The Riddles of Symphosius

I always love the shores, close to the deep banks,

Sweetly singing for the Muses; drenched with black color,

I am the messenger of the tongue, marked by the fingers of the master.

I cling, no great weight, to the outermost part of the body;

You might call it innate, so does no one feel burdened by the weight:

Yet one face, destined to bear many forms.

I bring great powers from small strength.

I open closed houses: but again I close those that are open;

I guard the house for the master: but in turn I am guarded by him.

Knotted, I am bound with iron, destined to hold many bound.

I am myself bound first, but being bound I bind in turn.

And I have freed many, yet I myself am not freed.

Earth gave me my body, fire gave me my strength:

I seek a lofty house, yet my place is always at the bottom:

I am drenched with liquids, but the moisture quickly leaves me.

I have tears, I have tears, but there is no cause of grief.

There is a path to heaven, but the heavy air hinders me;

And he who begot me is not himself born without me.

I am night in appearance, but I am not black in color;

And yet into the middle of the day I bring darkness with me:

Neither do the stars give me light, nor does Cynthia give me brightness.

I come from on high, gliding down in a long fall.

I fell from heaven, sent through the midst of the air:

And a bosom received me, which at the same time took me in.

I was once a wave, which I quickly believe I shall be again:

Now bound in the hard chains of the rigid sky,

I can neither bear to be trodden upon, nor to be held bare.

There is a house on earth, which resounds with a clear voice:

The house itself resounds, but the silent guest makes no sound;

Yet both run, the guest and the house together as one.

A fine dust of water, fallen with slight weight,

Wet in the sun, flowing in summer, dry in the cold,

About to make rivers, I first cover all the lands.

Long and swift I am borne, the daughter of a beautiful forest,

With an equally countless throng of companions pressing close:

I run many roads, leaving no footprints behind.

I shall tell you wondrous things about the beginnings of our life.

I was not yet born, nor was I then in my mother's womb:

Already with the birth laid aside, no one saw me born.

I cannot be born unless I have killed my mother.

I killed my mother: but the same end awaits me.

My death suffers what my birth has already done.

A letter fed me, yet I know not what a letter is.

I have lived in books, yet I am no more learned for it.

I have devoured the Muses, yet I myself have made no progress.

Pallas taught me to know the labor of weaving.

Neither do the rays of the loom nor the threads of the web concern me.

I have no hands, yet all things are accomplished with my feet.

I carry my house with me, always ready to move,

And with a changed soil I am not a wretched exile,

But my plan is born from the sky itself.

Hoarsely sounding, I am a vowel in the midst of the water;

But the voice sounds in praise, by which it also praises itself:

And though I always sing, no one praises my songs.

Slow with a sluggish step, endowed with a beautiful back,

Learned indeed by study, but destroyed by a cruel fate,

Alive I said nothing, yet now dead I thus sing.

My face is blind, obscured by black darkness.

Night itself is day to me, nor do I perceive any sun.

I prefer to be covered by earth: so no one will see me either.

I am provident for life, not sluggish in hard labor,

Bearing on my shoulders the rewards of a carefree winter:

Nor do I carry great things at once, but I gather many things in turn.

I am shameless, I confess; for what disgrace does gluttony fear?

I used to avoid the cold, and now I return in summer:

But I am quickly driven away, frightened by a false wind.

No good guest to farmers, no useful one to crops:

Not great in form, not called by an upright name:

Not welcome to Ceres, yet I take no small fattening.

My house is small, but the door is always open.

I live by stealth on a pilfered diet at little cost.

The name that is mine, a consul at Rome also bore.

I am a letter of the sky, written through flying wings,

Waging bloody wars, a bird of the hazards of Mars;

Nor do I fear battles, so long as the enemy be not too tall.

I live nine lives, if Greece does not deceive me;

And I am always black, compelled by no grief:

And without being angry I utter reproaches of my own accord.

Night gives me my name from the first hour of night.

I have no feather, though I have the wing of a flying creature.

But I return in the darkness, and I do not entrust myself to the days.

A house full of spines, yet the guest of a small body,

With an unharmed back, transfixed by sharp weapons.

An unarmed inhabitant sustains armed crops.

There is a novel hunt of beasts known to all,

Such that, if you catch anything, you refuse to carry it away with you,

And what you do not catch, you carry home with you nonetheless.

Life is death to me; I die if I begin to be born:

But the fate of death comes before the origin of light.

Thus alone I declare the shades themselves to be my parents.

I was the adulterer of a king, but I followed wooden limbs;

And I am a mountain of Cilicia, but not in name alone;

And I am carried in the heavens, and I walk upon the very earth.

I am the one with savage teeth, who overcomes the two-toothed,

Seeking bloody prey and gory meals

With much fury: I can also raise my voice.

A small body, but a heart greater than my body.

