Last week we held our (first?) Homer and Artificial Intelligence Workshop and it was fascinating. The conversations provided new directions, new questions, and some new ways for thinking about applying modern technology to ancient epic. I recorded and posted the video on youtube (with one section removed to protect unpublished material). Below are some notes as well.
A Quick Primer on Modern Computing: Statistics, LLMs, and AI (20-25 minutes)
John Pavlopoulos
JP gave an overview of how to use relative frequencies of n-grams, basic probability, and language models in Python and demonstrated how he trained a model on the first book of the Iliad to generate pseudo-Greek.
He then showed a model based on perplexity (the distance from expected outcomes of strings of letters based on the models included) and answered questions about misconceptions about statistical models. JP suggested that a signal problem is “If you torture the data enough, it will produce results.”
Research Presentation: Maria Konstantidou, John Pavlopoulos, Elton Barker
MK, JP, and EB presented some of their work using perplexity based statistical models to consider the Iliad, Odyssey and their traditions. They have created correlation maps of each epic and compared them
Some of their results show that Iliad 10 and Odyssey 24 are not outliers and that there are important statistical correlations across books that also have thematic affinities
In his response, SS talked about how to define the relationship between some of the statistical models and what we call Homer. He asked pressing questions about the methodology and the ‘tokens’ that correlate to the differences in Odyssey 9-12. He also talked about the importance of statistical models to Homeric studies historically and pragmatically
Research Presentation: Chiara Bozzone, Ryan Sandell, LMU München
CB and RS presented some results of their work based on authorship attribution models to examine the Iliad and the Odyssey. This approach shows that no clear stylistic node dominates all of both epics and the evidence indicates two poems from similar traditions (but separate ‘authors’) subject to later additions.
Response and Questions: Justin Arft, UT Knoxville
JA’s response asked questions about the correlation heatmaps from the work of JP, MK, and EB, and how different results might issue from training on bigrams or different characters. He focused on some concrete examples to help to illustrate how the selection of passages and selection of detail may alter the results
Bozzone, Chiara. “HoLM: Analyzing the Linguistic Unexpectedness in Homeric Poetry.” With John Pavlopoulos, Ryan Sandell, and Maria Konstantinidou. LREC-COLING 2024, 8166–8172. https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.715.pdf
Bozzone, Chiara. “One or Many Homers? Using Quantitative Authorship Analysis to Study the Homeric Question.” With Ryan Sandell. In David M. Goldstein, Stephanie W. Jamison, and Brent Vine (eds.). Proceedings of the 32nd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Hamburg: Buske.
Computational Research Labs in Classics Departments: Lab-Based Frameworks for Scholarship and Funding (10-15 minutes) Annie K. Lamar, UCSB
AKL presented some of her efforts to train students on computational research and set these in relief to the structural challenges of doing so in higher ed. For more information, see the Lorel Lab homepage
Response and Questions: Suzanne Lye, UNC Chapel Hill (10-15 minutes)
SL discussed a Classics Lab at UNC and the importance of cross training within a hybrid humanities model. She emphasized the need for institutional support for interdisciplinary research and training.
Research Presentation: Some Homeric Challenges to Machine Learning, Barbara Graziosi, Johannes Haubold, Jacob Murel, Princeton University (10-15 minutes)
JH and JM presented on overview of the Logion project at Princeton, a project that aims ”to develop an NLP tool that aids the restoration and elucidation of premodern Greek text”. They provided a demonstration of how they have used the text with authors like Michael Psellus and how they plan to use it in the future. It uses a large database to provide likely completions to incomplete manuscripts but needs a human philologist to judge the merit and accuracy. We discussed additional challenges for developing Logion for metrical texts and the challenges of considering homogenization through editorial processes over time.
Heraclitus the Commentator, in defending the application of allegorical readings to Homer, argues that allegory is of considerable antiquity—used clearly by Archilochus when he compares the troubles of a war (fr. 54) and Alcaeus, who “compares the troubles of a tyranny to the turmoil of a stormy sea.” (τὰς γὰρ τυραννικὰς ταραχὰς ἐξ ἴσου χειμερίῳ προσεικάζει καταστήματι θαλάττης, Homeric Problems 5.8)
Alcaeus, fr. 326
“I cannot make sense of the clash of the winds
One wave whirls from this side,
Another wave comes from the other, and we in the middle
Are borne in our dark ship
Toiling ever on in this great storm.
