A Cabinet Of Greek Curiosities

by J. C. McKeown

  bone of a doctor

  sandstone

  crocodile dung

  Egyptian earth

  head of a snake

  leech

  seeds of a bull

  dung-beetle’s eggs

  seeds of Ares

  clover

  Those who bet heavily on chariot races will have considered investment in curses a sound business practice. The following is part of the procedure involved in such an imprecation:

  After drowning the cat, insert three thin metal sheets, one into its anus, one into its mouth, and one into its throat. Write what you have to say on a sheet of papyrus that has been wiped clean with cinnabar. Add the chariots, the charioteers, and the horses, then wrap the papyrus around the cat’s body and bury it. (Greek Magical Papyri 3.15)

  A victory charm for a runner. While also inscribing the appropriate magical symbols, write this on his big toes: “grant me good fortune, sex-appeal, glory, grace” and as many of the usual things as you want (Greek Magical Papyri 7.390).

  To make people drinking at a symposium look as if they have donkey snouts: at night take the wick from a lamp and dip it in donkey’s blood, then make a new lamp with it and light it for the drinkers (Greek Magical Papyri 11b.1).

  Burn the head of a hare under a drawing of a pair of gladiators, and they will seem to [come alive and] fight (Greek Magical Papyri 7.176).

  To induce a sleeping woman to confess the name of the man she loves: put a bird’s tongue under her lips or on her heart and ask the question—she will say his name three times (Greek Magical Papyri 63.8).

  To find out by means of a die if a person is alive or has died: have your client throw a die in a bowl, and then have him fill the bowl with water. Add to the number on the die 612, which is the numerical value of the name of the god Zeus, and then subtract from the total 353, which is the numerical value of Hermes. If the sum remaining is an even number, he is alive, but if it is not, death has him (Greek Magical Papyri 62.47). Perhaps the ambience in which this ritual was conducted was sufficiently imposing to distract the customer from the simplicity of the mathematics. For the numerical value of words, see p. 175.

  A drunken deity, perhaps Dionysus, being carried along on a mule.

  Engrave a quail on an onyx stone with a sea perch at its feet. Put under the stone some of the concoction used in lamps, and no one will see you, even if you take something away. Smear your face with the concoction and wear the ring. No one will see either who you are or what you are doing (Cyranides 1.15).

  If you take some hairs from a donkey’s rump, burn them and grind them up, and then give them to a woman in a drink, she will not stop farting (Cyranides 2.31).

  If you want to play a joke on someone and cause him sleeplessness, remove the head from a living bat and sew it inside the pillow on which your victim usually sleeps. He will get no sleep, just as if he were wearing the whole bat as an amulet

  (Africanus Cestoi 1.17).

  XXII

  PROPHECY

  The best prophet is the one who guesses well (Euripides frg. 973). Alexander the Great quoted this verse to the Chaldaean soothsayers who tried to persuade him to postpone his entry into Babylon

  (Appian Civil Wars 2.153); he ignored them, and died there.

  The philosopher Favorinus thought that the most intolerable thing about astrologers is their notion that heaven above exercises control not only over things that happen to us through external agencies, but also over our own personal plans and opinions, our arbitrary and sudden changes of mind. Suppose you intended to go to the baths, then decided not to, then changed your mind again: Are we to suppose that this happens not through some vacillating mental state, but through some fateful alignment of the planets, leaving mankind not as rational beings but as silly and ridiculous puppets? (Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 14.1.23).

  If the time, the manner, and the cause of every person’s life and death, along with all human affairs, are determined by the stars in heaven, what do the astrologers have to say about flies, and worms, and sea urchins, and all the many other tiny creatures living on the land and in the sea? Are they also born and destroyed by the same laws as humans are? Either frogs and gnats are assigned their destinies by the movements of the stars in heaven just as we are, or, if astrologers do not believe this, why is it that the stars should have influence over humans, but not over other animals? (Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 14.1.31).

