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Category: Ancient Greek
Why does it need to have uppercase letters and lowercase letters in Attic Greek?
The dirty not-so-secret of Attic Greek typography: it adopts the punctuation and capitalisation conventions of the European-language country it is printed in. So names or adjectives of nationalities (Hellenic/hellenic, Hellene/hellene) will be capitalised based on where it is printed. The quotation marks will follow local practice (and there’s a special place in hell for whoever […]
Is Hebrew erabon,equal to αρραβωνας and Paul’s phrase,Cor.II,I,22″Give us arravon of spirit”means “give us new covenant, pledge with the holy spirit”?
Bauer’s Lexicon defines ἀρραβών as “payment of part of a purchase price in advance; first installment, deposit, down payment, pledge”. In time, the meaning has shifted to the kind of pledge associated with marriage: a betrothal, an engagement. (Greeks, please do not cite Ancient words with Modern inflections. It’s just confusing to those not as […]
What sort of crime was punished by Scaphism?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism You’ve linked to (and read) the English language Wikipedia article in the Question Details. From the English and German Wikipedia articles, we actually don’t know anything else about scaphism: it was described once in Plutarch, and then recapitulated in Eunapius and Zonaras, Byzantine sources. We don’t even know if it was something the Persians […]
Why are the Persian Wars important to the Greeks?
The only time the city-states of Ancient Greece rallied to a common cause Therefore, a formative event in the understanding of Greek identity (not least, because it was defined as not-barbarian) Leaving out the inconvenient fact that the Greeks of Ionia had long accommodated themselves to Persian rule A formative event in the history of […]
What do modern Greek speakers think of the phonetics of ancient Greek as it is taught in textbooks and performed (in, say, readings of Homer)? Do they think these reconstructions are accurate? Why?
What do they think? *sigh* The students at the Classics Department in the University of Auckland have this channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/… In which they have published three recordings of pop songs sung in Ancient Greek, with Erasmian pronunciation. They are exceedingly clever renderings, both in translation and staging. Mama Mia even has a Sappho […]
Why are there relatively few personal names shared between Indo-European languages?
Brian is of course correct that naming simply isn’t as stable as, say, the Swadesh-100 list of core vocabulary, or for that matter syntax (VSO, SOV, SVO). Things change much more quickly now than they used to, so you could object to Brian’s example. In English, the most popular names change radically every couple of […]
Why is the Greek letter phi translated into English as “ph” and not “f”?
Because when Latin started transliterating Greek, φ was still pronounced as /pʰ/: a p followed by an h. The shift of /pʰ/ to /ɸ/ to /f/ occurred later (the first evidence for it, Koine Greek phonology notes, is from Pompeii.) Answered 2016-07-22 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Why-is-the-Greek-letter-phi-translated-into-English-as-ph-and-not-“f”/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
What are some of the names of the most important Ancient Greek newspapers?
Ah, Anon, Anon… A newspaper by any modern understanding of the concept presupposes widespread literacy, and, you know, paper. The Roman Acta Diurna were a daily gazette of government decisions published, Asterix style, in stone, and there may even have been equivalents in Greece for publishing what the assemblies had decided that day; but they […]
What are all the animal forms that Zeus took in Greek Mythology?
Lucian Dialogues of the Gods has Zeus speaking to Eros: The pranks you have played me! Satyr, bull, swan, eagle, shower of gold — I have been everything in my time; and I have you to thank for it. Those are the most famous ones Bull: Europa Swan: Leda Shower of gold: Danae Satyr: Antiope […]
Do the Ancient Cretans have their own Cretan mythology?
Like Niko Vasileas said, we don’t have deciphered writings from the Minoans, so we don’t know for certain much of anything. But: We know the Greeks were Indo-European, and the Minoans likely were not. We know much of Greek mythology has Indo-European content in it. We know some things about Minoan religion from their sculptures […]