The swell has taken he mast
And the sail is completely transparent—
There are great tears through it
And the anchors have broken free…”
Alcaeus, fr. 6a [P. Oxy. 1789 1 i 15–19, ii 1–17, 3 i, 12 + 2166(e)4]
“Now this higher wave comes harder than the one before
And will bring us much toil to face
When it overcomes the ship
Let us strengthen the ship’s sides
As fast as we can and hurry into a safe harbor.
Let no weak hesitation take anyone.
For a great contest is clearly before us.
Recall your previous toil.
Today, let every man be dedicated.
And may we never cause shame
To our noble parents who lie beneath the earth”
On the internal surface, around the rim, four ships. Cemetery of Ancient Thera. 3rd quarter of the 6th cent. BC Archaeological Museum of Thera.
Schol. ad. Od. 8.17 (On why Odysseus is only responsible for the companions in his particular ship)
“According to the proverb “Common ship, common safety”
κατὰ τὴν παροιμίαν “κοινὴ ναῦς κοινὴ σωτηρία,”
Pindar, Nem. 6. 52-56
“Older poets found these things
To be an elevated roadway;
I follow it even though I have concern–
The wave that is always turning
Right into the front of the ship
Is said to cause everyone’s heart
The most trouble.”
“Generally, then, if one wants to examine it carefully, you will find Odysseus’ wandering to be an allegory. Homer has positioned Odysseus as some kind of an instrument of every kind of virtue and he has used him to philosophize, since he hated the wickedness which governs human life.
The land of the Lotus-eaters, a farm of exotic temptation, represents the temptation of pleasure through which Odysseus sailed in perfect control. He snuffs out the savage anger of each of us with the advice from his words as if cauterizing it. This anger is named the Cyclops, the one who steals away [hypoklôpôn] our faculties of reason.
What of this—does it not seem that Odysseus who ‘overcame the winds’ was the first to anticipate fair sailing through his knowledge of the stars? And he was superior to Kirkê’s drugs because he discovered a cure for addictive delicacies thanks to his deep wisdom.
And his intelligence extends even to Hades so that nothing in the underworld might go unexplored. Who listens to the Sirens and learns a diverse history of all time? Charybdis is an obvious name for luxury and endless drinking. Homer has allegorized manifold shamelessness in Skylla, which is why she would logically have a belt of dogs, guardians for her rapacity, daring, and pugnacity. The cattle of the sun are about controlling your eating—for he would not even allow starvation to be a compulsion to do injustice.
These stories were told mythically for their audiences, if someone delves into the allegorized wisdom, it will be the most useful to those who apprehend it.”
“It is impossible to really learn a man’s
mind, thought and opinion before he’s been initiated
into the offices and laws of the state.
Indeed—whoever attempts to direct the country
but does not make use of the best advice
as he keeps his tongue frozen out of fear
Seems to me to be the worst kind of person now and long ago.
Anyone who thinks his friend is more important than the country,
I say that they live nowhere.
May Zeus who always sees everything witness this:
I could never be silent when I saw ruin
Overtaking my citizens instead of safety.
And I could never make my country’s enemy a friend
For myself, because I know this crucial thing: The state is the ship which saves us And we may make friends only if it remains afloat.”
Consider this how this could turn out on many ships or even just one: there is a captain of some size and strength beyond the rest of the men in the ship, but he is deaf and similarly limited at seeing, and he knows as much about sailing as these qualities might imply. So, the sailors are struggling with one another about steering the ship, because each one believes that he should be in charge, even though he has learned nothing of the craft nor can indicate who his teacher was nor when he had the time to learn. Some of them are even saying that it is not teachable, and that they are ready to cut down the man who says it can be taught.
They are always hanging all over the captain asking him and making a big deal of the fact that he should entrust the rudder to them. There are times when some of them do not persuade him, and some of them kill others or kick them off the ship, and once they have overcome the noble captain through a mandrake, or drugs, or something else and run the ship, using up its contents drinking, and partying, and sailing just as such sort of men might. In addition to this, they praise as a fit sailor, and call a captain and knowledgeable at shipcraft the man who is cunning at convincing or forcing the captain that they should be in charge. And they rebuke as useless anyone who is not like this.
