The Mything Link
Kalimera! (Good day, in modern Greek)
Mild-mannered mythology major seeks creative minds, armchair travellers, art lovers, and born-again pagans for a ramble through the ruins of ancient Greece.
I came there last spring for the first time in the flesh, where I have been going in my imagination for almost 30 years. Through much of that time I have been earning a degree or two in classics, ancient Greece and Rome, with a little Egypt and Crete and Sumer thrown in for good measure. But I never quite fit in academia. Back when I worked on the Perseus Project in 1993, my personal homepage said, "other scholars beat the ancient world to death, when it's already dead. I want to bring it to life."
There are red, red poppies growing up through the cracks in the marble monuments of Eleusis, where rites to Demeter and Persephone promised initiates immortality.
In the ruins of Athena's shrine on Mt. Parnassos, where Gaia had a sanctuary guarded by a python long before Apollo slew her serpent and stole her oracle, green snakes still glide in the tall grasses beneath dusky olive trees.
The acoustics at the great theater of Epidauros are still sound enough that if you dare to recite Homer-- "Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles--" your voice will carry clear up the mountainside to the topmost seats.
Listen. Akoue. I'm going to tell you a story.
posted by Greek Geek | 9:50 PM
3 Comments:
Just a friendly heads up. Next time you start a blog you might wanan take a look if the title is already takes and if it is copyrighted...
Thanks for the tip! However, if you Google "It's All Greek To Me", you'll see that many stores, shops, websites, and books with that title. Why? Copyright laws follow common sense. One can't copyright or claim exclusive rights to commonly-used phrases like "that's the way the cookie crumbles" or "easy come, easy go" (or even "Greek goddess") anymore than one can copyright oxygen. Too many people use it.
In fact, companies that invent something have to be careful that their product name doesn't fall into common usage. Bayer lost its trademark to "aspirin" after the courts ruled that people were using "aspirin" for more than just their own pills.
The phrase "It's all Greek to me" actually has a fascinating history. It seems to have arisen during the Middle Ages when scribes who knew Latin but not Greek would write, "It's Greek, it can't be read" in places where classical authors or church fathers quoted Greek texts.
My favorite usage of the phrase is in Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning, where a befuddled pastor exclaims, "It's all Greek to me... except, of course, I understand Greek."
Admittedly it would've been wiser for me to name my page something unusual, so that it would turn up near the top of Google searches! :)
That's the harbor of Naxos, one of the Greek islands.
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