“Such images he wondered at on Vulcan’s shield, a parent’s present,
and he delights in the picture, although ignorant of the affairs
as he lifts upon his shoulder, the fame and fate of his descendants.”
Talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis,
miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet
attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum.
When asked about whether or not this new system was hostile to women, #twitter CFO Oglethorpe Humperdink said, “Well, we already know that twitter is a cesspool of abusive dicks. Why not double down on our brand?”#Phallusthursday
Women of twitter, fed up at yet another tone-deaf corporate response, said “Fuck this” (no, not literally, my dear Silenus) and offered up their own kolpometric system (with a super h/t to @serenajenk):
“Nor did unhappy Dido fail to drag out the night
With all kinds of talk as she was drinking deep of love.”
nec non et vario noctem sermone trahebat
infelix Dido longumque bibebat amorem,
A few days ago Christian Lehmann (@buffyantiqua and a teacher at Bard High School Early College, Cleveland) told the story of Aeneas and Dido from Vergil’s Aeneid through GIFs from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is not only genius which the world needs to witness for its own sake, but it also combines a few things I love: Homeric reception/myth and Buffy. (I tried to write about this once and partially failed.)
I loved this so much that I wanted to share it with those who don’t use Twitter and Christian was kind enough to give his consent (see his work on “The 100 and Classical (Under)Worlds” too). This is a lively and fascinating retelling–it forces reconsiderations, I think, of both the Aeneid and BVTS. Also, Buffy and Spike > Buffy and Riley.
Aeneas and Anna hanging out and braiding each others hair:
…solam nam perfidus ille / te colere, arcanos etiam tibi credere sensus; "That traitor listened to you alone, to you he confided his secret feelings" (Aen. 4.421-422) pic.twitter.com/ztU45D3WND
[below is my contribution: I learned this passage in high school where it was obligatory to understand that Dido was not dutiful enough and gave into passion, whereas Aeneas was oh so very pius.]
Vergil, Aeneid 4. 165-172
To the same cave came Dido and the Trojan captain
Earth first then nuptial Dido gave their sign
The lightning bolts were shining out and the Sky was a witness
to their bridal rites as the Nymphs sounded out on the mount’s highest peak
That day was the first cause of death; the first cause of evils.
For no longer was Dido cautioned by appearances or rumor
And no more was she harboring a secret love.
She calls it a marriage: with this name she cloaks her fault.
speluncam Dido dux et Troianus eandem
deveniunt. prima et Tellus et pronuba Iuno
dant signum; fulsere ignes et conscius Aether
conubiis, summoque ulularunt vertice Nymphae.
ille dies primus leti primusque malorum
causa fuit. neque enim specie famave movetur
nec iam furtivum Dido meditatur amorem;
coniugium vocat; hoc praetexit nomine culpam.
Last summer, while catching up with the SYFY series The Expanse, I learned that a fifth installment of the movie Sharknadohas made its debut. So, got to thinking and sent a tweet. Some entertainment ensued. In honor of the sixth and allegedly final movie in the storied franchise The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time, here we go again.
Bored linguists. Excitable Hellenists. A query: how would one say "Sharknado" in Ancient Greek?
I was surprised about the engagement (people like absurd questions), but not too surprised. I then got distracted by the idea. I have put some of the responses below. Apologies if I missed anyone.
My first thought was: Why is Shark-nado funny?
It is an absurd compound, the word shark plus a part of the word tornado, which has been amusingly reanalyzed as if it were a meaningful suffix. And, by the magical power of languag, it now is in fact a meaningful suffix.
Also, it is funny because it sounds like a metaphor but is actually literal: in the made for TV movies, of which there are now five, there is a churning gyro made of sharks.
Etymology, from the OED s.v. “tornado”
Etymology: In Hakluyt and his contemporaries, ternado; from Purchas 1625 onward, turnado, tournado, tornado. In none of these forms does the word exist in Spanish or Portuguese. But the early sense makes it probable that ternado was a bad adaptation (perhaps originally a blundered spelling) of Spanish tronada ‘thunderstorm’ ( <tronar to thunder), and that tornado was an attempt to improve it by treating it as a derivative of Spanish tornar to turn, return; compare tornado participle, returned. It is notable that this spelling is identified with explanations in which, not the thunder, but the turning, shifting, or whirling winds are the main feature. This is emphasized in the variants turnado, tournado.