Such men are unaware what a true helmsman is like, that he must be concerned about the time of year, the seasons, the sky, the stars, the wind and everything that is appropriate to the art, if he is going to be a leader of a ship in reality, how he might steer the ship even if some desire it or not, when they believe that it is not possible to obtain art or practice about how to do this, something like an art of ship-steering. When these types of conflicts are occurring on a ship, don’t you think the one who is a true helmsman would be called a star-gazer, a blabber, or useless to them by the sailors in the ships organized in this way?
“Always keep in mind that all sorts of people from all kinds of occupations and from every country on earth have died. And take this thought to Philistion and Phoibos and Origanion. Turn to the rest of the peoples on earth too.
We have to cross over to the same place where all those clever speakers and so many serious philosophers have gone—Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates—and where those great heroes of old, the brave generals and tyrants have gone too. Among them are Eudoxos, Hipparchus, Archimedes, and other sharp natures, big minds, tireless men, bold men, and those who mock the temporary and disposable nature of life itself, like Menippus and the rest.
Think about all these people, that they have been dead for a long time. Why is this terrible for them? Why worry about those who are no longer named? This one thing is worth much: to keep on living with truth and justice and in good will even among liars and unjust men.”
N.B This is a different Pythagoras from the one with the theorem.
Suda, s.v. Pythagoras of Ephesos
“Pythagoras of Ephesos. Once he overthrew the government called the reign of the Basilidai, Pythagoras became the harshest tyrant. He seemed and sometimes was very kind to the people and the masses, increasing their hopes, but under-delivering on their profits. Because he despoiled those in high esteem and power and liquidated their property, he was not at all tolerable.
He did not hesitate to impose the harshest punishments or to mercilessly kill those who had done no wrong—for he had gotten just this crazy. His lust for money was endless. He was also quickest to anger in response to any insults to those near to him. On their own, these things would have been enough reason for people to kill him in the worst way, but he also was contemptuous of the divine. Indeed, many of his previously mentioned victims he actually killed in temples.
When the daughters of one man took refuge in a temple, he did not dare to extract them forcefully, but he waited them out so long that the girls resolved their hunger with a rope. A plague then afflicted the people along with a famine and Pythagoras, who was worried for himself, sent representatives to Delphi, requesting relief from these sufferings. She said that he needed to build temples and take care of the dead. He lived before Cyrus of Persia, according to Batôn.”
This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations.
Book 8 of the Iliad can seem a bit oddly placed in the epic’s first half—it doesn’t hearken back to earlier moments in the war as books 1, 2, 3, and 7 do; instead, it provides an intense battle scene that helps to set the scene for the Achaean panic that motivates the embassy to Achilles in book 9. Structurally, it is similar to book 4 which starts with a speech by Zeus forbidding the gods from engaging in the war; but it also echoes book 1, in that it ends with another speech where Zeus anticipates the plot of the epic (laying out the general actions of books 9-16, in particular the death of Achilles.
The book’s action hangs on Zeus’ intervention—his tipping of the scales in favor of the Trojans, his thunder to frighten the Greeks, and an omen near the middle to provide different messages to each side. But a central theme of the book must be the characterization of Hektor. Books 6, 7 and 8 feature Hektor prominently: he is a son, brother, and father/husband returning to Troy in book 6; a warrior standing up for one-on-one combat in book 7; and a military leader in book 8.
Structure of Iliad 8
1-80 Divine Council: Zeus tells the gods to stay out of the battle and retreats to watch, tips the scales for the Trojans
50-245 Nestor gets trapped and Diomedes rescues him from Hektor; Hera rouses Agamemnon to stop Hektor from burning the ships
245-490 Zeus feels bad and allows the Greeks to push back; Hektor wounds Teucer; Hera and Athena talk about opposing Zeus’ will; Zeus tells Iris to tell them to stop and then lays out the plot of the Iliad through Patroklos’ death
490-565 Hektor assembles the Trojans and has them camp outside the city
Hektor’s decision to stay outside of the city and keep the pressure on the Greeks is all part of “Zeus’ plan”, in a way. But as with every major Iliadic action the motivation is not left to Zeus alone. Instead, we see Hektor making key decisions and rallying his troops in vain hope of victory and glory. The image we find of Hektor is polysemous, shifting on the audience. To the internal audiences (some of the gods and the Greeks), he has finally become the ‘man-slaying’ Hektor we are told they fear, despite his near loss to Ajax in book 7. For Zeus, he is an instrument of his plan to have the Greeks suffer for dishonoring Achilles. As an external audience, we know Hektor is doomed to fail and we know that the fears of the Greeks and the other gods about the Achaeans’ losing are (somewhat) unfounded (‘somewhat’ because myriads still die!). And yet, we are also treated to a more complicated hero than we might think.
