prose attestations to (or by) Kassandra, in the tidied original and in modern translation. presented in non-narrative format with in-character notes.
Featuring fragments on Greek tragedy and philosophy and guest-starring (pseudo-)Pausanias.
Geography
(Pseudo-Pausanias, 150-175 A.D. The copy of Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις to which this excerpt belongs, the only such copy of the work that contains this passage, was a ninth-century Arabic translation found in Cordoba by an archivist in 2013. From the very beginning controversy has reigned with respect to the validity of the work: since the rest of the text is nearly seamless, well within the bounds of seven hundred years' corruption and several translations, the strangeness of this passage (particularly the final line) stands out all the more. Many claim this passage a medieval addition or outright fraud, but they too are not without their biases.
Some scholars argue in the other direction, that elements of the writing style and of the language used do not neatly fit into the second century A.D. and are too close to that of the Classical period. This line of inquiry is currently being pursued by researchers at Universität Leipzig. One wonders at the implications, should this Classical argument prove correct.
Why the historically-sidelined island of Kephallonia serves as the subject of this mysterious textual addition, and what the final line could possibly be referencing, may never be known.)
Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις, selected passage
μετάξυ τῆς νήσου Ἰθάκης καὶ τοῦ πελάγους κεφαλλονιὰ ἔστιν. πάλαι δὲ ἕνεκα ξύλου, ἡ νῆσος νῦν ἀπορίας τῆς ξηρᾶς ἔστιν. ὀλιγωρεῖται νῦν ὑπὸ μέρους μείζονος Ἑλλάδος, ὁμοίως ἀρχαιότητι, καὶ ὁ δῆμος ἐνταῦθα ἀποζῇ μόλίς τε σκληρῶς ἐργάζεται, λάθρα οἰκουμένης τῆς εὐρέως.
ἐξαναστάντες ἐν μέσῃ τῇ νήσῳ Ὄρος Αἶνος, δόξαν ἔχει ἕνεκα θυελλῶν. ἐπὶ ὄρῳ ἵσταται τὸ μέγα μαρμάρινον ἄγαλμα τοῦ Διὸς, ὅν καλοῦσι Δία Κεραυνοβόλον. ὅταν γὰρ ἀστραπὴ τὴν ἀγάλματος χεῖρα τὴν ἀειραμένην κρούῃ, μυθέεται τὸν μάρμαρον διάπυρον καίειν. κατὰ δὲ ἔτος ἕκαστον ἐκεῖναι τῶν νήσου ᾐθέοι τῶν τολμητερῶν ἀγωνίζονται ἀναβαίνειν τὸν ἀγάλματον. ἀγῶνα γὰρ, εἴρουσι, τιμᾶν τὴν ἔνοικον ἣν συνεχῶς ἀνεβαίη ἐπὶ κορυφὴν τὴν ἀγάλματος ἐν χρόνῳ πάλαι.
καὶ μὴν διὰ ἄρχοντος Πυθόδωρου ἐν Ἀθήναις, ἔτου τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἐν ᾧ (ὡς Θουκυδίδης λέγει) τὸ Πλεῖστος Πόλεμος μετάξυ Ἀθήνων καὶ Σπαρτῆς ἦρξεν, ἡ νόσος Κεφαλλονιὰν κατέθρεξεν. ὁ δὲ οὗτος πυρετὸς αἷματος ὃς ἐν κώμῃ μικρᾳ ἦρξεν πλεῖστον τοῦ πλήθου διέφθειρε καὶ ἐντός οὔ γε πολλοῦ χρονοῦ νῆσον αὐτὴν ὑπέλιπεν ἐρήμην. κατὰ μυθολογίαν ἡ κακίστη δαίμων κακὸν τοῦτο ἐνηνόχει, ἀπεκτονυῖα τοῦς ἱερέας οἳ παύειν τὸν λοιμόν ἀπεστάλλατο.
μαλακή τοι συγχωρεῖ.
Translation
Between Ithaka and the sea is Kephallonia. Long ago renowned for its timber, the island is now one of arid poverty. It is ignored by most of Greece, as since antiquity, and the people there live scarcely and labor hard, unseen by the wider world.
