I have been seeing this sign lately. EEE stands for Eastern Equine Encephalitis, which sounds terrifying. The acronym is, coincidentally, the sound I make when I read about it. This, of course, made me think of the Homeric name for Circe’s Island, Aiaia.
Schol. PQV ad Hom. Od. 9.32
“Aiaiê: A name from the Tyrrheanian Island, Aiaia, or, a Kolkhian one. For Aiaia is a city in Kolkhis.”
“Aiaiê: The island which Kirkê inhabits. And Kirkê herself receives the nickname the “tricky Aiaian”. This is probably an ethnic name from the Island. The word is made from the “ai ai” mourners utter, since this was how the men lamented when they were slaughtered by the Laistrygonians. Or the name comes from the rightful mourning of those men who were turned into beasts.”
I have not seen any convincing modern updates, but if one shows up I will add it:
There is the possibility that it could be a primal name, e.g. "earth" or something reflecting the immortality, e.g. "eternal"; but I am a fan of folk-etymologies.
“In the verses we attribute to Epimenides, the rest [of creation] comes from Air and night. But Homer says that Okeanos produced the younger generation of gods from Tethys (“Okeanos and birth of the gods and their mother Tethys”, [Il. 14.201]). Yet, Abaris thinks it was Kronos and Rhea, while others claim that Zeus and Hera are father and mother of the gods. Pindar thinks that they come from mother Kybele when he sings “queen Kybele, mother…”
Tully, when he was to drive out Catiline as it were with a thunderbolt of eloquence, often used that figure of repetition, as Vivit Vivit? Immo vero etiam in senatum venit, etc. Indeed, inflamed with a well-grounded rage, he would have his words, as it were, double out of his mouth; and so do that artificially, which we see men in choler do naturally. And we, having noted the grace of those words, hale them in sometime to a familiar epistle, when it were too much choler to be choleric. How well store of similiter cadences doth sound with the gravity of the pulpit, I would but invoke Demosthenes’ soul to tell, who with a rare daintiness uses them. Truly they have made me think of the sophister that with too much subtlety would prove two eggs three, and though he might be counted a sophister, had none for his labor. So these men bringing in such a kind of eloquence, well may they obtain an opinion of a seeming fineness, but persuade few,—which should be the end of their fineness.
From the Fragments of the Greek Historians–Mythical traditions record that Thetis hid Achilles at Skyros to prevent him from getting taken to fight at Troy where she knew he would die. Most retellings of this focus on how Odysseus tricked him into revealing himself. But it turns out Achilles also took on a girl’s name while he was there.
BNJ 57 F 1 Ptolemy Chennos, Novel History, Book 1 Photios, Bibliotheca 190, 147a18
Aristonikos the Tarentinian reports that Achilles, when he was living among the girls at Lykomedes’ place, was named Kerkusera, and Issa and Pyrrha. He was also called Aspetos and Promêtheus.
The names he takes on surely deserve a little more contemplation. Why did he also have male names while he was there?
Ken Dowden, in his commentary on this fragment, provides the following explanation of the female names:
“The name Pyrrha (red-head, like Pyrrhos the alternative name of his son Neoptolemos) is also found in Hyginus, Fabulae 96. The name Kerkysera is held to be a ‘joke’ (i.e., of Ptolemy Chennos) by A. Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World (Oxford 2004), 141, presumably by association with κέρκος (a tail or penis). M. van der Valk, Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad (Leiden 1963), 369 n. 228, regards the name as corrupt–it should, according to him, be Κερκουρᾶς (Kerkouras) ‘he who urinates by means of his tail’. Even if this is right, it does not, of course, show that the name was invented by Ptolemy Chennos. Cameron, Mythography, 141, views Issa as an out-of-place Latin term of endearment. But it appears in Greek as the name of a Dalmatian island and, more appropriately to Achilles, of a city on Lesbos (named after a daughter of Makar, Steph. Byz., s.v. Issa). ‘There is also a feminine form Issas on Lesbos found in Partheniosin his Herakles’ (ἔστι καὶ θηλυκὸν Ἰσσάς ἐπὶ τῆς Λέσβου παρὰ Παρθενίῳ ἐν Ἡρακλεῖ) according to Steph. Byz.ibid. A real Aristonikos, given the range of possible dates (see Biographical Essay), might well have been reading Parthenios, or even vice-versa.”
