking door hangs long on its hinges.") You can see the Greek root κακ- in the English word "cacophony," and English "macrobiotic" is from μακρό-βιος.

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Κοινὰ πάθη πάντων.

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Κοινὰ πάθη πάντων.

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Suffering is common to all.

These words come from the "gnomai" supposedly composed by Phocylides, the 6th-century B.C.E. poet, although the work is now usually attributed to a pseudo-Phocylides, and perhaps composed as late as the 1st century C.E. by a Jewish writer. Here are the complete "gnomai" of pseudo-Phocylides if you are curious.

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Οὐκ ἐκπειράσεις κύριον τὸν θεόν σου.

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Οὐκ ἐκπειράσεις κύριον τὸν θεόν σου.

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You will not tempt the LORD your god.

The words come from the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus rebuked the devil who tempted him during his 40 days in the desert. Both Gospel writers are quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy. The use in Greek of κύριος without a definite article is a signal that the word is being ritually substituted for the sacred name of God, the tetragrammaton; that's why I have followed the convention of printing LORD in all-caps. In this, Greek Christians (and presumably Greek Jews before them) were following the Hebrew convention of substituting "Adonai" for the tetragrammaton in their reading of the scriptures; more about Adonai. (And yes, the Greek name Adonis, Ἄδωνις, comes from the same Semitic root.)

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Βασιλεῖ νόμος ἄγραφος.

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Βασιλεῖ νόμος ἄγραφος.

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For the king, the law (is) not written.

In other words, the law does not apply to the king. There is a fuller form of this proverb also: Μωρῷ καὶ βασιλεῖ νόμος ἄγραφος, in which the fool, μωρός, like the king, is outside the rule of the written law. The Greek word νόμος gives us the English words with -mony as a suffix, like economy, astronomy, etc. And, yes, the plant "basil" does get its name from Greek βασιλεύς; it is βασιλικόν φυτόν, the royal plant.

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Αὐτοὶ χελώνας ἐσθίετε.

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Αὐτοὶ χελώνας ἐσθίετε.

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Eat the turtles yourselves!

A fuller form of the saying is Αὐτοὶ χελώνας ἐσθίεθ᾿ οἵπερ εἵλετε, "Eat the turtles yourselves, you who caught them." This is from a story about Hermes and some fishermen, as Erasmus explains: the fishermen had caught more turtles than they could eat, so when Hermes came by, they offered him some turtles to eat, but he realized their hospitality was not sincere, just convenient, so he told them to eat the turtles themselves.

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Ἀνέμους γεωργεῖν.

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Ἀνέμους γεωργεῖν.

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To farm the winds.

This is another proverbial fool's errand. You are supposed to farm the earth, which is literally what the word means: the γεωργός, "farmer," is someone does work ἔργον on the earth γεω-. Nothing will come of farming the winds. Of course, now in the 21st century we do have wind-farms! From the Greek word ἄνεμος we get English "anemometer" which measures the speed of the wind. And from Greek farming, we get the name George in English.

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Μυὸς ὄλεθρος.

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Μυὸς ὄλεθρος.

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The death of the mouse.

The mouse was proverbial for having an easy death, provided it dies of natural causes (and not in the claws of a cat or the talons of a bird). The proverbial saying is reported by Aelian in On the Nature of Animals, and the phrase also appears in the comic poet Menander. The Greek noun ὄλεθρος is related to the verb ὄλλυμι, and in Homer, the noun appears in the formulaic expression αἰπὺς ὄλεθρος, usually translated as "sheer destruction." For more about the origin and meaning of the Homeric phrase see the discussion in Simon Pulleyn's essay, A Linguistic Approach to Classics.

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Μήτηρ ἁπάντων γαῖα καὶ κοινὴ τροφός.

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Μήτηρ ἁπάντων γαῖα καὶ κοινὴ τροφός.

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Earth is the mother of all and (our) common nurturer.

This is another of the iambic monostichs of Menander; here's the meter marked:

Μήτηρ ἁπάν|των γαῖ-α καὶ | κοινὴ τροφός.
The word γαῖα is also the name of the Earth Goddess, Gaia: Wikipedia. The root gives us all the geo- words in English, like geology and geography, etc.

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Ἄρκτου παρούσης, ἴχνη μὴ ζήτει.

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Ἄρκτου παρούσης, ἴχνη μὴ ζήτει.

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The bear's right here; don't look for the tracks.

This is one of the fragments of the lyric poet Bacchylides.The fragment is preserved in the proverb collection of Zenobius; this bilingual Loeb edition has the rest of the fragments of Bacchylides if you are curious. The phrase ἅρκτου παρούσης is a genitive absolute, and you can see from the participle παρούσης that ἄρκτος is a feminine noun.

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Ἁ δὲ χεὶρ την χεῖρα νίζει.

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Ἁ δὲ χεὶρ την χεῖρα νίζει.

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The hand washes the hand.

Compare the English saying, "One hand washes the other." The saying appears in a fragment of the comic writer Epicharmus. The complete verse line explains the meaning of the saying: Ἡ δὲ χεὶρ τὴν χεῖρα κνίζει, δός τι καὶ λάβοις τι, "give something and you'll get something." Another version of the saying in Greek cited by Erasmus is Χεὶρ χεῖρα νίπτει, δάκτυλός τε δάκτυλον, "Hand washes hand, and finger (washes) finger." From the Greek word χείρ we get the English word "chiropractor."

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Ἀρχὴ σοφίας φόβος θεοῦ.

