Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

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LESSON 2 - Second Part /

First Part

ACHILLES' GRIEF - From Homer's Iliad

An act of freedom

A

NTILOCHUS approaches Achilles with a sigh of sadness (

Ὤ

) referring to

himself (

µοι

), who has to let Achilles know (

πεύσεαι

) such a greatly (

µάλα

)

disastrous (

λυγρῆς

) message (

ἀγγελίης

).

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

To Homer and to all those who listened to Homer's poems knowing the course

of events, this message prefigured the beginning of the victory of Greeks. But

neither Homer, nor his audience, could care for such a secondary consequence:

the message was indeed sad and disastrous. Patroclus's death was not a prerequisite

to the victory of Greeks, it was not necessary for it to happen. Its cause was

Achilles' refusal to fight, an unnecessary refusal.

Homeric Gods are not as dominating as we sometimes think. If Achilles was to

suffer a great grief, how great should be the grief of God, seeing His gift on the

ground? And all of this depended on Achilles' free choice - a choice supported

and not imposed by God. By choosing Achilles' wrath as the subject of Iliad,

Homer recognised on the grounds of history an act (

πρᾶξις

) of freedom. In Homer

and after him the Greek is the free man.

It was an act of freedom, but it was also a sad act, that ended with the loss of the

glory of God. From now on the Greeks knew that they could not expect

anything real from history. Alexander the Great knew it, and took the

expedition of Greece to the end and beyond the end of the world, as Aeschines wrote.

The primary meaning of

κεῖµαι

is "I am embedded", and Achilles wanted to flow

immediately to the same bed, to become like the oar in Elpenor's seashore-grave,

that announced the impossibility of life from now on:

Ὣς

φάτο

͵ τὸν δ΄ ἄχεος νεφέλη ἐκάλυψε µέλαινα

·

ἀµφοτέρῃσι δὲ χερσὶν

ἑλὼν κόνιν αἰθαλόεσσαν χεύατο κὰκ

κεφαλῆς

͵

χαρίεν

δ΄ ᾔσχυνε

πρόσωπον

·

νεκταρέῳ δὲ χιτῶνι µέλαιν΄ ἀµφίζανε τέφρη.

* Written in blue are words you already know from the

first lesson

.

How many sentences are there in the text above?

As you know, to have a sentence you must have a verb (explicit or

implied), each verb forms its own sentence (clause), a self-sufficient

sentence is called main (

κυρία

), a sentence that needs another sentence in

order to have a complete meaning is called secondary (

δευτερεύουσα

) or

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

subordinate (

ὑποτεταγµένη

).

As in English, punctuation marks will give you some help: a comma (=

κόµµα

), a full

stop (=

τελεία

), a semicolon (in Greek this is a raised dot

·

-

in

red

in the text above.

Note that the English semicolon [ ; ], in Greek is the question mark). Of those marks, only a

full stop defines for sure one or more sentences, otherwise, a sentence may contain

elements (explanations, appositions, etc.) spanning many semicolons or commas.

1) Meaning is the best guide to finding the sentences in a period (the section of a text

between two full stops). 2) You know how many sentences there are, if you know how

many verbs there are, and, finally, 3) you can infer that a new sentence begins when

you see a conjuction (like "although"), a relative or interrogative pronoun (like "who"),

a relative or interrogative adverb (like "when").

There are a lot of words in the text that you can't understand, so that the first

move you'd make would be to open up your dictionary and find these words.

Let's suppose that you search first for the words of the first period (until the

first semicolon, at µέλαινα=dark). You will indeed find all the words in the

dictionary, except for three:

τόν

,

φάτο

and

ἐκάλυψε

. Your text now has become:

Ὣς

[

Thus

]

φάτο

[ ]

͵

τὸν

[ ]

δ΄

[

and,but

]

ἄχεος

[

grief

]

νεφέλη

[

cloud

]

ἐκάλυψε

[ ]

µέλαινα

[

dark

]

.

As you can see, among the words that you've found, there is not even one verb.

Why not?

