{"id":1381,"date":"2007-03-07T07:56:57","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T12:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/giving-old-meaning-to-homecoming\/"},"modified":"2007-03-07T07:58:13","modified_gmt":"2007-03-07T12:58:13","slug":"giving-old-meaning-to-homecoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/giving-old-meaning-to-homecoming","title":{"rendered":"Giving old meaning to “homecoming”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lately, I’ve been rediscovering my inner classics-geek. I guess it might be obvious from the contents of this blog, between those Monday Morning Montaigne snippets and my return to the Iliad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During the weekend, I opened up the Poetics<\/a> so I could try to make a smartass point about Alcestis<\/a> & Admetus (for That Thing I’m Trying To Write). I never had a productive time with Aristotle, but I’m trying to convince myself that this was partly because of the tiny typesetting of the Penguin editions I used to read.<\/p>\n

Last night, I got a brochure in the mail from my graduate school, the inestimably important (to me) St. John’s College<\/a>. The college is launching a continuing education program for alumni, consisting of weekend (or slightly longer) sessions on some of the great books.<\/p>\n

The first offering, Aristotle & Aquinas on the Unity of Intellect, didn’t appeal to me too much, but the second one, a 4-day session in June on the Odyssey<\/a>, made me wince and got the wheels turning in my head: “Hmm. . . if I get ahead on my Top Pharma Companies report a bit, I can afford to head down to Annapolis Thursday morning and get home Sunday night. . .”<\/p>\n

I saved the flyer. This morning, when I looked it over, I noticed something strange. See, this being St. John’s, the program is named after the port where Socrates and his buddies had the conversation that comprises The Republic<\/a>. It’s a typically intelligent gesture for a place that New York magazine once called “a school for hyperliterate misfits.”<\/p>\n

That said, the school is referring to the program as “Pireaus”, and that’s what struck me as odd. I had to run downstairs to my library to check that I wasn’t misremembering, but as far as I can tell, it’s supposed to be “Piraeus”, not “Pireaus”. That’s how Bloom has it, and that’s how Jowett has it. Unfortunately, I can’t find my Greek\/English lexicon down there (I’ve got a ton of books, okay? And, yes, I do<\/em> own a Greek\/English lexicon), and don’t have a Greek version of The Republic around.<\/p>\n

So, can anyone (that means you, brother) get me a ruling on why they’re called it Pireaus?<\/p>\n

(Now if I can just make an early start on those Top Company reports. . .)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately, I’ve been rediscovering my inner classics-geek. I guess it might be obvious from the contents of this blog, between those Monday Morning Montaigne snippets and my return to the Iliad. During the weekend, I opened up the Poetics so I could try to make a smartass point about Alcestis & Admetus (for That Thing … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Giving old meaning to “homecoming””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-mh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}