Ἐχθρῶν ἄδωρα ______.
reveal/hide answer
Ἐχθρῶν ἄδωρα δῶρα.______ ἔχεις.
reveal/hide answer
Γαλῆν ἔχεις.Ἀφ᾽ ἵππων ἐπ᾽ ______.
reveal/hide answer
Ἀφ᾽ ἵππων ἐπ᾽ ὄνον.______ αἰδοῦ.
reveal/hide answer
Πρεσβύτερον αἰδοῦ.Ἅπας ἐχῖνος ______.
reveal/hide answer
Ἅπας ἐχῖνος τραχύς.Ἐχθρῶν ἄδωρα δῶρα.
The gifts of your enemies (are) not gifts.
Literally, the gifts of your enemies are un-gifts, ἄ-δωρα. Ajax quotes this proverb in Socrates's play of the same name.
Γαλῆν ἔχεις.
You've got the weasel.
The weasel was a very bad omen, so telling someone that they have a weasel means that they are unlucky and going to get into trouble as a result. Compare the evil omen of a black cat crossing your path in English; there is a lot of folkloric overlap between weasels and cats (the ancient Greeks kept weasels in their houses to control mice; later, they adopted the Egyptian practice of keeping cats as pets).
Ἀφ᾽ ἵππων ἐπ᾽ ὄνον.
From horses to a donkey.
Other versions go from horses to donkeys, plural: ᾿Αφ’ ἵππων ἐπ’ ὄνους. Whether a person goes from horses to donkeys in the plural or from horses to just one donkey, it is clearly a big comedown. You can see ἵππο- in many Greek names, such as Hippocrates and Hippodamia. AFAIK, there are no Greek donkey names!
Πρεσβύτερον αἰδοῦ.
Respect an elder.
This is one of the so-called Delphic maxims recorded by Stobaeus. This one also has a comparative adjective; πρεσβύτερος is the comparative form of πρέσβυς, meaning "older, elder." This is the root of the English word "Presbyterian." Greek πρεσβύτερος is also the origin of English "priest."
Ἅπας ἐχῖνος τραχύς.
The whole hedgehog is prickly.
As Erasmus explains, this saying refers to a person who is "prickly" by analogy to the prickly hedgehog. In the same way that there is no un-prickly part of a hedgehog that allows you to safely pick it up, so too there are some people who are impossible to deal with no matter what you try to do: they are completely prickly. The adjective ἅπας is a compound: ἁ-πᾶς, "together-all." That initial alpha is not the alpha-privative, which is very common in Greek. Instead, this is the alpha-copulative, which is much less common, and which is weirdly the opposite of the alpha-privative. You can read more at Wikipedia about both the alpha-privative and alpha-copulative.
reveal/hide answer
Ἐχθρῶν ἄδωρα δῶρα.______ ἔχεις.
reveal/hide answer
Γαλῆν ἔχεις.Ἀφ᾽ ἵππων ἐπ᾽ ______.
reveal/hide answer
Ἀφ᾽ ἵππων ἐπ᾽ ὄνον.______ αἰδοῦ.
reveal/hide answer
Πρεσβύτερον αἰδοῦ.Ἅπας ἐχῖνος ______.
reveal/hide answer
Ἅπας ἐχῖνος τραχύς.
And to finish up, here's a random proverb and a random LOLCat too:
No comments:
Post a Comment