I am cunning in tricks, clever with a sharp wit;

And I am a wise beast, if any beast is called wise.

Nurturing nurse of Jupiter, clothed in long hair,

Traversing the heights and steep places with a difficult step,

I answer the shepherd of the flock with a trembling tongue.

Born in the fertile womb of a bristled mother,

From on high above I await the green fattening,

Bearing a divine name in my name, if the first letter were removed.

Unlike my father, of a different form from my mother,

Offspring of a mixed kind, not fit to continue the kind,

I am born from others, yet nothing is born from me.

I am named from a river, or the river is named from me:

And I am joined to the wind, swifter than the wind itself,

And the wind gives me young, I seek no husband.

Distinguished by four feet and two hands,

I am unlike myself, because I am not one and one;

And I am both carried and I walk, because two bodies bear me.

My head is large, but the members within are small:

One foot alone, but that one foot is very long:

And sleep loves me, yet I do not sleep my own sleep.

That my feet are like those of a goose, I will not deny:

Nor are there only two, but you see more in a row;

And yet I carry all these same ones turned upward.

I am called whole in Greek, but I am not whole in Latin;

Yet written before the middle of a tavern-keeper's shop.

I am born in the earth, washed in water, anointed with olive oil.

I hang while I am born: again I swell by hanging.

Hanging, I am moved by the winds, and nourished by the waters.

If I am not hanging, I shall very soon cease to be.

I bite those who bite me, I bite no one of my own accord;

But many are ready to bite the one who bites:

No one fears my bite, because I have no teeth at all.

I am the purple of the earth, suffused with beautiful color,

And fenced about, lest I be violated, I am defended by sharp weapons.

O happy, if I could live through a long fate!

I am indeed not great, but the greatest power is in me.

The breath is great, though in a small body.

Neither does my bud bring harm, nor does fault bring blush to me.

Sweet-scented of the grove, I am wearied by flame and smoke:

And this pleases the gods above, that I am sent into the midst of the fires,

Though nature has denied me any merit of sinning.

From tears and for tears my origin began.

I flowed from eyes, but now I am born from a tree,

A joyful honor to the leaf, but a sad image of grief.

I am a great god, kinsman to the peoples of the East.

Now through my fathers I have passed into many bodies,

And the strength remains not, but the grace of form has remained.

I was once a herb from the green grass of the earth;

But cut by the hard metal of steel, soft as I am,

I am pressed by my own weight, shut up beneath a lofty roof.

We are both stones, we are one, we both lie still;

As sluggish as the one is, so not sluggish goes the other.

The one remains unmoved there, the other never ceases to move.

I was among the stones, which ground and pressed me:

Yet I barely escaped, crushed through all my marrow:

And now my form is less, but my quantity is greater.

I do not wish to be joined in a marriage bed, though it pleases me to have a husband.

I want no man in my chamber: through myself my offspring is born.

I do not wish to suffer burial; I know how to bury myself in the earth.

A small body, with the curve of a bent point,

I carry deceitful baits through the midst of the wave:

I flatter in order to harm; I send food ahead to death.

Long, but slender, drawn out in thin metal,

I lead soft bonds accompanying me with light iron:

And I restore appearance to the wounded, and union to the loosened.

I was far greater once, while life remained:

But now lifeless, torn, bound, stripped away,

I am given to the earth; yet I am not buried in a tomb.

I enter head-first, I who hang from the sole of the foot:

With my top I touch the ground: I mark the traces of the head:

But many companions suffer the same fall.

None can split me, many can cut me.

But I am changeable in color, destined at some time to be white.

I prefer to remain black: I shall fear the last fate less.

I am not girt with locks, and I am not adorned with hair;

For within me I have hairs, which no one sees:

And hands send me forth, and I am sent back into the air by hands.

I am full of countless teeth throughout my whole body:

I devour the leafy offspring with a sharp bite:

Yet I chew in vain, and I spit out the rewards of the tooth.

A grove stands in the waters, a forest stands in the deep flood,

And the immovable timber remains in the midst of the waves.

Yet the earth sends forth what renders service to the earth.

I myself am not heavy, but the weight of water clings to me;

All my innards swell, spread through open cavities.

Water lies hidden within, but does not pour itself out of its own accord.

I have three teeth: which one row contains:

There is moreover one god and alone at the bottom;

And a divine power holds me, the wind fears me, the seas take heed of me.

Enclosed by heavy iron, surrounded by light feathers,

I press through the midst of the air with swift passage,

And sent forth departing, I return with no one sending me.

From the back of a beast I terrify all beasts,

Rendering obedience by the law of measured pain:

Nor do I wish to be despised, but on the other hand I do not wish to harm.

Fitted with hollow horns, transparent in a rounded circle,

Having a light within like a divine star,

In the midst of nights I do not lose the face of the days.

