Ancient and Modern Greek

1960 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-127
Author(s):  
B. E. Newton
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Third ◽  
Good Working ◽  
Linear B

A question which occurs frequently to classical students and others concerns the relation between ancient and modern Greek. It is the purpose of the present article to indicate in as brief a fashion as possible the lines on which the question might be approached.Perhaps the most amazing thing about Greek is that in the period over which our written records extend—in over three millennia, since the decipherment of Linear B—it has changed so little. Whereas a student of Latin would be ill-equipped to read a modern Italian newspaper, a person with a good working knowledge of classical Greek would not only find an Athenian newspaper intelligible for the most part, but would be amazed at the remarkable likenesses between the ancient and the modern languages. For the vocabulary of a Greek newspaper is probably 99 per cent, of classical origin and modern Greek has retained much of the cumbersome grammar of the ancient language—and ancient Greek has got a cumbersome grammar, when we consider that its verb has over four hundred forms as compared to sixty or so in French and two in Afrikaans. Thus the declension of φίλος is precisely the same now (except for the absence of the dual, which was obsolescent in Xenophon's day, and of the dative) as it was in the fifth century B.c. The conjugation of the present of ἒχω is identical with that of the classical verb, although the third plural ending -ουσι occurs mostly dialectically, e.g. in Cypriot, and has been largely replaced by -ουν.

LYKOPHRON AND EPIGRAPHY: THE VALUE AND FUNCTION OF CULT EPITHETS IN THEALEXANDRA

2014 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hornblower
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Local Origin ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
And Function

The subject of this paper is a striking and unavoidable feature of theAlexandra: Lykophron's habit of referring to single gods not by their usual names, but by multiple lists of epithets piled up in asyndeton. This phenomenon first occurs early in the 1474-line poem, and this occurrence will serve as an illustration. At 152–3, Demeter has five descriptors in a row: Ἐνναία ποτὲ | Ἕρκυνν' Ἐρινὺς Θουρία Ξιφηφόρος, ‘Ennaian … Herkynna, Erinys, Thouria, Sword-bearing’. In the footnote I give the probable explanations of these epithets. Although in this sample the explanations to most of the epithets are not to be found in inscriptions, my main aim in what follows will be to emphasize the relevance of epigraphy to the unravelling of some of the famous obscurity of Lykophron. In this paper, I ask why the poet accumulates divine epithets in this special way. I also ask whether the information provided by the ancient scholiasts, about the local origin of the epithets, is of good quality and of value to the historian of religion. This will mean checking some of that information against the evidence of inscriptions, beginning with Linear B. It will be argued that it stands up very well to such a check. TheAlexandrahas enjoyed remarkable recent vogue, but this attention has come mainly from the literary side. Historians, in particular historians of religion, and students of myths relating to colonial identity, have been much less ready to exploit the intricate detail of the poem, although it has so much to offer in these respects. The present article is, then, intended primarily as a contribution to the elucidation of a difficult literary text, and to the history of ancient Greek religion. Despite the article's main title, there will, as the subtitle is intended to make clear, be no attempt to gather and assess all the many passages in Lykophron to which inscriptions are relevant. There will, for example, be no discussion of 1141–74 and the early Hellenistic ‘Lokrian Maidens inscription’ (IG9.12706); or of the light thrown on 599 by the inscribed potsherds carrying dedications to Diomedes, recently found on the tiny island of Palagruza in the Adriatic, and beginning as early as the fifth centuryb.c.(SEG48.692bis–694); or of 733–4 and their relation to the fifth-centuryb.c.Athenian decree (n. 127) mentioning Diotimos, the general who founded a torch race at Naples, according to Lykophron; or of 570–85 and the epigraphically attested Archegesion or cult building of Anios on Delos, which shows that this strange founder king with three magical daughters was a figure of historical cult as well as of myth.

The Greek Dialects and Greek Pre-History

1956 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Chadwick
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
New Technique ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Linear B

One of the disadvantages of specialization is that other scholars often wish to make use of, but cannot evaluate, work in other fields. Moreover, it usually takes some time for a new theory to spread beyond the confines of a narrow specialist circle. The purpose of the present article is to summarize in English, and comment on, a new theory of the relationships of the Greek dialects and the historical facts to be deduced from them. The theory is mainly the result of the application to the ancient Greek dialects of the new technique of linguistic geography, which was first devised for the study of the Romance languages. The basis of what follows is an important article by E. Risch, following on a remarkable study by W. Porzig. The latter, though only recently published, was written some time ago, and some of its conclusions are disproved by the new evidence made available by the decipherment of the ‘Minoan’ Linear B script. Risch has been able to make some use of this, and it provides a valuable check on the soundness of the new theory.