Little horse on wheels, an ancient greek child’s toy (from tomb dating 950-900 BC. Kerameikos Archaeological Museum in Athens).
When I try to imagine how ancient audiences responded to the characterization of heroes in the epic we have, I consider two kinds of performance axes: on one, we have the episodic performances of epic, focusing on popular scenes; on the other, we have a major performance of a song like our own, that pieces together a different type of character in a sustained treatment that strings together ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ scenes (if the latter is possible). The significance here is that meaning in storytelling is developed through contrast and context, just as in language. The tension—or collaboration—between axes I just mentioned could also be reframed as the alternation between diachronic and synchronic aspects of language. In any given utterance, our meaning (intended or otherwise) relies on prior use and prior experience of a lexical item or morpheme, but the immediate meanings build on the combinations. The diachronic axis informs the synchronic, but the performance in the moment is realized differentially based on the experience (and competence) of performer and audience.
When it comes to a traditional figure like Hektor, I think we need to credit the tension between conventional/formulaic elements (‘man-slaying’ Hektor) and the unfolding narrative of this particular poem. Hektor up to this point in book 8 has not been the most fearsome warrior in the epic (if anything, that title belongs to Diomedes and then Ajax). He has been a chiding brother, a retreating son, and a father struggling to balance the necessity of war and the inevitability of death against his role a leader of a besieged city’s armies.
Some of the tension in these roles emerges in two rallying speeches in the first third of book 8. First, Hektor addresses the combined forces of Troy and their allies:
Iliad 8.172-183
“Hektor was calling out to the Trojans, roaring: Trojans and Lykians and Spear-fighting Dardanians Be men, friends, and remembering your rushing valor. I know that Zeus assented to me willingly To have victory and great glory, to be a pain for the Danaans. The fools who thought up these walls here, Useless and worth nothing. They will not withstand my fury. My horses will easily leap over this hand-dug trench, But when I make it to the hollow ships, Don’t forget the destructive fire at that time So that I can set the ships alight and kill them, The Argives, thunderstruck beneath the smoke by their ships.”
Almost immediately after this speech, he talks to his horses.
8. 184-197
“So he spoke and then he was calling out and addressing his horses: Xanthus and Podargos, Aithôn, and glorious Lampos Now is the time to pay me back for your food, the great heaps Of it Andromache, the daughter of great-hearted Eetion Set out for you foremost, the thought-sweetening grain And the wine she mixed in for you to drink, whenever the heart compelled, Before even me, I who claim to be her powerful husband. Rush forward now and hurry so that we can grab Nestor’s shield, the fame of which rises to heaven, Because it is all gold and has straps made the same way And the fine-worked breastplate of horse-taming Diomedes The one Hephaestus wore himself out when he made it. If we can take those two things, I think that the Achaeans Will climb into their swift ships this very evening.”
Where, we might expect Hektor to enter battle immediately or exhort a particular hero, instead, Troy’s champion turns to his horses Hektor and orders to pay him back for their care by helping him seize Nestor’s shield, an object endowed with kleos by its quality and owner, and Diomedes’ breastplate. This speech is marked as exhortative by these commands and the accompanying appeal to a reciprocal relationship. It is safe to say that Hektor anthropomorphizes the horses—Andromache mixes wine to make the wheat-meal sweet. Typically, when a superior invokes prior meals as motivation for action the vertical relationship is direct—here, however, Hektor reveals that Andromache feeds the horses.
The invocation of reciprocity, however, is one-degree removed—run fast, he says, pay me back for the care Andromache gave you. In this passage we find themes typically associated with Hektor throughout the epic—he invokes kleos, reveals an optimistic, if not tragically mistaken, attitude towards the war, and defines himself in terms of his family. In this passage, Andromache functions as a metonym for the Trojan city. It matters not if she actually feeds Hektor’s chariot team—Andromache represents the nurturing and nourishing figure who cannot fight, the women and children of Troy, in short, the city itself.