The formation of a Greek verb

W

E SAW (talking about the verb κεῖµαι) that a verb is formed by adding

various suffixes to a root. However, it is also possible to have additions before

the root, at the very start of the word. These additions are called augmentations

and they help a verb express various tenses. In English the verb solve becomes "I

have solved" in present perfect. The Greek

λύω

(= I solve) in present perfect

becomes

λέ

λυκα

(= I have solved).

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

The first syllable (

λε

) expresses the tense and it is an augmentation of the root

(

λυ

). The last syllable (

κα

) belongs to the person and number: λέ-λυ-κα.

[λέλυ

κας

= you have solved, λέλυ

κε

= he/she has solved, λελύκα

µεν

= we

have solved, etc]

Notice that the augmentation (λε) was formed by the consonant (

λ

) of the root

and the vowel

ε

. This happens in present perfect. You will encounter

augmentations in all past tenses (imperfect, aorists, perfect, pluperfect) and the

future perfect.

This particular augmentation, with the consonant of the root plus

the vowel

ε

, is called reduplication and it happens in perfect tenses (present

perfect, pluperfect, future perfect).

In Homer (and modern Greek) often a verb

lacks augmentation -

δάκρυσα

(I wept) instead of

ἐ

δάκρυσα.

As you might have noticed, in a Greek verb the person is revealed last, while

in English is revealed first: "

I

have solved something" we say in English. Greek

first reveals the time and action: there is something that has been solved (

λε-λυ

)

and afterwards there is revealed that it has been solved by me (λέ-λυ-

κα

). The

Greek order of importance/appearance, as reflected in a verb, is Time/Action ->

Person/Cause, while in English is Person/Cause -> Time/Action.

Verbs describe an action as it happens, this is their main work. A "solution"

also refers to an action - that may have happened, happens, will happen, etc. It

is a noun that mentions an action without actually describing it. By placing the

person/cause first, English transposes the weight from the action, which is the

essence of the verb and what makes the subject of the verb essential, to the acting

person, thus presenting the person into a void: "

I

". This is what we hear/read first:

an "I" or a "You", etc., - a person inside nowhere, doing or bearing nothing.

Greek first reveals the action (

πρᾶξις

) and the time (

χρόνος

) [which, for a verb,

is the equivalent of space (

χῶρος

)]: what a person does is where a person lives

and what a person is.

Knowing is going through these actions in a progress that reveals the person

always in the end. When Croesus, a very rich king, asked Solon if he considered

him happy, Solon replied: I must first know your end in order to answer this

question.

In Greek, the person is revealed not only after we have learned the time and

action (λέ-λυ-κα), but it is revealed united with this action: time, action and

person are united in a single word:

λέλυκα

. The dispersion of the person, due to

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

watching it before (which also means: outside) its proper life, is reflected in the

English by the very formation of the same tense in three words: I have solved

-

And notice in "I have solved" the accidentall irony, the irony of a solution

expressed in dissoluted language!

The tenses of a verb

T

HE CORE of the Greek tense system consists of the

Present

,

Aorist

and

Present Perfect

tenses. These tenses have more or less different stems, out of

which all other tenses are formed (

Imperfect

uses the stem of the

Present

,

Future

uses the stem of the

Aorist

,

Pluperfect

and

Future Perfect

use the theme

of the

Present Perfect

). That means, if you know the core of a verb, these three

tenses, it's easy to find everything else.

In the course of time, as you become more familiar with the various verb forms,

you will find it very easy to recognise the tenses. For the moment we need to

say just a word about the meaning of tenses, how they define time in speech.

