Abstract
In general, this article aims at exploring a selected fragment of the Ancient Greek language, namely the metaphors and metonymies related to food and feasting to be found in Old Attic Comedy. More specifically, the aim of the present article is twofold. First, it is to show how food and feasting were indirectly referred to in Ancient Greece by means of metaphor and metonymy. Second, it aims at investigating how food and feasting were used to metaphorically and metonymically talk and, more importantly, think about other spheres of life. In other words, the article is to show how food and feasting were used in Ancient Greece as both sources and targets of metaphoric and metonymic operations. Bearing in mind the Cognitive Linguistic principle of the embodiment of language, in order to analyze the selected linguistic expressions, the authors of this article also shed some light on the culture and the way of thinking of Ancient Greeks, or figuratively speaking, as Goethe would have put it, the authors “go to the poet’s land”.
Wer den Dichter will verstehen,
Muẞ in Dichters Lande gehen.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1819) (Whoever wants to understand the poet must go into the poet’s land (translation by Wroth 2007: 68)).
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
ICMs are Idealized Cognitive Models (as described e.g., by Lakoff and Johnson (1980)).
- 3.
There is hardly any agreement among cognitive linguists concerning the definitions of and the differences between metaphor and metonymy (see e.g., Barnden (2010) or Wachowski (2016)). For example metonymy very often is, but does not have to be, a reversible process and metaphor may, but does not have to, involve many systematic conceptual correspondences between certain elements of the source domain and certain elements of the target domain. A more detailed discussion of the problematic issues, however, is beyond the scope of the present article.
- 4.
Storey 2011, p. xvii, vol. I.
- 5.
E.g., the last plays of Aristophanes (a classic Old Comedy author) tend to be perceived as beginning to show Middle Comedy traits.
- 6.
Certainly, the vis comica of Old Comedy had a much broader scope than just the topics chosen by the poet. The comedy authors would jocularly incorporate various poetic genres into their plays, or parody fragments of works by other authors; new coinages would appear, puns, jokes, also sexual, or scatological were ubiquitous. Obviously, the spoken word did not constitute the limits for a comedy author. He would employ a whole range of the actors’ voice emission skills, their body language or stage movement abilities. He would also use stage props, stage machinery and buildings, actors’ costumes and masks, sometimes representing real individuals’ faces. An Old Comedy play, if successful, was a laughing feast for the audience.
- 7.
Ancient Greeks, of the classical period especially, prided themselves on being ‘moderate’ in eating and drinking, unlike ‘barbarians’, especially those to the East (e.g., Persians).
- 8.
The translation by Storey (2011, p. 291, vol. III).
- 9.
The Golden Age, as part of Greek mythology, is first seen in Hesiod’s Works and Days. During that time there supposedly lived the best race of man, the golden race. The then mankind did not have to toil for food as the earth spontaneously provided it in abundance. People lived in peace, never aged and died quietly as if falling asleep. The subsequent ages represent the deterioration of mankind: silver, bronze, heroic and, current (for Hesiod) iron. The imagery of the Golden Age was a popular topic with Old Comedy authors.
- 10.
Bold font in all the original fragments and translations is the authors’ of the article.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
The original text, the fragment number and the translation after Storey (2011, p. 56–57, vol. II).
- 15.
‘Wine, women and wisdom’ (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2017/01-02/ancient-greece-symposium-dinner-party/; access: January 10, 2018).
- 16.
- 17.
Olson (2004, p. 98), a renowned editor of Aristophanes, sees the lexeme’s meaning in this light, similarly to Abramowiczówna, the editor of the largest Greek-Polish dictionary (Abramowiczówna 1958–1965, s.v. παρατίθημι). Its English equivalent, A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell & Scott 1996, s.v. παρατίθημι), gives a somewhat less interesting for us definition: ‘put before, serve up.’ It should be borne in mind, however, that the ‘put before’ translation should probably be viewed through our perspective, where food is placed ‘in front of’ us for us to eat it. The idea of placing food beside the eater seems to be fully corroborated in the light of the meaning of the particle παρ (παρα) in the lexeme παρετίθει: its basic denotation (pertaining to the meaning of the preposition as answering the question ‘where’, of physical arrangements) is ‘by the side, beside’ (Liddell & Scott 1996, s.v. παρά).
- 18.
Cf. Olson 2004, p. 98 footnote to v. 84–7.
- 19.
Synecdoche has been traditionally subsumed under metonymy (as a ‘pars pro toto’ or ‘totum pro parte’ relation). This is why examples of synecdoche are also included in the present article. Still, in recent scholarship synecdoche is also sometimes understood as being ‘independent’ from metonymy in that it is a C relation (category based) and metonymy is an E relation (based on partonomy) (cf. (Burkhardt, 1996; Nerlich & Clarke, 1999; or Nerlich, 2010; Seto, 1995, 1999)). In the present article generic for specific and specific for generic relations, being taxonomical, are referred to as synecdochic and other part-whole (partonomical) relations are referred to as metonymic.
- 20.