The suggestions from Twitter:
καρχαριοτυφῶν: from [καρχαρίας “shark” + τυφῶν “tornado”] by @AntieDiaphanus
καρχαρίανεμοστρόβιλος: “shark-rain-gyre” from @didaclopez
κηταιγίδα: pun on “sea monster” (κῆτος) and storm (καταιγίς) from @KirkdaleBooks cf. κηταιγίδα (loved by @giovanni_lido)
καρχαρίομβρος: “shark-rain” from @nanocyborgasm
καρχαριοστρόβιλος: “shark-gyre” from @peneloPa
τερατολαῖλαψ: “monster=-omen hurricane” from @ohflanders
καρχαριηριώλη: “shark-air-destruction” from @deadfulprof
καρχαριάνεμος “shark-wind” from @jatrius
Κετρόβιλος: “sea-monster gyre” from @didaclopez
καρχαροδίνη: “shark-whorl” from @equiprimordial
My thought process:
I wanted Ancient Greek, so the problem is there is no word for “shark” according to Woodhouse’s Greek English dictionary. In Oppian’s Halieutika, we find a “fox-shark” (ἀλωπεκίαι, 1.380; cf. Ananius fr. 5.5: κἀλωπέκων) and, possibly, “the genus shark” in Aristotle’s On Breathing (τὸ τῶν καλουμένων σελαχῶν γένος, 476a) while Aelian prefers Ὁ γαλεὸς (On Animals, 2.55).
Of course, we need to go to Greek comedy if we want fish names: Platon the Comic gives us καρχαρίαν (fr. 189.14) while Cratinus, according to Athenaeus, gives us κύων (fr. 171.50), Eupolis provides σελάχιον (πρίω μοι σελάχιον, fr 1.: “buy some shark for me!”). I am going to leave aside the metaphorical transfer names (“dog” and “shark”) and focus just on the fish-words.
Here’s the LSJ on this:
σέλαχος, ὁ: “of all cartilaginous fishes” including “sharks”
καρχαρίας, ὁ: “a kind of shark” named so because of its “sharp” teeth (κάρχαρος means “sharp”).
Obviously, no one wants to use σέλαχος. So, the better suggestions should be from καρχαρίας. Someone suggested a κητ- compound, which I find especially attractive since κῆτος is already productive in compounds (e.g. κητόδορπος (fish-food) κητοτρόφος (sea-monster nourishing), κητοφάγος (sea-monster eating), κητοφόνος (sea monster slaying). The reason I am leaning this way is because SHARK in American films and culture is a figure of respect and horror, not something you eat. IT EATS YOU. So, Greek κῆτος, while not a shark, seems more apt for the EXTREME nature of this gyronic KILLING MACHINE.
Woodhouse suggests for English “tornado”: χείμων, θύελλα, τυφώς. For hurricane: the same, but with πρηστήρ coming sooner. The blander “storm” gets these, plus τρικυμία, φυσήματα, κλύδων and νιφάς. It does not provide what I think is the best suggestion, λαῖλαψ, which I am probably particular to because it is rather archaic. I also love the Suda’s definition “rain with wind. And darkness” (Λαῖλαψ: μετ’ ἀνέμων ὄμβρος, καὶ σκότος). Hescyhius also glosses it as “a storm, a turning of wind with rain” (καταιγίς, ἀνέμου συστροφὴ μετὰ ὑετοῦ).
Some further suggestions
κητολαῖλαψ: “sea-monster hurricane”
κητοχειμών: “sea-monster storm”
καρχαριοτυφών: “shark-typhoon”
κητοτυφών: “sea-monster typhoon”
καρχαριολαῖλαψ: “sea-monster hurricane”
Palaiophron suggested ἕλιξ κητέων, which is pretty rad. But I would like to turn that bad-boy around and get κητο-ελιξ or perhaps κητόλελιξ or even καρχαριόλελιξ.
Side-note 2: Another friend said that the compound should have some Greek compound of “turn” in it. I failed him.
