Honda creates Homeric Hephaestus Robot

One of my favourite genres of fiction is the kind of dystopian projections of future human development exemplified by such works as Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.  In a future post I may discuss my pet theory that much of Greek drama, especially Aristophanes' comedies, involves a version of this kind of admonitory fiction, presenting a slippery-slope image of what might happen to Athens if a certain path is either chosen or persisted in.

For now, I will contain myself to some of what I judge to be the futuristic notions in Homer (don't worry, I will mention someone else someday soon), namely that of technological advance.  It seems to me that the descriptions of Hephaestus' automatons are not magic, or described as being supernatural in and of themselves, but rather resulting from a supernatural skill.  That is to say, it would theoretically be possible for human craftsmen (and the renowned Daedalus is such an established figure by this time that his name is often used adjectivally to mean "ingeniously-crafted") to construct such machines, and Homer's description of the wondrous assistants is an imagining of the horizon of what human engineering could achieve.

And, as it turns out, Homer was proven right this week. Take a look at this video of what The Telegraph referred to as an "Artificial intelligence robot which can help round the home", compare it to the passage in the Iliad, and consider whether Homer’s faith in the potential of metallurgy was ill-placed.

             "ὑπὸ δ' ἀμφίπολοι ῥώοντο ἄνακτι

χρύσειαι ζωῇσι νεήνισιν εἰοικυῖαι.

τῇς ἐν μὲν νόος ἐστὶ μετὰ φρεσίν, ἐν δὲ καὶ αὐδὴ

καὶ σθένος, ἀθανάτων δὲ θεῶν ἄπο ἔργα ἴσασιν.

αἳ μὲν ὕπαιθα ἄνακτος ἐποίπνυον·"

             "and the maids rushed to help their master,

Made of gold, looking like living maidens.

They have intelligence in their mind, as well as speech

And strength, and learned their tasks from the immortal gods.

They bustled about in support of their master."

Actually, Honda haven't quite yet matched Hephaestus' feat, given that Asimo doesn't seem to have any speech capabilities.  Still, if 'I, Robot' is anything to go by, won't be long now.  And it surely won't be too long after that before someone has one made of gold...  Bloody bankers.

The Accidental Vandal?

As well as finding modern parallels to ancient odds and ends, I’ll do my best to find ancient precedents or similarities to modern day events or news stories.  I was particularly amused by this story, in which an unnamed cleaning woman caused irreparable damage to an art instalment in a German museum.  The Guardian report lists some other examples of similar things happening to similar offerings by Joseph Beuys, Gustav Metzger and Damian Hirst - I don’t intend to get into the merits of modern art, but I will preliminarily compare these stories to this scene from the incomparable Mr. Bean film, in which a piece of real art is also "cleaned", although under quite different circumstances:

This story reminds me of a couple of Classical ones, although they are obvious and neither corresponds exactly.  The first relates to the theme of misunderstanding whether or not something is a piece of art, because it is so true to life.  It is the contest of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, in which the two painters sought to establish which of them was the greater artist - which, in this context, means which of them renders the most lifelike representation.

Zeuxis goes first, and paints such realistic grapes that birds fly from the sky and try to eat them.  Pleased with this result, he then smugly demands that Parrhasius draw back the curtain in front of his own painting.  As it turns out, the curtain is the painting, and Zeuxis himself, like the birds, has been fooled.  Parrhasius therefore wins, as fooling a human trumps fooling birds.  Interestingly, according to the Washington Post: "Thanks to [Kippenberger's] troublemaking persona, some have suggested that he would have liked the way that the cleaning woman 'completed' his sculpture" - although this does seem to refer to a commenter called "fearslayer88", so I'm not sure how much store to set by that.  One might think, however, that, much like Zeuxis and Parrhasius, Kippenberger intended for his artwork to look as lifelike as possible, and that this mistake is a tribute to his artistic skill, even if his artistic intentions were different (i.e. his realism was not to do with proving how well he could recreate the real world as an end in itself, but rather as a means of delivering an artistic message (I would imagine)).