As Hektor initiates his offensive strategy, the characterization of his hopes and delusion is stable—kleos is there for the taking; the Achaeans can be repelled; the city can be saved. The final lines depict Hektor’s battle-rush—winning the armor is metonymic language for killing Diomedes and Nestor, which surely would be a blow to Achaian morale, but this assertion is contained within a future-less vivid conditional statement (lines 196-7). Hektor’s speeches in the Iliad contain many impossible conditionals, reflecting the gap between the world Hektor desires and the one he finds. Note as well, the contrast between his boast about burning the ships to his assembled allies and his more modest wish to his horses for the Achaeans to sail home.
Ancient Greek pyxis with a horse in place of the handle. From a cremation burial (800-775 BC). Inv. T69/V. Kerameikos Archaeological Museum of Athens.
The position of this speech may add to its irony. In this sequence of speeches, Hektor insults the Achaeans, rallies his army and turns to exhort his own horses. Zeus’ intervention is accompanied by one of Hektor’s most awkward experiments in leadership. He uses the language of martial exhortation on creatures that not only cannot speak to him in return but whom the narrative does not allow to react. For comparison, consider Hektor’s speech to his allies in book 17
Iliad 17.219-233
Rallying, he addressed them with winged words: “Hear me, you thousand tribes of neighboring allies. For I did not gather each of you here from your cities searching for a multitude or needing one, but so that you might willingly protect the wives and innocent children of the Trojans for me from the war-mongering Achaeans. Considering these things, I have exhausted the host with gifts and food, and I increase the spirit of each of you. So, let everyone turn straightaway and either be killed or be saved—for this is the seduction of war. Whoever then now conveys Patroklos, even dead to the horse taming Trojans and to whomever Ajax yields I will split half the booty with him, and I will have the other half and his kleos will be half of mine.”
There is overlap across his exhortative speeches, but the contrast is telling as well: Hektor speaks to his horses as if to a close companion, a brother or a comrade in arms. His rallying speeches contain some of the same themes, but lack some of the intimacy of his address to his horses. There is a pathos because the expected exhortation here would be to one of his men, as Agamemnon speaks to Odysseus or Diomedes in book 4. Hektor’s speech to his horses may be said to emphasize his isolation.
There are three moments in the Iliad when heroes talk to horses. In their, Homer: The Resonance of Epic, Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold describe Homeric heroes, especially Achilles, as occupying a midpoint between men and the gods. In a section entitled “God, Animals, and Fate,” they nicely describe the function of many animals in communicating divine will to mortal man through omens I would argue that horses potentially represent a midpoint between animals and men. In this scheme, Achilles’ conversation with Xanthus later in the epic (book 19) represents a mantic moment; Antilochus threatens his horses with starvation and abuse if they don’t win him the chariot race in book 23 (23.402-17). Achilles’ conversation with horses brings his his closeness to the gods into relief with his mortality; Antilochus’ youthful brashness towards his horses anticipates the conflicts that ensue at the end of the chariot race.
Hektor’s equine moment show the contrast between his public bluster and his more personal hope: he claims to all that they may win the war that day, but he asks his horses only to win some prize of renown. The stepped down ambitions of this close encounter echo his conversation with Andromache, the very present absence for Hektor’s speeches through the rest of the poem. But here, as when Hektor speaks to his own heart in book 22, he addresses an interlocutor who can or will not respond. Each of these scenes says far more about Just as Homeric figures may look above to see what they are not, we may imagine them looking down and discovering certain aspects of what they are.
Greek History exhibit, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece. Complete indexed photo collection at WorldHistoryPics.com.
“The land is full of evils; the sea is full of evils.
Diseases come to humans at day and at night
they come on their own bringing evils to mortals in silence
Since devious Zeus took their voices away.”
“The whole state often suffers because of a wicked man
Who transgresses the gods and devises reckless deeds.
Kronos’ son rains down great pain on them from heaven:
Famine and plague and the people start to perish.
[Women don’t give birth and households waste away
Thanks to the vengeance of Olympian Zeus.] And at other times
Kronos’ son ruins their great army or their wall
Or he destroys their ships on the the sea.”
