In which I am not fluent in Greek

This is not about the fact that I have been embarrassing myself when I have to translate in seminar, and have been giving the impression all week that I don't know either Greek or Latin and am not preparing for class at all (none of those things are true).

This is about my niggling obsession with forms of address and social distinctions that are expressed in language. Or aren't expressed (really obviously) in language, as seems to be the case.

So here is an example of what is bothering me today.

A contemporary translation of a bit of Achilles Tatius; Melite, a wealthy woman of Ephesus, is inspecting her estate when a slave woman in chains falls at her feet and makes a plea:

"Have mercy on me, m'lady, as one woman to another. I am free by birth, though now a slave, as Fortune chooses." And so saying, she fell silent.

Melite said: "Stand up, woman. Tell me your name and country and who put these shackles on you. Even in fallen circumstances, your beauty proclaims you a person of no mean birth."

"It was the bailiff," the woman replied, "because I would not submit to his lechery. Lakaina is my name, ma'am, born in Thessaly. I humbly beg your generous ladyship, free me from this awful condition, keep me somewhere safe until I can pay back the two thousand gold pieces that Sosthenes gave the pirates for me. I'll pay if off quick, I promise you. Else I'll wait on you hand and foot, m'lady. Just look here, now, how he's been swinging his lash at my poor back!" And she slipped down part of her dress to show her back cruelly striped with welts.

( Meanderings about status-markers and vocatives and translation )