That all assumes, of course, that this was a mistake, which leads me to the second Classical anecdote this story reminds me of.  It relates to the notion of destroying art – and, somewhat indirectly, to the fact that the poor lady is, quite rightly, not named anywhere as far as I can tell.  That was hoped to be the fate of the infamous (pun intended?) Herostratus, who intentionally set fire to the beautiful Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonder of the Ancient World, for the simple purpose of gaining fame for doing so.  The sentence was apt: as well as execution, that his name should never be referred to again by any historian.

There's a useful and fairly extensive list of sources for this story from the excellent Michael Gilleland (Laudator Temporis Acti) here, which might help you decide whether or not the cheeky arsonist won out in the end – certainly, his name has not been lost to posterity as was the hope, though he is hardly a household name.  Does that count as immortal fame?

Now, is it likely that this cleaning woman didn't realise that she shouldn't clean the art installation?  Did she clean any others?  Or could it be that this German cleaning lady is, in fact, what the Germans call a Herostrat?

And, to close off, something I was reminded of by the hilarious Guardian title:

The Successes and Failures of GM Alphabet

The modern alphabet as it is used today has evolved over many millennia, undergoing many transitions from the Middle East, via Greek (which consisted of various dialects) and Etruscan to the Latin alphabet which is used today, with few variations, by many languages including English. Due to the differences between these languages, many changes were either necessary or convenient, which is why the Semitic alphabet (without vowels) was 22 letters long; the Greek alphabet, as we know it from literary Greek at least, was 24 (missing the digamma, including the tacked-on upsilon, phi, chi, psi and omega); and Latin was between 21 and 23 letters.  Since Classical times, of course, more letters have been added, as Indiana Jones forgot to his peril.



But most of these changes took place organically - that is to say, there was no central committee whose job it was to regulate the alphabet, introducing and phasing out words deemed either redundant or required; for example, Etruscan had no /g/ sound, so they made Greek's gamma (Phoenician's gaml) a <c>, and used it as one of their /k/ sounds (in addition to <k> and <q>). There may be some exceptions: for example, there is a story related in Plutarch that Spurius Carvilius Ruga (or, as spelled in Greek, displaying some differences in orthography, Σπόριος Καρβίλιος) added a stroke to the letter C in order to accommodate the /g/ sound in his name, since the Etruscans had done away with the gamma.  If true, this story represents one example of top-down alphabet change. By contrast, the letter <z> was rntroduced by no-one in particular, after the Romans decided they could no longer transliterate the pesky zeta with <s> or <ss>.  Even though the letter was officially removed in the first place by the Censor Appius Claudius Caecus (as in the Appian Way) around 300BC, after rhotacism made it defunct (or he didn't like the face people pulled when they said it, cf. De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, III.261).

But there are also examples of attempts to add to the alphabet falling flat: the Emperor Claudius tried to add three letters to the alphabet, and was so monumentally unsuccessful that today scholars don't even know what one of them was. One was a "(reversed, upside-down digamma), which stood for the semivowel /w/"; the other, a plus sign without a west-pointing arm (if you see what I mean) "was used in place of the letter ypsilon in Greek names. Its phonological value is unclear. A third letter, which is reported to have stood for the cluster /ps/, has not yet been found in an inscription. Its precise form is uncertain; the Latin grammarians cite several possibilities."*

There have been attempts more recently to effect "alphabetic reform" on the English language, and not just lame April Fool's jokes or slightly less lame YouTube sketches (I actually found it quite funny) - or indeed nutters on Yahoo! Answers.  Most notably, Benjamin Franklin tried in 1768 "to give the alphabet a more natural order":



This is quite succinctly summarised and illustrated here.  More recently, also in America, was the publication in 1905 of "A Plea for Alphabetic Reform" by Benn Pitman.  Notwithstanding his inability to spell the word "Pharaoh" (see p.4), he did pioneer shorthand writing (or phonography). Interestingly, his New York Times obituary from December 29, 1910, reports as follows, and you may make of it what you will:

Beyond that, there is the interrobang, which ended with a whimper, and which wouldn't even really have become part of the alphabet, unless one classed it with the ampersand ("&"), so named because students rattling off their A-Z would add at the end, "and, per se, 'and'".  In that sense, the ampersand was considered to some extent a 27th letter (or at least, that's what Wikipedia says).

