Monthly Archives: September 2005

Dueling Quotations

Posted on Friday: September 30, 2005 by Michael Hendry

Aristotle’s is well-known, the first sentence of the Metaphysics: pántes hoi ánthropoi toû eidénai orégontai phúsei. All humans by nature desire knowledge. Plato’s is less well-known, being tucked away in a complex argument in Book VII of the Republic (535e), … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

Whatever Happened To Siculate Lunate Sigmas?

Posted on Sunday: September 18, 2005 by Michael Hendry

In the thirty years since I first heard of them, I’ve had the vague impression that siculate lunate sigmas, like adscript iotas for the traditional subscripts and use of capital V and small u for both vowels and consonants in … Continue reading →

Posted in Formatting, Greek Literature | 6 Comments

Two Jokes In Chekhov

Posted on Thursday: September 8, 2005 by Michael Hendry

Some purely verbal jokes work equally well in many languages. Here is a paragraph of Chekhov’s one-page squib, “From a Retired Teacher’s Notebook”: The words ‘proposition’ and ‘conjunction’ make schoolgirls modestly lower their eyes and blush, but the terms ‘organic’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Latin Grammar, Nachleben | 2 Comments

One-Word Joke

Posted on Saturday: September 3, 2005 by Michael Hendry

 Silius  Update: (9/5, 4:15pm) Since no one has ‘gotten’ it yet, here’s another version of the joke with the same answer:  Baebius  And here are two more, non-Classical this time, with a different, but parallel, answer:  Philip   Charles 

Posted in Jokes, Latin Literature | Tagged | 9 Comments