Side-note 3: Another friend, in discovering that there were 5 Sharknado films, texted me: “What!? Where have I been? In such a world, “President Trump” should have come as no surprise.”
Side-note 4: My son who is 5 just walked by and saw the promo-picture for “Sharknado 5” and said “giant sharks on land and in the air? That. Is. A. Mazing.”
“So I was speaking, but [the Kyklops] did not answer me because of his pitiless heart.
But then he leapt up, shot out his hands at my companions,
Grabbed two together, and struck them against the ground
Like puppies. Brains were flowing out from them and they dyed the ground.
After tearing them limb from limb, he prepared himself a meal.
He ate them like a mountain-born lion and left nothing behind,
The innards, the meat, and the marrow-filled bones.”
My perplexity over this passage provides a good example of how Twitter can be used for good. Last year, I asked a question about killing puppies got some great responses. One found a later passage that deals with puppies and has some interesting thematic resonance with Odysseus’ development:
I think that all of these ideas are essential to a full interpretation of this passage. But, I do wonder if, in addition, we should consider ancient Greek practices of puppy sacrifice. I know that the following accounts are later, but what if we imagine the simile used here as evoking ideas of purification through sacrifice?
“Nearly all the Greeks made use of the dog in sacrifice and some still do today, for cleansing rituals. They also bring puppies for Hekate along with other purification materials; and they rub down people who need cleansing with the puppies.”
“The Greeks in their purification bring out the puppies and in many places use them in the practice called periskulakismos [‘carrying puppies around’]”
“Here, each of these groups of youths sacrifice a puppy to Enyalius, god of war, because they believe that it is best to make this most valiant of the domesticated animals to the bravest of the gods. I don’t know any other Greeks who believe it is right to sacrifice puppies to the gods except for the Kolophonians. For the Kolophonians sacrifice a black female puppy to the goddess of the Crossroad. The sacrifices of both the Kolophonians and the Spartan youths take place at night.”
“Indeed, the ancients did not consider this animal to be clean either: it was never sacrificed to one of the Olympian goes, but when it is given to Hekate at the cross-roads, it functions as part of the sacrifices that turn away and cleanse evil. In Sparta, they sacrifice dogs to the bloodiest of the gods, Enyalios. In Boiotia, it is the public cleansing ritual to walk between the parts of a dog that has been cut in half. The Romans themselves, during the Wolf-Festival which they call the Lupercalia, they sacrifice a dog in the month of purification.”
“Solon the Athenian, the son of Eksêkestides, when his nephew sang some song of Sappho at a drinking party, took pleasure in it and asked the young man to teach it to him. When someone asked why he was eager to learn it, he responded: “So, once I learn it, I may die.”
@sentantiq#deathandclassics more seriously, I guess it would have to be Sappho? After all death is nothing but a distance between you and your loved ones
— Ye Olde Philologer Cokedril (@PhiloCrocodile) May 24, 2018
There were lots of interesting answers–it would be annoying to post all the tweets here, but I have added some to give an idea of the range of responses.
“Human strength is meager
Our plains incomplete
Toil follows toil in our short lives.
Death looms inescapable for all—
People who are good and bad draw
of that an equal portion.”
“Since you are human, never claim what tomorrow might bring.
Nor, if you see a fortunate man, how long it will last.
For not even the time of a tender-winged fly
Is not as fast.”
Here are the tweets I sent to try to contextualize the question:
I ask the #deathandclassics question in all seriousness because it is a question I actually consider often (1/8)
I actually have been memorizing the opening lines of the #Odyssey to recite to myself in times of agitation. And I think, if I know I am going to die, I will recite it to myself. (2/8)
Why the #Odyssey? I think the #Iliad is the poem of death and the Odyssey is the poem of life. Both poems are at some level about what it means to be a person, but the Odyssey is about how life is lived. #deathandclassics (3/8)
In a way, it will be like a replaying of my life through a story I have read many times. There is also the ancient allegorical tradition that the Odyssey is about the transition from one realm to the next, the movement of a soul from one plane to another #deathandclassics (4/8)
Even without the allegory, the Odyssey is about the journey of a person and the journey that IS the person. #deathandclassics (5/8)
I think that this might be nice to think about in the final moments—that even though I individual am passing on, I am drifting away on words that have moved through a thousand years #deathandclassics (6/8)
Since we ply our trade by reusing the quotes of the ancients, we have nothing but respect for those who find new use for our material in turn. The following is inspired.