Foucault as Superauthor

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-125
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Main Motivation ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
Lecture Courses

Three phases in Foucault’s examination of authorship and free speech were essential to him throughout his life. They can be linked to such texts as the three lectures “What is an Author?” (first phase), “What is Critique?,” and “What is Revolution?” (second phase), and the two lecture courses, “Fearless Speech,” and “The Courage of Truth” (third phase). Initially, Foucault merely describes the founders of discursivity (hence, “superauthors”), among whom he reckoned only Marx and Freud, as the sole alternative to his own conceptualization of the author function, which is exhibited en masse in contemporary society. He then modifies his views on superauthorship by making Kant the paradigm and by linking his own concept of free speech to a Kan-tian critical attitude. However, Foucault claims only the half of Kant’s philosophical legacy that is related to the study of the ontology of the self.The article advances the hypothesis that the sovereign power of speech, which can be found in Marx and Heidegger and in generally in the concept of “superauthorship,” becomes unacceptable for Foucault. During the third phase, the danger of a tyrannical use of free speech compels Foucault to make a number of fruitful but questionable choices in his work. He focuses on a single aspect of free speech in which a speaker is in a weaker position and therefore has to overcome his fear in order to tell the truth. Foucault associates this kind of free speech with the ancient Greek notion of parrhesia, which according to his interpretation means “fearless speech”; however, this reading is not always supported by the ancient Greek sources. Foucault’s deliberations bring him to the radical conclusion that free speech transforms into performative “aesthetics of existence.” Foucault’s main motivation for pursuing this line of thought all through his life was to investigate his own abilities and powers as an author

scholarly journals Deictic Shifting in Greek Contractual Writing (I–IV AD)

Philologus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 164 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Author(s):  
Klaas Bentein
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

AbstractMuch attention has been paid to ‘deictic shifts’ in Ancient Greek literary texts. In this article I show that similar phenomena can be found in documentary texts. Contracts in particular display unexpected shifts from the first to the third person or vice versa. Rather than constituting a narrative technique, I argue that such shifts should be related to the existence of two major types of stylization, called the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective’ style. In objectively styled contracts, subjective intrusions may occur as a result of the scribe temporarily assuming himself to be the deictic center, whereas in subjectively styled contracts objective intrusions may occur as a result of the contracting parties dictating to the scribe, and the scribe not modifying the personal references. There are also a couple of texts which display more extensive deictic alter­nations, which suggests that generic confusion between the two major types of stylization may have played a role.

scholarly journals PINDAR, OLYMPIAN 2.5–7, TEXT AND COMMENTARY—WITH EXCURSIONS TO ‘PERICTIONE’, EMPEDOCLES AND EURIPIDES’ HIPPOLYTUS

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 499-517
Author(s):  
M.S. Silk
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Divine Retribution ◽  
As If

In 1998, I suggested a new text for a notably corrupt passage in Pindar's Isthmian 5. This article is in effect a sequel to that earlier discussion. In the 1998 article, I proposed, inter alia, that the modern vulgate text of I. 5.58, ἐλπίδων ἔκνισ’ ὄπιν, is indefensible and the product of scribal corruption in antiquity, and that chief among the indefensible products of corruption there is the supposed secular use of ὄπις, as if used to mean something like ‘zeal’. This (as I hope to have demonstrated) is a sense for which there is no good evidence in classical Greek, where ὄπις always has a delimited religious denotation, meaning either (a) ‘gods’ response’, ‘divine retribution’, or else (b) ‘religious awe’ or ‘reverence’ towards the gods, through fear of that response or that retribution. If we discount I. 5.58 itself (and likewise the focus of the present article, O. 2.6), all the pre-Hellenistic attestations can be straightforwardly listed under these headings: (a) Il. 16.388 θεῶν ὄπιν οὐκ ἀλέγοντες, Od. 14.88 ὄπιδος κρατερὸν δέος, Hes. Theog. 221–2 θεαὶ . . . | . . . ἀπὸ τῷ δώωσι κακὴν ὄπιν, Pind. P. 8.71–2 θεῶν δ’ ὄπιν | ἄφθονον αἰτέω, sim. Od. 20.215, 21.28, Hes. Op. 187, 251, 706, along with, seemingly, a fragmentary fifth-century Thessalian verse inscription, CEG 1.120.1 Hansen; (b) Hdt. 9.76.2 θεῶν ὄπιν ἔχοντας, 8.143.2. In addition, one other instance can be interpreted as either (a) or (b), or in effect both: Od. 14.82 (of the suitors) οὐκ ὄπιδα φρονέοντες . . . οὐδ’ ἐλεητύν. In all cases, though, ‘gods’ are specified, usually as a dependent genitive with ὄπις, or else separately but in the near context. Hellenistic and later occurrences of the word are few, and (as I argued in 1998) hints there of a secular reading can actually be taken to reflect misunderstandings based on, precisely, the early corruption in I. 5.

scholarly journals Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Raw Material ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek World