“We have already happened to discuss the reason why people are predisposed towards a revolution. People who desire equality rise up in strife when they believe that they have less even though they are allegedly equal to those they oppose. But those who want inequality or their own superiority imagine that even though they are unequal that don’t have more but merely an equal amount. (Of course, these feelings may exist both justly and unjustly. People who are in a lesser position engage in strife in order to become equal; those who are merely equal, do it to become superior.”
“The city was following the laws, but they were already expecting a revolution and longing for a different kind of government, not because they were hoping for equality, but because they would have more in a revolution and they would rule over their opposition in every way.”
rcher watching over the Greeks placing ballots on a table to decide which of Ajax the Great and Odysseus should receive the weapons of the dead Achilles. Attic red-figured kylix, ca. 490-480 BC. From Vulci.
In Aristophanes’ Peace a rude hand gesture is mentioned (549):
Καὶ τὸν δορυξὸν οἷον ἐσκιμάλισεν.
Perseus’ translation (“this sickle-maker is thumbing his nose at the spear-maker?” ) may not do justice to the gesture or its meaning. Ancient commentary glosses this in a slightly different way. (See this site for a reference to the digitus impudicus in the Clouds)
Schol ad Ar. Pax. 549
Eskimálisen: “instead of he stuck his finger up” for to skimalísai is properly to shove a finger into a bird’s anus. But when people wish to insult someone, they extend their middle finger, retract the rest, and show it.”
Apart from loving this passage’s instructions about how to give a middle finger, I am intrigued by the fact that Greeks gave the middle finger at all and by the chance that the reference to a bird’s anus might provide an amusing folk etymology for why we call it the “bird”. But, first and foremost, we can learn why the Greeks gave the finger.
A popular article in Slate claims that the middle finger is offensive because it is phallic, so sticking it up is like rudely showing someone a penis. Wikipedia says it is all about sexual intercourse. The Greek evidence, however, indicates that while phallic meaning is operative, what one does with the threatened phallus is truly insulting (at hubris levels even!). So, let’s go through some of the extant evidence.
We have some confirmation of the synonymy the scholion indicates between giving the middle finger and sticking a finger in an anus:
Phrynichus, 83.15
Katadaktulizein: “to wantonly touch through the rectum with a finger. Attic Greeks use the term skimalizein.
There is also a proverb recorded that repeats much of the same material as we find in the scholion.
Michal. Apostol. Parom. 7.98
“You should get fingered” : [This is a proverb applied] for those worthy of insult. For skimalísai means when someone wants to insult someone, people raise their middle finger, retract the rest, and show it. Properly, this indicates shoving a finger into a bird’s anus.”
The Suda pretty much provides the same information but with an opening alternative:
“Eskimalisen: [This is when] one insults by joining thumb and middle finger and striking them. Or, instead it means to give the finger [katedaktulise]: for “to finger” is, properly, to place your middle finger into a bird’s anus. But it is not only this: whenever people want to insult someone, they stretch out their middle finger, withdraw the rest, and show it. So Aristophanes says: “[see] how he fingered the spear-maker.”
In another entry we find a more abstract use of the verb with several options for translation. (There is also an explanation about why people are sticking fingers in birds.) Don’t sleep on the Suda: the entry combines agricultural information with an anecdote from philosophy:
Skimalisô: “I treat as nothing; I mock; I grab with a little finger as I would a woman’s ass”. Skimalizein means to examine with a little finger, to see if chickens are about to lay eggs.
When two men were resting above at one of Zeno’s drinking parties, and the one below him was sticking his foot in the other’s ass, and Zeno was doing the same thing to him with his knee, he turned around and said, “what kind of pain do you think you were causing the man below you?”
The entries from the Suda are pretty far removed from the time of Aristophanes’ Peace (only 1500 years or so). Although the steady tradition from the scholia through the lexicographers indicates some consistency, we still need a little more to help flesh this out.
So, a final piece of evidence to wrap this all up. One of the words for the middle finger in Attic Greek is καταπύγων (a meaning attested by both Photius and Hesychius: Καταπύγων: ὁ μέσος δάκτυλος). This word, when not referring to fingers, generally indicates someone “given to unnatural lust” (LSJ) or one who is lecherous, derived from the preposition kata and the noun pugê (buttocks, ass). The point, if I may, is that the middle finger in this colloquialism is directly associated with something that goes deep in the buttocks.
