Ancient Greek puns

Puns may be the lowest form of humour these days, but in early Greek literature, they’re more like word magic.

... τὸν δορίγαμβρον ἀμφινεικῆ θ’
Ἑλέναν; ἐπεὶ πρεπόντως
ἑλέναυς ἕλανδρος ἑλέπτολις.

(Who was it that named) that spear-bride,
that bone of contention, Helen? A fitting name!
Ship-destroyer, man-destroyer, city-destroyer.

Aischylos, Agamemnon 688–690

In the last line Helen is helenaus, helandros, heleptolis. This kind of wordplay is a formidable translation problem. Later in the play, Kassandra complains that the god Apollo has destroyed her: apollōn emos, apōlesas gar ‘my destroyer, for you have destroyed (me)’ (1080–1081).

‘Greek vase’ meme. Transcription: ‘Oh you hate ancient Greek puns? My Apollogies.’

This is one of the grimmest plays in the corpus of Athenian tragedy. It doesn’t do humour. No one in the audience in 458 BCE groaned or cracked a smile at this line.

It’s about word magic. Many Greek thinkers believed there was an inherent link between language and the things it refers to. Logos literally means ‘word’, but its connotations could go a lot further. For 5th century BCE Greeks, there was a deep importance to the contrast between logos and ergon: speech and action, theory and practice, intent and outcome. The Stoics went further and used logos to refer to the principle that the universe behaves intelligibly and self-consistently.

Wordplay in Homer

So when we find wordplay in Homer, don’t assume it’s for laughs. There’s one story that explains that Odysseus’ grandfather chose his name because the grandfather was always getting people angry at him (odyss-amenos, Odyssey 19.407). That episode is memorable because it’s precisely about the wordplay.

But the most famous pun is the ‘nobody’ trick that Odysseus uses to fool the Cyclops.

Then from the cave strong Polyphemos addressed them:
‘O friends, Nobody [Outis] is killing me by trickery or violence.’
In answer they spoke winged words:
‘If nobody [mē tis] is doing violence to you on your own, —
well, there’s no way to avoid a plague sent by great Zeus!
Go and pray to your father the lord Poseidon.’
So they spoke and went away. And my own heart laughed,
at how my name deceived them, and my excellent trick [mētis].

Odyssey 9.407–414

The fake name Outis is simply the Greek for ‘no one, nobody’. Ou tis (οὔ τις) and mē tis (μή τις) are grammatical variants of ‘nobody’. And mētis (μῆτις) is the word for a cunning trick, something particularly associated with Odysseus. He even has his own stock epithet polymētis ‘full of tricks’.

I can’t say that there’s no hint of humour at all — Odysseus does mock the Cyclops at certain moments — but that isn’t what this moment is about. When Odysseus gave the fake name in an earlier scene, it wasn’t mockery, it was a meaningful statement about his own isolation.

‘Nobody [Outis] is my name. Nobody is what they always call me —
my mother, my father, and all my other friends.’

Odyssey 9.366–367

Odysseus is stuck in No Man’s Land during his ten years of wandering, isolated from the community that frames his personal identity. He’s the original Man with No Name.

Note. If he were really pushing the grammatical ambiguity the second ‘Nobody’, in the accusative form, could have been followed by a word starting with a vowel: then it’d be ambiguous whether he was saying Οὖτιν as a proper name or οὔ τιν’ meaning ‘no one’. The Cyclops does use the accusative form ambiguously in this way, at line 369. (I’m over-analysing this, I know. I’m not alone, at least: Eustathios makes similar comments.)

What, you think it’s a coincidence that the first line of the epic just refers to Odysseus as ‘a man’, without mentioning his name? Moments where Odysseus’ name is revealed are significant moments.

When Odysseus starts revealing himself to his family, the moment is packed with wordplay, as Simon Goldhill has pointed out (1991: 10). Here’s how he introduces himself to his son Telemachos:

οὔ τίς τοι θεός εἰμι· τί μ’ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐΐσκεις;
ἀλλὰ πατὴρ τεός εἰμι.