My screenshots of a few weeks of @sentantiq tweets has inadvertently amounted to what I'd like to call "Becoming a Classicist: a Tragi-comedy in 5 Acts"
Even before I received it, I knew I would have some issues with it. West has long been a proponent of a strictly textualist view of Homer–which means his goal in editing the Iliad or the Odyssey is to restore the epics to something closer to what the ‘original’ ‘author’ had in mind. Even with modern authors, I think we emphasize individual agency, creativity and genius to the detriment of cultural contexts and audience reception far too much. For the Homeric epics, which arise from oral performance tradition and which have undergone generations of transformations in the textualized forms, the peril of overemphasizing the importance of an ‘author’ is even greater.
So, West’s final great work was going to ruffle my feathers–indeed, he announced many of his intentions in his Making of the Odyssey. What I was looking forward too, however, was an edition with an updated apparatus criticus integrating new Papyri and manuscripts unavailable to Von der Mühll when he edited the text. In the accumulation of testimonia as well as readings, West’s edition does not disappoint. The text is quite readable.
But there are some problems. Minor: he uses iota adscripts instead of subscripts and offers a more liberal application of the nu-moveable. These are merely aesthetic annoyances for me….
The major problem is that West excises many repeated lines or passages that have almost always been included in editions and relegated them to the apparatus if there is some papyrological or testimonial justification for doing so. In addition, he brackets lines that are not typically bracketed. So, West eliminates some lines that Von der Mühll preserves, e.g. 9.30 and labels others as spurious (e.g. 9.55). But really takes it further. (See the group discussion on these issues for more examples and some fine defenses and explanations).
West, of course, does this because he thinks many lines have been repeated by the process of transmission and that the writerly Homer would never have repeated so much. West is welcome to this opinion–and it is not alone in it. But the relegation of some many lines is quite striking and renders the text useless alone (in my opinion). I cannot imagine using this with undergraduates or advising a casual reader of Homer to use this instead of the old Teubner or even Allen’s OCT.
The editorial choices will change some interpretation as well. Some are idiosyncratic but have support (such as West’s decision to go with the double accent ἄνδρά μοι ἔννεπε instead of the common and more widely accepted ῎Ανδρα μοι ἔννεπε for 1.1). Others may alter what the text means, as when he goes with ἄνθρωποι, μήδε σφιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψαι instead of ἄνθρωποι, μέγα δέ σφιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψαι for Od. 13.158. In his reading, the infinitive ἀμφικαλύψαι becomes negative command–thus Zeus is ordering Poseidon not to drop a mountain on the Phaeacians.
There are many issues like this throughout the text. I will probably highlight some now and then. But when I started posting about it on twitter, a dozen or so people joined in with enthusiasm, expertise, and bibliographies! I have storified the several conversations as a group review of West’s edition. Check it out–I learned a lot from those involved and we inadvertently illustrated how useful twitter can be.
As you can probably imagine, the responses were fast coming, erudite and funny. I probably should have not been surprised by the eagerness of the responses. Unlike the other classics game which requires and even prizes a knowledge of the obscure–where people talk about the lost texts from antiquity–this one is fair game for almost anyone.
And it also has the imprint of antiquity: think of all the banquets that are settings for the remains of ancient literature, the Symposia of Xenophon and Plato, Petronius’ absurd feast, the imagined, endless meals of Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists and Plutarch’s Dinner of the Seven Wise Men. Who doesn’t fantasize about a perfect, endless, raucous meal?
Seneca, Contr. 9.11
“A man was killed so that this asshole might dine more pleasantly with his girlfriend?”
Ut iste cum amica cenaret iucundius homo occisus est.
Martial, 2.18
“Eh, I am ashamed, but I’m looking, I’m looking for a your dinner invitation, Maximus.
And you’re looking for a different one. Now, for once, we are equal.”