I am seen through entirely, nor do I bar the gaze of light,

Transmitting eyes that pass within my substance:

Winter does not pass through me, yet the sun nonetheless shines in me.

No fixed form is mine, no form is foreign to me.

There is a brightness within, gleaming with radiant light,

Which shows nothing, unless it has first seen something.

I am a good law of speaking, I am also a hard law of silence.

The right of the greedy tongue, the end without end of speaking,

Flowing myself, while words flow, so that the tongue may rest.

Water sunk far from the surface in a deep turf,

I can come forth only when veins have been dug through,

And I am drawn up to those above, led by another's labor.

Earth covers the trunk, the waters lie hidden in the turf:

There is a modest channel, which has no banks at all.

It is carried through the midst of wood, which used to carry wood.

I do not die continuously when the breath goes out;

For it returns without ceasing, though it also often departs.

And now my breath is great, now I have no capacity at all.

I, saved from the cruel flood of Deucalion,

am akin to earth, yet far harder than she.

Let a letter depart: I shall have the name of a bird as well.

I have escaped flames, I have fled the torments of fire.

The very remedy fights contrary to my fate.

I burn from water; I am set ablaze by waves in their midst.

Fire is always within me, yet rarely seen.

For it lies hidden inside, but comes forth only at blows;

nor does it need wood to live, nor water to die.

Four equal sisters run together with skill,

as though competing, though the toil is one for all,

and they are equally near, yet cannot touch one another.

We are those who stretch high toward heaven in our seeking,

whom one harmonious order holds together in concordant make,

so that, clinging together, one may climb through us to the heights.

Great mother of cleanliness, bound with a tenacious knot,

joined to the flat ground and grasped by two hands,

I am led everywhere following, and all things follow me as well.

Stiff with curved bronze, I am fashioned into a wide circle.

Within is the moving likeness of a clattering tongue;

it does not sound when at rest, yet when moved it often rings out.

We were once three, joined together under one name.

From three comes one, and three are mingled into one;

each good in itself: better is he who contains all.

Nothing has been taken away, nothing added from without;

yet I cannot find whatever I myself had left before.

What had been, is not: what was not, has begun to be.

Bearing a Greek name, the great contention of goddesses,

the deceit of a fair youth, the care of many sisters,

the ruin of Troy, while I carried out bloody wars.

I trace my noble lineage from the race of great Cato.

I have one sister, though many are thought to exist.

My complexion is born of smoke, my savour born of the sea.

I do not claim my strength from my whole body,

but in the contest of the head I refuse to yield to none.

My head is great: all my weight too is in it.

I grind all things together with the great strength of my power.

I have one neck, but the shape of two heads.

In place of feet there is a head: for the rest of the body is absent.

Red, curved, capacious, wet with another's drops,

feigning with false gleam the colour of gold,

given over to sweat, I yield to modest toil.

Through all the chambers harmless fire enters in:

there is great heat within which no one fears.

The house is not bare, but the guest who comes is bare.

I am ever given over to desire, uncertain of the future:

I am tossed with varied spinning into doubtful chances,

now sad for me in ill fortune, now glad in favourable events.

I was earth at first, hidden in the recesses of the earth:

now the flames have given me another worth and another name.

Nor am I now called earth, though earth may be prepared from me.

I bore more than one body ought to bear.

I had three souls, all of which I held within:

two departed, but the third nearly followed.

Once mighty in war, to be feared in savage arms,

I had five feet, which no one ever denied me;

now I scarce have two: abundance has made me poor.

Now it is lawful to see what you can scarce believe.

There is one eye within, but many thousands of heads.

He who sells what he has—whence shall he obtain what he has not?

Between the light-bearing sky and the earth lying below,

a traveller passes through the middle air with practised skill:

but the path is narrow, and scarce suffices for his very feet.

I fear no ambushes from lurking treachery,

for God has granted us these gifts of form,

that no one may move me, save he who is first moved himself.

A maiden most modest, I keep well the law of modesty.

I am not bold of mouth, nor rash of tongue;

I am unwilling to speak unbidden, but I give answers to one who speaks.

Coming of my own accord, I display various shapes.

I fashion empty fears with no true distinction.

But no one sees me, save he who closes his own eyes.

Bearing the name of a man, I remained after his final end:

the empty name endures, but sweet life has fled.

Yet life survives death after the span of life.

A twin point is joined to me with an iron hook.

I wrestle with the wind, I fight with the deep abyss;

I search the midst of the waters, and bite the very earth as well.

My mother was earth, my father was Prometheus himself,

And ears garlanded with a hollow belly govern me.

When I fell unhappily, my mother broke me apart.

Now you may believe me that what is said to be impossible can be done.

You hold eight in your hands, but with me as your guide and teacher,

when seven are taken away, six will remain to you.