  George the Monk lists a wide range of objects and phenomena used by pagans to predict the future (Chronicle 238):

  flour

  barley

  oak trees

  entrails

  the flight and the cries of birds

  chance utterances

  sneezing

  thunder

  mice

  weasels

  the creaking of planks

  ringing in the ears

  twitching of the body

  the names of the dead, of stars, and of rivers

  When the Spartans consulted the oracle of Jupiter at Dodona before the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C., the urn containing the lots and the other things necessary for the consultation were knocked over and scattered by the king of the Molossians’ pet monkey (Cicero On Divination 1.76). The Spartans went on to suffer a defeat that marked the beginning of the end of their supremacy in Greece. A monkey wrought equally ominous havoc in the temple of Ceres at Rome just before the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. (Cassius Dio Roman History 50.8).

  Questions submitted to the oracle of Zeus and the ancient goddess Dione at Dodona, near Ioannina, in the western mountains of Greece:

  Reveal to me, O Zeus, whether it is better for me to give my daughter in marriage to Theodorus or to Tessias.

  Cleoutas asks Zeus and Dione if it is profitable and beneficial for him to graze sheep.

  Lysanias asks Zeus and Dione whether he is the father of the baby borne by Annyla.

  A terra-cotta monkey-faced cup.

  Agis asks Zeus and Dione about the sheets and pillows which he lost, whether one of those from outside stole them.

  Should I enquire at an oracle elsewhere?

  Nicias kept a soothsayer in his household, ostensibly to make enquiries about public affairs, but in fact he consulted him mostly about his own business, especially about his silver mines (Plutarch Life of Nicias 4).

  While an astrologer sat on a hilltop during the night watching the stars, his associate waited with the woman in labor and, as soon as she gave birth, he would send a signal by striking a gong. When the astrologer on the hilltop heard the gong, he would note the rising zodiacal sign as being in the ascendancy. In the daytime, he would study both the ascendant stars and the movements of the sun (Sextus Empiricus Against the Professors of Liberal Studies 5.27). “Horoscope” means literally “watching the hour,” referring particularly to the hour of a person’s birth.

  Here is how charlatans make a skull seem to speak as an oracle. The skull itself is made of the stomach membrane of a cow, wrapped around and molded onto a base of wax and chalk, so as to give the appearance of a skull. The windpipe of a crane or some other such long-necked creature is secretly attached to the skull by the oracle-monger’s accomplice, who can then speak through it, saying whatever he wishes to say (Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies 4.41).

  Orpheus’s head prophesying.

  Hierius, the son of Plutarch, who studied philosophy under Proclus, saw in the so-called house of Quirinus a human head exactly like a chickpea in size and appearance. Hence it was called “The Chickpea.” In other respects, however, it was just like a human head, with eyes, a face, hair, a mouth, and its voice was as loud as the voices of a thousand people (Damascius Philosophical History frg. 63b Athanassiadi). Photius quotes this passage as an example of Damascius’s credulity, without telling us what the head actually talked about, but it is likely enough that it issued prophecies.

  Politicians depend on good guesswork, not on understanding, in steering the state on the right
course. They are just like soothsayers and prophets, who say much that is true, but understand nothing of what they are saying

  (Plato Meno 99c).

  XXIII

  WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS

  If I had taken Prodicus’s fifty-drachma course on etymology, I could have told you straightaway the whole truth about words. But I didn’t; I took only the one drachma course, so I don’t know about such things

  (Socrates at Plato Cratylus 384b).

  After winning a victory at Olympia, Heracles paid homage to the river Alpheus [the local river] by naming the letter “alpha” after it and placing it at the start of the alphabet (Ptolemy the Quail in Photius The Library 190.151).

  Describing a thing instead of naming it makes what you say the more impressive. For example, say “a surface that extends equally in all directions,” not just “a circle” (Aristotle Rhetoric 1407b).

