These are the proverbs (and there are always more proverbs at the blog):
Πάθει μάθος.
Ἵππου γῆρας.
Λύκου ῥήματα.
Μίδας ὄνου ὦτα.
Τὸν ἀτυχῆ καὶ πρόβατον δάκνει.
And now, some commentary:
Πάθει μάθος.
Wisdom (is acquired) by means of suffering.
The words are spoken by the chorus in Aeschylus's Agamemnon, where the word μάθος is a poetic equivalent to μάθησις, "learning, the getting of knowledge, wisdom." The word πάθος (from the verb πάσχω) can simply mean "experience," but it can also have the negative connotation of "suffering." Given that the chorus then goes on to speak about πόνος, "hard work, toil," I opted for "suffering" in the English translation. In addition, Greek πάθος can also mean "emotion, passion," which is the sense it has taken on in the English word pathos, and also in compounds like sympathy and empathy. Compare a saying from an earlier blog post: Τα παθήματα μαθήματα.
Ἵππου γῆρας.
The old age of a horse.
This refers to the diminished strength and stamina that comes with old age, as seen in the contrast between a lively young horse and the plodding slowness of the old horse. Plutarch invokes the saying in his treatise on "Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs" (a timely essay given the current presidential election in the United States). From the Greek root in γῆρας we get English words like geriatric, gerontology, etc.
Λύκου ῥήματα.
The words of a wolf.
This saying appears in the ancient commentary on Plato's Phaedrus, where Socrates asserts that it is right for even the wolf to have his say. The commentator explains: "the words of a wolf, i.e. of someone who does wrong in both word and deed." To explain Plato's meaning more specifically, the commentator then tells an Aesop's fable about the wolf who criticized a shepherd whom he saw eating a sheep: "What an outcry there would be," said the wolf, "if I were to do the same." (For those of you who are fans of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you might remember that this is the passage from Plato which prompted Pirsig to say that "Phaedrus," his alter ego in the book, means "wolf" in Greek, a misstatement he corrected in a preface found in later editions of the book.)
Μίδας ὄνου ὦτα.
Midas (has) the ears of a donkey.
This saying refers to an ancient legend about Midas and his barber, which you can read at Wikipedia. Midas kept his donkey ears wrapped up in a turban, a secret known only to his barber, but his barber could not resist whispering the secret into a hole in the ground; grass grew in that spot, and then the grass whispered the story to every passerby — and so Midas's secret became common knowledge. There are similar stories in many different cultures; see Midas and other folktales of type 782 collected by Dan Ashliman, which includes examples from Europe, India, and the Philippines. You can see the root of Greek οὖς (ὠτός) in English medical terms such as otologist and otolaryngologist.
Τὸν ἀτυχῆ καὶ πρόβατον δάκνει.
Even a sheep bites an unfortunate man.
The idea is that anybody can be bitten by a snake or a dog, etc., but you have to be really down on your luck for a meek creature like a sheep to bite you. The third-declension adjective ἀτυχής is an alpha-privative: ἀ-τυχής, un-lucky, un-fortunate, etc. Note that καὶ is an adverb here, not a conjunction: καὶ πρόβατον, even a sheep.
King Midas
And here's a random proverb too:
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