“For it is vain and foolish to talk of knowing Greek, since in our ignorance we should be at the bottom of any class of schoolboys, since we do not know how the words sounded, or where precisely we ought to laugh, or how the actors acted, and between this foreign people and ourselves there is not only difference of race and tongue but a tremendous breach of tradition. All the more strange, then, is it that we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn back to Greek, and be for ever making up some notion of the meaning of Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say?”
Fragment 1.1 The following is allegedly from a letter by Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi to her remaining son
“You may say that it is a fine thing to take vengeance from your enemies. Indeed, that seems neither greater nor finer to anyone than to me, if it can be achieved while the republic is kept safe. But since this cannot happen, may our enemies not perish for a long time—may they stay as they are now—rather than our country meet ruin and destruction”
Dices pulchrum esse inimicos ulcisci. Id neque maius neque pulchrius cuiquam atque mihi esse videtur, sed si liceat re publica salva ea persequi. Sed quatenus id fieri non potest, multo tempore multisque partibus inimici nostri non peribunt, atque uti nunc sunt erunt potius quam res publica profligetur atque pereat.
Fragment 2.1 Eulogy for Cicero
“You should not be ignorant of the fact that this genre of Latin literature is not only the only one that did not match Greece but was left altogether simplistic and incomplete with the death of Cicero. For he was the only one who was able and likely to endow history with a worthy voice—since, he certainly polished the rough eloquence bequeathed by our forebears. He gave Latin philosophy, which was improper before, with his own style. From this I am unsure whether or not the republic or history was aggrieved more greatly by his passing.”
Non ignorare debes unum hoc genus Latinarum litterarum adhuc non modo non respondere Graeciae, sed omnino rude atque inchoatum morte Ciceronis relictum. Ille enim fuit unus qui potuerit et etiam debuerit historiam digna voce pronuntiare, quippe qui oratoriam eloquentiam rudem a maioribus acceptam perpoliverit, philosophiam ante eum incomptam Latinam sua confirmarit oratione. Ex quo dubito, interitu eius utrum res publica an historia magis doleat.
This is likely the penultimate, or at least the antepenultimate, post about animal sounds. I am not losing steam, exactly; but I am losing material. This post is a little bit of a failure. But, along the way, we will get to sounds for weasels, snakes, and mice. This is a win, even if the elusive cat’s meow remains beyond me. If anyone finds evidence, I will gladly post it.
A proverb (in Arsenius and elsewhere; this version is from the Etymologicum Magnum)
“[Comparing] a cat to Athena. This is used for those who poorly compare serious things with minor because of some minor similarity, as the proverb applies—as if someone compares Athena with a cat because they both have gray eyes.”
As I have posted about before, there is confusion in early Greek between weasels and cats because both are used in an early period to rid the home of rodents and cats are not as well-represented until the Hellenistic period or later. This complicates finding evidence for ancient Greek representations of cat sounds (I cannot find any) and weasel sounds (very little evidence). But there are some interesting things to say about cats.
The first thing to note is that there are different names and spellings for the felix domesticus. The early Αἴλουρος appears in Herodotus (with an extra syllable). By the early Byzantine period we find an interesting etymology based on the cat’s twirling tail.
Etym. Magnum.
“Ailouros: An animal. The name comes from twisting, turning and moving the tail. Also an ailourios, some call a root this”
“Attic speakers say aielouros; Greeks say ailouros”
αἰέλουρος ᾿Αττικοί, αἴλουρος ῞Ελληνες.
N.B. This form does appear in Herodotus, Sophocles, and more!
Additional evidence gives us little information about the ailouros. It is clear that Herodotus’ cat is the cat as we might recognize it. In other early Greek authors, the evidence gets a bit muddy. This scholion to Aristophanes provides some interesting information. It conflates names and animals, I think, but presents some catty behavior.