We say that

Present

refers to an action that happens now. In Greek it is called

Ἐνεστώς

= the time that has just now established/installed an action. Imagine

this in space terms. When drawing a line, each point, one by one is established

in and by time, and becomes instantly past. That very in-stant in which each

point appears is the ἐν-εστώς. In the sentence attributed to Heraclitus

πάντα

χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν µένει

(=everything moves and nothing remains), a sentence

describing a principle, what gives the sense of a continuous present is just this,

the sense of a principle, and not the meaning, of course. The principle as such is

always present. We may call this a meta-present, a present that does not belong to

a grammatical event, but to a detached observation of language and reality, as if

the one who speaks was not governed by language or reality. It is interesting,

that the very word

ἐνεστώς

is a present perfect participle, the very present is

described by a present perfect word! We would be closer to reality if we talked

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

not about present and present perfect, but about two forms of a present perfect,

where present announces a probable present perfect, like saying “she plays” to

mean “she has started to play”, some of her playing is already past!

Imperfect

refers to an action that was happening sometime. It is called imperfect,

because it waits to be interrupted or was interrupted by another action.

However, in Greek it is not called imperfect, it is called

Παρατατικός

=

Extending/Extentive. Παρατατικὸς is the natural continuance of the Ἐνεστώς, an

instant that is repeated so that it is extended, until something else happens that

stops this prolongation. The word "Παρατατικός" is closer to the English

"Present", than to "Imperfect". It refers to a duration, and this duration is

connected with some present - now or sometime present.

In ἐνεστώς (present) we can not know how long an action is going to last. On

the contrary, παρατατικός refers to duration properly, because we know that

something was happening in a complete (this doesn't mean calculated) duration.

In ἐνεστώς, perfect is the instant, in παρατατικός, perfect is duration - in both

cases we can not speak of imperfectness, therefore translating "παρατατικὸς"

with "imperfect" is wrong. We don't know if the action was complete, but we do

know that time was complete, and when we describe a tense we must describe

the time and not the action. Think of this. In Greek a tense is called

χρόνος

=

time! But even in English tense means a stretch and a distance, it also refers to

time (by spacial terms) and not to the action itself.

Aorist

, a transliteration of the Greek

ἀόριστος

, (=undefined) refers to an instant

past. Aorist is the projection of a distinct instance of ἐνεστώς (present) into the

past. Remove duration from παρατατικός, and you have the aorist. What I now

do, exactly this tomorrow will be what I yesterday did - I crossed the street, for

example. An action of the present, that is certain and obvious, since the subject

is inside that action, when it moves to the past it looses its certainty, it becomes

vague, something that happened, that is sure, but we are not there any more.

Aorist is the primary tense of memory, which, as pure memory, is not related to,

and thus defined by, the present and actual. (Remember what

Plato

says in

Theaetetus

about memory).

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

Future

, the Greek

µέλλων

, is what will happen or will be happening - it may

express duration or not. "I will learn" may mean that I will learn something

tomorrow, or that I will be learning my lessons for the whole year or all my life.

It is very interesting, that, while Greek has so many tenses describing all

nuances of the past, while it developed even a second aorist, a second perfect

and a second pluperfect, it doesn't have a distinct tense for duration in the future -

you can not say "I will be learning" using a distinct grammatical form, a distinct

tense (although you can say it in modern Greek - *Ancient/Byzantine Greek:

µαθήσοµαι

= I will learn or I will be learning, *Modern Greek

θὰ µάθω

= I will

learn,

θὰ µαθαίνω

= I will be learning).

Older Greek left the future (much) more unspecified than past, and/or it saw in

time a move to the past, more than a move to the future. Time, movement,

change - death, is really important here, so important, that is present even in the

verb system, in the very absence of a future continuous!

Present Perfect

in Greek is called

Παρα

κείµενος

. Can you recognise the name?

It comes from your known verb

κεῖµαι

described by the preposition

παρὰ

(beside, near to, next to).

Παρα-κείµενος

is a participle meaning a time that lies

beside. Beside what? Beside present time. You can think of this as a kind of

counterpoint, where παρακείµενος colours present time with a completed

action, the consequences of which last until now. This co-existence of present

and past that makes time relational in the way a field is relational, is the reason

why present perfect is not identical with present nor with aorist.

E.g. in the

first letter

of St. John we read: "Love is in this: not that we have

loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son". The King James version

translates the original παρακείµενος (we have loved -

ἠγαπήκαµεν

) with

an aorist (we loved), destroying thus the sense of the original.

