thanks to nathaniel who pointed me to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_phrases
for a handy [though very cursory] list of greek phrases. the beginnings of a greek *bartlett's familiar quotations*, if you will.
at nathaniel's encouragement, i created a wikipedia account for myself, and added my first edit of a wiki article. nathaniel had pointed out that there was no entry for khalepa ta kala; this simply would not do.
thanks moreover to matt, who had emailed separately asking for the precise citation for this proverb in plato. as you'll see from the wiki page, i've located it in book 4 of the *republic* [stephanus page 435c, at the very end of that section; he calls it to legomenon, i.e., a 'saying' -- a synonym for gnômê or 'proverb']. i'm pretty sure i've read it in the *laws* too, but i'll have to keep searching for it there [and the *laws* is a biggish dialogue].
meanwhile, this passage in the *republic* is important for other reasons: here is where plato correlates his famous tripartite division of the psukhê to aspects of a polis. [brief aside on psukhê: what is that, anyway? the 'mind'? the 'inner self'? probably 'soul' is not the best translation for psukhê in plato, as it brings with it some christian religious connotations that would have quite bewildered socrates or plato. FWIW, however, psukhê is precisely the word that early christian writers do use for 'soul'; this may, among other things, tell us something about how they read *plato*.] you can read the passage online, in english, by clicking here.
well, nobody said any of this -- least of all, plato -- was easy. but it's worth knowing. or, to put it another way: KHALEPA TA KALA.
5 comments:
I'm very glad you decided to create a Wikipedia account. Since it is completely open to anyone, support from more people will result in continued improvement. One thing I would like to point out is that the other phrases listed on that page contain the Greek writings of them. I encourage you to exam the editing help page (and other help pages too) and learn about Wiki markup and other things (Note: I haven't done any actual editing myself, so I'm not very knowledgeable about it). This will allow you to enhance your additions both in content and format. Regular Greek letters are simple to add, but accented characters seem to require a Unicode value or something (you can look at the other sections of the phrases page to get an idea). Learning and doing all of this is quite time-consuming, I'm sure, and obviously not required, but the more comprehensive information that is added, the better Wikipedia becomes.
[Nathaniel] I'm very glad you decided to create a Wikipedia account.
thanks. and it's high time, too; i've known about wikipedia since the very beginning. in fact, around the same time as wikipedia.com was born, i was on the advisory board for another, closely-related encyclopedia --nupedia.com -- that was being designed along the same lines. the conceptual difference was that wikipedia was to be for quick, easy additions ['wiki' means 'fast' in hawaiian], and nupedia was intended for carefully-written essays vetted by an editorial team of experts.
many such entries, on classical subjects, were actually written and vetted for nupedia, but [fortunately or un-] it eventually went defunct. i think the process was too, essentially, *twentieth-century* for the internet. their vision was to assemble a vast, free online encyclopedia to rival the *britannica* and so forth. but such projects are typically many years in the making. whereas [it's important to remember] the average lifespan of a web page is 90 days. that average is heavily impacted by the inclusion of many throw-aways, of course, but my point still stands: the spirit of the internet is speed.
wikipedia, true to its name, has come to critical mass very quickly -- exponentially more so than nupedia ever could have done. and honestly, most of the wiki entries i have read so far have been at least adequate. some of them are of remarkable quality. what seems to have happened here is that the 'online community' [i.e. a *portion* of it] has rallied round a project that they care about, and decided it's worth careful, ongoing attention. when you assemble that much energy and talent and focus them on such an endeavor, the results can be very impressive indeed.
but while we're quoting proverbs from antiquity, one in *latin* might be apposite here: FESTINA LENTE, 'make haste slowly.' sure, the internet is about instantaneity, but rome was not built in a day. we're back to KHALEPA TA KALA in fact: most of the things we achieve in this life that are really worth doing, do take some effort -- and [often] time. so while wikipedia is off and running, in record time, it is not going to come into its plenitude overnight: for it to actualize its full potential is going to take time and thought and effort and lots of generous thinking.
[Andy] The problem I believe we are facing is that many of todays experts with real field experience were trained in their particular discipline in a day when the internet was still in its infancy; that is, it is only a recent phenomenon that one can gain enormous notability through online publishing (in the grand scheme).
this is exactly right, on both counts: many of those who are leaders in the field in classics [to look no further] came to maturity *before* the internet was invented. some of them have become extremely techno-savvy [in fact david packard, of hewlett-packard fame, has a PhD in *classics*], but others are quite allergic to computer technology.
i imagine there are parallels to be found in other academic fields as well. but time will smooth out these wrinkles.
another wrinkle, also mentioned here, is that the academy is somewhat leery of online publication. this is not without logic: to publish a scholarly book in the traditional fashion, you have to go through a rigorous refereeing and vetting process that takes at least a couple of years [this is after you've written the whole first draft]; to publish a book online, all you need is an internet connection and some server space. so there's as yet no reliable quality-control apparatus in place for such endeavors.
with something like wikipedia it's a bit different; an open-source, multi-author document like this is actually undergoing constant and fairly rigorous scrutiny [and can be repeatedly corrected as mistakes are found]. so over time, again, it's liable to atttain very high quality indeed.
I have been using this phrase MUCH too often recently.
I have been using this phrase MUCH too often recently.
LOL! that just shows how true/applicable it is! does it have to do with the time of year, do you think -- the academic crunch?
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