Here's to the aorist optative

[starlady]

Oh man, it's been years since I'd thought about the aorist optative. I'm such a bad lapsed Classicist. But here's a line from this week's Economist about the study of ancient Greek that I thought was too damn good not to share:

Intellectual elitism, as much as an appreciation of Aristophanes’s bawdy humour, is the glue that binds Hellenists together—stoked, in some schools, by a feeling of official neglect or hostility from peers.

The article concludes by saying that the real threat to the classics in general and Greek in particular is not modernity but globlization. I could see that. In the meantime, off to the grocery store.

Comments

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

*toasts the aorist optative*

Yep, I pretty much agree with all of that, except that Aristophanes has to be humorous to others beyond Classicists. I mean, really. Frogs is just hilarious.

Of course, one of the 'impractical' things about Classics is that despite the fact that I 'know' three modern languages other than English, that knowledge only extends to reading philological junk. John asked a while back if I'd like to study in France or Germany (and work on those spoken languages). I said not really; I don't think that's the answer he's used to. I guess I'm just a homebody stuck in a globalizing world. Or something.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Frogs is pretty good.

Your success at acquiring reading knowledge of French and German makes me hope that I too will be able to pick up at least one of them (probably French) with relative speed, as I will have to do for my future goals. Of course, I'd love to study abroad to work on my speaking abilities. :-)

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

Dude, you speak Japanese. You can learn French over a weekend.

[spacevlad.livejournal.com]

German's not hard either, the grammar is similar to English and a lot of the vocab makes intuitive sense. The upper-level grammar stuff, like word genders, starts to get crazy, but the basics and advanced-level stuff is pretty easy.

[socair.livejournal.com]

German grammar is very similar to Greek, or at least I thought so in my semester of it...

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

I agree, German grammar isn't too bad, but the vocab drives me nuts after a while. I think I spend enough time cramming Latin and Greek into my head that I don't care enough to remember all those German words. And I don't use it frequently enough to learn by osmosis. Whereas in French, 90% of the vocabulary is almost blindingly obvious.

[socair.livejournal.com]

Wow. It's been ages since I thought much about anything Greek... sad! I should brush up, my brother just finished a year of it and he's going to make me look like a load.

And yeah, I can kind of see that, though I agree that Aristophanes can't just be us. Incidentally, did it please anyone else that they put hoi polloi, without a the in front? That I will never forget...

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

It's The Economist, you know there are people on staff who not only know what quantitative metathesis is, but embrace it wholeheartedly. And who would shoot themselves before saying "the hoi polloi." :-)

I want to brush up too. We are loads (lodes?).

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

Loads. Iliad 18.104: ἀλλ’ ἧμαι παρὰ νηυσὶν ἐτώσιον ἄχθος ἀρούρης.

And yes, I am ridiculously delighted to see οἱ πολλοί without an additional article.

As a sidenote, did anybody see the article a couple days ago (can't remember where, right off) on some scientists figuring out the exact day on which Odysseus returned home based on eclipses and whatnot? Reactions?

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I saw that. I almost posted on it. I would totally buy it (unlike the scientists in the article, who seemed to not want to acknowledge that The Odyssey could be gasp! based in fact, or that people could remember a solar eclipse in verse for 500 years. fools.).

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

See, I'm not so sure. One of the things I find totally fascinating about Homer is that it has all sorts of stuff that goes back 500 years before it was written, but on the other hand, it also has a bunch of anachronisms from the 8th century. I don't know if you could tell which category a solar eclipse would fall into, especially if that sort of thing is fairly common doom-laden imagery and wouldn't necessarily refer to a real event. And especially if the passage doesn't clearly describe an eclipse and Plutarch was the first one to interpret it that way.

I guess I feel that this is one of those instances where you actually need scientists and Hellenists working together instead of going off on their own, because both sides have certain necessary insights (both positive and negative). The article seemed to me an oversimplification on several counts.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it could be completely wrong-headed for all those reasons. But I was annoyed by the dismissal of the possibility that the memory of the event had survived for 500 years, when so many other things clearly do.

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

I'm not necessarily saying it's all wrong; I'm just saying they should have at least consulted somebody who actually knows about such things. Somebody who could confirm the validity of oral tradition, and then caution them about certain other things. When all your evidence is philological, you really need a philologist in on it.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Interdisciplinarism!