DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.10358#0470
THEBES.
435
by an earthquake which shook the monuments of Thebes in the year 27 B.C.— and this accident
was the main cause of its after fame. For from the ruined giant there now came forth a sweet
sound, as of a human voice, when the morning sun touched him with its earlv beams. The
phenomenon was doubtless due to the effect of heat upon a cracked stone wet with dew—
some say a shrewd priest worked the oracle from within—but to the Greeks and Romans, who
were then the chief Nile tourists, the " Vocal Memnon " was nothing less than miraculous.
Like the luckless Polydorus imprisoned in his
tree and uttering lamentable groans—
Gemitus lacrimabilis imo
Auditur tumulo, et vox reddita fertur ad auris—
this speaking statue must surely contain a living
hero, and that hero, by a confusion of similar
sounds, they decided must be Memnon. The
inscriptions on the statue, dating from the time
of Nero downwards, express the wonder and
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things
THE FALLEN COLOSSUS OF RAMESES.
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed :
And on the pedestal these words appear :—■
" My name is Ozymandias, king of kings :
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! "—Shelley.
delight of tourists of the ancient world who heard the morning song of Memnon. Some are
in Greek, some in Latin, some prose and some verse ; and the legend which they associate
with the statue is thus told in the lines inscribed on it by Asclepiodotus :—
O sea-born Thetis, know that Memnon lives,—
Slain though he was beneath Dardanian walls,—
And softly sings beneath the Libyan hills,
Where spreading Nile parts hundred-gated Thebes ".
Yet thy Achilles, whom no fray could sate,
Speaks not in Trojan or Thessalian plain.
435
by an earthquake which shook the monuments of Thebes in the year 27 B.C.— and this accident
was the main cause of its after fame. For from the ruined giant there now came forth a sweet
sound, as of a human voice, when the morning sun touched him with its earlv beams. The
phenomenon was doubtless due to the effect of heat upon a cracked stone wet with dew—
some say a shrewd priest worked the oracle from within—but to the Greeks and Romans, who
were then the chief Nile tourists, the " Vocal Memnon " was nothing less than miraculous.
Like the luckless Polydorus imprisoned in his
tree and uttering lamentable groans—
Gemitus lacrimabilis imo
Auditur tumulo, et vox reddita fertur ad auris—
this speaking statue must surely contain a living
hero, and that hero, by a confusion of similar
sounds, they decided must be Memnon. The
inscriptions on the statue, dating from the time
of Nero downwards, express the wonder and
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things
THE FALLEN COLOSSUS OF RAMESES.
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed :
And on the pedestal these words appear :—■
" My name is Ozymandias, king of kings :
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! "—Shelley.
delight of tourists of the ancient world who heard the morning song of Memnon. Some are
in Greek, some in Latin, some prose and some verse ; and the legend which they associate
with the statue is thus told in the lines inscribed on it by Asclepiodotus :—
O sea-born Thetis, know that Memnon lives,—
Slain though he was beneath Dardanian walls,—
And softly sings beneath the Libyan hills,
Where spreading Nile parts hundred-gated Thebes ".
Yet thy Achilles, whom no fray could sate,
Speaks not in Trojan or Thessalian plain.