This text is from Brill’s new Jacoby, a collection of the Fragments of the Greek historians
“The Law of the Twelve Tables commands that anyone who has conspired with an enemy against the state or handed a citizen to a public enemy, should suffer capital punishment.”
Marcianus, ap. Dig., XLVIII, 4, 3: Lex XII Tabularum iubet eum qui hostem concitaverit quive civem hosti tradiderit capite puniri.
Cicero, De Legibus 3.2
“[Cases concerning] death and citizenship must not be pursued except before the greatest assembly and those whom the censors have recorded in the rolls of the citizens.”
de capite civis nisi per maximum comitiatum ollosque, quos censores in partibus populi locasint, ne ferunto.
Xenophon, Apology 25
“These opponents have not said that I am guilty of any of the actions for which the established penalty is death–robbing a temple, theft, enslaving someone, betraying the state…”
“Whoever raises a human being into power and thus enslaves the laws, whoever makes the state subordinate to his petty faction and transgresses what is right by doing all of this violently and stirring up civil strife, he should be considered the most inimical to the whole state.
And the kind of person who does not share these actions, but does occupy some of the most important offices of the state and either fails to observe them or does not fail but will not avenge his country because of cowardice, he should be considered as a citizen at a second degree of evil.
Let each person whose worth is small bear witness to the officers of the state by bringing this person to court for his plotting violent and unconstitutional revolution. Give them the same charges we have for temple robbery and run the trial as it is in those cases where the death penalty comes by majority vote.”
“It is right that punishments for other crimes come after them, but punishment for treason should precede the dissolution of the state. If you miss that opportune moment when those men are about to do something treacherous against their state, it is not possible for you to obtain justice from the men who did wrong: for they become stronger than the punishment possible from those who have been wronged.”
“Death is not the most extreme penalty–there are those described in Hades for offenses like this which are beyond death and are truly described, but they are useless in deterring some kinds of minds from their crimes.”
From Brill’s New Pauly on the death penalty in Greece and Rome by Gottfriend Schiemann:
“In Athens not only premeditated killing (phónos) and sedition and high treason (katálysis toû dḗmoû, prodosía ) resulted in the death penalty, but also religious offences such as desecration of the temple (hierosylía) and (cf. in particular the case against Socrates [2], 399 BC) publicly taught godlessness (asébeia). In a similar way, in Rome there was provision for the state death penalty for sedition and high treason (perduellio) by beheading (decollatio , in Greece apokephalízein) with an axe, later a sword. In the Roman Imperial period this was the typical death penalty for honestiores , but now sometimes also for homicide.”
The death penalty is not the enactment of justice, it is the execution of vengeance when justice is impossible or not actually desired. It does not function as a deterrent. It is meted out disproportionately to people without financial and social capital, which in the United States means that people of color face capital charges and are executed at far higher rates. The moral peril is compounded by the imperfection of our criminal system where at least 1 in 25 people on death row are actually innocent. The death penalty is not part of a justice system, it is part of a vengeance system.
Note the connection in several passages between the sanctity of the state, the power to end a life, and citizenship.
Bonus Content on treason:
Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 10.1
“Look, I have letters here which are obvious proof of treason and have the plans of the enemy.”
teneo ecce epistulas, in quibus manifesta proditionis argumenta sunt, in quibus hostium consilia
Polybius, Histories 5.59.2
“…because of the style of his life and his treason against his country I believe he is worthy of the greatest punishment.”