Schol. ad Aristophanes Pl. 693
“Stinkier than a weasel”: There are two kinds of weasels, one is wild, which is twofold. It is called an ailouros and another small animal which has red skin. And there is also a *hêmeron. This is the creature which homer calls a ktis but is commonly called katis. This one has really the worst smelling excrement. And when this animal defecates and excretes it throws dirt over it and covers what it excreted. You should also know that that ktis to which, according to the language in homer, the lexicographers of that divine man do not understand, that it is syncope for katis. This animal, they say, is a birdeater, and a complete troublemaker, like an ailouros.”
“People claim that cats hate and dread everything that smells bad. For this reason, they dig a hole and hide their fecal matter so that they might make it invisible when they cover it with earth.”
*I cannot find more information about this type of weasel. We need a weasel-specialist.
What I suspect might be going on here–apart from the delightful description of whatever animal this is as a bird-eater and a troublemaker–is that this scholiast is building a phonetic bridge between the Homeric weasel (ktis) and the latter Greek word for domesticated cat (kattês). The overlapping conceptual space of cat and weasel in the galea (γαλέη) facilitates this, I think. You will note from the passages below some behavior that seems feline and some that does not.
Schol. at Arist. Clouds 169a
“Now he says that the spotted lizard is the small and red wild weasel, not the ailouros or the hêmeron weasel, this is the ktis or also the katis about which Homer also says “he placed a hat well made from a weasel on his head.” This wild weasel scrambles up and down and runs around the walls”
“Home-born”: A kattês which was born in the home. “Does A homeborn cat, after eating my partridge, expects to live in my home? [=Greek Anthology 7.205, attributed to Agathias Scholasticus]
γαλῆ γαλέα mostly describes a weasel but sometimes indicates a cat, since both were used domestically to catch mice.
Aelian 6.41.30-32
“this is also a particular quality of mice. Whenever they hear the trilling of a weasel or the hissing of a serpent they transfer their young from one mouse hole to another”
This passage is the only place I could find evidence of the sound that weasels make. This verb is used to indicate the trilling or squeaking of multiple types of animals, usually small ones like mice and weasels.
This is not the only place where this sibilant verb is used to describe a snake’s hiss. Again, in a scholion to Aristophanes, we get a description of multiple animals sounds that includes the sssssscary snake:
Schol ad. Aristoph. Pl. 689
“Each of the animals has its own particular voice—so a goat maaaas, a cow moooos, a raven crows and other animals are similar. Thus a snake also hisses [surizei].
The verb used here, however, seems to be denominative from σῦριγξ, a noun which has a bit of a messy prehistory.
The verb trizein is used for many different animals. A unique compound appears to evoke the panicked squeaking of a dying mouse. In Latin, mice pipitare.
Batrakhomuomakhia 88
“He was squeezing his hands together and he was squeaking while he died”
καὶ χεῖρας ἔσφιγγε καὶ ὀλλύμενος κατέτριζε.
An Anecdote from Aelian
“Aristeides the Lokrian, after he was bitten by a Tartessian weasel and was dying, said “It would have been much better to die after being bitten by a lion or leopard than, if there would be some excuse for death other than this creature.” I think he felt the shamefulness of the bite to be more burdensome than death itself.
“The frogs, distressed by the anarchy prevailing among them, sent ambassadors to Zeus asking him to give them a king. He took note of their silliness and threw down a piece of wood into the pond. The frogs, terrified at first by the loud sound, submerged themselves in the depths of the pond.
Later, when the piece of wood was still, they came back up and rose to such a height of insolence that they mounted the wood and perched upon it. Deeming this king unworthy of them, they sent messengers to Zeus, asking him to change their king, because the first one was too lazy. Zeus was irritated by this, so he sent them a snake as king, by whom they were all snatched up and eaten.”
We have a small group of fragments attributed to the Hellenistic poet Bion. Here are a few.
Bion, fr. 3 [- Stobaeus 1.9.3]
“Let love call the Muses; let the Muses carry love.
