Comment by romaaeterna | Hacker News Reader

Comment by romaaeterna | Hacker News Reader

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``` We learn misogynistic pejoratives like “meriochane”, given to Cleopatra by Horace and company, which Rosenbaum translates as “the woman who gapes wide for ten thousand men” ```

Well, no. Rosenbaum discusses μυοχάνη on pg. 14, a word found in Galen's Glossary of Hippocrates. Galen:

μυ<ρ>ιοχάνη· ἐπίθετον χασκούσης. εἰ δὲ μυριοχαύνη γράφοιτο, ἡ ἐπὶ μυρίοις ἂν εἴη χαυνουμένη.

My trans. "Muriochane/Muiochane: A name for a woman yawning. But if it is to be written 'thousand relaxer', it should be a woman who relaxes [ie., her legs] for a thousand."

This "yawn" or "yawn after something" can be similar in Greek usage to our "drool after."

The "Cleopatra" claim is internet garbage, nowhere in Rosenbaum, and I wonder if an AI summarizer picked it up from Reddit or something? All Rosenbaum does is quote Erotian in that discussion, who says "μηριοχάνη ὄνομα γυναικός," Meriochane is the name of a woman.

There's another related word from the Suda, μυσάχνη, which it attributes to Archilochus as a reference (name for?) a prostitute.

>The "Cleopatra" claim is internet garbage, nowhere in Rosenbaum, and I wonder if an AI summarizer picked it up from Reddit or something? All Rosenbaum does is quote Erotian in that discussion, who says "μηριοχάνη ὄνομα γυναικός," Meriochane is the name of a woman.

The moment you learn someone has used an LLM to make a claim you can safely ignore them forever. Better yet, you can ignore everyone who reproduces it uncritically.

Now that we have LLM, we can safely suggest something specious(ish) is LLM junk and ignore it forever.

Same difference. At least now its easier to tell when people are full of shit

> My trans. "Muriochane/Muiochane

Shouldn't that be 'my(r)iochane'? And wouldn't that be ten thousand instead of one?

In a Latin transcription, the Greek "u psilon" (simple u) may be written as either "u" or "y", without causing ambiguities.

The Greek vowel had been originally pronounced the same as Latin u, so the old borrowings in Latin from Greek write it as "u".

Then, by the time from which most classical Greek literature has been preserved, the pronunciation of "u psilon" has been modified in most contexts to become a front rounded vowel, like the French "u" or the German "ü".

Because of this, in later Latin the letter "Y" has been created and added to the Latin alphabet, to write the front rounded vowel of the contemporaneous Greek, which had no Latin correspondent.

Latin "y" is normally preferable for writing Greek "u psilon", unless the discussion is about older attestations of words (like in Homer) or about the etymology of Greek words, when it is preferable to write "u psilon" as "u", to match the old pronunciation or the vowels of the cognate words.

> In a Latin transcription, the Greek "u psilon" (simple u) may be written as either "u" or "y", without causing ambiguities.

There's no ambiguity if you already know whatever Greek word is at issue. But by that standard, there is also no ambiguity if you represent every Greek word with the spelling "x". If all you know is the transcription, "u" would be expected to correspond to Greek ου. This isn't really an ambiguity, but it will instantly become one if you start using "u" to correspond to υ as well.

> Latin "y" is normally preferable for writing Greek "u psilon", unless the discussion is about older attestations of words (like in Homer) or about the etymology of Greek words, when it is preferable to write "u psilon" as "u"

Well, the timing here is Hippocrates, who appears to be contemporaneous with "Thucydides".

It is an etymological discussion, but writing "muriochane" seems more like an attempt to intentionally obscure the root of "myriad" than an attempt to make it clearer.

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