the ants come marching 2 x 2

[thanate]

question for the lj brain trust, as it were: can anyone else find the ancient greek lettering for the inscriptions over the door at the delphic oracle? (gnothi seaton (know thyself) & mede agan (all things in moderation)) I feel that I used to know how they were actually spelled, but my brain does not play well with non-english, and all my classics notes are put away in boxes.

My attempts to cull this information from the internet have gotten me nothing helpful, although I have learned that there's a woman on myspace who goes by the name of Gnothi Seaton. I would have friended her, except she didn't look like the sort of person who would get on with Psychokiller Barbie.

Also, there are a great many doll pictures gathering in my "things I haven't gotten around to posting yet" folder, but I still haven't posted them yet. You can tell, can't you? Now I get to decide whether to go to climbing, or the library. Hm...

Comments

[laeticiav.livejournal.com]

Finally, a question I can answer:

Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10.24.1: Γνῶθι σαυτὸν καὶ Μηδὲν ἄγαν.

Sometimes uncontracted σεαυτόν rather than σαυτὸν

Here's the whole passage courtesy of Tufts' Perseus library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0159&layout=&loc=10.24.1), with the font set to Unicode, which might be an imperfect font, but it's the only one I've managed to set up for Perseua on my Mac.

ταῦτα μὲν δὴ οὕτω γενόμενα ἴστω τις: ἐν δὲ τῷ προνάῳ τῷ ἐν Δελφοῖς γεγραμμένα ἐστὶν ὠφελήματα ἀνθρώποις ἐς βίον, ἐγράφη δὲ ὑπὸ ἀνδρῶν οὓς γενέσθαι σοφοὺς λέγουσιν Ἕλληνες. οὗτοι δὲ ἦσαν ἐκ μὲν Ἰωνίας Θαλῆς τε Μιλήσιος καὶ Πριηνεὺς Βίας, Αἰολέων δὲ τῶν ἐν Λέσβῳ Πιττακὸς Μιτυληναῖος, ἐκ δὲ Δωριέων τῶν ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ Κλεόβουλος Λίνδιος, καὶ Ἀθηναῖός τε Σόλων καὶ Σπαρτιάτης Χίλων: τὸν δὲ ἕβδομον Πλάτων ὁ Ἀρίστωνος ἀντὶ Περιάνδρου τοῦ Κυψέλου Μύσωνα κατείλοχε τὸν Χηνέα: κώμη δὲ ἐν τῇ Οἴτῃ τῷ ὄρει ᾠκοῦντο αἱ Χῆναι. οὗτοι οὖν οἱ ἄνδρες ἀφικόμενοι ἐς Δελφοὺς ἀνέθεσαν τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι τὰ ᾀδόμενα Γνῶθι σαυτὸν καὶ Μηδὲν ἄγαν.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Yay! I knew someone knew these things! (and it is a good thing I asked, as I was getting my vowels very confused, despite pronouncing them right. :/ I wish my brain got on better with other languages...) Thanks!

[laeticiav.livejournal.com]

What are you using the Greek for? I like 'know thyself,' although I suck at 'all things in moderation...'
I'm not much of a linguist -- I acquired Latin through sheer force of will and Greek always flitted at the peripheries of my mind and even though my teachers seemed fooled, I felt that in some fundamental way it has always eluded me. I guess I never moved from translating to reading .

[thanate.livejournal.com]

It's one of the things I want to keep in my head, but now specifically because I was thinking of a) signs over the craft room doors (since I feel that it might hurt the resale value of the house to carve things into the nice wide doorframes) and b) doll tattoos, ideas pending, as version 1 didn't work out as well as I might have liked. Also, I found a chart of several early alphabets (http://www.ancientscripts.com/greek.html) that makes me lament that I have no excuse to use the Corinthian beta. Oh well.

I didn't fail my second semester of Greek only because the professor took pity on three of us who were classical civ majors and needed it to graduate, and gave us a remedial session. One of the more humbling experiences of my life; it didn't seem to matter how much time I spent studying, because virtually nothing of the linguistic structure managed to stick in my brain. Whereas most of the random trivia words & phrases I learned in the history classes I can still say, if not spell properly.