Alright, so the mistake in the title was a deliberate one, but I think it makes the point nevertheless. Yes, this is the news that the letter posted by 100 academics to Michael Gove in the Independent (which I discussed recently) has been attacked by the judges of the Bad Grammar Awards (article here). The things I have to say in response to this news primarily focus around Toby Young, one of the judges, but first I want briefly to tackle some of the criticisms, particularly those cited in the Guardian article above. Here is the cited paragraph:
"Much of it demands too much too young. This will put pressure on teachers to rely on rote learning without understanding. Inappropriate demands will lead to failure and demoralisation. The learner is largely ignored. Little account is taken of children's potential interests and capacities, or that young children need to relate abstract ideas to their experience, lives and activity."
The criticisms focus on the first and last sentences. While I am happy to admit that the phrase "too much too young" does not conform to the strictest grammar, the judges seem to have attempted to overplay its mistakes. They claim that since there is no obvious noun to understand with young, that the phrase must be adverbial, but that this is impossible as young cannot perform the actions of an adverb. There are in fact two different nouns that are easily understandable, but in order for them to make sense, the phrase should really have begun with a preposition; personally I would go with 'too much from too young [sc. an age]' or 'too much from [sc. children] too young', either of which is perfectly understandable.
The second complaint is that 'little account is taken... that young children' is illogical as there is no such verb as "to take account", only "to take account of". However, I think that the sentence is perfectly clear when we understand "of the fact that" for "that". Not a particularly large stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, I am not here to attempt to justify all of the mistakes in the letter, lest I fall into the same trap into which, as I shall demonstrate presently, the judges have fallen. What I wanted to demonstrate is how the judges have, in my opinion, exaggerated mistakes in order for them to appear more grave than is the case. So onto the issue of Toby Young.
There is a danger, I believe, for a panel of judges that includes the likes of Toby Young (that is, politically conservative) to choose such a letter for the Bad Grammar awards of the decision being at least partially, if not potentially primarily, a political decision. Even if that decision was not itself political, Toby Young's article since the decision certainly is, and this casts a suspicion of bias to the decision-making process (which for all I know could have been without blame).
The second issue I want to raise, and it is the issue I have focused on in my title, is that we all make mistakes, and it is a little hypocritical to have an award for such minor quibbles when Toby Young falls pray to the odd mistake himself. To demonstrate this, I will take a couple of examples from here.
At the beginning of the second paragraph, Young says: 'the central point of disagreement was over whether an Ed Miliband-led government is a price worth paying to give Dave a bloody nose.' The are a number of problems with this which, although not ungrammatical, make it a horrible sentence. First "over whether" is a terrible phrase, which could have been rectified with a much more straightforward "concerned whether". The phrase "an Ed Miliband-led government" includes a pointlessly complex noun phrase, which would have been much clearer had he said "a government led by Ed Miliband". And the "price worth paying to give Dave a bloody nose" is for me perilously close to a mixed metaphor, but I'll let that one slip.
The same paragraph also includes the phrase 'clear blue water,' which should of course be 'clear, blue water.' And toward the end of the paragraph we have the following sentence:
'This, to my mind, is the toughest question for Farage: Is your loathing of Cameron so great that you're prepared to risk what may well be our last chance to get out of the EU?'
Not entirely sure why is needs a capital there.
So maybe I am being, like the judges, overly picky in my examples. None of these are particularly bad, and I am open to the possibility that some of them are perfectly justified by the rules of grammar, as I haven't looked up the many exceptions to rules that may exculpate them. But the judges are overly picky in giving an award for bad grammar to a political hot potato; if I am overly picky, it is simply to state that sometimes even the best of we makes mistakes.
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Friday, 26 April 2013
Bending over not quite backwards for Hipponax
Despite having had this and another blog post in the pipeline for quite some time, my tardiness in getting either written down and published (to use Google's blogging terminology) is remarkable, even to me. Still, I have finally sat myself down and started writing with the intent of completing a blog. What is my subject, do I hear you ask? One word and a name in Hipponax' poetry.
I should, presumably, explain myself a little more clearly, lest readers either depart prematurely and unsatisfied or struggle onwards in spite of my rude lack of clarity to a disappointing end. Last month I went over on my first trip to Ireland, and more specifically to Dublin, to give a paper on Hipponax' feud with Bupalus, a matter I have mentioned elsewhere. While the matter of the feud is rather too long for me to explore in any detail in a blog (especially due to my tendency to waffle somewhat when blogging), during my research for the paper I noticed something, and it is that note that I wanted to explore in blog format. The note itself concerns Hipponax fragment 17, and here it is:
I should, presumably, explain myself a little more clearly, lest readers either depart prematurely and unsatisfied or struggle onwards in spite of my rude lack of clarity to a disappointing end. Last month I went over on my first trip to Ireland, and more specifically to Dublin, to give a paper on Hipponax' feud with Bupalus, a matter I have mentioned elsewhere. While the matter of the feud is rather too long for me to explore in any detail in a blog (especially due to my tendency to waffle somewhat when blogging), during my research for the paper I noticed something, and it is that note that I wanted to explore in blog format. The note itself concerns Hipponax fragment 17, and here it is:
κύψασα γὰρ μοι πρὸς τὸ λύχνον Ἀρήτη
for Arete, bending over for me towards the lamp...
Those who read my previous Hipponactean blog, or who are externally aware of the Hipponactean corpus, will know that Arete is the mother of Bupalus (although Degani is not sure), with whom he is supposed to be having an incestuous relationship (cf. 'Bupulus, that motherfucker with Arete...'), and the word that caught my attention in this fragment was the first one of the Greek, kupsasa, translated as 'bending over'. What I am going to suggest is that this word used here is meant to recall Hipponax' association elsewhere in his poetry between Arete and Calypso. This association is made twice in what survives of Hipponax' poetry, that is in fragments 77 and 129. In 77 this is based on a restoration of ]υψου[ to Κυψου(ν) and in 129 we have the partial line πῶς παρὰ Κυψοῦν ἦλθε - how he came to Kypso. Jeffrey Henderson, in his book The maculate muse, explains this name as punning upon kuptô, the aorist form of which is used in fragment 17, and so referring at once to the Homeric Calypso and the act of fellatio.
