ricardienne: (heiro)
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 )

[whine]

Jan. 24th, 2011 08:38 pm
ricardienne: (heiro)
Pretty much the only way I am ready for this week is in my expertise on vocative δέσποτα and captive women in Greek tragedy -- too bad it's slim to nothing odds that it will even come up in class tomorrow.
ricardienne: (library)
νῦν δ᾽ ἄγ᾽ ἀείδοντες παιήονα κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν
νηυσὶν ἔπι γλαφυρῇσι νεώμεθα, τόνδε δ᾽ ἄγωμεν.
ἠράμεθα μέγα κῦδος: ἐπέφνομεν Ἕκτορα δῖον

But come now, Achaean youths, singing the paeon
let us go to the hollow ships, let us convey him.
We achieved great glory: we slew divine Hektor
(Il. 22.391-3)

This means that according to Achilles' command the warriors are to bring the slain enemy to the camp in a victory procession and with a victory-song. With line 393, Achilles gives them the theme for their song, that is, they are to sing, at his pleasure, something like what some non-combatant back home could have said during the World War: we have conquered the Russians at Tannenberg, we took prisoners, he have brought enemies, guns, etc. to nought, and so on. Here, as in the lines of Homer, the speaking person or persons are not actively, but only emotionally sharking in the action. Due to shared communal feeling, which here bids together army and home, there prince and warriors, it situates itself sociatively. But a special refinement seems to me to lie in that the hero, who completed the deed alone, calls on his men to sing in the sociative mode; this especially shows us Achilles as a collectivist and socially-conscious man...

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