bogus Aeschylus quote?

[Jonathan Lighter]

YBQ contains no quotations from Aeschylus. But never mind that. One of the
quotations from Aeschylus that it doesn't contain may be a quotation from
somebody else.

In his 1995 memoir, _In Retrospect_, Robert MacNamara seems to have helped
popularize the saying, which he attributes to Aeschylus, that "The reward of
suffering is experience."

Nifty. Unfortunately, neither I nor Wikiquotes can find a citation of this
saying earlier than roughly the 1980s.

What earlier authorities credit Aeschylus with saying (in _Prometheus
Bound_) was, essentially, that suffering brings wisdom.
There is a huge difference in my mind between the two versions of Aeschylus'
words.  If suffering brings wisdom, then it has some value. If its "reward"
is *mere* "experience," however, why bother? You could be as dumb as
before, just more wretched.

Another question is whether Aeschylus (not a native speaker of Modern
English) was actually able to verbalize the difference between "wisdom" and
"experience" or whether, in accordance with Whorf-Sapir, that
distinction would have been less than obvious. My Ancient Greek is too, er,
"rusty" for me to comment.

If  the Greek vocabulary didn't distinguish, which word in context seems
more likely to reflect his intention? (My SWAG is "wisdom": Aeschylus was a
pessimist but not, AFAIK, a nihilist.)

Moreover, several websites credit "The reward of suffering is experience" to
the precocious Harry Truman, said to have uttered it in "1884," as soon,
presumably, as he popped from the womb. God knows what his mom thought.

JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org