If the restoration in fragment 77 is correct, then we have good reason to associate the name Kypso with Arete, as this fragment is one of a number from the same papyrus with Homeric resonances that also seem to refer to Bupalus (77.4 has Βου[, probably referring to Bupalus) and his family. While I cannot prove that the restoration is correct, it would definitely make sense in the context of the fragment and in the context of Hipponax' more general use of the Odyssey in his strategies against Bupalus (for which see Rosen 1990 and the ideas in my head). And so, on the assumption that the generally recognized interpretation of fragment 77 is correct, I would want to link fragments 17 and 77 more closely than they have been thus far, or at least to my knowledge. For while it has been recognized that fragment 17 is talking about fellatio, the verb used hasn't been seen to be linked into Hipponax' broader strategies for dealing with the Bupalus household. Here, then, is my contention that kupsasa in fragment 17 should be understood not only as a parallel to the use(s) of Kypso elsewhere, but as directly linked with those usages, and so the poem from which fragment 17 is derived probably displayed Arete in her pseudo-role as the Homeric Calypso.
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
The new enemy of education - Gove's rhetoric
So far, in response to the government's latest proposals for changes to the UK education system, I have sat back, just a little, not speaking out myself but reposting and retweeting the words of others on the issue. No longer. Now Gove has stepped up to the plate by publishing an article on the matter for the mail, and now I too cannot restrain my tongue. The preposterous mess that are his rhetorical strategies must not go without damnation. I do apologise if I am sounding myself as though I were about to head into my own emotion-rather-than-logic-driven rhetoric, I am doing my best to remain calm and I intend to progress through logic rather than patent political posturing.
Gove is upset, in case you didn't know, because 100 university academics have written a letter to him, published in the Independent, which outlines the serious concerns of the underwritten. I am upset because Gove's response is so poor, and because it in fact fails short of achieving the very educational standards he claims to support. What he wants the education system in this country to do, he says, is to prepare students to become modern citizens. For this, they need to know 'how to communicate in formal settings, appreciate the arguments in newspapers' leading articles and understand the context behind big political decisions.' Aside from the absence of the oxford comma (ironic, perhaps, for someone whose educational reforms are so insistent on the correct use of English grammar and syntax!), there is much wrong with this. So what I am going to do, as someone who has in the not too distant past been through these 'systematically devalued' GCSEs and A-Levels, is to demonstrate how I can "appreciate" the arguments in his newspaper article.
First, I should begin with the original letter, which emphasizes the approach of Gove's reforms, 'endless lists of spellings, facts and rules,' and explicitly states the opinion that this would have a negative result on education. It also introduces the dichotomy between learning and understanding. For these scholars, the reforms are all learning, no understanding. Understanding, it is implied, is associated with children's individual personalities and interests. By promoting these, schoolchildren become engaged, eager learners. On the other hand, the educational reforms of this government are delineated to the point that individuality, that is to say the individuality of the teacher and of the child, is stifled. They then use the example of the greatly diminished role of interactive exercises, such as speech and drama, to demonstrate how popular methods for teachers to engage their students must now give way to learning by rote. They go on to suggest that these hardened guidelines for teachers are being specified because of a distrust in the teaching profession.
This is, in essence, the argument. But they don't stop there. They proceed to adduce facts, the kind of evidence that the schoolchildren too have to produce in their essays. The evidence put forward is twofold: on the one hand, there is the CBI report that encourages a move away from micro-organization and memorization; on the other, there is the comparison between the proposed reforms and high-achieving education systems elsewhere in the world. The reason this letter is effective is that it successfully engages in an argumentative dialogue, in that it seeks to address directly the suggestions of the opposing member of the argument, it also lays out clearly its reasons for opposing the former position, and it adduces external evidence in its support. Finally, it ends on a note that seeks not to break down argument, but to build upon it:
'We urge parents, teachers and other stakeholders to respond to the Government consultation in its few remaining weeks, and demand a fresh start.'
This ending comment asks others to join in the debate and asks for the government not to cease any and all educational reform, but to start again after taking on board and answering the comments of the opposing argument.
So, what of Gove's response? Its very title, in fact, contains many elements of argument style continued throughout, so it is worth beginning there: 'I refuse to surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-bent on destroying our schools: Education Secretary berates "the new enemies of promise" for opposing his plans.'
Given what I just said about the academics' letter, that it ends with an exhortation for people to submit their opinions and continue the debate, it is interesting to see how Gove opens by closing debate down - with outright refusal. The refusal also begins the strong tone of the article, with the title also containing the words 'Marxist', which, whatever your political persuasion, automatically invokes a personal political response, 'hell-bent', which represents the academics' letter as offering no compromise (in case you hadn't noticed, we've seen that it certainly does!), and 'destroying', which again portrays Gove's enemies as angling for deterioration, with no reference to their claims that they are trying to prevent it.
What this opening title does, in other words, is to establish a political dichotomy between Gove and his enemies. The title is founded upon the assumption that the general readership is not only pro-democratic (and therefore anti-Marxist), but also believes in a good education for its youth. The implication being made is that Gove is the epitome of democracy and the upholder of educational values. He as good as says as much with the sentence: 'the new Enemies of Promise are a set of politically motivated individuals who have been actively trying to prevent millions of our poorest children getting the education they need.' [N.B. again from such a determined follower of English grammar and syntax, we might have expect Gove to know that the verb 'prevent' doesn't take a double accusative, and that in English we prevent someone from doing something.] Reading this sentence, we might even be led momentarily to forget that Gove too is "politically motivated".
The way Gove goes about attacking his enemies is, to his credit, ingenious. If also transparent and manipulative. Instead of answering any of the criticisms raised in his opening, he attacks their position before even telling us who they are. As we read the article, we are supposed to believe before even discovering the identity of Gove's opponents that they are terrible people who seek to stop our children learning anything. Furthermore, he tries to strengthen his position by resorting to the uncontroversial: he gives evidence of current students lack of knowledge. As we should still remember, the letter does not say nothing should be done, nor does it give any opinion on the current system. However, just by talking about the current system, Gove tries to align it with his enemies. This alignment is most explicitly stated in the following:
'But who is responsible for this failure? Who are the guilty men and women who have deprived a generation of the knowledge they need? Who are the modern Enemies of Promise?
Well, helpfully, 100 of them put their name to a letter to the Independent newspaper this week.'
