My sister, reflect on how our father died
Despised and disgraced.
How he discovered crime in himself
And worked his hands to stab his own eyes.
Then how his mother-wife (that pair of words!)
Did violence against life with a plaited cord.
It goes on–how two brothers, yours and mine,
Killed one another, poor things,
And won at each other’s hand their common doom.
Now consider this too: we’re all that’s left.
We will die in the most wicked way
If despite the law’s might we transgressed
A decree, or the power, of tyrants.
You have to realize, we were born women;
We do not fight men.
Who has greater strength makes the rule.
We must submit to this, and more painful things.
I beg those under the earth to understand:
I’m not free. I will obey those who hold sway.
“Once, when [Caligula] was playing dice and had learned that he didn’t have any money, he demanded the tax roles of the Gauls and then ordered the wealthiest of them to be killed. He returned to his said that “while you have been competing over a few mere handfuls, I have come into one hundred and fifty million.” And those men died without any plan it all.
A certain one of them, Julius Sacerdos, who was well-to-do but certainly not one of the super-rich to the each that he should have been attached for it, was killed because he had a similar name. Everything happened with as little concern as this.
I don’t need to mention any of the many others who died by name, but I will talk about those for whom history demands some memory. First, he had Lentulus Gaetulicus killed—he was well-reputed in every way and had been an overseer of Germany for ten years all because he was dear to his soldiers. He also killed Lepidus, his lover and beloved, Drusilla’s husband, a man who had joined Gaius himself in having sex with those other sisters, Argippina and Julia. He had even stood for office five years soon than the law allowed and he had kept announcing that he would leave him as the successor of the empire. He sent the soldiers money for that man, as if he had overcome some enemy, and also sent three daggers to Mars the Avenger in Rome.”
“In addition to this, if something is one of those things that exists, where can it exist? For Zeno’s dilemma asks this kind of question: if everything which is exists in a place, then it is clear that the place is part of a place too and this problem persists endlessly.
Wait, there’s more: if every body is in a place, then the body is also in the entire place. How, then, are were to talk about things that increase and grow? For, based on what we have said, it would be necessary for the place to expand as well so that the space may be neither smaller nor greater than the thing which occupies it.
Because of these arguments we are necessarily in a state of confusion not only about what [a place] is but whether it even exists.”
“A ruler’s first duty is to save the state itself. This is saved no less in refraining from what is not fitting than from pursuing what is fitting. But the one who shirks or overreaches is no longer a king or a ruler, but in fact becomes a demagogue or a despot. He fills the subjects with hatred and contempt. While the first problem seems to come from being too lenient or a concern for humanity, the second comes from self-regard and harshness.”
“Aristonomos the son of Demostratos hated women and used to have sex with a donkey. After some time, the donkey gave birth to an extremely beautiful girl named Onoskelis. Aristokles reports this in the second book of his Unbelievable Things.
Fulvius Stellus used to have sex with a horse because he hated women. Eventually the horse gave birth to a fine-looking girl and they named her Epona. She is a deity who focuses on horses. This is according to Agesilaus in the third book of his Italian Matters.”
“Apopholios properly means someone who is not worthy to be numbered among men as a complete person, one who is lacking the use of words or deeds for the proper occasions. They also call schools phôleoi. Therefore, someone who has not gone to school is called useless, i.e. unschooled”
“Apophôlia: uneducated things. For phôleoi are schools. Or, they are things which someone shouldn’t declare because they are ineloquent or lack understanding”
†ἀποφώλιος· μάταιος. ἀδόκιμος, εὐτελής. ἢ ἀπαίδευτος (θ 177) p
Etymologicum Genuinum
….“this comes from phôleon: for schools are called phôleoi because people linger and spend time in them. Therefore they call uneducated people apophôlioi.”
φωλεύεω, “to lurk in a hole or a den”….“to lie hidden”
More Etymologies: Notes (from Perseus)
[177] ἀποφώλιος. The derivation of this word is most uncertain; it is commonly compounded of “ἀπὸ-ὄφελος” [from ophellos, “use”], while others refer it to a root “φα”, ‘to blow,’ or to “ἀπάφεσθαι”, ‘to cheat.’ Autenrieth proposes to refer the latter part of the word to the same root as “φύω” and “φώς”, so as to mean, ‘grown out of shape.’
“ ‘But you need to show some eagerness,’ he said, ‘since you may hear something soon. Perhaps it will seem shocking to you that this thing alone of all others is simple—when nothing else typically is—that it is sometimes and for some people better to die than to live. In addition, for some of the for whom it is better to be dead, it might seem equally shocking that it is not holy for them to do this good for themselves but they need to wait for some other benefactor to do it.’
