Apollodorus of Karystos on working so hard at living badly

You know what? Turning on the news has never been a pleasant experience but lately...? What the hell are were doing to the world? To each other? What depravity and sense of entitlement is in the hearts of humans that we can do these horrible things and think we are in the right? How can we vote for lunatics to enter office? How can we turn a blind eye to refugees pouring out of warzones? How do we pass judgement on people coming to our countries in search of shelter? I practice xenia, I practice the ancient laws of hospitality. It pains me so, so greatly, to see all of this happening. So, today I am going to leave you with some ancient words of wisdom and seeth.

Apollodorus of Karystos (Ἀπολλόδωρος ὁ Καρύστιος) in Euboea was one of the most important writers of the Attic New Comedy, who flourished in Athens between 300 and 260 BC. He is to be distinguished from the older Apollodorus of Gela (342—290), also a writer of comedy, a contemporary of Menander. He wrote 47 comedies and obtained the prize five times. We have no full plays of him that have survived, but there are fragments. This is one, from Grammateidiopoios ('Maker of Writing Tablets').

Humans, all of you—why do you dismiss living happily
And work so hard at living badly
By waging war against each other? Dear gods!
Has some savage type of Fortune taken control
Of our lives, who knows nothing of education at all,
and is completely ignorant of anything
good or evil and just jerks us around
in whatever direction chance governs?
I think so. For how could a Fortune that was truly Greek
Prefer to watch them torn apart by themselves
And falling down among the corpses,
When it were possible for them to be happy, playing,
Getting drunk and listening to music. Tell me, sweetest one—
Rebuke our Fortune as the savage she is!”

 

Does not a life, like this deserve the name
Of godlike?—Think how far more pleasant all
Affairs would be in our communities
Than now they are, if we were but to change
Our fashions, and our habits, and our principles
One little bit. Why should we not proclaim,
"Every Athenian of less than thirty years of age,
Let him come forth and drink. Let all the cavalry
Go to a feast at Corinth, for ten days,
Crowned with chaplets, and perfumed most sweetly.
Let the Megarians sell and boil their cabbages.
Bid all the allies now hasten to the bath,
And mix in cups the rich Euboean wine."
Sure this is real luxury and life,
But we are slaves to a most clownish fortune.

Source of translation for verse one, source of translation for verse two.