Gove tries to justify his claims by saying that these 100 people are in charge of the curricula and teacher training. But another perspective might well ask whether these people are doing what they can in the system. I mean, who established the GCSE and A-Level system anyhow? Aren't they to blame? My task, though, is not to exculpate any designers of curricula or lay blame. What I simply suggest is that Gove is taking some, not necessarily representative facts, and laying them down as gospel.
Finally, we move towards some discussion of what they actually say. But again, Gove isn't just going to get involved in straightforward debate. Instead, he again resorts to the prejudices of his audience. He takes the general thrust of his reforms and simplifies them to a point at which they are so vague as to resemble only barely their original: 'expecting 11-year olds to write grammatical sentences and use fractions in sums.' Then, having established a positive connection with the reader through this simplification, he quotes the letter. Such a combination of mangled raw data and quotation naturally leaves the reader thinking that the academics' letter is entirely ridiculous.
And now we get to the best bit - the ad hominem argument. For anyone who doesn't know, the ad hominem argument is one wherein the arguer feels that, if he can't deal with real arguments, he might as well attack the nasty people criticizing him. One example of these ad hominem arguments will be well known to all schoolchildren - 'your mum.' This is essentially what Gove turns to now. I don't know the context in which the scholar, to whomever Gove is referring to (we aren't even given his name, just in case we check out the veracity or context of Gove's quotation), said that he writes 'from a classical Marxist perspective,' and to be honest, I don't care. It shouldn't matter.
Gove continues to suggest that the 100 academics who signed the letter are part of 'The Blob', a group dedicated to stopping the advance of the British education system, and who are ideologically driven by the 60s. Apart from the fact that 'The Blob' sounds like a shit conspiracy theory, as if most conspiracy theories weren't shit enough, he is again clearly misrepresenting those people. I cannot find any hint of 60s ideology in their letter. They don't directly advocate anything. Instead, Gove tries to depict himself as someone fighting against The Man, when it is in fact the other way around. He even describes his opponents as ultra-militants. Given that militants are, by definition, confrontational and/or violent, it doesn't seem that these academics are any form of militant, let alone ultra-violent ones. No violence has been threatened or enacted. As Gove draws to a close, it seems as though he feels the emotional language of his title is wearing off, and needs to be replaced with scare tactics that have no basis in reality.
Furthermore, what Gove's article has done very well is to hide the government's commercialist approach to education. I presume that the reason for this is that readers are more likely to object to an educational horizon that only ever looks at the monetary rewards. Some people, strange as it may seem, think that education is about just a little bit more. However, this language does at one point slip through the net. Gove says that in some brilliant schools, the children 'acquire the stock of knowledge required to take their place in a modern democracy.' There are, according to the OED, 10 definitions of 'stock'. However, I presume he is not talking in terms of cookery, gunfire, ancestry, or plant life. No. The definition that most fits the bill in the context is 'the goods of merchandise kept on the premises of a shop or warehouse and available for sale or distribution.' In the metaphor employed, students are a sort of knowledge warehouse, and their place in a modern democracy, or at least the role envisaged by Gove, is to sell or distribute this knowledge for money.
What I think I have shown is that Gove's response to the letter of the academics is hugely misrepresentative of all involved from start to finish. We as readers are consistently asked to choose sides and Gove consistently uses ideologically driven language to drive readers into his arms, at the same moment as he claims that it is his opponents who are the ideological ones. If Gove really wanted his audience to appreciate the arguments of newspaper articles, then his ideal readership is one that can see through his own rhetoric, and lay bare the false standards he purports. What Gove really wants is for his readers to be taken in by his rhetoric, rather than looking at the objective, unadulterated facts in order to make up their own minds. Finally, I would suggest that if Gove really wants to lecture people on the merits of teaching correct English usage, he should first of all learn it himself.
[Disclaimer: I have attempted to demonstrate the inaccuracies of Gove's English only because of his claims about English teaching. I do not claim to have in this instance written in perfect English myself.]
Gove is upset, in case you didn't know, because 100 university academics have written a letter to him, published in the Independent, which outlines the serious concerns of the underwritten. I am upset because Gove's response is so poor, and because it in fact fails short of achieving the very educational standards he claims to support. What he wants the education system in this country to do, he says, is to prepare students to become modern citizens. For this, they need to know 'how to communicate in formal settings, appreciate the arguments in newspapers' leading articles and understand the context behind big political decisions.' Aside from the absence of the oxford comma (ironic, perhaps, for someone whose educational reforms are so insistent on the correct use of English grammar and syntax!), there is much wrong with this. So what I am going to do, as someone who has in the not too distant past been through these 'systematically devalued' GCSEs and A-Levels, is to demonstrate how I can "appreciate" the arguments in his newspaper article.
First, I should begin with the original letter, which emphasizes the approach of Gove's reforms, 'endless lists of spellings, facts and rules,' and explicitly states the opinion that this would have a negative result on education. It also introduces the dichotomy between learning and understanding. For these scholars, the reforms are all learning, no understanding. Understanding, it is implied, is associated with children's individual personalities and interests. By promoting these, schoolchildren become engaged, eager learners. On the other hand, the educational reforms of this government are delineated to the point that individuality, that is to say the individuality of the teacher and of the child, is stifled. They then use the example of the greatly diminished role of interactive exercises, such as speech and drama, to demonstrate how popular methods for teachers to engage their students must now give way to learning by rote. They go on to suggest that these hardened guidelines for teachers are being specified because of a distrust in the teaching profession.
This is, in essence, the argument. But they don't stop there. They proceed to adduce facts, the kind of evidence that the schoolchildren too have to produce in their essays. The evidence put forward is twofold: on the one hand, there is the CBI report that encourages a move away from micro-organization and memorization; on the other, there is the comparison between the proposed reforms and high-achieving education systems elsewhere in the world. The reason this letter is effective is that it successfully engages in an argumentative dialogue, in that it seeks to address directly the suggestions of the opposing member of the argument, it also lays out clearly its reasons for opposing the former position, and it adduces external evidence in its support. Finally, it ends on a note that seeks not to break down argument, but to build upon it:
'We urge parents, teachers and other stakeholders to respond to the Government consultation in its few remaining weeks, and demand a fresh start.'
This ending comment asks others to join in the debate and asks for the government not to cease any and all educational reform, but to start again after taking on board and answering the comments of the opposing argument.
So, what of Gove's response? Its very title, in fact, contains many elements of argument style continued throughout, so it is worth beginning there: 'I refuse to surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-bent on destroying our schools: Education Secretary berates "the new enemies of promise" for opposing his plans.'