‘I am nobody’s god. Why compare me to the immortals?
But I am your father.’

Odyssey 16.187–188

At no point does he actually tell Telemachos his name. Just like in the first line of the Odyssey, he’s a nameless man. Instead, we get wordplay linking these two lines together: ou ... tʰeos eimi ‘I am not a god’, teos eimi ‘I am yours’. At the same time, he echoes the Outis/Nobody trick from the Cyclops episode: ou tis tʰeos eimi ‘I am Nobody-god, I am no(body’s) god.’

He goes on to say, ‘no other Odysseus is going to come’ (16.204). But he never comes out and says ‘I am Odysseus’ to anyone on Ithaca. He doesn’t say ‘Odysseus’ when he’s being reunited with anyone in his family or household, and he doesn’t say it when he reveals himself to the suitors.

An article by Norman Austin (1972) looks into how Telemachos, Penelope, and the others also avoid using his name. Austin interprets them as trying to protect Odysseus by concealing his identity; Douglas Olson (1992) shows that it’s deeper than that. It’s about ‘name-magic’.

Groaning statue meme. Transcription: ‘εἰ πυρὸς αἰθομένου μέσσην ἑκατοντάδα θείης, / παρθένου εὑρήσεις υἱέα καὶ φονέα’ ‘If you put a hundred in the middle of a blazing fire, you’ll find a virgin’s son and a murderer’ (Greek anthology 14.20). The wordplay in this riddle is in a more modern vein: it’s entertainment, not word magic. The solution is to insert the Greek numeral ρ into the word for ‘of fire’. In Greek legend Pyrrhos is the bloodthirsty son of Achilleus and Deidameia. (NB: this isn’t actually a Greek statue. It’s Henri Vidal’s ‘Cain’ (1896) in the Jardin des Tuileries, Paris.)

But there’s wordplay on Odysseus’ name in the Odyssey’s very first scene, too. When Athena is trying to persuade Zeus that it’s time for Odysseus to be allowed to go home, her speech is full of his name.

‘For me it’s about Odysseus, dystroyer in battle; my heart is dystracted;
a dysolate man for dysperately long, in agony away from his family ...
Atlas’ daughter (Kalypso) holds him dystressed, so dyspondent,
constantly with soothing and seductive words. ...
By the ships of the Argives he pleased you with sacrifices
in broad Troy: why are you so dysgusted now, Zeus?’

Odyssey 1.48–62

Yes, this translation is rather contrived. The Greek is too. It’s full of words like dysmorōi, dystēnon, odyromenon, and ōdysao, as well as a cluster of da- and dē- sounds in the first two lines.

The same wordplay turns up in the Cyclops episode, too. Straight after the mētis/outis ‘trick/nobody’ punchline, the very next line describes the Cyclops’ agony from being blinded —

Κύκλωψ δὲ στενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ὀδύνῃσι ...

But the Cyclops, groaning and dystressed in his dyscomforts ...

Odyssey 9.415

There are no thorough monographs on wordplay in Homer, but there are several articles (Dimock 1956; Austin 1972; Olson 1992; Louden 1995; Ahl 2002). There’s a lot to choose from. There’s wordplay on the name of Achilleus, who brings akʰos to the laos, pain to the people, a motif echoed implicitly in the opening lines of the Iliad, and more explicitly elsewhere (e.g. 6.413–414, 16.21–22, 23.136–137). There’s play on the prophet Teiresias, whose name is evoked by the weariness of Odysseus’ men (teireto ... eiresiēs ‘(their heart) was worn by rowing’, Odyssey 10.78). Penelope’s story of the Gates of Horn and Ivory has a bundle of wordplays on elepʰas ‘ivory’ (Odyssey 19.563–565), as well as a day ‘of dysonant name’ (dysōnymos, Odyssey 19.571). And so on.