To stay with the assertion in Slate, as the largest finger, the middle finger raised does seem to have a phallic association, but in the Greek usage at least the showing of such a phallic symbol is a threat of its use. Based on the association of the gesture and the word for the middle finger with “wantonness”, the gesture threatens deep anal penetration, a threat like Catullus’ pedicabo (“I will sexually violate your ass”). Google searches will find this answer, but without the pleasant lexical tour!
A FALISCAN BLACK-GLAZED ASKOS | CIRCA 4TH CENTURY B.C. | Ancient Art & Antiquities Auction | Ancient Art & Antiquities, vases | Christie’s from Pinterest
But lest you fear that the gesture is now too base and vulgar to be used, no less a luminary than the philosopher Diogenes employed it:
Diogenes Flips off Demosthenes (Diogenes Laertius, 6.34 and 35)
Once, when some foreigners wanted to see Demosthenes, he put up his middle finger, and said, “this is the Athenian demagogue!”
“[Diogenes] used to say that most people were a single finger away from insanity. If someone walks around holding out his middle finger, he seems nuts. But if he is holding his index, he doesn’t.”
There is a Byzantine didactic poem based on Greek medical treatises. Thankfully, it does not skip the good stuff.
The poem is from a collection of didactic verses attributed to Michael Psellos of Constantinople who lived and worked in the 11th century CE. The text comes from the Teubner edition of his poems edited by L. G. Westernik (1982).
Poemata 9.841
“One kind of melancholy is lykanthropy.
And it is clearly a type of misanthropy.
Mark thus a man who rushes from the day
When you see him at night running round graves,
With a pale face, dumb dry eyes, not a care in his rage.”
In discussing tales of Diomedes’ companions being turned into birds, Augustine in De Civitate Dei (City of God) discusses werewolves (18.17, the full text):
“In order to make this seem more likely, Varro reports other fantastic tales concerning the infamous witch Circe, who transformed Odysseus’ companions into beasts, and concerning the Arcadians, who were by chance transformed when they swam across a certain lake in which they were turned into wolves. Then, they lived as wolves in the same region. If they did not eat human flesh, then they would be returned to human form after swimming across the same lake again.
And he also specifies that a certain Demanaetus tasted of the sacrifice which the Arcadians used to make to the Lycaean god, after the child was burned on the altar, and that he transformed into a wolf and, once he became a man again, competing in boxing at the Olympian games and achieved a victory. Varro does not believe for this reason that Pan or Jupiter were given the name “Lykaios” in Arcadia for any other reason than their ability to turn men into wolves, since they did not believe that this could happen except through divine power. As you know, a wolf is called lykos in Greek, and this is where the name Lykaian comes from. Varro adds that the Roman Luperci arose from their own mysteries similarly.
But what can we who talk about these things say about this kind of deceit by the devil’s forces?”
Augustine goes on to object to these tales and discuss Apuleius’ Golden Ass. I started translating this, but it is a bit of a Halloween buzzkill..
No Room For Werewolves in this city…
[XVII] Hoc Varro ut astruat, commemorat alia non minus incredibilia de illa maga famosissima Circe, quae socios quoque Vlixis mutauit in bestias, et de Arcadibus, qui sorte ducti tranabant quoddam stagnum atque ibi conuertebantur in lupos et cum similibus feris per illius regionis deserta uiuebant. Si autem carne non uescerentur humana, rursus post nouem annos eodem renatato stagno reformabantur in homines.
Denique etiam nominatim expressit quendam Demaenetum gustasse de sacrificio, quod Arcades immolato puero deo suo Lycaeo facere solerent, et in lupum fuisse mutatum et anno decimo in figuram propriam restitutum pugilatum sese exercuisse et Olympiaco uicisse certamine. Nec idem propter aliud arbitratur historicus in Arcadia tale nomen adfictum Pani Lycaeo et Ioui Lycaeo nisi propter hanc in lupos hominum mutationem, quod eam nisi ui diuina fieri non putarent. Lupus enim Graece *lu/kos dicitur, unde Lycaei nomen apparet inflexum. Romanos etiam Lupercos ex illorum mysteriorum ueluti semine dicit exortos.
Sed de ista tanta ludificatione daemonum nos quid dicamus…