Given what I just said about the academics' letter, that it ends with an exhortation for people to submit their opinions and continue the debate, it is interesting to see how Gove opens by closing debate down - with outright refusal. The refusal also begins the strong tone of the article, with the title also containing the words 'Marxist', which, whatever your political persuasion, automatically invokes a personal political response, 'hell-bent', which represents the academics' letter as offering no compromise (in case you hadn't noticed, we've seen that it certainly does!), and 'destroying', which again portrays Gove's enemies as angling for deterioration, with no reference to their claims that they are trying to prevent it.
What this opening title does, in other words, is to establish a political dichotomy between Gove and his enemies. The title is founded upon the assumption that the general readership is not only pro-democratic (and therefore anti-Marxist), but also believes in a good education for its youth. The implication being made is that Gove is the epitome of democracy and the upholder of educational values. He as good as says as much with the sentence: 'the new Enemies of Promise are a set of politically motivated individuals who have been actively trying to prevent millions of our poorest children getting the education they need.' [N.B. again from such a determined follower of English grammar and syntax, we might have expect Gove to know that the verb 'prevent' doesn't take a double accusative, and that in English we prevent someone from doing something.] Reading this sentence, we might even be led momentarily to forget that Gove too is "politically motivated".
The way Gove goes about attacking his enemies is, to his credit, ingenious. If also transparent and manipulative. Instead of answering any of the criticisms raised in his opening, he attacks their position before even telling us who they are. As we read the article, we are supposed to believe before even discovering the identity of Gove's opponents that they are terrible people who seek to stop our children learning anything. Furthermore, he tries to strengthen his position by resorting to the uncontroversial: he gives evidence of current students lack of knowledge. As we should still remember, the letter does not say nothing should be done, nor does it give any opinion on the current system. However, just by talking about the current system, Gove tries to align it with his enemies. This alignment is most explicitly stated in the following:
'But who is responsible for this failure? Who are the guilty men and women who have deprived a generation of the knowledge they need? Who are the modern Enemies of Promise?
Well, helpfully, 100 of them put their name to a letter to the Independent newspaper this week.'
Gove tries to justify his claims by saying that these 100 people are in charge of the curricula and teacher training. But another perspective might well ask whether these people are doing what they can in the system. I mean, who established the GCSE and A-Level system anyhow? Aren't they to blame? My task, though, is not to exculpate any designers of curricula or lay blame. What I simply suggest is that Gove is taking some, not necessarily representative facts, and laying them down as gospel.
Finally, we move towards some discussion of what they actually say. But again, Gove isn't just going to get involved in straightforward debate. Instead, he again resorts to the prejudices of his audience. He takes the general thrust of his reforms and simplifies them to a point at which they are so vague as to resemble only barely their original: 'expecting 11-year olds to write grammatical sentences and use fractions in sums.' Then, having established a positive connection with the reader through this simplification, he quotes the letter. Such a combination of mangled raw data and quotation naturally leaves the reader thinking that the academics' letter is entirely ridiculous.
And now we get to the best bit - the ad hominem argument. For anyone who doesn't know, the ad hominem argument is one wherein the arguer feels that, if he can't deal with real arguments, he might as well attack the nasty people criticizing him. One example of these ad hominem arguments will be well known to all schoolchildren - 'your mum.' This is essentially what Gove turns to now. I don't know the context in which the scholar, to whomever Gove is referring to (we aren't even given his name, just in case we check out the veracity or context of Gove's quotation), said that he writes 'from a classical Marxist perspective,' and to be honest, I don't care. It shouldn't matter.
Gove continues to suggest that the 100 academics who signed the letter are part of 'The Blob', a group dedicated to stopping the advance of the British education system, and who are ideologically driven by the 60s. Apart from the fact that 'The Blob' sounds like a shit conspiracy theory, as if most conspiracy theories weren't shit enough, he is again clearly misrepresenting those people. I cannot find any hint of 60s ideology in their letter. They don't directly advocate anything. Instead, Gove tries to depict himself as someone fighting against The Man, when it is in fact the other way around. He even describes his opponents as ultra-militants. Given that militants are, by definition, confrontational and/or violent, it doesn't seem that these academics are any form of militant, let alone ultra-violent ones. No violence has been threatened or enacted. As Gove draws to a close, it seems as though he feels the emotional language of his title is wearing off, and needs to be replaced with scare tactics that have no basis in reality.
Furthermore, what Gove's article has done very well is to hide the government's commercialist approach to education. I presume that the reason for this is that readers are more likely to object to an educational horizon that only ever looks at the monetary rewards. Some people, strange as it may seem, think that education is about just a little bit more. However, this language does at one point slip through the net. Gove says that in some brilliant schools, the children 'acquire the stock of knowledge required to take their place in a modern democracy.' There are, according to the OED, 10 definitions of 'stock'. However, I presume he is not talking in terms of cookery, gunfire, ancestry, or plant life. No. The definition that most fits the bill in the context is 'the goods of merchandise kept on the premises of a shop or warehouse and available for sale or distribution.' In the metaphor employed, students are a sort of knowledge warehouse, and their place in a modern democracy, or at least the role envisaged by Gove, is to sell or distribute this knowledge for money.
What I think I have shown is that Gove's response to the letter of the academics is hugely misrepresentative of all involved from start to finish. We as readers are consistently asked to choose sides and Gove consistently uses ideologically driven language to drive readers into his arms, at the same moment as he claims that it is his opponents who are the ideological ones. If Gove really wanted his audience to appreciate the arguments of newspaper articles, then his ideal readership is one that can see through his own rhetoric, and lay bare the false standards he purports. What Gove really wants is for his readers to be taken in by his rhetoric, rather than looking at the objective, unadulterated facts in order to make up their own minds. Finally, I would suggest that if Gove really wants to lecture people on the merits of teaching correct English usage, he should first of all learn it himself.
[Disclaimer: I have attempted to demonstrate the inaccuracies of Gove's English only because of his claims about English teaching. I do not claim to have in this instance written in perfect English myself.]
Friday, 22 February 2013
Translation studies and essentialism
I should really prefix a blog in which I look at what links can be made between translation studies and essentialism by saying that I am only vaguely aware of some of the issues surrounding both translation studies and philosophy, let alone essentialism. In many ways, then, what I am hoping to achieve is to provoke responses from those more in the know than I. For all I know, this comparison may well have already been made, and I would be intrigued to see what the results of such further study and thought are.