What the original text does, is to connect love with both our present

perfect (

ἠγαπήκαµεν

-we have loved) and God's aorist (

ἠγάπησεν

- He

loved [us],

ἀπέστειλεν

- He sent [His Son to us]). The text says: I know

that you loved and continue to love God (this is the παρακείµενος, our

past love accompanies and affects our present life - we still love God), but

be carefull: because our love has a past, has a duration, it is tested and is

still strong and active we must not be misled so as to think that it is self-

sufficient. Don't think that in this and only in this can love exist. No, love,

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

properly speaking, is in God's aorist, in a particular instant undecided by

us, where God first loved us and out of this love sent His son to us. This

aorist is the beginning and foundation of our present perfect.

There is no time in God. There wasn't a time when God did not love us

and a time when He started loving us. This exactly happened with us. No

matter how perfect we are, to us our perfection has a start. In time, Love

comes in an instant, the instant of the aorist, the instant that reflects God's

eternal instant, that cuts time and marks the beginning of our love in time.

This coming of Love in an instant that belongs equally to time and

eternity, is the incarnation and sacrifice of God's son - the source of our

love. And this is what the King James translation destroyed by confusing

our aorist with eternity's coming into that aorist.

Pluperfect

in Greek is called

Ὑπερσυντέλικος

. It means a time when an action

was complete (

τετελεσµένη

, perfected) above/before (

ὑπὲρ

) some other action

of the past: "and they whom I had loved (

ἠγαπήκειν

) very much, turned

against me" (Job 19.19). The grammatical meaning is I had loved them very much,

before they turned against me - and here is how the King James translation

destroys it: "and they whom I loved are turned against me". By transforming

the Pluperfect love into an aorist the King James version disjoins Job's love from

his friends' turning against him. By changing the aorist of their turn into a

perfect strengthens even more that disjunction, while infusing into the present

something that is not of primary importance any more. But Job's thought was,

instead, a memory of the time when his complete love was lost, having

encountered the turning of his friends against him. In the now that Job speaks

both are past, his love and his friends' assault, he is now all alone remembering

both, and praying to God for his overall suffering.

Future Perfect

is called

Συντελεσµένος Μέλλων

. You can think of it as a

reflexion of Pluperfect to the future, meaning a time when an action will be

complete (

συντελεσµένη

, perfected) before something else happens (I will have

gone before it rains).

As in English, various demands of the meaning sometimes make a time

belonging to a specific tense, to be expressed in the form of some other tense -

such as, e.g. when narrating a past action in a present tense, "he dies" instead of

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

"he died" (which is called "historical present"), etc. There is (much) more to be

said on tenses, but these are enough for the moment.

*

Chances are, that searching a dictionary for λέλυκα, you will find: "present

perfect tense, indicative mode, active voice of the verb λύω = to solve".

However, you might not find it, save only into the lemma λύω. At least in that

place, a good dictionary would describe all the other tenses. Therefore, in our

phrase

Ὣς

[

Thus

]

φάτο

[ ]

͵

τὸν

[ ]

δ΄

[

and,but

]

ἄχεος

[

grief

]

νεφέλη

[

cloud

]

ἐκάλυψε

[ ]

µέλαινα

[

dark

]

.

we begin to think that maybe the verb(s) have prefixes, and this is the reason

why we can't find them in the dictionary. The first thing we know, then, is that

our verb(s) are in some past tense (or future perfect).

Here are the words we don't know:

φάτο, τόν, ἐκάλυψε

Τόν

, is among the words you should memorise, a basic element of speech, a

demonstrative pronoun that in the course of time became the article. It is very

easy to remember it, and you will encounter it all the times.

In English we say I see the way, in Greek

ὁρῶ τὸν τρόπον

. But while in English

the article "the" is used always in the same form ("the") for all genders and

numbers - the way, the ways, the woman, the girls, the children, etc. - in Greek,

which makes your life difficult, there is a different form of the article for each

gender and number:

e.g.

the way =

ὁ

τρόπος, the ways =

οἱ

τρόποι, the woman =

ἡ

γυνή, the girls =

αἱ

κόραι, the children =

τὰ

παιδία.