AbstractTwo major themes dominate the poetry of the Alexandrian poet, C. P. Cavafy: homosexual desire and Greekness, broadly defined. This paper explores the interconnectivity of these motifs, showing how Cavafy’s poetic queerness is expressed through his relationship with the ancient Greek world, especially Hellenistic Alexandria. I focus on Cavafy’s incorporation of ancient sculpture into his poetry and the ways that sculpture, for Cavafy, is a vehicle for expressing forbidden desires in an acceptable way. In this, I draw on the works of Liana Giannakopoulou on statuary in modern Greek poetry and Dimitris Papanikolaou on Cavafy’s homosexuality and its presentation in the poetry. Sculpture features in around a third of Cavafy’s poems and pervades it in various ways: the inclusion of physical statues as focuses of ecphrastic description, the use of sculptural language and metaphor, and the likening of Cavafy’s beloveds to Greek marbles of the past, to name but three. This article argues that Cavafy utilizes the statuary of the ancient Greek world as raw material, from which he sculpts his modern Greek queerness, variously desiring the statuesque bodies of contemporary Alexandrian youths and constructing eroticized depictions of ancient Greek marbles. The very ontology of queerness is, for Cavafy, ‘created’ using explicitly sculptural metaphors (e.g. the repeated uses of the verb κάνω [‘to make’] in descriptions of ‘those made like me’) and he employs Hellenistic statues as a productive link between his desires and so-called ‘Greek desire’, placing himself within a continuum of queer, Greek men.

scholarly journals Is Liturgy Ludic? Distinguishing between the Phenomena of Play and Ritual

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 232
Author(s):  
Christina M. Gschwandtner
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ontological Claim

What is the nature (or “Wesen”) of the liturgical phenomenon? It has become immensely popular to describe liturgical or ritual practice as a kind of “holy play,” whether as metaphor, as productive analogy for pragmatic or theological purposes, or even as making an ontological claim about what liturgy “is” in its essence. The present article seeks to complicate the association of the phenomena of liturgy and of play. The first part traces the origins of the notion of play and the development of its application to ritual in the most influential sources from Kant to Gadamer. The second part highlights its prevalence in the contemporary discussion and elucidates how it is being used. The third part provides a phenomenological analysis to demonstrate important differences between the two phenomena and to question the contention that liturgy is a form of play. The final part tries to ascertain the broader practical and theological aims being served by the association of the two phenomena and—via a return to the question of the nature of the liturgical phenomenon in a more theological mode—suggests that these aims might be accomplished more productively in ways that avoid the downsides of identifying ritual or liturgy with play.

Imperatives, V-movement and logical mood

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Luisa Rivero ◽  
Arhonto Terzi
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Distinctive Morphology

Imperative Vs with distinctive morphology either have a distinctive syntax (Modern Greek, Spanish), or distribute like others Vs (Serbo-Croatian, Ancient Greek). The contrast follows from properties of the root C. The first type has a strong Imperative V-feature in C, and under Chomsky's Greed Principle, Imperative Vs raise overtly to check this feature. The second type is the Wackernagel language, whose C hosts no features, but V-features are in I. If no phrase fronts, Vs move to C to support second position items. V-to-C affects all Vs, is last resort, follows Lasnik's Enlightened Self-Interest, and escapes Greed.

Ancient Hinduism as a Missionary Religion

Numen ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arvind Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
The Third ◽  
Fourth Part ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe paper is conceptually divided into four parts. In the first part the widely held view that ancient Hinduism was not a missionary religion is presented. (The term ancient is employed to characterize the period in the history of Hinduism extending from fifth century B.C.E. to the tenth century. The term 'missionary religion' is used to designate a religion which places its followers under an obligation to missionize.) In the second part the conception of conversion in the context of ancient Hinduism is clarified and it is explained how this conception differs from the notion of conversion as found in Christianity. In the third part the view that ancient Hinduism was not a missionary religion is challenged by presenting textual evidence that ancient Hinduism was in fact a missionary religion, inasmuch as it placed a well-defined segment of its members under an obligation to undertake missionary activity. Such historical material as serves to confirm the textual evidence is then presented in the fourth part.

Spoken Greek

1944 ◽  
Vol 13 (38-39) ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
W. R Loader
Keyword(s):  
Formal Language ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Business Correspondence

It has been suggested that there is less difference between ancient Greek and modern Greek than between present-day English and Chaucer's language. The suggestion is somewhat questionable. Broadly speaking, apart from dialects and local variations, there are presently three languages in Greece, the Kathareuousa, the Demotiki, and the popular newspaper language, which is a blend of the two.The Kathareuousa is the official and formal language, used in Government publications and statements, business correspondence, non-fictional books and treatises, law courts, University lectures, and in formal conversation. And although its grammatical structure is analytic as opposed to the synthesis of ancient Greek (a change which constitutes the main difference between classical and modern Greek, as it does between other modern and ancient languages), in the Kathareuousa the most strenuous attempt has been made to maintain the accidence and vocabulary of the ancient language.Words are declined and verbs conjugated (without some of their more difficult and less used moods and tenses) as in Attic Greek, pronouns and prepositions and the cases governed by them are the same, and while, naturally, many terms which describe things known only to the modern world are not to be found in Liddell and Scott, they are generally legitimate and intelligible compounds of words which are to be found in Liddell and Scott. Ἀɛροπλἁνoν for aeroplane, ἀɛρòσTαtoν for balloon, are instances which come easily to mind.

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