Misquoting Homer

[Bill Palmer]

Maybe it WAS "sheep".  After all, you know the old Greek navy
saying..."women are for breeding, boys are for pleasure, but for sheer
ecstasy, there is nothing like a goat"

Bill Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Harris" <cats22 at STNY.RR.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: Misquoting Homer


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Doug Harris <cats22 at STNY.RR.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Misquoting Homer
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I thought it said 'sheep'... and I thought 'Homer said THAT???'
>
> Prepared and sent with Chaos Software's Intellect mail client.
> Intellect's contacts and appointments managers also are cool.
>
> ----- Original message ----------------------------------------
> From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Received: 8/23/2009 1:23:04 PM
> Subject: Misquoting Homer
>
>
>>This should probably go to the Homer list, but they may know about it
>>there
>>already.
>
>>These lines show up fifty times on Google Books, back to 1942 (in a book
>>of
>>quotations...) as a Homeric statement on men and war:
>
>>"Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than of war."
>
>>Great comment, right?
>
>>Well, maybe, but what Homer really said was something like this:
>
>
>>"A man may have enough of anything-
>
>>sleep or love or the sweet song or the dance-
>
>>and all are much better than battle, but
>
>>these Trojans never get their fill of war!"
>
>
>
>>     ---- Iliad, XIII, 636-39, trans. Michael Reck.
>
>
>
>>See, Menelaus is complaining that the Trojans are inhuman for keeping the
>>war going, whereas the misquotation implies that an overweening love of
>>war
>>is the norm.
>
>>I picked Reck's undeservedly lesser-known translation (it came out at the
>>same time as Robert Fagles's blockbuster! Oops!) because it's the simplest
>>for mof the statement, but all the others I've looked at say essentially
>>the
>>same thing.
>
>>JL
>>--
>>"There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
>>Platypus"
>
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