So, to the point. The basis of essentialism, as I understand it, derives from an Aristotelian theory (unfortunately I have no idea where this idea is expressed in the Aristotelian corpus - would love to find out however!) that everything has essential and accidental characteristics. The former term refers to characteristics that are essential for the identity of the thing itself; the latter refers to characteristics that happen to be characteristics of a particular example of a thing, but are not essential characteristics for the identity of the thing. I realize all that's a little abstract, so I imagine an exemplum would help. Since I have been looking a lot of late at death in Homer, we might say that mortality is essential for the definition of a human (although obviously mortality is an essential characteristic of much more besides). On the other hand, many of Homer's epithets, such as Diomedes' characteristic of being 'good at the war-cry', are only accidental to the characters.
We can, it strikes me, take these distinctions and usefully apply them to the workings of different translations. What translations aim to do is to convey the meaning of its original to readers, at least some of whom may not understand the original language. The question is: what is the meaning of the original? What some translations gain in "literal accuracy" they may lose in "tone", while others may convey perfectly the "tone" of the original by forfeiting "literal accuracy". What we can say with some confidence, I would argue, is that whatever line is taken by the translator, be it literal, tonal, domesticating, or foreignizing, is that a translation attempts to convey what is believed to be the essence of the original work - that is to say those aspects of the original without which it could no longer be described as the original work. One might say, for example, that to translate Aristophanes' profanities as euphemisms in English would be to deny the translation something of the essence of the Aristophanic original, intended as they were (at least in part) to shock.
As a further example to demonstrate a little bit more clearly how thinking of translations in this way is useful, or could be useful, I shall turn to Rieu's translation of the Odyssey, which opens thus:
So, to the point. The basis of essentialism, as I understand it, derives from an Aristotelian theory (unfortunately I have no idea where this idea is expressed in the Aristotelian corpus - would love to find out however!) that everything has essential and accidental characteristics. The former term refers to characteristics that are essential for the identity of the thing itself; the latter refers to characteristics that happen to be characteristics of a particular example of a thing, but are not essential characteristics for the identity of the thing. I realize all that's a little abstract, so I imagine an exemplum would help. Since I have been looking a lot of late at death in Homer, we might say that mortality is essential for the definition of a human (although obviously mortality is an essential characteristic of much more besides). On the other hand, many of Homer's epithets, such as Diomedes' characteristic of being 'good at the war-cry', are only accidental to the characters.
We can, it strikes me, take these distinctions and usefully apply them to the workings of different translations. What translations aim to do is to convey the meaning of its original to readers, at least some of whom may not understand the original language. The question is: what is the meaning of the original? What some translations gain in "literal accuracy" they may lose in "tone", while others may convey perfectly the "tone" of the original by forfeiting "literal accuracy". What we can say with some confidence, I would argue, is that whatever line is taken by the translator, be it literal, tonal, domesticating, or foreignizing, is that a translation attempts to convey what is believed to be the essence of the original work - that is to say those aspects of the original without which it could no longer be described as the original work. One might say, for example, that to translate Aristophanes' profanities as euphemisms in English would be to deny the translation something of the essence of the Aristophanic original, intended as they were (at least in part) to shock.
As a further example to demonstrate a little bit more clearly how thinking of translations in this way is useful, or could be useful, I shall turn to Rieu's translation of the Odyssey, which opens thus:
Tell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy.
Those who know the Greek will notice one or two aspects of the translation that are not what could be described as "literal". Firstly, we have 'the story of that resourceful man' as a translation of the two Greek words andra... polutropon. What Rieu's translation drives at, however, is to express how the opening line functions to establish the theme of the poem. In this sense, in fact, the translation works in a surprising number of ways: not only the obvious one, that at the core of the Odyssey is Odysseus himself, but stories are also a very important aspect of the poem - Odysseus himself tells his own story for several books.
Secondly, there is 'who was driven to wander far and wide,' a translation of what literally simply means 'who wandered very far'.** The slight circumlocution 'was driven to wander' is interesting in that it implicitly introduces Poseidon's anger, as it was Poseidon who delays Odysseus' homecoming for as long as possible.
So we see, I think, how by looking at Rieu's translation of what he sees as the essence of Homer's epic that we can reveal some of what lies behind it. Or am I simply giving him too much credit?
** I should acknowledge a huge mistake in my original post, kindly pointed out to me on Twitter by @NGrotum, that somehow or other I had always presumed πλάγχθη referred to Odysseus' suffering. Apologies, not sure how or when that happened.
** I should acknowledge a huge mistake in my original post, kindly pointed out to me on Twitter by @NGrotum, that somehow or other I had always presumed πλάγχθη referred to Odysseus' suffering. Apologies, not sure how or when that happened.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
On when the Batrachomyomachia was not written
For those not in the know (and there aren't not a huge amount of people who are, let's be honest), the date of the Batrachomyomachia (Bat.), a poem that parodies Homer, is a very thorny issue. Back in 1916, Wackernagel wrote a very detailed lexical examination of the poem to conclude that it was most likely written in the 1st century BC/early 1st century AD. And he has not often been questioned since, with perhaps the notable exception of Bliquez in a 1977 article. However, more recently there has appeared a new contender in the debate - Romain Garnier - and what I would like to do here is to address his article, which suggests that the poem was in fact written by Lucian.
First of all, I should outline his lines of argument, and I hope, despite not agreeing with them, that I shall not fail to do them justice in their own right. He says that the author of the Bat., whoe'er he be, is clear cognisant of Homeric language and of the Homeric Hymns; he also knows some Hesiod, Callimachus, and the enigmatic style of the Hellenistic Anthology. This, however, we all already know (I would explain but it would take too long).
This author also knows some Latin, as in the poem we find the use of pterna as meaning "ham" from the Latin perna, rather than the usual Greek meaning of talon. We also find what he calls "hebraisms", the use of the verb ischuô + infin. as well as the verb knaiô, which are found in the Septuagint.
Also to consider is the dominant Attic style of Greek, just like we find in Lucian, as well as references in the poem to Lucian's Dialogues of the gods, such as Athena's money problems, the headaches, and the general presentation of the gods is ridiculous. From all this evidence, he says, the author can be none other than Lucian himself ('pour toutes ces raisons, il n'est pas exclu de penser que l'auteur de la Batr. ne soit autre que Lucien lui-même').