In its center rises Mount Ainos, famous for its thunderstorms. Upon it stands the great marble statue of Zeus, whom they call Zeus Lightning-hurler. When lightning strikes the statue's upraised hand, the marble is said to glow. Every year those more daring of the island's youths compete to ascend the statue. The competition, they say, honors an inhabitant who regularly climbed to the statue's summit in a time long past.
During the archonship of Pythodoros in Athens, in the same year that (Thucydides writes) the Great War broke out between Athens and Sparta, a plague swept Kephallonia. This blood fever, which began in a small village, killed most of the populace and within a short time left the island a wasteland. Legend claims that a wrathful demon had brought this evil, slaughtering the priests who had been dispatched to halt the pestilence.
The coward stops trying.
Philosophy
(The following is the longest complete fragment of Περὶ Κόσμου Ἀφροσύνης, attributed to the Galician writer Viterubius in the late second century A.D. We have learned in the last few years that Περὶ Κόσμου Ἀφροσύνης was Viterubius's vicious response to the lost Περὶ Τῆς Κόσμῳ Χρείας by an unknown Athenian author, who modern scholarship for decades believed (incorrectly) to be the archon Philisteides. That work was apparently a reinterpretation of the apocryphal work Περὶ Τοῦ Κόσμου, of which both text and author are lost to us - if the work ever even existed.
Leaning excessively on a pair of references in Viterubius's other fragments, fringe scholarship has vehemently argued that the original Περὶ Τοῦ Κόσμου dates back to the Classical period. We at the Institute have dismissed this claim.)
Περὶ Κόσμου Ἀφροσύνης, fragment
1) …ἐπειδήπερ εἴη οὐ θεοὶ, ὡς τινὲς φασίν. αὖταρ δὲ ἔγωγε λόγον τὸν ψευδήν τε ἐμφανῶς καὶ ἀπατηλὸν ἐκβάλλω. πῶς ἔνεστι τῳ νομίζειν τοιοῦτον οῦτως εἶναι; μᾶλλον δὲ, ἐγὼ ἐρίζω, ἐκείνους οὓς ὁρῶμεν ὁμοίῳ θεοῖς εἰσὶ ἀληθῶς περ δαίμονας ἄλλα. ἐγὼ γὰρ πρότερον δέδειχα ὅτι εἰ θεοὶ εἰσὶ, ὥσπερ δὲ θεοὺς οὐχ ἡμεῖς δὴ διαγιγνώσκοιμεν.
2) καίπερ γὰρ εἰ οἱ δαίμονες οἱ καὶ Βαυκίδος καὶ Φιλήμονος τοὺς θεοὺς ἂν διέγνωσαν ἐν εἰσοδῷ, σφεῖς ἄξιοί περ ἦσαν τῶν ἐνδίκων δωρέων τοῖς πεπράγοσι ὅ γε δίκαιον, οὐ δὴ μόνον ἕνεκα φυσέως τῆς ἐκείνων οἵ χάριτας παρέλαβον. ἦ γὰρ ὃ μὲν πράγματα τὰ ἡμέτερα ἐπαίρει πρός δικαιον ἐστὶ οὐχ ὃ δὲ φρονήματα τὰ ἡμέτερα ἐλαύνει πρὸς ἄλλα. καὶ δὴ οὑτῶς ὅτι ξενια ἡ Ἑλλήικος μὲν προεῖπον, καὶ δὲ νῦν ἐπαναλαμβάνει, μυριάκις τὸν Ὀβίδου λόγον τὸν μύθου.