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

Tὸν

is the accusative case, singular number, of the masculine type of the article

(nominative=

ὁ

). The accusative case is usually the case of the object: ὁρῶ

τὸν

τρόπον (I see the way).

Therefore, in our text again, we know that τὸν is not a verb. Since τὸν is in

accusative case, we expect that maybe the noun that is indicated by

τὸν

will be

the object of our verb(s).

There remain

φάτο

and

ἐκάλυψε

.

Translating

Φάτο

is not used in the Attic dialect, you won't find it in

Plato

, for example, not

once. Φάτο is the equivalent of

ἔφη

. It is third person, singular, (second) aorist

tense, of the verb

φηµί

(I say, speak) and it means "he/she said". We shall see

this verb in details in a future lesson, because it is common and irregular (=even

more difficult!). However, if you open your dictionary to find φάτο you will see

there the words

φατ

ίζω, which is a verb, and

φάτ

ισις, which is a noun. Judging

from the stem, you can easily and safely enough guess that φάτο may have

something to do with "speaking". Explaining φάτισις, Liddell-Scott dictionary

connects it with

φηµί

. If you follow this connection and go the lemma of φηµί,

you will - at last - find there the form

φάτο

. Thus, after a 5 or 10 minutes

journey, you finally discovered the verb of your sentence. But what about

ἐκάλυψε

? Maybe this is another verb. If it is indeed, then you will have two

sentences, because each verb supports its own sentence.

From what we have already seen about augmentations you should suspect that

the first syllable (

ε

) might be an augmentation, so that the stem - and most

probably the present tense of the verb - starts with

καλ

. You open your

dictionary again, in

καλ-

, where you find lots of words. You proceed to

καλυψ-

hopping for better results. You find κάλυψις, attibuted to καλύπτειν. Then in

καλύπτω you see that its aorist is

ἐκάλυψα

. Knowing (when you will know)

the basic endings of a verb, you won't have any difficulties understanding that

ἐκάλυψε is the third person, singular: he/she/it covered something.

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

This way, you will need a life only to find the basic meanings of the words of a

single book. By learning Greek you will acquire a basic vocabulary and some

familiarity with the formation of words and sentences, that will let you have at

least an elementary instant perception of the text, before you need to search for

anything. You will never know all Greek words. I don't know a lot of words.

Even words that I know, I often explore more, as I did with κεῖµαι in this

lesson.

It is very different to know something and to explain it, whether to yourself or

to others. The Greek language is what it is, because those who spoke and wrote

in it wanted to explain their instant perceptions as much as possible. In time and

importance first is always the in-stant. The Greek speaking is like a battle of the

Sophist against Cratylus, the concepts' struggle to communicate something of the

οὐσίαν ὄντος

. The Greek language, primarily, is the equivalent of Greek

painting and sculpture, not what we'd call today "expressionist", but an attempt

to be saved in language what could not be saved in reality.

In the beginning, where you are now, you have to treat a sentence as if it were a

secret code, your dictionary being a magnifier and yourself a detective.

Consider it like a game - this is

Lynn Sherr

's (ABC news) approach, which I

accept and suggest: " Studying classical Greek was, to me, not only fun and

fascinating and eye-opening, it was like a puzzle -; a new secret code -;

endlessly delightful despite having to learn all those declensions." Maybe you

will also be able to see, that reading Greek, even in the beginning, is not like

deciphering some secret code whatever, but deciphering a precious secret code…

If you study carefully, you will soon be able to have an instant perception of the

text. You will still play the detective - but the secrets will get always fewer and

always more important. You must read as much as you can, and then read

more…

*

After what we found in the dictionary, our sentence has become:

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

Ὣς

[

Thus

]

φάτο

[spoke]

͵

τὸν

[ ]

δ΄

[

and,but

]

ἄχεος

[

grief

]

νεφέλη

[

cloud

]

ἐκάλυψε

[

covered

]

µέλαινα

[

dark

]

.