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Ἀρχὴ σοφίας φόβος θεοῦ.

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The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.

The saying comes from the Biblical Book of Proverbs. The Greek word ἀρχὴ has a wide range of meaning: it can mean first in terms of time (as in English "archaic") and it can also refer to first in status, hence authority, command, etc. (as in English words like archangel and other arch- words).

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Σιγᾶν ἄμεινον ἢ λαλεῖν ἃ μὴ πρέπει.

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Σιγᾶν ἄμεινον ἢ λαλεῖν ἃ μὴ πρέπει.

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To be silent is better than to say things that are not appropriate.

The Greek infinitive, σιγᾶν, is a neuter noun, hence the neuter adjective, ἄμεινον (the masculine form is ἀμείνων). This is another one of Menander's monostichs; here is the iambic meter marked:

Σιγᾶν ἄμει|νον ἢ λαλεῖν | ἃ μὴ πρέπει.

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Λύχνον ἐν μεσημβρίᾳ ἅπτειν.

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Λύχνον ἐν μεσημβρίᾳ ἅπτειν.

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To light the lamp at midday.

This is a proverbially foolish and/or wasteful thing to do; compare the English saying "to burn daylight." You don't need a lamp when the sun is shining! There is an Aesop's fable based on this saying; you can read more about that fable here: The Lamp in Daylight.

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Θεὸς διὰ πάντα τελευτᾷ.

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Θεὸς διὰ πάντα τελευτᾷ.

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God brings all things to completion.

The words come from Homer's Iliad, when Agamemnon is basically blaming Zeus for his quarrel with Achilles. The word διὰ is not a preposition here; instead, it is functioning as an adverb; later, these adverbs attached themselves to the verbs as prefixes (δια-τελευτάω), but they were more free-floating in Homer. This is called tmesis, "cutting" of the verb; you can read more at Wikipedia: Tmesis. The root of the verb is τέλος, meaning the end or outcome, and you can see that Greek root in English teleology.

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Βοῶν ὦτα ἔχετε.

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Βοῶν ὦτα ἔχετε.

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You have the ears of oxen.

The ox was proverbially slow-witted, so to have the "oxen ears" meant that someone did not understand what was being said. This proverb was used as a pun to make fun of Boeotians since "βοῶν ὦτα" sounds like Βοιωτοί, Boeotians. (The name Boeotia does come from "ox" βοῦς, but it has nothing to do with ears.)

This ancient joke appears in the ancient commentary on Horace's Epistles, "Boetians were considered to be slow-witted, as if βοῶν ὦτα ἔχοντες."

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Κάθαμμα λύειν.

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Κάθαμμα λύειν.

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To loosen the knot.

As Erasmus explains, this is a reference to the legend of the Gordian knot, which you can read about also at Wikipedia. Alexander the Great famously cut the knot with his sword rather than figuring out how to untie it (see below). Compare this saying from an earlier blog post (in fact, the very first Greek proverb post at this blog!): Γόρδιος δεσμός.

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Ὅπου γὰρ ἡ λεοντῆ μὴ ἐφικνεῖται προσραπτέον ἐκεῖ τὴν ἀλωπεκῆν.

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Ὅπου γὰρ ἡ λεοντῆ μὴ ἐφικνεῖται προσραπτέον ἐκεῖ τὴν ἀλωπεκῆν.

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Where the lion skin cannot reach, apply there the skin of the fox.

In other words, when the lion's strength will not succeed, use the fox's cunning. Plutarch attributes the saying to the Spartan general Lysander, and the words are especially apt, because Lysander was rebuking those who said that the "descendants of Heracles" (Heracleidae) should not stoop to cunning, and the lion-skin was emblematic of Heracles. For more about Lysander, see Wikipedia (which cites this saying).

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Λύκος περὶ φρέαρ χορεύει.

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Λύκος περὶ φρέαρ χορεύει.

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The wolf is dancing around the well.

This saying actually made it into the LSJ Greek dictionary in the entry for the word λύκος, where they explain that it refers to someone doing something foolish, useless, etc. A wolf will not accomplish anything by dancing around a well; he might be thirsty, but he is not going to get anything to drink by dancing. Or, in another interpretation, if his prey has jumped into the well, he's not going to catch it now.

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Ὁ Καρπάθιος τὸν λαγών.

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Ὁ Καρπάθιος τὸν λαγών.

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The Carpathian (brought) the rabbit.

This is mentioned as a proverb in Aristotle's Rhetoric, and it was already known to Archilochus. The story goes that a Carpathian unwittingly imported a pair of rabbits onto the island (Κάρπαθος), and the rabbits multiplied, devastating the crops. Compare the rabbits in Australia.

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Αἱ Ἰβύκου γέρανοι.

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Αἱ Ἰβύκου γέρανοι.

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The cranes of Ibycus.

This refers to a story about the lyric poet, Ibycus, whose murder was avenged by cranes. You can read the story in the Wikipedia article about Ibycus, which cites this proverb. The poet Schiller made this story the subject of a poem; here is an English translation. Note that the cranes, γέρανοι, are feminine (like many animal names, γέρανος is common gender).

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Ὄνος ἐν πιθήκοις.

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Ὄνος ἐν πιθήκοις.

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A donkey among the monkeys.

The saying appears in a long fragment of Menander quoted by Aulus Gellius. It refers to someone, not very bright, who is being mocked and insulted by those around him, as the donkey is regularly an object of ridicule, while monkeys are proverbially rude.

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