An Interesting Footnote

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this has been discussed, but I found it while reading The Wife of Bath's Tale for the [insert horrifically large number here]th time.

In reference to the line "Of Livia he told me and of Lucy," where the Wife is listing some of the bad wives her fifth husband used to tell her about in order to keep her in line (which failed miserably):

"Livia was either Augustus's wife, who poisoned several prominent Romans (including her own husband) for political gain, or Livilla, Livia's granddaughter, who poisoned her husband at the instigation of her lover Sejanus."

Intruiged, I went to Wikipedia and read this article.

Feel free to discuss the implications of this, but I also wanted to ask if anyone thought there was anything specific in the characters' names.  We already know that at least Attolia (and Eddis, if you buy into that whole "Helen" thing which I do not :-b) has an ironic name (potentially chosen for its irony?), and we know that "Eugenides" means "well-born," and of course there's dear wise Sophos, but what about people like Philologos ("lover of truth" or "word," etc)?  Would anyone happen to know what any of the other characters' names mean?

Comments

[sprite6.livejournal.com]

I picked up on "agape" when I was reading, but what does "heiro" mean?

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, I meant the obvious thing it sounds like -- "hero." Which may be what it means, though with this spelling it may have a different origin. It's amusingly close to a word meaning "dissembler" but that's without the rough breathing (the H). Since the alphabet's different I'll assume it really does mean "hero" unless someone else here knows more than Liddell and Scott.

Liddell and Scott

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

Liddell and Scott !

Have you read Tam Lin by Pamela Dean? Liddell and Scott is featured rather prominently, and I didn't realize it was a real text book beloved of Classics Majors. What fun to see you reference it!

*Thinks, in retrospect, dropping the 2nd major in classics was an error on my part*

Re: Liddell and Scott

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

It's a dictionary, actually.

Other Liddell and Scott trivia: Alice Liddell (for whom Lewis Carroll wrote you-know-what) is from the same family.

Actually, I ended up dropping the Classics major myself! But not before I'd taken seven years of Latin and six of Greek.