By the way, if anyone knows anything about James Joyce and Finnegans Wake (I certainly don't), they might be able to connect this to the "abcedminded" and "allaphbed" puns that are found there?  And "letters" and "lettrines"?

* A Companion to the Latin Language edited by James Clackson, who, by the way, can be heard voicing-over this brilliant clip (<3 BBC).

(Epos) Nekerdes: Part II

Just to follow up on and flesh out some of the ideas from yesterday's inaugural post.  First, this video which depicts some of the horror of losing treasure (κέρδεα) that you have hoarded:



Second, to develop a bit more fully the contrast between Iliadic notions of action and Odyssean notions of crafty speech.  This is obviously a huge topic, but I want to approach it briefly, in keeping with the theme of the video, through the prism of the sons of the two poems' respective heroes: Neoptolemus (son of Achilles) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus).  I'll just point out in passing (although I am a big believer in noms parlants, especially in Homer) the differences between the meanings of the two names: Neoptolemus meaning "New War", just what is not needed after the horror of the expedition to Troy; while Telemachus means "Far From Battle".  Neoptolemus is the one who kills Astyanax, Hector's infant son (at least, that is his most defenceless and innocent victim), whereas until Athene comes to rouse him, Telemachus does little but sit at home biting his nails over his absent father.

Both are, for one reason or another and to some extent, fatherless.  Neoptolemus' father is off hunting a glory that will never fade, in the knowledge that this will result in his death and, consequently, never seeing his son again.  Achilles' extreme nonchalance when it comes to fatherhood is demonstrated most starkly by his off-hand comment when speaking about his grief at Patroclus' death, in the Iliad at 19.327: "If, I suppose, godlike Neoptolemus is even still alive." (εἴ που ἔτι ζώει γε Νεοπτόλεμος θεοειδής).  This is ironically preceded by his referring to his son as "φίλος υἱός", "beloved/dear son" - the absurdity of this designation is driven home by a comparison to the truly loving attitude of Hector in Book 6 in the Iliad towards his son Astyanax (whom, let us not forget, Neoptolemus will kill).

The line in which Neoptolemus' name is used for the only time in the entire Iliad is particularly emphatic because of its particles: "που", "perhaps, I suppose", is a sort of verbal shrug, an explicit declamation of ignorance; "γε", "at least, at any rate", emphasises the word that precedes it, marks that word as the stressed point of the sentence.  It is a sorely overlooked particle, often misunderstood or brushed aside as being "merely for the metre".  (In fact, I might start a little sub-blog here devoted to this overlooked and under-appreciated particle - Ge And Proud?)  This is a good example of the word's usage to accentuate the tone of the line - in this case indifference, complacency, disinterest - by underlining that the father does not even know if his son is alive or dead; it simultaneously links the sentiment to the ephemeralness (it's in the OED...) of Achilles' own life.

Telemachus receives a lot more attention, in both poems; in the Iliad, Odysseus even refers to himself, in a reversal of the traditional patronymic mode, as the "father of Telemachus" (Τηλεμάχοιο πατὴρ 2.260).  Whereas fatherless Neoptolemus tries to emulate his father with extreme violence and blood-thirst, misunderstanding the point of fighting due to his lack of fatherly guidance (see Iliad Book 9 for evidence of Achilles' sensitivity and thoughtfulness), Telemachus fails to grasp the notion of Odyssean cunning and restraint, going to the opposite extreme to Neoptolemus and indulging in inertia and passivity - however, due to the return of his father, by the end of the Odyssey he has learned about subtlety and caution, proving himself a man by refraining from stringing his father's bow, even though he is able to do so, and lying to cover it up (Od. 21.125-135).

