Generally speaking and on the whole, how consistent would you say Ancient Greek is with regards to using grammatical constructions in the same way, and, so to say, “correct-as-in-textbook”? Stated differently, how “important” are grammatical constructs to convey meaning?
Contrast with “archaisms”: words that look like they have a certain grammatical form at first glance but for historical reasons have come to mean something different, meaning that the grammatical construct is less important in conveying information.
To make this concrete, say I come across a verb and it’s in the middle voice: how likely is it that I will interpret that word “correctly” if I take a grammar-forward approach (the grammatical construction has high importance in understanding the word) and apply the idea of the middle voice to the active voice version of the verb which I know… Compared to if I took a grammar-backseat approach (the grammatical construction is more of an afterthought and should not be relied upon that much) and assumed the ending/voice may not mean that much compared to archaisms that may be found in a dictionary?
It seems to me, and now I’m probably stating the obvious, but due survival bias and various factors, it seems more likely to me that the works we have and can read today in the 21st century are more likely to be written by “more aristocratic” people, so the corpus of Ancient Greek texts will, generally speaking, be more “correct” (assuming educated people are more likely to use “correct” grammar) than for example the corpus of contemporary English which has a greater span (compared early 20th century British writers with for example modern hip hop, or youtube comments).
Then again, the reason I picked the middle voice verb as an example is to make the question more interesting, because this voice does not exist in English in the same way as in Greek, but in certain cases there may be some versions of a verb that in the middle voice has a suitable English version instead and the active and middle version may have a slightly different word-for-word translation. This is not necessarily the same thing as being “more archaic” using the dichotomy above, as long as that English “more colorful” translation mean the same thing as the active version of the verb, with the grammatical rule applied..
Post-Homeric Greek grammar tends to be fairly consistent through all periods and levels of Greek. That’s certainly true of the use of the middle voice. And the grammatical construction is essential for conveying meaning in writing. So generally speaking a “grammar-forward” approach is the one to take, and archaism scarcely comes into it.
You’ll be glad to learn that we do in fact have the ancient Greek equivalent of a corpus of contemporary English, in the form of the hundreds of thousands of papyrus letters and documents discovered in recent centuries. Their grammar is not always “correct” by classical standards but it is basically the same, allowing for syntactic change over time. These papyri show how ordinary people used Greek, in a wide variety of contexts..
This thread’s question makes me wonder about an alternate history, where someone during the Classical Greek period started an ancient version of urbandictionary.com
…would be pretty funny if people from all over the ancient Mediterranean contributed to the ancient urbandictionary.com project of this alternate history.
malolosgreencat: Haha that’s a fun thought. You in turn make me wonder how many of the classic texts we read today are actually censored versions where, due to… tradition… those who lived in the more prudent time periods between the classical period and today, simply removed or changed indecent words from these revered texts to “improve” them.
I had to google this and learned (right now!) that Aristophanes was apparently pretty good at profanity. I am 100% sure that there exists versions with indecent words cut. Would be fun to compare the differences and also compare how translations in different contemporary time periods have dealt with these difficulties.
I get the impression you don’t actually know any Aristophanes? I think you would be quite surprised at the nature of the “profanity”. Its not far removed from the sort of language one finds in Chaucer and Boccaccio. There is a frankness about bodily functions and sexual activity which appeals to schoolboys (I can’t speak for girls). But these days it all seems rather tame unless someone (often the tabloid press) seeks to sensationalise it. (See this thread on Catullus Ovid Too Bawdy for Schools? ).
Ian Ruffel says:
“Expurgation has a long history in the reception of Greek comedy, especially in a pedagogic context, and can be traced as far back as the arrival of Greek texts into the West in the fifteenth century. In the English-speaking world, it is particularly notable with the growth of school and university editions from 1835 onwards, but its influence in classical scholarship continues into the second half of the twentieth century.”
‘Seeing the meat for what it is’: Aristophanic expurgation and its phallacies’ by Ian Ruffell in Stephen Harrison, Christopher Stray (eds.), Expurgating the Classics Editing Out in Greek and Latin, Bristol Classical Press, 2012.
Ruffel discusses several passages in the Akharnians, which have been problematic for (mainly British) translators. One can see in Loeb translations (before Henderson) that either offending words were not translated or covered by euphemism or indeed whole passages of Greek were excised. In latter years the early Loebs at least had the Greek Text silently restored with an anonymous translation.
Our changing attitude to expurgation has many explanations depending not only on our cultural expectations of the Greeks but our own mores. I think that it has a lot to tell us about our present day anxieties with gender identity and sharing “bathrooms”. As Ruffel (in part) concludes “but it is in the policing of gender that the interventions of the expurgators are most noticeable: restrained but tough masculinity needs to be upheld and female sexuality in particular needs to be closed down.”
Thanks seneca2008! This is very helpful, now I want to get a hold of the old and the new Loeb edition and compare them. (As you guessed, I’ve never read him).
I was reading Robin Hards translation of Ps-Apollodorus “Library” a while back and, with regards to Zeus (and others) he often translated a word I don’t remember to “have intercourse with”. I’m not trying to be puerile, but reading this made me think: If Ps-Apollodorus wrote English, is that the precise phrasing he would have used? Somehow, I don’t think so.
If you have more resources discussing various aspects of different authors “colorfulness” I’d highly appreciate it. The biggest reason I started learning Ancient Greek in the first place was because I wanted to make my own translations of Marcus Aurelius in a language I personally believe he would have used, so I find this subject fascinating. And profanities are probably the most obvious and in-your-face translation problem to learn from.
The phrase is perfectly respectable in English, and originates from a time when “intercourse” was not being used as a euphemism. More recent translations tend to render the Greek (ὁμιλεῖν and synonyms) differently. Languages develop over a period of time, words change usage, expressions go in and out of vogue.
But if you want to travel between Intercourse and Paradise, you only have to come to Pennsylvania.