There are two verbs: spoke [

φάτο=ἔφη

] and covered [

ἐκάλυψε

], therefore we

search for two sentences. And we must understand whom

τὸν

refers to.

We change the order of the words to come closer to how we usually order a

sentence in our language:

Ὣς

[

Thus

]

φάτο

[

spoke

]

͵

τὸν

[ ]

δ΄

[

and,but

]

ἐκάλυψε

[

covered

]

µέλαινα

[

dark

]

νεφέλη

[

cloud

]

ἄχεος

[

grief

]

.

You may find this change of order useful for the moment - but never forget that it

is a change

you

do, that the order of the text is different, and this difference is

important.

Since Antilochus was speaking about what happened with Patroclus, we can

infer that the subject of

φάτο

is Antilochus. It is time now for Achilles to

respond, and therefore

τὸν

refers to him. It is usual in Greek for a person to be

referred to in a sentence with the combination of the pronoun/article and one or

both of these two words: µὲν or δέ.

Gregory of Nyssa

, for example, writes:

ὁ

µὲν

γεννηθεὶς ἦν,

ὁ δὲ

δίχα γεννήσεως : "

ὁ µὲν

(=Abel)

was born,

ὁ δὲ

(=Adam)

was without birth [he was created]". In all such cases the names (of

persons, places, actions, etc) which

ὁ µὲν

or

ὁ δὲ

refer to, must have been

mentioned or implied in a previous sentence. Note also, that the conjunctive words

µὲν

and

δὲ

are never placed in the beginning of a sentence and they usually occupy the

second place introducing a kind of relation, being, e.g. the equivalent of "but" and

"while" in English, or "the one" and "the other", etc. - "But John left, while I

stayed", "the one left, the other came", "this happened, that not".

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

*

And here is how our sentence is finally translated:

"Thus spoke he, and a dark cloud of grief covered the other."

Here is Butler's translation: "A dark cloud of grief fell upon Achilles as he

listened". Much has changed - too much for the meaning to be rescued...

One of the most important is that while in the original the dark cloud first of all

covers Achilles' name, Butler's translation treats the expression

τὸν δὲ

as a

convention, which, of course, can be easily replaced by the name of the person

implied.

In the original there are two equal, primary, sentences.

The first is almost an oracle (

φάτο / φηµὶ

is also connected with this sense),

Patroclus' lying as a divine sentence, announced by Antilochus. The second

primary sentence is the realisation of the oracle, making Achilles' face disappear

into the dark cloud of grief, leaving Achilles' thirst (θυµός) naked, just like

Patroclus was naked upon the ground.

Achilles' nakedness (a living one, not the nakedness of a corpse) is transformed

into a grief which replaces his face. The meaning of covering here is replacement.

Grief exists in the place where Achilles had his face, that is, in the place of Patroclus.

Homer did not want to depict how grief falls upon a face, but what happens

with the face. This is why he used the verb

ἐκάλυψε

, which Butler ignored.

However, there is one more detail, and this one can not be translated at all.

We said that in the Homeric sentense Achilles' name disappears. This is not

absolutely correct, since in the original text "grief" is

ἄχος

, a word that starts

with the very letters Achilles' name starts (

Ἀχ

ιλλεύς), which, in the genitive

case (mainly a possesive case), contains all of grief's letters:

Ἀχ

ιλλῆ

ος

.

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

We now suspect that this covering is also a revealing of an inherent quality/

destination of Achilles' nature, we now begin to understand that maybe this

cloud is the ultimate, the most real, face of Achilles - a faceless face.

Butler's translation is, perhaps, good enough to express Achilles' sadness in a

sentimental way, but all the elements that explain and describe this sadness,

letting us know its roots and nature, are lost. Decades and centuries of such an

irresponsible treatment of the texts have made them seem exchangeable by a

translation.