Aischylos’ heavenly pisspot

There’s a wordplay — possibly two — in two fragments of Aischylos’ lost plays, which I’m fairly sure have never been noticed in any scholarly publications. The plays are part of Aischylos’ lost Odysseus tetralogy, specifically, the Psychagōgoi and Ostologoi (‘soul-summoners’ and ‘bone gatherers’). The tetralogy as a whole related Odysseus’ consultation of Teiresias, his return home, his confrontation with Penelope’s suitors, and probably, his death.

In one fragment of the Psychagōgoi, the ghost of Teiresias prophesies the future:

For a heron flying on high
will strike you with dung, the excrement of its bowels;
after this, a sea beast’s spine
will corrupt your skin, ancient and shedding hair.

Aischylos fr. 275 Radt

There was a genre of Greek poetry in the 6th–5th centuries BCE called chresmologic poetry, or ‘oracle collecting’, which purported to consist of prophecies about the future. Only fragments survive, but those fragments are couched in enigmatic references, obscure symbolism, and sometimes, wordplay. Aischylos’ surviving plays sometimes adopt this style — notably in Agamemnon, in the opening chorus and in the Kassandra scene (especially 133–137, 147–155, 1219–1225) — and this fragment fits right in. What are the enigmatic references here?

The ‘sea beast’s spine’ is the only bit where there’s widespread agreement. This is usually thought to prophesy Odysseus’ death, killed by his illegitimate son Telegonos, using a spear tipped with the spine of a poisonous ray. The satyr play of the tetralogy is named after Telegonos’ mother, Kirke, and other sources for the Telegonos story refer to Odysseus’ extreme old age at the time, so this is a very good bet.

What about the first two lines? Some 20th century commentators were so revolted by the supposed violation of tragic propriety by mentioning faeces that they insisted they must be the kind of thing you’d find in a vulgar satyr play.

But this is chresmologic poetry. Aischylos mentions birds a lot, and they’re nearly always omens, or symbolic (Pollard 1948). There’s wordplay here — word magic. It pains me that most scholarly articles about this fragment are earnestly certain that it’s about a poisonous spine literally embedded in a literal heron’s faeces. It’s like saying that the opening chorus of Agamemnon really is just about some eagles eating a rabbit.

Note. I won’t name names. Instead, for decent overviews of the Odysseus tetralogy see Gantz 1980: 151–153; Katsouris 1982.

Here’s a fragment from a subsequent play in the tetralogy, the Ostologoi. Odysseus recalls how one of the suitors once mistreated him:

[Eurymachos] is the one who once, for a joke,
threw a foul-smelling pisspot at me.
He threw and did not miss! And about my head
it crashed and was wrecked in shards,
and it gave me a stench, the opposite of myrrh ...

Aischylos fr. 180 Radt

Fr. 179 also refers to the incident. It echoes similar incidents in the Odyssey, where various suitors throw objects at the disguised Odysseus.

Note. Threats of throwing a stool at Odyssey 17.229–246, 405–412; stools actually thrown at 17.458–491, 18.394–404; a cow’s foot thrown at 20.299–319.

The word magic is on the word for ‘pisspot’, ouranē. This must be what Teiresias is referring to when he mentions excrement coming ‘from on high’ — because ouranos is the standard word for ‘sky’.

Ouranē ‘pisspot’ and ouranos ‘sky’ aren’t etymologically related to one another. (If you’re interested, they are related to English ‘urine’ and the planet ‘Uranus’, respectively.) But obviously there’s room for wordplay. The excrement that strikes Odysseus is ‘from on high’ because it was inside an ouranē.

So Teiresias is actually prophesying two separate incidents: (1) Eurymachos throwing the pisspot — excrement coming ‘from on high’ and out of an ouranē — and (2) afterwards, Odysseus being killed by a poisonous spine in old age.