(Epos) Nekerdes

Hello, welcome to the blog. I intend for this post to be a little microcosm of what I hope the blog will do, and the tone it will be in, although obviously at this stage it's all a bit primordial (and I've never done this before). So this will basically be an explanation of the name, and a sort of mission statement, and an exemplum.

The first thing I hope to do with this blog is fill in any gaps I find in the blogosphere. That is to say, when I google something and come up empty-handed, I'd like, as far as I am able, to provide the information that I couldn't find for the (highly theoretical) next person. At the time of writing this, according to Google, there is not one blog that has ever used the word "nekerdes" in any post - I did find one reference to "l'Hôpital Neker des Enfants Malades à Paris", but it's from quite an offensive article in quite an offensive French Catholic gazette, so I won't link to it here (also I don't know how to) (and I hate Catholics) (just kidding).

So now there is a blog that has not only used the phrase, but has enshrined it as a letterhead and founding principle.  This firstly means that I do not intend to "monetise" this blog or ever have ads on it.  (I can delete this later, right?)  But more broadly, I don't really intend to get any profit out of it, other than the opportunity to verbalise some of my own ideas and disseminate some others that I come across, hopefully being of some help to others.

The phrase epos nekerdes (ἔπος νηκερδὲς) is found in Homer's Odyssey at line 14.509, within a litotes (double negative - i.e. Odysseus' word isn't without profit): Eumaeus, the loyal swineherd, has just heard his disguised master Odysseus - whom he hasn't recognised - spin a completely truthless yarn about being a high-born Cretan, and then a short anecdote (still in character as a vagrant) about once being cold and being given a warm cloak.

This is one of my favourite books, a transitional midpoint in a poem so fixated (no pun intended?) on markers of transition.  It harks back to the much longer tale (whose truth is disputed by scholars, see Richardson (JSTOR) for a particularly sceptical and insightful analysis) Odysseus told to the Phaeacians, and harks forward to the tale he will tell to Penelope.  Aside from the broader motif of words and trickery that permeate the poem, the also ties into the theme of acquisitiveness and materialism: just before arriving at Eumaeus' hut (on the border of his own property), Odysseus stashed all of his Phaeacian gifts (13.362-371), which are almost as essential a component of his nostos as his own return is.

There is one other example of the word "nekerdes" in Homer (only one, which is arguably significant in itself, in a poem with so much repetition and reliance on epithets), and it comes in the Iliad, at line 17.469, just after the pathetic death of Patroclus.  It is the "nekerdea boulen" (νηκερδέα βουλὴν - unprofitable plan) of Automedon, the bereft charioteer of Achilles, in a scene so sad that even Zeus is moved (17.441-455) - the focus is on loneliness and isolation in the midst of war, the futility of mortal combat (despite Achilles' choice of a short life instead of great fame) and the irony of the wrangling that began the Iliad over prizes and loot, now that Achilles has lost something that is truly valuable to him.

Each use of the word is saturated with the ethos of its own poem, and each poem has a different understanding of what the word means - note that in the Odyssey it describes a "word" and in the Iliad it describes a "plan".  It's not terribly profound, but I quite like the dichotomy.

Another thing this blog will try to do is draw connections between the ancient world and more modern stuff.  When it's done well, as in the Richardson article above with the Hitchcock reference, I think it's great fun as well as often being enlightening and thought-provoking.  So, I'll be both attempting it and quoting more eminent people achieving it.

In that spirit, I leave you with this clip from the great Danny DeVito in Other People's Money - and make sure to look out for the Greek subtitles.