3) ...τούτου οὖν οὕτως ὄντος, αἰσθήσεων ἡμετέρων οὖν ἐχόντων τῇδε ἁμαρτίων, ἐγὼ συμβάλλω καὶ συμβαίνειν τοὐναντίον δύνασθαι: ἦ ἡμᾶς δῆτα αἰσθάνεσθαι θεούς δύνασθαι ἐν τῷ οὔκ πώ γε ὄντι τοῦ Ὀλύμπου…
4) …τὸν μέγιστον ἡμῖν κίνδυνον ἔρχεσθαι εἰ ἡμεῖς δαίμοσι τοῖς τοιουτοτρόποις ἁμαρτάνωμεν διδόναι ἀξίαν σφετέραν…
5) καὶ μὴν σκόπει Ἀλήθειαν. εἴκαζε δὲ αὐτὴν Ἐνοσίχθονι ἢ Κεραυνοβόλῳ, οὓς μὲν ὄντας ὁρῶμεν ἐνθάδε, αὐτὴν δὲ οὐχ ὁρῶμεν: ἀλλὰ ἔτι αὐτή τοι πανταχοῦ ἐστί, καὶ συγγραφὰς ἡμῶν τοῖς μονιμοῖς δακτύλοις συντίθησιν. χεῖρ γὰρ ἣ κἂν τάχα ἀφανὴς ᾖ μέντοι ἀρχὰς ἔτι καθαιρῇ…
Translation
…inasmuch as there are no gods, some say. I reject this false and deceptive argument. How can one believe such a thing to be so?
Rather, I say, they who we see as gods are, in fact, other beings. I have previously demonstrated that if there are gods, we would not recognize them as gods. For although the divine spirits of Baucis and Philemon might have recognized the gods on their threshold, they earned their just rewards by doing what was right, not simply because of the nature of those who received their kindness. What drives our actions toward what is right is not what drives our thoughts toward other things. So it is that Hellenistic xenia foretold, and even today repeats, Ovid's recounting of this myth thousandsfold.
...This being the case, our faculties thus being so flawed, I conjecture that the reverse can also occur: that we perceive the gods in what may not be the Olympians at all…
…that the greatest danger to us will come should we fail to grant such beings their rightful due…
Consider Truth. Compare her to the Earth-shaker or Thunder-hurler, which we can see existing in our world, while she is invisible; yet she is everywhere, writing our histories with unyielding fingers. The hand which is unseen may still topple empires…
Writings on Tragedy
(This excerpt was found largely intact in a mummy in Egypt and is presented here in its most plausible reconstructed form. The author and source text are unknown, and no recognizably related fragments have been discovered.)
text unknown, fragment
Stechōrigom Eleutherārum paucī in memoria tenent. hīc Anticlus Plataeae scrībit, ac constat fere hodiē, Stechōrigum tragoediam scrībere capessīvisse dē fīliā deīsatā, Spartānā iactā dē Taugetō summō, proeliā virgine quae quaerēns domum agminēs Graecum dēvastāvit. mythicon vēnātus excelsus bellum amorem iurem contigit et deōs ipsōs. per trēs annōs Stechōrigos scrīpsit hanc carminem atque annī tertiī fine in Dionysiā Pīraeō adeptus erat — novum quia in Athēnīs ipsīs drama nōndum celebrāta erat.
sed hoc, cum famam virī Graecae summī audīvērunt, hīc cōnātus concīvit īram apud ac Athēnārum oligarchās ac Corinthī etiam Spartae, ut incēnsae sint dramae illius et pecūnia confiscāta, et ipse effugātus. statim Stechōrigos fugit in Antiochīam, qua occisus propediem cicūtā.
Translation
"Few remember Stechorigos of Eleutherae. One Anticles of Plataea writes, and it is generally agreed today, that Stechorigos undertook to write a tragedy about a godborn daughter, cast from Mount Taygetos, a Spartan battle maiden who killed hosts of Greeks in search of her family. Her virtuous hunt touched myth, war, love, duty, the gods themselves. Stechorigos wrote this play over the course of three years and at the end of the third year had secured a spot in the Dionysia at Piraeus — an unusual circumstance because the play had never been performed in Athens itself.
"However, when word reached the highest men of Greece, this endeavor was met with outrage among the oligarchs of Athens and Corinth and even Sparta, and as a result his plays were burned and his property confiscated, and Stechorigos himself was exiled. Stechorigos immediately fled to Antioch, where he soon after died by poison."
A/N: second of three! I took advantage of this one to bring some Latin in and then play with the style a bit. for the other two portions, I tried to write at least roughly in styles suitable to their genre. lots of particles and step-by-step reason for the philosophy. for the geography I ripped off Pausanias.
comments and critique are always appreciated!