What about the heron? This is more obscure and speculative. The key, I suspect, lies in geography, though this is only an inference. My sense is that it’s related to the city of Ardea in central Italy. This is because (a) we know that by the 6th century BCE Kirke’s home was imagined as being in central Italy at Monte Circeo; (b) numerous cities in Latium and Etruria had foundation legends involving children of Odysseus, Kirke, or both, including both Telegonos and Telemachos (see Phillips 1953; the second half of this piece); (c) one of these is the city of Ardea, whose name is the Latin for ‘heron’. Ardea even had herons on its coinage.

Note. The heron–Ardea link was pointed out to me more than a decade ago by Alison Griffith. I apologise to her for still not getting it into a proper publication.

So an enigmatic reference to a heron could suggest children of Odysseus and Kirke. In principle it could also be less specific, linking these children to augury (ancient augurs saw a flying heron as a good omen). It’d be very much in keeping with Aischylos’ style to have a single passage carrying many meanings at once. Still, I’ll allow that this wordplay is less clear-cut. For the ‘excrement from on high’ wordplay, we have fragments explcitly reporting the payoff of the prophecy: we don’t have that for the heron.

Word magic and the gods

The important thing is that something like an οὐράνη οὐράνια, a ‘heavenly pisspot’, is no joke. It represents a prophet’s mastery of the relationship between language and reality. That relationship is enigmatic, and that’s why Greek chresmologic poetry is couched in enigmas. If words are linked to real objects, then wordplay is a statement about links between things in the real world.

This became important in literary criticism, and even theology, in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. There was a vogue for treating the sounds of gods’ names as meaningful.

This isn’t the space for a wide-ranging review, but we touched on it at the start with Kassandra’s wordplay on ‘Apollo’ and apollōn ‘destroyer’. The Homeric commentator Theagenes of Rhegion interpreted the battle of the gods in Iliad 20–21 in naturalistic terms, each god representing a force of nature; and for two of the gods, the symbolism lies in their name, Hera = ἀήρ ‘air’ and Leto = λήθη ‘forgetfulness’. Then there are several theological wordplays in the Derveni papyrus, which states that ‘Rhea’ and ‘Hera’ are one and the same because they contain the same letters (at least in the pre-Ionic Attic alphabet), that Demeter is also called ‘Deio’ because she was ‘torn’ (ἐδηιώθη) by sexual intercourse, and that Kronos is a primordial ‘colliding mind’ (κρου- + νοῦς). This kind of mysticism is the proper context for wordplay in Greek literature up to the 5th century BCE.

References

• Ahl, F. 2002. ‘Wordplay and apparent fiction in the Odyssey.’ Arethusa 35: 117–132. [JSTOR]
• Austin, N. 1972. ‘Name magic in the Odyssey.’ California studies in classical antiquity 5: 1–19. [DOI | JSTOR]
• Dimock, G. E. 1956. ‘The name of Odysseus.’ The Hudson review 9: 52–70. [DOI | JSTOR]
• Gantz, T. 1980. ‘The Aischylean tetralogy: attested and conjectured groups.’ American journal of philology 101: 133–164. [JSTOR]
• Katsouris, A. 1982. ‘Aeschylus’ “Odyssean” tetralogy.’ Dioniso 53: 47–60.
• Louden, B. 1995. ‘Categories of Homeric wordplay.’ Transactions of the American Philological Association 125: 27–46. [DOI | JSTOR]
• Olson, S. D. 1992. ‘“Name-magic” and the threat of lying strangers in Homer’s Odyssey.’ Illinois classical studies 17: 1–7. [JSTOR]
• Phillips, E. D. 1953. ‘Odysseus in Italy.’ Journal of Hellenic studies 73: 53–67. [DOI | JSTOR]
• Pollard, J. R. T. 1948. ‘Birds in Aeschylus.’ Greece & Rome 17: 116–127. [DOI | JSTOR]