May the Muses always give me a song in my longing,
A sweet song—no treatment is more pleasing than this.”
“I don’t know and it does not seem right to labor over things we haven’t learned”
Οὐκ οἶδ’, οὐδ’ ἐπέοικεν ἃ μὴ μάθομες πονέεσθαι.
Bion fr. 8 [=Stobaeus 4.16.15]
“If my songs are good, then these few
Fate has granted as a safeguard for what I have done.
If they are not pleasing, why should I toil any longer?
If Kronos’ son or devious Fate had granted to us
Two lifetimes, so that we could dedicate
The first to happiness and pleasure and the second to work,
Then it would be right to work first and sample happiness later.
But since the gods have decreed that one time come
For human life and that this is brief and minor too,
How long, wretches, should we toil tirelessly at work.
How long will we throw our soul and hearts into
Profit and skill, longing always for more and greater wealth?
Truly, have we all forgotten that we are mortal?
Have we all forgotten our lifetime is brief?”
“But I will take my own path down the hill
Toward the sandy shore, murmuring my song to
plead with harsh Galatea. I will not give up sweet hope
Even at the last steps of old age.”
J.E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship Vol. 1:
“Greek influence was stoutly resisted by the elder Cato (234-149), and it was probably at his instance that the Greek philosophers and rhetoricians were expelled from Rome in 161. The philosophers returned in 155 in the persons of the Academic Carneades, the Peripatetic Critolaus, and the Stoic Diogenes, who aroused the interest of the young Romans, and the indignation of the aged Cato, by the sophistry of the arguments with which they defended the seizure of Oropus by Athens (Plut. Cato, i 22). In his old age Cato warned his son against Greek physicians and also against Greek literature, adding that the latter was worthy of inspection but not of study (Plin. X. H. xxix 14). He is said to have learnt Greek late in life (Cic. De Sen. 26), and to have derived some advantage, as an orator, from the reading of Thucydides and still more from that of Demosthenes; but Plutarch, in recording this tradition, is careful to add that, even as a writer, Cato showed the influence of Greek literature, and that many of his apophthegms were translated from Greek (Cato i 2). Toward the end of his days, as he looked forward to the conquest of Carthage by the younger Scipio, he expressed his sense of the contrast between that leader and the rest of the Roman generals by quoting a line from Homer : οἶος πέπνυται, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀίσσουσι (ib. 27).”
“Once, nature provided a song to kites as great as that of swans. But when they heard the horses neighing they fell in love and tried to mimic it. As they tried to imitate them, they lose their own voice. They never learned to neigh and they forgot how to sing.
The imitation of something different deprives you of what is yours.”
The most common representation of horse sounds in Ancient Greek is seems to be based off a root with uncertain origins. I suspect it might have, at least to some speakers, represented a similar vocalism to that of English neigh.
Hesychius
“khremetismos: the sound of horses.”
χρεμετισμός· ἡ φωνὴ τῶν ἵππων
Cf. Zonaras Χρεμετισμός. ἡ τῶν ἵππων βοή
Herodian = Schol. T ad Il. 21.575b
“Then he heard the barking” Aristarchus says that some have “dog-howling” [kunulagmon]. Stesichorus also seems to read this, for he says (fr. 78) “the endless dog-howling”, We don’t know of any other examples of the compound. For howling [ulagmos] is elsewhere the name properly applied for hearing dogs, just as neighing is for horses.
Anyone who has spent time with horses knows that they do not make only one type of sound. There are two basic lexical items for equine snorting: the somewhat uncommon φρυάγμα and the slightly more common φριμαγμος. Both are understood by ancient authors to be onomatopoetic representations of nasalized snorting. But some sources make one or the author a synonym of neighing. All of these words seem to be nominalized abstracts from (what ancient speakers considered) animal-sound roots.
Zonaras
“Snorting [phrimagmos]: whinnying [khrêtismos]
Φριμαγμός. ὁ χρεμετισμός.