With all that laid out, I suppose one or two of you (so most of you), will be wondering what my objections to these arguments are. Maybe not, but they are the point of my writing this blog, so tally ho. Of the first paragraph of arguments, all I can say is that we already knew the author was aware of these authors, and we have been for quite some time. Never before has it led us to conclude any differently from Wackernagel, as even the latest of these authors (Callimachus and the Anth.) are 3rd cent. BC.
Next up are the claims about the Latin and Hebrew connections. Unfortunately, and misleadingly, Garnier does not tell us much about the time periods of these connections. Taking perna first, I see no reason why its influence in constructing a new meaning for pterna takes the dating of the poem any further forward in time than Wackernagel's suggestion, as perna is widely found in the poetry of Plautus in the late 3rd cent. BC (Mil. Glor. A3S1.162, Stich. A2S2.36, Capt. A4S2.70, A4S3 3, 8, Pseud. A1S2.34, Pers. A1S3.25, Curc. A2S3.44, 88). As for the use of ischuô that evolved from the time of the Septuagint, I propose the same objection, as the Septuagint was written, at the very broadest dating, sometime between the end of the 3rd cent. and end of the 1st cent. BC (through the evidence of papyri and Aristeas). So neither of these proposals require us to date the poem any later than Wackernagel's suggestion.
All that remains is to discuss the Attic style and the "reference" to Lucian. First of all, there is no reason to suppose that an Attic style necessitates Lucianic authorship, since even Lucian's Attic style was adopted as a literary technique because Attic was considered "the most/best Greek", not to mention the possibility that it simply could have been written by an Athenian citizen/for an Athenian audience. This leaves me with the reference in the poem to Lucian's Dialogues of the gods. First of all, Garnier does not make it clear in his article why Lucian might choose to make almost precisely the same jokes as he had done in another text. Secondly, it strikes me that there is no good reason to suppose that the Bat. could not have been written in the 1st cent. BC/AD by person unknown, and subsequently referenced by Lucian in the 2nd Cent. AD.
That, I hope, deals with all of the arguments Garnier puts forward of his own accord as to why he believes Lucian to be the author of the Bat. Now, and finally, I want to put forward some evidence not cited by him - the external evidence for the poem. This evidence consists of references to the poem by Martial (Epig. 14.183 - perlege Maeonio cantatas carmine ranas), Statius (Praef. ad Silv. 1 - legimus... Batrachomachiam), and Ps.-Herodotus (Vit. Hom. 24), all of which were likely written before Lucian.
In conclusion, therefore, I suggest a date for when the Batrachomyomachia was not written - the second century AD - and that it was not written by Lucian.
First of all, I should outline his lines of argument, and I hope, despite not agreeing with them, that I shall not fail to do them justice in their own right. He says that the author of the Bat., whoe'er he be, is clear cognisant of Homeric language and of the Homeric Hymns; he also knows some Hesiod, Callimachus, and the enigmatic style of the Hellenistic Anthology. This, however, we all already know (I would explain but it would take too long).
This author also knows some Latin, as in the poem we find the use of pterna as meaning "ham" from the Latin perna, rather than the usual Greek meaning of talon. We also find what he calls "hebraisms", the use of the verb ischuô + infin. as well as the verb knaiô, which are found in the Septuagint.
Also to consider is the dominant Attic style of Greek, just like we find in Lucian, as well as references in the poem to Lucian's Dialogues of the gods, such as Athena's money problems, the headaches, and the general presentation of the gods is ridiculous. From all this evidence, he says, the author can be none other than Lucian himself ('pour toutes ces raisons, il n'est pas exclu de penser que l'auteur de la Batr. ne soit autre que Lucien lui-même').
With all that laid out, I suppose one or two of you (so most of you), will be wondering what my objections to these arguments are. Maybe not, but they are the point of my writing this blog, so tally ho. Of the first paragraph of arguments, all I can say is that we already knew the author was aware of these authors, and we have been for quite some time. Never before has it led us to conclude any differently from Wackernagel, as even the latest of these authors (Callimachus and the Anth.) are 3rd cent. BC.
Next up are the claims about the Latin and Hebrew connections. Unfortunately, and misleadingly, Garnier does not tell us much about the time periods of these connections. Taking perna first, I see no reason why its influence in constructing a new meaning for pterna takes the dating of the poem any further forward in time than Wackernagel's suggestion, as perna is widely found in the poetry of Plautus in the late 3rd cent. BC (Mil. Glor. A3S1.162, Stich. A2S2.36, Capt. A4S2.70, A4S3 3, 8, Pseud. A1S2.34, Pers. A1S3.25, Curc. A2S3.44, 88). As for the use of ischuô that evolved from the time of the Septuagint, I propose the same objection, as the Septuagint was written, at the very broadest dating, sometime between the end of the 3rd cent. and end of the 1st cent. BC (through the evidence of papyri and Aristeas). So neither of these proposals require us to date the poem any later than Wackernagel's suggestion.
All that remains is to discuss the Attic style and the "reference" to Lucian. First of all, there is no reason to suppose that an Attic style necessitates Lucianic authorship, since even Lucian's Attic style was adopted as a literary technique because Attic was considered "the most/best Greek", not to mention the possibility that it simply could have been written by an Athenian citizen/for an Athenian audience. This leaves me with the reference in the poem to Lucian's Dialogues of the gods. First of all, Garnier does not make it clear in his article why Lucian might choose to make almost precisely the same jokes as he had done in another text. Secondly, it strikes me that there is no good reason to suppose that the Bat. could not have been written in the 1st cent. BC/AD by person unknown, and subsequently referenced by Lucian in the 2nd Cent. AD.
That, I hope, deals with all of the arguments Garnier puts forward of his own accord as to why he believes Lucian to be the author of the Bat. Now, and finally, I want to put forward some evidence not cited by him - the external evidence for the poem. This evidence consists of references to the poem by Martial (Epig. 14.183 - perlege Maeonio cantatas carmine ranas), Statius (Praef. ad Silv. 1 - legimus... Batrachomachiam), and Ps.-Herodotus (Vit. Hom. 24), all of which were likely written before Lucian.
In conclusion, therefore, I suggest a date for when the Batrachomyomachia was not written - the second century AD - and that it was not written by Lucian.
