The Tune
Above the lyrics (transcribed here in modern Greek font) is a line with letters and signs for the tune:
Translated into modern musical notation, the tune is something like this:
| Seikilos epitaph Tune performed on a computer |
The following is the Greek text (in the later polytonic script; the original is in majuscule), along a transliteration of the words (which are sung to the melody), and a (somewhat free) English translation:
- Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου,
- Hoson zês, phainou,
- While you live, shine,
- μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ·
- mêden holôs su lupou;
- have no grief at all;
- πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν,
- pros oligon esti to zên,
- life exists only for a short while,
- τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.
- to telos ho chronos apaitei.
- and time demands its toll.
Read more about this topic: Seikilos Epitaph
Famous quotes containing the word tune:
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“My Poynz, I cannot frame me tune to fayne,
To cloke the trothe for praisse withowt desart,
Of them that lyst all vice for to retayne.
I cannot honour them that settes their part
With Venus and Baccus all theire lyf long;
Nor holld my pece of them allthoo I smart.”
—Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)