The Last Samurai (19 page)

So far so good. It was only 3:15, and here already was more help for the decipherer than the Rosetta Stone ever gave Champollion. In fact I could not help thinking how much easier life would be if I proceeded without further ado to a noncommittal Ciao, rather than struggling hungover and sleepless with grammatical detail. And yet the text as it stood looked so thin. Apart from the transliteration, it offered nothing not readily available in the pages of the Loeb Classical Library. It was completely unconvincing as a message in a bottle and besides, it would be only too obvious that it could not have taken more than 15 minutes to write. So it would still be necessary to leave a note unless, of course, I left a more plausible sample of the gift to posterity, and I wrote

Μυρομ
νω grieving [masculine/feminine accusative dual middle participle] δ’
ρα and then, and so [connective particles] τ
them [M/F accusative dual pronoun] γε emphatic particle
δ
ν seeing [M. nominative singular aorist participle]
λ
ησε took pity [3rd person singular aorist indicative] Kρονíων the son of Kronos (Zeus)

and I still did not have something on the page that could be concluded with an airy Ciao.

It was also useless as a message in a bottle because full of unexplained grammatical terms which should really be explained or taken out. But I could not take them out without writing it all out again, and I could not explain them without going on for pages. But what if I had got carried away going through the passage word by word and not noticed this problem till later?

κιν
σας moving [masculine nominative singular aorist participle] δí and [connective particle] κ
ρη head προτ
… μυθ
σατο addressed [3rd person singular aorist middle indicative]
ν his θυμ
ν soul/spirit/mind/heart [masculine accusative singular]