“He used to say that no plague is more fatal than the bodily pleasure which has been given to human beings by nature. Zealous lusts for this kind of pleasure compel people toward pursuing them insanely and without any control. From this source springs treason against our country, coups against the legitimate government, and from here secret meetings with enemies are born.”
Nullam capitaliorem pestem quam voluptatem corporis hominibus dicebat a natura datam, cuius voluptatis avidae libidines temere et ecfrenate ad potiendum incitarentur. Hinc patriae proditiones, hinc rerum publicarum eversiones, hinc cum hostibus clandestina colloquia nasci
But Wait! There’s More!
Some Greek Words for Perjury
ἐπιορκία, ἡ: perjury
ἐπίορκος, ὁ: Perjurer
ἐπιορκέω: to commit perjury
ψευδορκεῖν: to make a false oath
Thanks to Dimitri Nakassis for sending me this passage
Thucydides. 7.27
“Thirteen hundred peltasts, Thracian swordsmen from the Dii tribe, also came to Athens the same summer. They were supposed to have traveled to Sicily with Demosthenes. Because they were rather late, the Athenians decided to send them back to Thrace where they came from. For it seemed too expense to retain them for the Decelean War since they each were earning a drachma a day.
Since Decelea was first invested by the whole enemy army in that summer and later was held by the garrisons coming from different cities coming in turn to ravage the land, it was causing great harm to the Athenians. Indeed, this undermined Athenian affairs first by loss of property and then by the death of men.
Previous attacks were brief and did not keep the Athenians from deriving benefit from their land the rest of the time. But once they were continually invested in Attica and they were sometimes attacking in force and at other times using a single garrison attacking the country and pillaging to supply itself. The Spartan king Agis was also present and he was no slacker in prosecuting the war.
The Athenians were greatly harmed; they were deprived of their whole land. More than twenty thousand slaves freed themselves and a great number of these were craftspeople. All of the sheep and pack animals perished. And the Athenian horses, because the cavalry was deploying every day to attack Decelea and guard the land, either went lame because of working on rocky ground or they were wounded.
It would be edifying to write a history of the Peloponnesian War from the perspective of the slaves on either side. At the very least, a selection of all the passages which mentioned slavery and enslaved peoples would change the way we think of the war.
Note from Charles F. Smith on perseus.edu
πλέονἢδύομυριάδες : Boeckh, P. E. p. 55, reckons the number of slaves in Athens in the most flourishing period at 365,000, so that the number here given does not seem incredible.
Artemon of Pergamon (New Jacoby: BNJ 569 F 3 [=Schol. on Pind., Pyth. 1, inscr. a])
“Golden Lyre”: The poem has been written for Hieron; Pindar allegedly said this according to the historian Artemon because Hieron promised him a golden lyre. But these kinds of things are full of superfluous detail”
περιεργαζόμαι, “to take more pains than enough about a thing, to waste one’s labor” 2. “to be a busybody”
περιεργία: “over-exactness” II. “officiousness” III. “curious arts”
περίεργος: “careful overmuch” II. “done with especial care”; “overwrought, too elaborate, superfluous”
περιεργοπένητες: “poor scholars”
Suda, Kappa 504
Kataglôttismata: “tonguing-down”: all sorts of kisses. Fabrications. All kinds of massages with sweet oils. Also, superfluous words. Or the “tonguing-down” is a rather excessive kiss. Or, it is flattery”
“Solon, after he was asked by Periander over drink—when the former happened to be quiet—whether he was silent because of a loss of words or foolishness, said “No fool could ever be quiet at a drinking party.”
“Who can get a doctor for me and which one?
Who is an expert in the art of assholes?
Is it Amunôn? Perhaps he will decline.
Have someone call Antisthenes by any means.
For this man knows why an asshole wants
To shit thanks to the groaning.
Queen Eleithuia, don’t you ignore me
When I am breaking but all stopped up,
Don’t let me be the comic chamberpot!”
