Re: Appropriate Ancient Spelling for Hephaistion...
Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 6:53 pm
Oh the joy of 'motion towards'! i don't think Greek has changed as much vis-a-vis structure or vocabulary from the koine and the modern day as much as a more hybrid language like English has from Elizabethan to the present. I too remember a bus journey where I wanted to go to Thebes in Boeotia which is Thiva now but I was saying Thivai, or vice versa and had to resort to 'Ho polis Kadmou' which everyone suddenly understood and good job too, the other place was about twenty miles away from where i thought I wanted to be, great museum, not a great town, IMHO.
One of the lecturers at my Uni was an expert in spoken Ancient Greek, as far as anyone can be, and I remember him basically singing a passage of Thukydides with all the pitch changes; I think that a rhapsode only accompanied himself with his kithaidra or whatever, rather than singing along to a melody as in a modern song despite poets always talking of 'singing' but I am morethan willing to be set straight on that if there is any evidence; I imagine their performances more like William Shatner than Carole Carpenter and nthing like Ronnie James Dio, blessed be his name.
One of the lecturers at my Uni was an expert in spoken Ancient Greek, as far as anyone can be, and I remember him basically singing a passage of Thukydides with all the pitch changes; I think that a rhapsode only accompanied himself with his kithaidra or whatever, rather than singing along to a melody as in a modern song despite poets always talking of 'singing' but I am morethan willing to be set straight on that if there is any evidence; I imagine their performances more like William Shatner than Carole Carpenter and nthing like Ronnie James Dio, blessed be his name.