Grief covered Achilles, grief became his face, he is now thirsty for grief and

"with both hands he took sooty ash and poured it over his head"

"ἀµφοτέρῃσι δὲ χερσὶν ἑλὼν κόνιν αἰθαλόεσσαν χεύατο κὰκ κεφαλῆς",

over the face itself

"and he disgraced the glorious face"

"χαρίεν δ΄ ᾔσχυνε πρόσωπον",

and the whole body

"and on the divine shirt dark ash was falling all over"

νεκταρέῳ δὲ χιτῶνι µέλαιν΄ ἀµφίζανε τέφρη

.

Notice the ash (

κόνις αἰθαλόεσσα

- and not just dust, as Butler translates), that

connects grief with fire and death, foreshadowing/announcing the fulfillment of

Achilles' future.

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

Notice the couple of

ἤσχυνε

and

χαρίεν

(disgraced - glorious), completely lost in

Butler's translation ("disfiguring his comely face"), a couple that presents the

face (

πρόσωπον

) as a place of honor and glory, both of which properly belong only

to God.

Notice the couple of

νεκταρέῳ

and

τέφρη

(divine - ash).

Νεκτάρεος

is an adjective that comes from

νέκταρ

, the drink of Gods, and it

means the brilliant, exceptional and divine, with the particular sense of the one

that overcomes death. A

νεκτάρεος χιτών

(divine shirt) is essentially a shirt of

immortality, while ash belongs to burning and death. Notice how everything

sinks into darkness, how everything is supported by the face and is lost with it

and by it, how God himself dies.

This painting and description, this penetration

into the deepest meanings and relations,

already present in the first Greek literary

work, a work of poetry, will characterise all the

important works of Greek literature and not

only philosophy. The primary interest in

achieving inside language, inside memory and

speech, the closest possible depiction of the

οὐσίαν

ὄντος

, places a certain task upon anyone who

might want to learn Greek. Words can not be

treated like exchangeable conventions; they

incarnate the concepts. I can not translate them

without giving birth to a more or less different

meaning. It takes a lot of care to minimize the

distance. Learning Greek will prove beneficial

to the way you treat all languages from now on.

Cf.

Homer

:

Achilles' Grief

,

Returning to Ithaca

,

The Underworld

Orphica

:

Everything was generated by Love

,

From man you became God

Plato:

Studying

Death

,

Ways to Hades

,

The Real World

,

Self-knowledge

,

Wisdom

,

Philosophy needs

eyesight

,

Lovers

,

A nature of wondrous beauty

,

A moving image of eternity

,

We are a

heavenly flower

,

Becoming like God

,

Birth in good and beauty

Virgil:

To return

and view the cheerful skies

Horace:

Be resigned to greatness

Ovid:

Achilles'

death

Clement of Alexandria:

O the perfect child!

Origen:

You will find a divine

perception

Gregory the Theologian:

God with Gods is being united

,

Unity found

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

its rest in Trinity

Basil the Great:

Glorifying the greatness of His deity

,

A likeness of

eternity

Gregory of Nyssa:

Everything shares in the Beautiful

Boethius:

His

mourning moved the depths of hell

Maximus Confessor:

Nothing is empty of the

Holy Spirit

Erigena:

By His seeing and running all things are made

Symeon the

New Theologian:

Becoming invisible and suddenly appearing

Meister Eckhart:

Entirely within, entirely without

Nicholas Cabasilas:

The old and the new Adam

Hoelderlin:

The God is near, and hard to grasp

,

Hyperion's song of destiny

Schiller:

A glorious humanity

Gogol:

We recognise in them the divine origin of

man

(margin: Keats, To Homer)

Emerson:

When the Gods come among men

Rilke:

Ein Wehn im Gott

Heidegger:

Through a foundational poetic and noetic

experience of Being

Helen Keller:

The length, breadth and sweep of heavens are

mine!

Cavafy:

The Horses of Achilles

Papatsonis:

Scheme

,

Hestia

,

Wisdom

,

In

Rising Sound

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Learning Greek - Lesson 2 - Second Part

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