Monday, 24 December 2012
Metagaming and authority in Assassin's Creed Revelations
So I suppose it is rather late to start talking about Assassin's Creed Revelations just after the release of Assassin's Creed 3. Well, I'm so sorry that I on this occasion do not fit myself into such neat structures as you might perhaps like. Nevertheless, on replaying ACR, I noticed something interesting that I would like to share.
While I am a firm believer that videogaming has a new potential become its own brand of literature, many people would find that position difficult to sustain, as gaming is seen as a rather frivolous form of entertainment. I propose that ACR is conscious of this position and goes some way to try and assert a form of authority for itself.
This authority is achieved through the consciousness and highlighting of metagaming within the game. Normally, you see, we play as Desmond Miles who "plays" Ezio or Altair (or now Connor), and so we have a game within a game - a metagame. In ACR a further layer is added and, by that addition, the whole concept of both gaming and metagaming is brought to the fore. In ACR, that is to say, we play Desmond "playing" Ezio who, through the Masyaf keys, "plays" Altair. These concepts are, as I say, thereby brought to the fore not simply through their inclusion, but also through dialogue. After for the first time reliving or replaying a segment of Altair's life, Ezio asks what Altair can teach us. These questions at this point do not just ask what the actual specific stories can tell us, but also ask what we can learn from "playing" the lives of others, or in other words what "playing" in general teaches us.
It is by commenting on the abilities of stories that are "played" to teach us that ACR makes us consider how or what we can learn by playing the game. Theoretically, however, this ability is not limited to ACR but can include any (especially first-person) game. In short, ACR directs us to think about how gaming can be used to teach us lessons in the same way as any book or poem.
While I am a firm believer that videogaming has a new potential become its own brand of literature, many people would find that position difficult to sustain, as gaming is seen as a rather frivolous form of entertainment. I propose that ACR is conscious of this position and goes some way to try and assert a form of authority for itself.
This authority is achieved through the consciousness and highlighting of metagaming within the game. Normally, you see, we play as Desmond Miles who "plays" Ezio or Altair (or now Connor), and so we have a game within a game - a metagame. In ACR a further layer is added and, by that addition, the whole concept of both gaming and metagaming is brought to the fore. In ACR, that is to say, we play Desmond "playing" Ezio who, through the Masyaf keys, "plays" Altair. These concepts are, as I say, thereby brought to the fore not simply through their inclusion, but also through dialogue. After for the first time reliving or replaying a segment of Altair's life, Ezio asks what Altair can teach us. These questions at this point do not just ask what the actual specific stories can tell us, but also ask what we can learn from "playing" the lives of others, or in other words what "playing" in general teaches us.
It is by commenting on the abilities of stories that are "played" to teach us that ACR makes us consider how or what we can learn by playing the game. Theoretically, however, this ability is not limited to ACR but can include any (especially first-person) game. In short, ACR directs us to think about how gaming can be used to teach us lessons in the same way as any book or poem.
Thursday, 1 November 2012
Hipponax' feud with Bupalus: Fact or Poetic Fiction?
As anyone who has spent too much time on Twitter will tell you, stories about the famous can emerge for the most bizarre and rummy of reasons. And this most certainly extends to poets. From the classical world we have received a wide and peculiar range of stories relating to poets, writers, politicians, and the like. Examples of which include the stories that Aeschylus was killed when a tortoise was dropped on his head and that Archilochus, on the way to sell a cow at market, met and bantered with the Muses, after which the price they paid for his solitary cow was a lyre that appeared at his feet just as mysteriously as the Muses disappeared along with the cow. The latter in particular constantly reminds me of Jack and the beanstalk.
The point about these stories from the ancient world at which I'm driving, however, is that they are not always as random as they might at first sight appear. In fact, it is now relatively well established amongst the academe that many of these stories derive from the poems of these poets (or, at least, they do in the case of poets and other writers). The hypothesis supposes that later writers, desperate to find out more about the "real" poet, whomever they happen to be reading at the time, use the texts they have at hand to look for "clues" about the author's life. And depending on the import of the narratorial persona, these clues are more or less explicit.
That is not, however, to say that any of them are true. In the case of Archilochus' cow, a story that may well derive from a poem in which Archilochus uses the story to establish his poetic authority, I doubt many would believe it to be literally true, certainly not nowadays.
So, after such preamble, to the matter at hand. What I really want to talk about is one such story about Hipponax, a sixth century iambic poet. According to the tradition, Hipponax was very ugly (as brought out rather colourfully in the image above from Guillaume Rouille's Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum). Or to be more precise, he was portrayed as ugly in a statue of him made by two brothers, Bupalus and Athenis. So, I, along probably with most other scholars of iambos, want answers to the following questions: is there any truth behind this story? Should we care, or does it matter? The answer to the latter boils down to the following: is the story and/or the truth of the story important for understanding his poetry? Ultimately, without a time machine, as is so often the case, we will almost certainly never know the answer to the first question. So I shall focus on the others.
What we do know is that Bupalus and Athenis are both mentioned in his poetry. Athenis is only mentioned once in the surviving fragments (fr. 70.11W), and unfortunately the only remnants of the rest of the line on which his name appears are the letters ku, which, to be honest, could be almost anything. In line 13 we do have the word estêka(n?), either I or they set up, which it is tempting to suggest refers to the famous story. Bupalus, on the other hand, appears frequently, both in the same fragment (although perhaps a different poem - the fragment bears a mark that could indicate a break between poems between lines 10 and 11) and elsewhere. Perhaps the most important mark Bupalus leaves in the traces of Hipponactean poetry is the accusation that he is in an incestuous relationship with his mother, found amongst others in fr. 12:
The point about these stories from the ancient world at which I'm driving, however, is that they are not always as random as they might at first sight appear. In fact, it is now relatively well established amongst the academe that many of these stories derive from the poems of these poets (or, at least, they do in the case of poets and other writers). The hypothesis supposes that later writers, desperate to find out more about the "real" poet, whomever they happen to be reading at the time, use the texts they have at hand to look for "clues" about the author's life. And depending on the import of the narratorial persona, these clues are more or less explicit.
That is not, however, to say that any of them are true. In the case of Archilochus' cow, a story that may well derive from a poem in which Archilochus uses the story to establish his poetic authority, I doubt many would believe it to be literally true, certainly not nowadays.