Lexicon Vindobenese, khi 5
“Whinnying [krêtismos] and snorting [phruagmos] are poetically applied to horses.
χρεμετισμὸς καὶ φρυαγμὸς ποιητικῶς ἐπὶ ἵππων.
Schol in Lyk. 244
“Snorting is neighing. A snorting echo. This, I believe, means neighing. But neighing is not the same as snorting. It is the sound that comes through horses’ noses when they prance.”
“Snorting [phrimasseo] This means to prance with pleasure, to leap, the whole herd. The verb snorting is onomatopoetic from the sound of goats. The verb is also applied to horses. It is onomatopoeia from their sound.”
“Phruagmos: this is a meaningless sound, mixed with fierce breath, emitting through the nose of horses and mules. They do this especially when they are responding to the treatment of those taming them”
“Now this necessity of vitalizing classical study is felt everywhere, and due praise must be given to the honest efforts made in this direction, though many of them are mere revivals of abandoned experiments, so slow are men to learn from history. To be sure, the readiness with which a man can vitalize his subject is something that varies with the individuality. Some men can pass from the morning newspaper or the midnight novel straight to the lecture on Greek literature, or to the investigation of grammatical phenomena, and feel that the life is one; others have to put on mental bands and gowns in order to present the gospel of Hellenism, as Buffon is said to have put on court dress before he paid his respects to Nature ; others regard a Greek joke as a sacred thing, not lightly to be laughed at. In fact, there is no more pitiable object than a man born to an honest slowness of vision and expression, who is goaded by the requirements of the age into being lively; your Goodman Dull who will fain be as nimble-witted as Moth. The students soon see through this false liveliness, are irritated, are repelled by it, and prefer in the long run the honest, steady bore of a methodical wimble to the tumultuous prodding of a would-be live teacher. We are supposed to be a race of humorists, and American jokes I have found to be in great demand in the common rooms and combination rooms of English universities; and I am afraid that this reputation has had a bad effect on the style of American lecturers, who seem to think that no matter what the subject, they must vindicate their right to a share in the national sense of humor. They are not very Greek in this unfailing funniness; there is no very good Greek equivalent for ‘fun’ ; indeed, it is hard, it is almost impossible, to restore for the outsider the volatilized savor of Attic salt. One has to create an atmosphere for the inhalation of the delicate perfume.”
“I would wish, men of the jury, that I might possess a power of speech and experience of events equal both to my misfortune and the events that occurred. But now I have experienced the latter beyond what is fitting and I lack more of the former than is advantageous. When it was necessary that I endure physical suffering because of the unjustified charge, experience didn’t help me at all; and since it is necessary now that I tell you want happened truthfully, my limited speaking ability undermines me. For many of those who are bad at speaking are disbelieved regarding the truth and they perish because of this, because they cannot make the true events clear. But many people who can speak well are credible by lying and save themselves in that way, because they lied! Therefore, whenever someone has no experience in speaking publicly, his challenge is more the words of his accusers than the events themselves and the truth of the matter.
I would, then, ask you, men, not what many of those who go to court ask for, to be heard, these men who don’t trust themselves and who believe something unjust about you beforehand—for it is right that a defendant will get a fair hearing among good men without asking for it since even the prosecution obtains this without asking—No, I need these things from you. If I make a mistake in my speech, pardon me and take it more as inexperience than a deliberate injustice. If I say something correctly, assume it spoken truly rather than cleverly. For it is not right that the one who does wrong in deed be saved through speech any more than it is that the one who has done rightly in deed perish through speech. For a word is a slip of the tongue, but a deed is an error in judgment. Someone in danger necessarily makes some mistakes. For he not only is forced to think about what has been said, but about what will happen, since all the things that may still happen are subject to chance for than to good planning. This is why someone in danger is out of sorts. For I also see people very familiar with talking in public speaking much worse about themselves whenever they are in danger. When they act without any danger, they speak more correctly.”