  Byzantium is the armpit of Greece (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 351c). If this vigorous expression is intended to be an insult, it is difficult to understand. Chalcedon, founded not long before Byzantium on the opposite (eastern) side of the Bosphorus, was known as the “city of the blind” (Herodotus Histories 4.144), because its founding fathers ignored the much more favorable location on the other shore. The inhabitants of European Istanbul still gaze across the Bosphorus with the same satisfaction.

  They understood the imperfections of the soul, whether a person was addicted to drinking or a lover of pleasure with his brains in his genitals (Aelian On Animals frg. 284, quoted at Suda s.v. craepalodes [“hung over”], with no further context given for this memorably formulated phrase). Demosthenes uses a more decorous version of the expression when addressing the Athenian assembly: Any Athenians who are shown to support Philip of Macedon rather than their own country should be utterly destroyed by you, if you have your brains in your heads, and not trodden underfoot at your heels (On Halonnesus 45, a passage much quoted by later rhetoricians). Plato had observed that the desire for sexual intercourse turns a man’s penis into a disobedient thing with a mind of its own, like an animal that will not listen to reason; goaded by lust, it tries to take complete control (Timaeus 91b).

  There is a wide range of personal names derived from κόπρος (kopros, “excrement”). In some cases the name perhaps commemorates exposure at birth on a dunghill, as in the case of St. Copres. Sometimes, however, the name may be apotropaic, an attempt to protect the child from evil spirits through its apparent worthlessness.

  Among the works of Pindar is found an ode containing no sigmas [written as σ or ς]. Hermioneus also composed an ode without sigmas, and Lasus wrote a hymn to Demeter without sigmas (Athenaeus Wise Men at Dinner 455c).

  Bodmer Papyrus 28, a fragment of a satyr play by an unidentified author, has no sigmas in its sixty lines (eleven of which are complete). Sigma is one of the most frequent letters in the Greek alphabet, and 92 percent of iambic trimeters are said to have at least one sigma; the chances against this omission being coincidental have been calculated at one in 1030.

  “Exile” is a term of abuse, at least among foolish people, who also use “pauper” as an insult, and “bald,” and “short,” and (my God!) “foreigner,” and “immigrant” (Plutarch Exile 607a).

  When the word τύραννος (tyrannos) was first imported into Greek, probably from Lydian, it meant simply “ruler,” with no negative connotations. By the 4th century B.C., however, the pejorative sense “tyrant” was firmly established. Plato calculates that the life of a king (βασιλεύς, basileus) is 729 times happier than that of a τύραννος (Republic 587e).

  The philosopher/scientist Archytas, who ruled Tarentum in the 4th century B.C., was very sensible and was especially careful not to say anything obscene. If ever he was forced to use strong language, he used to write it on the wall (Aelian Miscellaneous History 14.19).

  The philosopher Athenodorus said to Augustus: “Whenever you become angry, Caesar, don’t say or do anything until you’ve recited the twenty-four letters of the [Greek] alphabet to yourself” (Plutarch Sayings of Kings and Commanders 207c).

  The longest word in Latin from the classical period or earlier is the comic coinage subductisupercilicarptor, “a person who criticizes, drawing his eyebrows from below,” a mere twenty-four letters. The longest word in Greek, which is much more given to compounding words, is also comic, an Aristophanic concoction, describing an indigestible gallimaufry of various types of food in 171 letters: λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιολιπαρομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσ

  υφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοπιφαλλι<δ>οκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερυγών (Ecclesiazusae 1169–75; this will certainly have tasted atrocious, since it consists of an indiscriminate mixture of meats and sweets).

  The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/) is gathering statistics on the occurrence of Greek names, drawing on evidence spanning more than a thousand years, from the earliest literacy to the late Roman period. Much the commonest name for men is Dionysius (our Denis/Dennis/Denys), followed by Apollonius and Demetrius. Far fewer women’s names survive, and there is much more variation in popularity from one region to another than with men’s names; the most frequent seems to be Zosime, followed by Eirene (i.e., Irene) and Demetria.

