酸っぱいブドウとマンブリーノの兜

ソクラテスは獄中でイソップ童話を詩に直したり、
アポロを讃える頌歌を作曲したりしてた。
文章を書かずに産婆術の対話を大切にしてた人が。

'Why Socrates, who was not a poet, while in prison
had been putting Aesop into verse?'
―'Because several times in his life he had been
warned in dreams that he should practise music;
and as he was about to die and was not certain of
what was meant, he wished to fulfil the admonition
in the letter as well as in the spirit, by writing
verses as well as by cultivating philosophy.'

"Phaedo" by Plato
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1658/1658-h/1658-h.htm

he wanted to know why you, who never before wrote
a line of poetry, now that you are in prison are
turning Aesop's fables into verse, and also
composing that hymn in honour of Apollo.

Ibid

Aesop (ca. 620-564 BC)

Art Collection of Villa Albani, Rome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop
がそんなに前の人だったってのがやっぱり衝撃的。
でもこうやってヘレニズム様式の彫像になってると
古代ギリシャ人だったんだなという感じがしてくる。

話は飛ぶけれど、ドン・キホーテに出てくる話で、
次なる冒険を待ち望んでいたドン・キホーテはここぞと、
ひとつの扉が閉まれば、別の扉が開くという諺を挙げる。

"I think, Sancho, there is no proverb that is
not true, all being maxims drawn from experience
itself, the mother of all the sciences, especially
that one that says, 'Where one door shuts,
another opens.' I say so because if last night
fortune shut the door of the adventure we were
looking for against us, cheating us with the
fulling mills, it now opens wide another one for
another better and more certain adventure, and
if I do not contrive to enter it, it will be
my own fault."

"DON QUIXOTE" by Miguel de Cervantes
Vol. I. Chap. XXI.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/996/pg996.html

そして、床屋の金盥をあれこそはまさにマンブリーノの兜だ
といきおい奪い取ってかぶってしまう。黄金の不死身の兜。
（太陽を反射して光っていただけなのに。）

しかも、純金に目がくらんだ何者かが半分を
溶かしてしまったので、欠けているのが残念だ。

あわれな床屋には、後で牧師が代償を払ってくれる。

見える者にしか見えないマンブリーノの兜。