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Two Old Jokes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. W. Gomme
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow

Extract

It is always a pity to spoil an old joke, especially one that belongs to one's own profession, which has been repeated time and again, for generations, whenever a teacher of Greek is concerned with the passages in question; but when the hearty laughter is over and the last echoes of it from our obedient pupils have faded away, let us examine the Greek again. .

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1954

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References

page 46 note 1 I read this paper at a meeting of the Classical Association of the Pacific at Seattle, Washington. This first part of it had later the advantage of a scrutiny by Professor L. A. Mackay of the University of California.

page 47 note 1 Bywater says, A is equivalent to A ‘even without A’, which is possible, but A, simple.

page 48 note 1 Gudeman notes the qualifying , but does not otherwise draw any distinction between Aristotle writing on politics and on poetry.

page 48 note 2 Curiously, one of the few commentators who have seen clearly that ‘goodness’ here means poetic goodness, that Aristotle was of talking of poetry, not politics, was Batteux, the French editor of the eighteenth century, and he then achieves a most perverse interpretation (see Twining's edition, ii, p. 137, from which I take the reference to Batteux; and who has himself translated ‘women are, perhaps, rather bad than good’): ‘Aristote ne parle pas ici des femmes en général, mais seulement de celles que les Poètes ont mises ur le théâtre, telles que Médée, Clytemnestre, etc’ Twining says, ‘this is polite, but it does not make Aristotle polite’.