![]() ![]() ![]() The first couplet ending emphasizes the murder of the tyrant, Hipparchus, although he is not named, and finishes with a description of a politically changed Athens in the aftermath. The parallel opening couplets of these stanzas offer almost certain proof that they were standardized introductions that could be enjambed with endings that highlighted different dimensions of the famous assassination. Before we come to some examples of these, however, let us first examine some structural peculiarities of the skolia that are best explained as performance options or variations. In what follows, therefore, I will not belabor the historical arguments for the origin and early context of these skolia, but rather focus on some alternative uses to which the verses might have been put, through pun, innuendo, and simple cleverness during symposia. What might have been serious historical content at one point in their existence could be turned to light, and often hilariously ribald, effect at another. What Bowra did not emphasize, as more recent scholarship has, is that origins do not determine ends, because these skolia were sung and modified at symposia over several generations. The fact remains that all of the surviving Attic skolia have an historical context, though I would not go quite so far as to say that they have a specific point of origin. This was not altogether as wrongheaded as recent commentators, such as Gérard Lambin, have maintained. Bowra’s discussion, for example, essentially sought to divide all the Attic skolia into three historical periods: those associated with the Peisistratids, the Alcmaeonids, and the Persian Wars. ![]() The Discourse of Disputation: Three Comparative TypologiesĮarlier scholarship on the content of the Attic skolia, as with skolia more generally, lavished attention on lexicography and especially their presumed political background. Epic Competition in Performance: Homer and Rhapsodes16. Play and the Seriousness of Sympotic Poetry Gamesĩ. Sporting at Symposia: Verse and Skolia Competitions6. Excursus: Theocritus and the Problem of Judgment ![]() Stichomythia and σκώμματα: Euripides’ Cyclops, Aristophanes’ Wealth, and Plato’s EuthydemusĤ. Dramatic Representations of Verse Competition1. So they are not big mistakes, but they are fundamental ones.Introduction: Toward an Understanding of Greek Poetic Contestation That said, in order to trick unsuspecting puzzlers, the puzzle relies on the puzzler making those specific mistakes in order to spring its trap, so to speak. I hope this helps - to your point, I certainly would agree with you that it isn't that big of a mistake. My first thought certainly wasn't to prove that the maximum altitude of a triangle with hypotenuse 10 was 5. There is an inherent simplicity bias as well here, since people want to give a quick answer without thinking too hard about it. People don't expect the fact that there is so much additional complexity behind this question - if I was asking you a quick math question about geometry, chances are you wouldn't expect to have to disprove the existence of the triangle in the question. The fact that most people have either (a) heard of the triangle area formula to find (6)(10)/2 = 30 or (b) heard of Pythagorean triples/triangles and know that there exists a 6-8-10 right triangle, so (6)(8)/2 = 24. The riddle should translate more closely to "Assuming that a crash occurred on the border between the US and Canada, and assuming that at least one occupant of the plane was alive after the crash occurred, where were all of the people who were alive after the crash occurred buried as a result of that crash?" (This last part eliminates the technically true answer of "Sweden, because Jimmy was on the plane and he survived, but then he lived another 50 years and died and was buried in Sweden"). If there are no survivors, then I guess mathematically the statement "All survivors were buried in the US" is vacuously true, but you would never say that in reality. By definition, a "survivor" is "a person who survives, especially a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died." The riddle uses misdirection by adding unnecessary detail (border of US and Canada) to obscure the fact that a survivor must be alive by definition and therefore does not need to be buried. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |