7 posts tagged “greek”
From Hans Dieter Betz's translation of PGM VII. 664-85 in The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. That's a papyrus scroll, found in Egypt, written in Greek, certainly from before 600 CE. the origin of how we think of magic in the modern world. These scrolls are the source of "abracadabra," of amulets, ultimately of things like Harry Potter.
SPELL FOR OBTAINING DREAM REVELATIONS: Take a linen strip, and on it you write with myrrh ink the matter, and wrap an olive branch and place it beside your head, beneath the left side of your head, and go to sleep, pure, on a rush mat on the ground, saying the spell 7 times to the lamp:
OIOSENMIGADON ORTHO BAUBO NIOERE KODERETH DOSERE SYRE SUROE SANKISTE DODEKAKISTE AKROUROBORE KODERE RINOTON KOUMETANA ROUBITHA NOUMILA PERPHEROU AROUORER AROUER (say it seven times and add the usual, whatever you wish.)"Hermes, lord of the world, who're in the heart,
O circle of Selene, spherical
and square, the founder of the words of speech,
pleader of Justice's cause, garbed in a mantle,
with golden sandals, turning airy course
beneath earth's depths, who hold the spirit's reins,
the sun's and who with lamps of gods immortal
give joy to those beneath earth's depths, to mortals
who've finished life. The Moirai's fatal thread
and Dream divine you're said to be, who send
forth oracles by day and night; you cure
pains of all mortals with your healing cares.
Hither, o blessed one, o mighty son
of the goddess who brings full mental powers,
by your own form and gracious mind. And to
an uncorrupted youth reveal a sign
and send him your true skill of prophecy.
The term "AKROUROBORE" means "ourobouros," the snake eating its own tail. "Arouer" is Egyptian for Hr-wr, "Horus the great."
I don't know if you realize how cool this is, but it is totally cool. There's a whole book of these plus about 1,500 curse tablets, written to call on the spirits of the dead/heroes/gods to work one's will on earth. They're fantastic. I love them. I am a huge nerd.
You know, little inconsistencies in scholarship really bother me.
For instance, almost everything I read about curse tablets favors the term defixiones over καταδεσμοι (and yes, I am too lazy to put the accents on that, O Greek-readers who read this. You will live) despite the fact that the latter term is actually better attested in the curse tablets themselves. There isn't even a Latin verb defixio - it's from defigo.
Anyhow, I wish that I could use καταδεσμοι in my paper, but unfortunately the seminal work in the field uses the terms I was talking about in my last entry, defixiones amatoriae and all that, and it gets pretty confusing when you're using three terms (defixiones, curse tablets, καταδεσμοι) for the same thing. So defixiones it is.
Bother.
Why, oh why, is it so dang difficult to write polytonic Greek in LaTeX?!
Well, as embarrassing as it is to admit it, I'm going to have to drop Greek at semester.
This semester was kind of a test for me: can I write a qual, learn two languages, and become a better student at the same time? I entered it with a lot of hopes, but I wasn't betting too heavily on anything.
The key point came when, after having studied for a significant chunk of last weekend, I opened a Greek exam on Monday and saw... meaningless gibberish. Well, not entirely. I could tell you, "yes, I've seen that word before." Many of the words I could even give you the principle parts, or tell you the genitive, or even decline. But I was completely unable to access the vocabulary or its meaning in the sentence.
Apparently this is a symptom of having too much info in too little time. Whodathunkit: I have reached the edge of my brain's cognitive capacity.
Anyhow, it's pretty depressing to run up against a wall like that, but at least I've tried. I'm sure I'll be able to finish out the semester, but I won't be able to make the jump to Homeric Greek -- so now I'm shopping for a new fourth class. Maybe the deadline hasn't passed to apply for creative writing classes...? But they wouldn't be with Pete; that would be sad. H'm.
1) Today I read the words "master chef" as "Master Chief." And I've never even bothered to beat Halo!
2) Final Fantasy XII is beginning to eat my soul. My thoughts so far: it took me a while to pick up the new combat system, but I like it nonetheless -- though the way one controls the other characters' AI still feels awkward to me. I wish that one was able to go back to an entirely turn-based system sometimes, but on the other hand, this is a lot more exciting (it makes the monster battles actually interesting, even after you've done a million of them). Also, hooray for monster battles no longer being totally random! The plot itself, too, I'm finding engaging, with a real mix of influences (so far our favorite description, I think, has been 'Aladdin + Star Wars + the Roman Empire + Harajuku fashion') and the bravery to break out of a couple Final Fantasy tropes. Last but not least -- Young men with beards? Thank God! The reign of the bishi is challenged!
3) My Greek exam is also eating my soul, but in a different way. I've studied more than enough; I'm gonna be fine... I just keep worrying about it. Oh well: it isn't till one o'clock, even if I do have to finish a Latin exam before then.
4) My qual status: still unwritten. That's what happens when you go out of town all weekend. Next weekend is going to be the Weekend of Qualling Horror, I think. Isn't it interesting that 'Qual' looks so much like 'quail,' as in "quail in fear"?
oh. my. god. that is all i have to say about my workload this year.
okay, no it isn't.
anyone who knows me has been getting driven crazy by my complaining -- i've been unpleasantly shocked by how much work i have. nick keeps commenting that i'm getting a little crazy (i've left at least two messages on his cell phone where i verbally bitch-slapped him without meaning to. uh, oops. i guess i get vicious when i get stressed). but that's not to say that i'm not sleeping, or that i'm not getting all my work done, or even that i didn't have enough time to play an hour of "katamari damacy" on monday night. just that i have a lot of work.
things that i need to figure out: food. i've been eating both lunch and dinner away from home, and i need to figure out how to do this. i don't want to spend a half-hour walking for my dinner, because if you add preparation time to that it takes an hour and a half out of my day and that is just unacceptable. but at the same time, i don't want to buy it at commons. fortunately, this should only be a problem three days a week, since (a) i have three-day weekends all! semester! long! and (b) thursdays are my "friday" so i don't need to stay at school (i.e., in the library) until after dinner. I think the plan is going to be that i pack an extra sandwich and then have a midnight snack. oh, so complicated! but i really, really, really don't want to bring work home with me, at least not this semester.
i actually am feeling more and more comfortable in both greek and latin. there was a little bit of right! languages! shock at first, but now we're doing indirect statements & vocabulary in latin and comparative adjectives in greek and those are things i remember/can do. i'm looking forward to when we get more into the translation; then, at least, i can partially trust intuition over rote memorization -- because my memorized bits are rusty, rusty, rusty! my other two classes haven't really picked up yet; i can't say what i think of emma wasserman (the visiting religion prof this year) because i haven't had her in conference yet, and i can't say if roman history will be any better than greek history was last year for the same reason. i do know that i need to come up with a topic for my classics qual within two weeks. yikes! part of me wants to write about cicero, because it would be a nice synergy, with latin 210 doing the pro caelio. but part of me knows that that's a cop-out, because i don't know too much about any of the other topics we're studying in roman history (well, i know who the gracchi are, does that count? it's so not my fault that we're doing republican rome, and my focus is later! ok, so that's an exaggeration, but still). so i don't know. i think i'm going to give it till this weekend, then do some fierce wikipediaing. wikipedia will at least tell me enough, and enough quickly, that i can figure out if certain topics are right out.
i guess this is just difficult because, well, i haven't taken roman history yet! but i want to get an early start. i guess i could write about the early republic -- in fact, it might be a good idea; i'd have a lot of experience with it. but the later the more useful to me personally, and also the later the grosser things get (incest! murder! rape! triumphs! hoo-rah!) which means the more interesting they become. oh well. i have a week and a half left to decide, and even then it isn't a final decision, just a general direction. bah.
Show us something interesting in the sky.
this dovetails nicely with what i did today: something interesting in the sky is a gondola! okay, so not actually a gondola, but the lines that the gondola runs on. in this picture, the gondola itself is not in the sky but rather in its dock.
for our last full day in utah, we went up to snowbird, which is a ski resort in little cottonwood canyon. we took a gondola ride up to a grand total elevation of 11,000 feet, wandered around up there, and then went down and had lunch overlooking a forest. it was beautiful. i also saw my father's childhood home, near parleys canyon, on our way back. mom, grandma and i had a great conversation about politics, and while it's definitely time to go home (mom and i have been on the fritz a little throughout the trip, off and on, and i think we need time apart to chill out) it was really, really gorgeous.
i can't believe that tomorrow is my last day in utah, and then i'm in school, pretty much. o-week starts tomorrow, eh?
in that news, i have my class schedule now. i'm taking greek 210 with ellen millender and latin 201 with nigel nicholson monday through thursday, which take up the two hours in the middle of the day (noon to two o'clock). then, on tuesday and thursday i have origins of western morality with emma wasserman (ten-thirty to eleven-fifty) and roman history with ellen again (two-forty to four). i have fridays off. this schedule is a really good thing, i think, because it means i have lots of time to work on greek and latin on the days when i have those classes. if i can keep up on the reading over the weekends, wednesday should be the only really hairy day in my week -- and wednesdays are always, always hairy, even if you schedule yourself specifically to avoid that.
