I was just recently thinking of our ongoing skatokhasm and the sheer variety of excremental words in ancient Greek. I happened to look up my favorite Greek word from graduate school and stumbled upon what must be the most charming entry in the Suda.
Suda, Epsilon 92 [referring to Aristophanes, Frogs 479]
“I shat myself”: I defecated because of some fear. I pooped. Aristophanes says this in the Frogs. He is calling the god to help.”
Kalonikê: But what if our husbands leave us?
Lysistrata: To use Pherecrates’ term: flay the flayed dog.
Kalonikê: These words of nonsense are just counterfeit [sex].
“The word of Pherecrates: if our husbands despise us, then it is necessary to use dildos and to flog the flogged shaft. Pherecrates said this in a drama where the proverb is applied to those who are suffering something else in addition to what they have suffered.
Olisbos: Genitals made from leather which the Milesian women used to use as tribades(!) and shameful people do. Widowed women also use them. Aristophanes writes “I did not see an eight-fingered dildo*/ which might be our leathered aid.”** This second part is drawn from the proverb “fig-wood aid” applied to weak people.
“Courtesanizers: The women who are called ‘rubbers’” [or ‘grinders’? i.e. Lesbians] Ἑταιρίστριαι: αἱ καλούμεναι τριβάδες. See also Hesychius s.v. dietaristriai: “Women who rub themselves against girls in intercourse the way men do. For example, tribades.”
The Lexicographer Photius repeats only the following definition:
Olisboi: Leather dicks
῎Ολισβοι: δερμάτινα αἰδοῖα.
The Scholia to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata 109-110 basically presents the same information:
Olisbon: A leather penis. And that is for the Milesian women. He is joking that they use dildos. The next part, “leathery aid” plays upon the proverb “fig-tree aid”, used for the weak. He has changed it to “leathery” because dildos are made of leather. They are leather-made penises which widowed women use.”
Melancholy here contrasts with “thinking -wrongly” (paraphronein). A scholion to another play by Aristophanes glosses the realms of these types of mental maladies (Schol. ad Plut. 11a ex 20-28)
“He seems to say this because he harmed or helped his master through his own virtue more—and while he disturbed him through prophecy, he made him crazy [melankholan] through medicine and took away his ability to think [phronein] through wisdom, which is the art of thinking. The servant lies. For he does not speak the truth….”
Where melancholy denotes a physical ailment [i.e. biologically caused and treated], paraphrosunê indicates parafunctionality which may be treated without medicine.
μελαγχολάω: to be atrabilious, melancholy-mad.
μελαγχολία: atrabiliousness, melancholy, a disease [atual LSJ definition]
παραφροσύνη, ἡ: wandering of mind, derangment, delirium
παραφρονέω: to be beside oneself, be deranged, or mad.
Lyrica Adespota, fr. 3.9-10
“Lust–that magician–takes me. It descends upon my mind
And makes me crazy!”
“In the same way, ‘truth’ concerning the way things appear has come to some people from their senses. They believe that it is right that truth should be judged neither by the multitude or the scarcity [of those who believe it]; and they believe that the same thing seems sweet to some who taste it and bitter to others with the result that if all men were sick or if they were all insane and two or three were healthy or in their right mind, wouldn’t it seem that these few were sick and crazy and not the rest?”
“You’re following with your dicks out; and you will eat breakfast [like] goats”
ἕπεσθ’ ἀπεψωλημένοι· τράγοι δ’ ἀκρατιεῖσθε.
From the Suda
“You will breakfast”: Aristophanes in Wealth has “You will breakfast like goats”. This means you will breakfast with an exposed penis: you will do wild things like goats, since after sex, goats lick the penis. [So this means] you will lick the end of a dick like a goat.”
“akratieisthe” stands in for “you would eat”. For akratismos means eating first thing in the morning. Or, “you will do wild things”, since after intercourse, goats lick their own genitals.”
ἡ ἐπιορκία, hê epiorkía: “perjury
ἐπιορκεῖν, epiorkeîn; ψευδορκεῖν, pseudorkeîn: “to make a false oath; to commit perjury”
Hesiod, Works and Days 282-284
“Whoever lies when he has sworn a false oath in his witness
Outrages justice and falls into an incurable ruin,
His family is left harried and weakened afterwards.”
“Now may Zeus know this, the highest and the best of the gods,
Along with Earth, the Sun and the Furies, those who punish men
Under the earth, whenever someone perjures himself.”
“I could not have believed
That one among us would ever be
so wicked to dare
To say these things
So shamefully in public.
But everything can happen now,
And I praise the ancient proverb:
One must look carefully
under every stone
to avoid the bite
of a politician”
[The material that follows is full of typical Greek misogyny and I have had my fill of that of late]
The scholion for this passage credits Praxilla (fr. 750) with the proverb:
“Friend, protect yourself against the scorpion under every stone.”
ὑπὸ παντὶ λίθῳ σκορπίον ὦ ἑταῖρε φυλάσσεο
And thinking that anything can happen makes me think of Archilochus:
Archilochus, fr. 122
“Nothing is unexpected, nothing can be sworn untrue,
and nothing amazes since father Zeus the Olympian
veiled the light to make it night at midday
even as the sun was shining: now dread fear has overtaken men.
