greek

On this date in 44 BCE, on the fifteenth (or ides, in the Roman calendar) of March, Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated by a conspiracy of dissatisfied senators, including his good friend Brutus. As Shakespeare has it (and didn’t Shakespeare have it?):

CAESAR. The Ides of March are come.
SOOTHSAYER. Ay, Caesar, but not gone.

His famous last words are, naturally, legend. As the inimitable folks of I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again once put it:

Bill Oddie: Well, I know his famous last words!
David Hatch: And what were they?
Bill: Err…quod erat demonstrandum.
David: That means ‘which was to be proved’.
Bill: What was to be proved?
David: Which was to be proved!
Bill: Well, no wonder they were his last words.

Caesar’s last words were reported by Plutarch to be καὶ σὺ τέκνον; (’You too, my son?’) and literally translated by Suetonius as tu quoque, fili mi? (’You too, my son?’). However, the translation given in Shakespeare of et tu, Brute? is undoubtedly more popular and famous. Also, it flows better, despite the fact that Caesar, like other educated, upper-class Romans, would have probably spoken Greek in day-to-day use, unlike the vulgar Latin of the vulgar masses. In fact, there’s a terrific bit of dialogue from the beginning of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that picks up on this quite nicely:

CASSIUS. Did Cicero say anything?
CASCA. Ay, he spoke Greek.
CASSIUS. To what effect?
CASCA. Nay, an I tell you that, I’ll ne’er look you i’ the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.

But let turn back to ISIRTA for the last word:

David Hatch: Eventually, Caesar was stabbed in the Appian Way.
Bill Oddie: And that’s a very nasty way to be stabbed!
David: I’m sorry, did I say he was stabbed in the Appian Way? I meant he was stabbed in the Senate.
Bill: That’s even nastier.

My students asked me what they could do to commemorate the Ides of March, and I told them to stab their best friends before their friends could stab them. A good bit of advice, that, especially if you’re an ancient Roman, but I wonder how much utility it has today. I do hope they didn’t take me seriously. Ave atque vale, Caesar.

From a former professor of mine who taught Greek, Latin, and literary theory, with a side order of Marxism and New Historicism:

The status quo is oppressive. In fact, it’s a bit like studying Greek: you get up early in the morning to come in here and talk about Pindar, and you do it because you like it. But you only think that because you’ve been oppressed!

Today’s Dinosaur Comics speaks to one of the long-debated paradoxes of classical scholarship:

I’m not sure I agree with T. Rex, however—and I’m not sure the classics world would either. As the chorus say in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus 1225, μὴ φῦναι τὸν ἅπαντα νικᾷ λόγον, ‘By all reckoning, it is best not to be born.’ Utahraptor would have something to say to that, I’m sure.

ὑπερβολῇ λέγουσι τὸν Φιλόξενον
τῶν διθυράμβων τὸν ποιητὴν γεγονέναι
ὀψοφάγον. εἶτα πουλύποδα πηχῶν δυεῖν
ἐν ταῖς Συρακούσαις ποτ’ αὐτὸν ἀγοράσαι
καὶ σκευάσαντα καταφαγεῖν ὅλον σχεδὸν
πλὴν τῆς κεφαλῆς. ἁλόντα δ’ ὑπὸ δυσπεψίας
κακῶς σφόδρα σχεῖν· εἶτα δ’ ἰατροῦ τινος
πρὸς αὐτὸν εἰσελθόντος, ὃς φαύλως πάνυ
ὁρῶν φερόμενον αὐτὸν εἶπεν· εἴ τί σοι
ἀνοικονόμητόν ἐστι διατίθου ταχύ,
Φιλόξεν’· ἀποθανῇ γὰρ ὥρας ἑβδόμης.
κἀκεῖνος εἶπε· τέλος ἔχει τὰ πάντα μοι,
ἰατρέ, φησί, καὶ δεδιώκηται πάλαι·
τοὺς διθυράμβους σὺν θεοῖς καταλιμπάνω
ἠνδρωμένους καὶ πάντας ἐστεφανωμένους·
οὓς ἀνατίθημι ταῖς ἐμαυτοῦ συντρόφοις
Μούσαις Ἀφροδίτην καὶ Διόνυσον ἐπιτρόπους—
ταῦθ’ αἱ διαθῆκαι διασαφοῦσιν. ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ
ὁ Τιμοθέου Χάρων σχολάζειν οὐκ ἐᾷ
οὑκ τῆς Νιόβης, χωρεῖν δὲ πορθμίδ’ ἀναβοᾷ,
καλεῖ δὲ μοῖρα νύχιος, ἧς κλύειν χρεών,
ἵν’ ἔχων ἀποτρέχω πάντα τἀμαυτοῦ κάτω,
τοῦ πουλύποδος μοι τὸ κατάλοιπον ἀπόδοτε.

They say that Philoxenus, the poet who wrote dithyrambs, was the biggest glutton of all time. This one time in Syracuse, they say that he bought and ate all of a two-foot-long octopus—almost, except the head. Seized by heartburn, he was in a bad way. A doctor came to him, and seeing that he wasn’t feeling so well, he said, ‘Philoxenus, if there’s anything you need to set straight in your domestic affairs, do it right away, because you’re going to die at the seventh hour.’ Philoxenus replied, ‘All of my belongings are in order, doctor, and were set straight long ago. I leave behind my grown-up dithyrambs, all crowned by the grace of the gods, which I have consecrated to the Muses and Aphrodite and Dionysus—but my will makes all that clear. Seeing as Charon (as in Timotheus’ Niobe) does not permit lingering, and is shouting that his boat is departing, and dark Fate calls, and we must heed her—and so that I can go below with all of my stuff, give me the leftovers of the octopus.’

—The comic poet Machon, in Athenaeus 8.341a–d