So, after such preamble, to the matter at hand. What I really want to talk about is one such story about Hipponax, a sixth century iambic poet. According to the tradition, Hipponax was very ugly (as brought out rather colourfully in the image above from Guillaume Rouille's Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum). Or to be more precise, he was portrayed as ugly in a statue of him made by two brothers, Bupalus and Athenis. So, I, along probably with most other scholars of iambos, want answers to the following questions: is there any truth behind this story? Should we care, or does it matter? The answer to the latter boils down to the following: is the story and/or the truth of the story important for understanding his poetry? Ultimately, without a time machine, as is so often the case, we will almost certainly never know the answer to the first question. So I shall focus on the others.
What we do know is that Bupalus and Athenis are both mentioned in his poetry. Athenis is only mentioned once in the surviving fragments (fr. 70.11W), and unfortunately the only remnants of the rest of the line on which his name appears are the letters ku, which, to be honest, could be almost anything. In line 13 we do have the word estêka(n?), either I or they set up, which it is tempting to suggest refers to the famous story. Bupalus, on the other hand, appears frequently, both in the same fragment (although perhaps a different poem - the fragment bears a mark that could indicate a break between poems between lines 10 and 11) and elsewhere. Perhaps the most important mark Bupalus leaves in the traces of Hipponactean poetry is the accusation that he is in an incestuous relationship with his mother, found amongst others in fr. 12:
Bupalus, the mother-fucker with Arete, fooling
with these words (by these means?) the Erythraeans,
preparing to draw back his damnable foreskin... (trans. Gerber)
So far, what I hope to have achieved is both to have contextualized the melieu of the stories surrounding ancient authors and given a broad picture of the role of Bupalus and Athenis in Hipponax' poetry. Now I would like to talk a bit about the story about Bupalus and Athenis, which we know about from two sources - the Suda and Pliny the Elder.
The Suda tells us that Hipponax wrote against the two scupltors o(/ti au0tou= ei0ko/naj pro\j u(/brin ei0rga/santo, 'because they hubristically fashioned likenesses of him'. Given that we know many of these stories derive from the original poetry, does the wording give us any clues to understanding the poem on which the story is based (presuming there was one)? I think we should be pointing to the word hubrin, since from a narratological point of view it is unclear who thinks their act is hubristic. So is the Suda telling us that this is how Hipponax portrayed the act?
In search of the possibility of confirmation, I shall turn to Pliny, who, in his Natural Histories, says that it was on account of Hipponax' ugliness that imaginem eius lasciuia iocosam hi proposuere ridentium circulis, 'they [Bupalus and Athenis] impudently exhibited a humorous likeness of him to a circle of laughing spectators.' While Pliny's story gives more details, we should remember that the extra details are not necessarily a marker of following the poem more closely; they could simply be a later extrapolation to enliven the telling. Again, I want to hone in on a particular word, this time lasciuia, translated by Gerber as impudently. It is certainly interesting that both authors include a moral viewpoint in describing the story, but is it pertinent? In other words, could lasciuia be a Latin rendering of some original Hipponactean poetry's use of hubris?
To answer this, we need, I think, to look closely at what hubris really means. The OED claims that in Greek tragedy hubris is 'excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.' This definition, however, is a little out of touch with the most recent scholarly work on the subject. In his commentary on Aeschylus' Persians, Garvie argues that it is not an offence against a god or gods, but an action which brings dishonour on another man. This meaning of hubris certainly squares more with the evidence. Just to take a brief but perhaps an example rather paradigmatic for Greek culture, in Iliad 1 Agamemnon's seizure of Bryseis from Achilles is twice described as an act of hubris (203, 214). This might not seem much, but the word only appears in this scene in the whole of the Iliad. The first time it happens is particularly illuminating, where Achilles says:
'Why have you come this time, daughter of Zeus who holds the aegis?
Is it to witness the insult (hubrin) done me by Agamemnon son of Atreus?
Well, I will tell you something which I think will certainly be done as I say:
for this arrogance of his at some time soon he will loose his life.' (trans. Hammond)
Here it is most certainly Achilles who is the victim of hubris. Furthermore, however, he also connects hubris with what is translated by Hammond as 'arrogance', a translation of huperopliêisi, defined in the LSJ dictionary as 'presumptuousness'. Both hubris and huperoplia describe points at which one of Delphi's great warnings, gnôthi seauton 'know yourself', has not been heeded.
Given this understanding of hubris, the question remains whether lasciuia could be an attempt to render it into Latin. Now, my Latin is somewhat out of practise, so I would be grateful if anyone can prove me right or wrong. At this stage, I think lasciuia could well be just that, and for this sense of the word I now give you some Sallust (BJ 41.3):
When that fear [of an enemy], however, was removed from their minds, licentiousness and pride (lasciuia atque superbia), evils which prosperity loves to foster, immediately began to prevail. (trans. Watson)
Sallust's linkage between these two nouns, it strikes me, imply a certain form of connection between the two, even if that link is not brought out by Watson's rather old translation. If I had to try to pinpoint the meaning or sense of lasciuia here I would be tempted to suggest something along the lines of 'excessive frivolity', where the extent of people's freedom of action causes others negative effects, although I realize here I may be over-emphasizing the connections I think can exist between lasciuia and hubris.
Suppose, for a moment, that I am right. What would this actually change about how we think about the story or Hipponax' poetry more generally? If the connection between hubris and lasciuia is viable, I would suggest that there is a strong possibility the usage reflects an originally Hipponactean poem, in which Hipponax emphasizes their act as a hubristic one. In turn, I would say that this could then be connected to the way Hipponax presents himself, and his rivalry with Bupalus, in his poetry more generally. Hipponax is very fond of using the figure of Odysseus in various ways in his poetry and dealing with Bupalus. A relatively uncontentious example would be the papyrus containing fragments 74-7. Fragment 74 seems to be a title beginning with the letters odu, usually taken as a reference to the Odyssey or Odysseus himself, and the other fragments contain a variety of references to Odyssean stories, and to Bupalus. The reason hubris matters to Hipponax' aligning of his persona with Odysseus is that hubris is a much stronger theme throughout the Odyssey than in the Iliad. Hipponax' emphasis of the hubristic element of Bupalus and Athenis' statue, I shall end by suggesting, would therefore be entirely in keeping with and almost certainly part of Hipponax' broader poetic strategy.
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