From this time on everything that men believe
will be doubted: may none of us who see this be surprised
when we see forest beasts taking turns in the salted field
with dolphins, when the echoing waves of the sea become
Dearer to them than the sand, and the dolphins love the wooded glen…”
“Then Eurynomê the bed-maid led them
As they went to bed, holding a torch in her hands.
She left again once she led them into the bed chamber;
Then they happily entered the rite of the ancient bed.”
Comments from the Scholia:
ἀσπάσιοι λέκτροιο] “They happily and enthusiastically remembered the ancient practice of intercourse”
Aristophanes and Aristarchus believed that this was the end (peras) of the Odyssey
Aristophanes and Aristarchus claim this as the end (telos) of the Odyssey
Erbse (1972,166-177) argues that the Alexandrian scholars really meant that the natural ‘end’ of the story in an Aristotelian sense was the reunion of husband and wife. And, yet, Aristotle seems to have a different ‘end’ in mind for the epic:
Aristotle, Poetics 1455b17-24
“In drama, the episodes are brief; while epic uses episodes for expansion. The story of the Odyssey really is not long: a man is away from home for many years because he is detained by Poseidon and he is alone. While this is going on, at home his possessions are being wasted by suitors and there is a plot against his son. But when he returns, storm-tossed, once he reveals himself, he attacks them, saves himself and destroys his enemies. That’s the core of the tale; different episodes comprise the rest of it”
Eustathius takes issue with the scholiasts’ choice:
Eustathius, Commentary on the Odyssey, II.308
“We should note that according to the very old accounts, Aristarchus and Aristophanes, the best of the ancient commentators, made this line (23.296) the end of the Odyssey, because they were suspicious of what remained to the end of the book. But these scholars are cutting off many critical things, which they claim to oppose, for example the immediately following rhetorical recapitulation of that has happened and then, in a way, a summary of the whole Odyssey and then, in the next book, the recognition scene between Odysseus and Laertes, and the many marvelous things that happen there.”
“Let us spurn the rewards of today and look to future glory; let us deem best what is most honorable; let us hope for what we want, but bear what befalls us; finally, let us consider that even the bodies of brave men and great citizens are mortal; but that activity of the mind and the glory of virtue are forever.”
praesentis fructus neglegamus, posteritatis gloriae serviamus; id esse optimum putemus quod erit rectissimum; speremus quae volumus, sed quod acciderit feramus; cogitemus denique corpus virorum fortium magnorum hominum esse mortale, animi vero motus et virtutis gloriam sempiternam
Mile 5: When I start to Make Jokes to Myself about Pheidippides
Lucian, On Mistakes in Greeting
“After saying ‘hello’ he died with his greeting a gasped out a final farewell”
Students often complain about the lack of verisimilitude in the heroic diet–even though the Odyssey mentions that Odysseus’ companions fish and hunt birds before they kill the cattle in Thrinacia, students find something odd about a diet of meat, bread and wine.
Apparently ancient comic poets did too–and they were concerned about the reality of heroic sexual habits as well. Obviously, as the beginning of book 1 of the Iliad makes clear, eligible ladies were not in excess supply.
[Warning: this next passage is a little, well, explicit] Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 1.46
“Sarpedon makes it clear that they ate fish when he says that being captured is similar to hunting with a fishing net. In the comic charm, Eubolos also says jokingly:
Where dies Homer say that any of the Achaeans Ate fish? They only ever roast meat—he never has Anyone of them boil it at all! And not a one of them sees a single prostitute— They were stroking themselves for ten years! They knew a bitter expedition, those men who After taking a single city went back home With assholes much wider than the city they captured.
The heroes also didn’t allow freedom to the birds in the air, but they set snares and nets for thrushes and doves. They practices for bird hunting when they tied the dove to the mast of the ship and shot arrows at it, as is clear from the Funeral Games. But Homer leaves out their consumption of vegetables, fish and birds because of gluttony and because cooking is inappropriate, he judged it inferior to heroic and godly deeds.”
Note: My small LSJ defines δέφω as “to soften by working by the hand, to make supple, to tan hides.” The 1902 LSJ uses Latin to explain: “sensu obscoeno, v. Lat. Masturbari.”
The Suda cuts to the chase on this one with “dephein: touching the genitals. So, “rubbing” (Dephomenos) instead of “flogging your genitals.”
“Excellent.
Just as if you were masturbating, say it first now gently
“let us hurry” and then again pushing on, quickly.”
[Here’s a link to the whole play. Soon, one of the interlocutors stops “because the skin is irritated by masturbation.” (῾Οτιὴ τὸ δέρμα δεφομένων ἀπέρχεται, 29)]
The verb is not common, to say the least, so later commentators found it necessary to gloss it and explain Aristophanes’ joke. I realize that I might be crossing many boundaries of propriety here, but I am a bit intrigued by the explanations of the joke, how the joke immediately becomes less funny, and the language used in the commentaries. So, here it goes:
Scholia in Knights:
[1] “ ‘Just like dephomenos’: instead of “flogging your genitals” (apodérôn to aidoion). For, when men touch their genitals they don’t complete as they began, but they move more eagerly towards the secretion of semen. This plays on that, he means start small at first but then go continuously.
[3]‘dephomenos’: They mean handling the penis. For, when men take hold of their penises they don’t move towards ejaculation the way they began, but more eagerly over time, as they are inflamed by the continuity of movement.”
