An old version (5th c. BCE) of an even older complaint, from the proem of Choerilus of Samos’ lost Περσηίς or Περσικά, a history of the Persian wars. The first half of line 3 is preserved in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (3.14; 1415a1), the rest in a scholia to that section. This text is from Hugh Lloyd-Jones’ Supplementum Hellenisticum (fr. 317).
Ah, blessed the man who was skilful in song at that time,
the attendant of the Muses, when the meadow was pure.
But now, when all has been divided up and the poetic skills have their fixed limits,
we are left last as if in a race, nor is there any direction
in which a man, though he look everywhere, can fetch a newly yoked chariot.’ἆ μάκαρ, ὅστις ἔην κεῖνον χρόνον ἴδρις ἀοιδῆς,
Μουσάων θεράπων, ὅτ’ ἀκήρατος ἦν ἔτι λειμών·
νῦν δ’ ὅτε πάντα δέδασται, ἔχουσι δὲ πείρατα τέχναι,
ὕστατοι ὥστε δρόμου καταλειπόμεθ’, οὐδέ πῃ ἔστι
πάντῃ παπταίνοντα νεοζυγὲς ἅρμα πελάσσαι.
Extracts 