Kebês laughed quietly and added in his own dialect, ‘As Zeus is my witness…’
Socrates said, “Well, it certainly would seem to be illogical, in this phrasing, but it nevertheless retains some kind of logic. The story which is told in the mystery narratives about these things—that we humans are in some kind of a cage and it is not right for us to free ourselves from it and run away—this story seems super important yet not easy to understand. Yet, this does seem to me to be well put: there are gods who care about us and human beings are one of their possessions. Doesn’t that seem to you to be the case?’ “
If you or someone you know feel alone, uncertain, depressed or for any reason cannot find enough joy and hope to think life is worth it, please reach out to someone. The suicide prevention hotline has a website, a phone number (1-800-273-8255), and a chat line. And if we can help you find some tether to the continuity of human experience through the Classics or a word, please don’t hesitate to ask.
“And the most absurd thing of all, Gods, is that even the dog of Erigone–he has been raised up so that that little girl won’t be upset because she can’t have her sweet little doggie in heaven! Doesn’t this seem to be an insult, a drunken joke? Listen, there’s more.”
“A dog is interred beneath this marker—
Tauron who was not undone when faced with a killer.
For he encountered a boar in direct combat-
It could not be passed as it puffed out its jaw
And drove a furrow in his chest as it dripped with white foam.
But the dog struck two feet into its back
And grabbed the bristling beast in the middle of its chest
And drove it down into the ground—he made a gift
Of the beast to Hades and died himself, as is the custom for an Indian.
He saved the life of Zenon, the hunter he followed.
So he is buried here beneath this light dust.”
“Glaukos, overseer, I will place another saying in your thoughts:
Give the dogs dinner first near the courtyard’s gates.
This is better: for the dog hears first when a man
Approaches or if a wild beast dares near the fence.”
“Is this true? Does no one apart from suitors take my letters to you? There are certainly many of those types lately–since you have made it clear that no one is safely recommended to you without my letter. But who of all your friends said that I would give my letter to anyone without meaning to do so? What greater pleasure remains to me than writing to you or reading a letter from you since I can’t actually talk to you?
What annoys me the most is that I have so much work to do that I am not capable of writing to you whenever I want to. I would have assaulted you not only with letters but huge tomes that I would have used rightly to be challenged to you to write back.
Although you are busy, you still have more leisure than I; or, if you don’t have free time, don’t be so shameless as to annoy me by asking for ever more responses when you only write to me after long breaks.”
itane? praeter litigatores nemo ad te meas litteras? multae istae quidem ; tu enim perfecisti ut nemo sine litteris meis tibi se commendatum putaret ; sed quis umquam tuorum mihi dixit esse cui darem, quin dederim? aut quid mi iucundius quam, cum coram tecum loqui non possim, aut scribere ad te aut tuas legere litteras? illud magis mihi solet esse molestum, tantis me impediri occupationibus, ut ad te scribendi meo arbitratu facultas nulla detur.non enim te epistulis sed voluminibus lacesserem ; quibus quidem me a te provocari oportebat.
quamvis enim occupatus sis,’ oti tamen plus habes ; aut, si ne tu quidem vacas, noli impudens esse nec mihi molestiam exhibere et a me litteras crebriores, cum tu mihi raro mittas, flagitare.
“Who eat bread…” He says this because there are some races who don’t eat bread. Indeed, some are called locust eaters and fish-easters, like the Skythian race and the Massagetae are called meat-eaters. Some of the locust-eaters, after seeing bread, used to believe it was shit.”
“The poet also does not show heroes eating fish or birds, but still Odysseus’ companions do try to under compulsion. Generally, the poet avoids this kind of habit because of its triviality, but he has [heroes] eat roasted meat.”
“Those who eat grain/bread.” This is perhaps said regarding the difference of other mortals who are not these kind of people—the kind of sort the story claims that the long-lived Aethiopians are too. These people, after they saw bread, compared it to shit. There were also those who lived from eating locusts and others who lived off fish. For this reason they are called locust-eaters and fish eaters. The Skythian race and the Masssegetic people who live primarily off meat do not wish to eat grain.”
“In a close land to [the Aethiopians] are people darker-skinned than the rest and shorter and the shortest-lived, the locust-eaters. They rarely see more than forty years because their flesh is rife with parasites. They live on locusts who arrive in the spring carried by the strong winds that blow into these places. After throwing burning logs into trenches and kindling them a little, they overshadow the locusts with smoke and they call. They pound them together with salt and use them as cakes for their food.”
Strabo’s passage is, from a modern perspective, fairly racist (and more so even than the Eustathius). I don’t believe that the Odyssey’s formulaic line carries the same force, however. For Homer, people who eat bread are those who cultivate the earth and have to work (they don’t live easy lives like the gods). People who don’t eat the fruit of the earth are marauders and monsters.
The Odyssey’s ethnographic frame develops structures that insist to be fully human, one must (1) live in a city and (2) have recognizable laws and institutions, and (3) cultivate the earth. Creatures who don’t do these things are marginalized and dehumanized either through their behavior (the suitors and sailors) or through actual deformity (the Cyclopes, Kikones, and, well, pretty much most of the women in the poem). So, while the epic itself is not clearly racist in the modern sense, it supplies and deploys frameworks by which other human beings may be marginalized and dehumanized.