  Many Greek verbs formed from place-names and ending in zein mean “to speak or behave like the inhabitants of” a particular place. Since xenophobia was endemic in Greece, it is not surprising that such verbs usually have negative connotations. For example:

  • κρητίζειν (kretizein) “to act like a Cretan” means to tell lies, because lying comes as naturally to Cretans as movement comes to every living thing (Theognostus On Spelling 530) and because when Idomeneus the Cretan was selected to divide up the booty from Troy for the Greeks, he reserved the best for himself (Scholion to Callimachus Hymn to Zeus 8).

  • λεσβιάζειν (lesbiazein) “to act like a person from Lesbos”; that is, to fellate. Fellatio was invented by the women of Lesbos (Scholion to Aristophanes Wasps 1346).

  • σιφνιάζειν (siphniazein) “to act like a person from the island of Siphnos” originally meant to perform elaborate musical compositions in the manner of Philoxenides of Siphnos (Pollux Onomasticon 4.65), but it came to mean also to touch someone on the buttocks with one’s finger (Photius The Lexicon 515).

  • σολοικίζειν (soloikizein) “to act like a person from Soli [in Cilicia]”; that is, to speak or write incorrectly, to commit a solecism. It is ironic that Aratus, the author of the Phaenomena, a didactic poem greatly admired by contemporaries as the ne plus ultra of careful composition, was from Soli.

  • συβαρίζειν (sybarizein) “to act like a person from Sybaris”; that is, to live decadently; see p. 249.

  • φοινικίζειν (phoinikizein) “to act like a Phoenician.” When it comes to shameful acts, we are more disgusted by those who act like Phoenicians than like people from Lesbos (Galen On the Qualities and Powers of Herbs 12.249, who unhelpfully, but no doubt quite reasonably, assumes that his readers know what precisely he is talking about).

  ZΩΣIMH HPAKΛEΩNOΣ AΠAMITIΣ (Zosime Herakleonos Apamitis, “Zosime, daughter of Herakleon, from Apamea”). The hands symbolize her kinsmen’s vow to avenge her violent death.

  LOST IN TRANSLATION

  Some say that when Alexander arrived at the temple of Zeus Ammon, the high priest wished to make a gesture of friendship by addressing him in Greek with the words ὦ παιδίον [O paidion, “O my son”]. His foreign accent made it sound like ὦ παιδίος [O paidios (a meaningless word)], but Alexander was delighted with his slip of the tongue, and a story was circulated that the priest had said ὦ παῖ Διός [O pai Dios, “O son of Zeus”] (Plutarch Life of Alexander 27). A similar pun is preserved by Plutarch at Life of Dion 5, w
here Dionysius ridicules Gelon (Γέλων), one of his predecessors as tyrant of Syracuse, by calling him the γέλως (gelos, “laughing stock”) of all Sicily.

  Instead of simply giving a literal Greek translation of “hare” in Leviticus, the Hebrew scholars commissioned by Ptolemy Philadelphus to translate the Torah (see p. 150) wrote “the short-legged creature,” because Ptolemy’s wife was named “Hare” and they did not want him to think they were mocking him by inserting his wife’s name in a list of non-kosher animals (The Talmud Megillah 9). This is rather distorted. Not only is the Greek for “hare” λαγώς (lagos) not Λᾶγος (Lagos) (which has a different accent and a different length in both its vowels and belongs to a different declension), but Λᾶγος was actually the name of Philadelphus’s grandfather and also of his half-brother; his wives were both called Arsinoe.

  The deified Alexander, displaying the ram’s horns of Zeus Ammon. Being the son of Zeus was good propaganda, but not everyone went along with it: Demosthenes said he had no objection if Alexander wished to be the son not only of Zeus but of Poseidon as well (Hyperides Against Demosthenes 7). It would be interesting to hear more about Athenaeus’s claim that Alexander the Great took on the guise of so many gods, and even of the goddess Artemis (Wise Men at Dinner 537f).