E.g., ‘And when they regaled us they forced us to drink fine unmixed wine from goblets of crystal and gold.’ (v. 73–75 in Henderson’s translation; Henderson 1998a, p. 65).
- 21.
As Sommerstein explains: ‘lit. “let him shake his crests for (= with a view to obtaining) salt fish”, i.e., “if he wants food, let him frighten the salt-fish vendors into giving it to him, because he won’t be able to frighten me”.’ (Sommerstein, 2015d, p. 204).
- 22.
i.e., most plain food. Cf. also Sommerstein’s remark: ‘[s]alt-fish was cheap and despised (…).’ (Sommerstein, 2015d, p. 204).
- 23.
- 24.
The translator adds that the speaker is perhaps an Ionian doctor (Edmonds, 1957, p. 483).
- 25.
Storey 2011, p. 77, vol. I.
- 26.
Sommerstein (2015d, p. 179) observes the metaphor in this fragment of the comedy. Interestingly, Olson fails to see the figurative relationship between ‘Euripides’ and ‘garlic’ here on the grounds that Dikaiopolis is not preparing for combat but for a race (Olson 2004, p. 197–8, footnote to v. 483–5). However, Dikaiopolis is preparing for a serious argument with the chorus, so the combat idea does not seem altogether wrong, especially that Dikaiopolis is aware of what he risks meaning to defend the Spartans. The soliloquy he delivers later (497–556) would indeed resemble a combat rather than a race, it seems, and the chorus’s victory means Dikaiopolis’ death. Also, the very beginning of the quoted fragment is not unlike a hortative song a soldier would chant before battle.
- 27.
- 28.
Interestingly, the verb for ‘serve up’ used here, παρέθηκε (παρατίθημι), is the very verb analyzed in Example (5).
- 29.
- 30.
ἐπίπαστα—‘Greek epipasta, cakes made of fine meal and sprinkled with a black, salty sauce.’ (Sommerstein, 2015a, p. 150); ἐπίπαστον—‘a kind of cake with confits (or the like) upon it’ (Liddell & Scott 1996, s.v. ἐπίπασμα); δημιόπραθ’ (δημιοπρᾶτα)—‘goods confiscated by the State and put up for sale’ (Liddell & Scott 1996, s.v. δημιοεργείη, Abramowiczówna 1958–1965, s.v. δημιοπρᾶτα).
- 31.
The original text, the verse number and the translation after Henderson (1998b, p. 282, 283).
- 32.
Sommerstein (2015c; 186) explains the phrase, ‘(…) the meaning is evidently that what is happening to Bdelycleon now is barely even a foretaste of what is going to happen to him later. (…).’ His rendition of the idiom is as follows: ‘Oh no, you haven’t even got to the celery yet, or the rue either’ (2015c: 51).
- 33.
This reading is rejected by Sommerstein (2015c, p. 186–7): ‘The scholia offer two explanations of why “in the celery and rue” should mean “just at the beginning”: (i) in herb gardens celery and rue were planted at the front, (ii) new-born babies were laid on celery (on this view the mention of rue is an irrelevant addition for comic effect). Neither explanation is convincing: (i) has the air of an ad hoc invention, and (ii) is open to the objection that the main ritual associations of celery were with death and mourning (…) and it was sacred to the underworld gods (…). Probably fifth-century Athenians had no idea what the origin of the idiom was.’
- 34.
- 35.
The original text, the verse number and the translation after Henderson (1998b, p. 442, 443).
- 36.
One could argue that there is one more food-related metonymic expression in the fragment, i.e., ‘nice knuckle sandwich.’ Perhaps so, but it is not certain. Sommerstein (2015b, p. 15) translates the phrase καὶ κόνδυλον ὄψον ἐπ’ αὐτῇ as ‘and as savoury to go with it – a bunch of fives.’ He explains the fragment as follows (Sommerstein 2015b, p. 140), ‘a bunch of fives – Greek kondulon “a knuckle, a punch”, with a pun on kandaulos, a culinary delicacy of Lydian origin made of many ingredients (…).’ This reading is corroborated by Abramowiczówna (1958–1965, s.v. κόνδυλος). She interprets the passage (κολλύραν καὶ κόνδυλον ὄψον ἐπ’ αὐτῇ) as a proverb and gives its translation as ‘na pierwsze bułkę, na drugie szturchańca’ (‘a roll for the first course, a pushing for the second’—translation by the authors of the article). Henderson’s translation above seems to mean ‘knuckle’ as ‘a piece of meat with a joint in it.’ Sommerstein’s and Abramowiczówna’s understanding of the expression, however, may possibly be also hidden in the lexeme ‘knuckle’ here.
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Szefliński, W., Wachowski, W. (2019). Metaphor and Metonymy in a Culture of Food and Feasting: A Study Based on Selected Ancient Greek Comedies. In: Mianowski, J., Borodo, M., Schreiber, P. (eds) Memory, Identity and Cognition: Explorations in Culture and Communication. Second Language Learning and Teaching(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12590-5_15
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