Capto tuam, pudet heu, sed capto, Maxime, cenam.
tu captas aliam: iam sumus ergo pares.
Table 1: Clodius, Fulvia, Clodia, Atticus and Cicero Table 2: Aeschylus, Euripides & Seneca and we are going to DISCUSS the house of Atreus https://t.co/394qHnyDPp
This line is something I bounce around twitter every few months or so. As with many of our tweets, it is divorced from its context and takes on a new meaning in our own time (one, I think, which is less than positive since people are motivated more by an acquisitive, begrudging impulse than one of empathy).
A twitter correspondent (@History_Twerp) noted that this line was echoed in Herodotus.
Herodotus 3.52
Periander speaks to his son and says “since you have learned how much being envied is better than being pitied, and also what it is like to be angry at your parents and your betters, come home…”
The notes on Perseus for Pindar’s Pythian 1 refer to the passage from Herodotus as “proverbial” without any additional evidence. The passages do seem proverbial since they use the same basic lexical items to express the same basic idea. Nevertheless, there is not additional evidence for a proverb. Instead, I think we probably have evidence of a general cultural value immanent among aristocratic classes during the early Classical period.
Here’s a fuller context for Pindar, Pyth. 1.84-86
“Satiety reshapes
Fast and easy expectations—
And the citizens’ secret witness grows especially burdened over foreign wealth.
But still, since envy is stronger than pity,
Do not overlook noble things, but guide the people
With a just rudder. Make your tongue
Bronze on an truthful anvil.”
In the context of the Pythian ode, the brevity of the statement along with the epexegetical γὰρ gives the impression of a proverb drawn from elsewhere. But it is my sense, from reading through a lot of Pindar and Bacchylides, that the epinician genre is in the business of sounding proverbial (it lends itself towards gnomic utterances because of the lyric brevity of expression, lack of epic-style repetition, and limited syntax). The trick of epinician poetry is to sound old and authoritative without actually being so.
The positive valence attributed to envy over pity is present as well in Hesiod’s Works and Days where two types of Strife are distinguished in order to mark one type of human conflict as good and one type as bad.
Hesiod, Works and Days, 26-7
“And a potter is angry with a potter, and a carpenter with a carpenter;
Even a beggar will envy a beggar and a singer a singer.”
So the general attitude projected by Herodotus’ Periander and Pindar is harmonious with the Archaic Greek notion that ‘envy’ produces a type of rivalry that has positive effects. It is better than pity because pity is something which people in a stronger position have over those in a weaker position (and who wants to be in the weaker position?). For Pindar, envy is better because it imbues Hiero’s people with a spirit of rivalry; for Periander, who uses the statement in an attempt to get his son to come home, it is an attempt to convince him to give up the ways of a mendicant and return the palace. Interestingly, according to Herodotus, Periander fails.
The relationship between pity and envy appears in Diogenes as well.
Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno of Citium 7.111
“[they claim] that grief is an irrational reaction. Its variations include: pity, envy, jealousy, rivalry, annoyance, bitterness, anger, and distraction. Pity is pain for someone who suffers evil unworthily; envy is grief over someone else’s good fortunes; jealousy is pain over what another possesses when you want it yourself; and rivalry is pain over what another has and which you possess too…”
At first sight, there is little value judgment in this summary. But pity and envy are collocated as emotional or unreasoning impulses distinguished by their frames of reference but united by the fact that both are a type of pain. The comparison between pity and envy, does not seem otherwise common in Greek literature. (But this conclusion is extremely tentative. Please let me know of any other passages.)
A fragment of Plutarch (quoted in Stobaeus) established what turns out to be somewhat proverbial, that envious people risk two sources of pain.
Hippias says that there are two types of envy. One is just, whenever someone envies evil men who have been honored. The other is unjust, whenever someone envies good people who are honored. Men who envy suffer twice as much as others; for they are troubled not only by their own evils, but by others’ good fortunes.”
This sentiment is rather similar to one attributed to Anacharsis the Skythian by the Gnomologium Vaticanum:
“When asked by someone why envious men are always in pain, he said “because not only do their own evils bite them, but the good fortunes of those near them cause them grief too…”
