Chapter 1 Proto-semantic studies

Let us start with this fragment from an unknown comedy by Epicharmus. It can be imagined as a school dialogue (in the manner of the one between Strepsiades and Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds) where semantic approaches are discussed:

Epich. fr. 147 PCG:

A. τί δὲ τόδ’ ἐστί; B. δηλαδὴ τρίπους. A. τί μὰν ἔχει πόδας

τέτορας; οὔκ ἐστιν τρίπους, ἀλλ’ <ἐστὶν> οἶμαι τετράπους.

B. ἔστιν ὄνομ’ αὐτῶι τρίπους, τέτοράς γα μὰν ἔχει πόδας.

A. εἰ δίπους τοίνυν ποκ’ ἦς αἴνίγματ’ Οἰ〈δίπου〉 νοεῖς

(А) What is this here? (B) a tripod, plainly. (А) But why does it have

four feet? It is not a tripod, but seems like a tetrapod to me.

(B) It bears the name tripod, but it has really got four feet.

(А) Well, if it once had two feet, you can think of the riddle of Oe<dipus>

Such a name-giving scene where an object is scrutinised on a (real or imagined) stage, its feet are counted (τρίπους, τετράπους, δίπους) and the nature of its designation is questioned, was very familiar to Epicharmus' audience.1 The co-occurrence of intensifying particles and deictics, such as τί δὲ τόδ’ ἐστί, τί μὰν ἔχει, δηλαδή, γα μὰν (Attic γε μήν), and τοίνυν, and the opposition of the deictic elements in the first and second person singular forms οἶμαι (“I think”) and νοεῖς (“you think”) provide detailed spatial information, including appropriate movements of the hands, head and body of (at least) two characters of the play, as well as the spectators. The context for the discussion of the meaning of 'tripod' (ἔστιν ὄνομ’ αὐτῶι τρίπους) is thus materially and spatially determined from the outset of the dialogue, the sympotic or sacral scenic space being specified by the object of a tripod.

The only cover-text for this fragment comes from Athenaeus, who provides such information about it as we have.2 Athenaeus quotes six passages from earlier source(s), starting the section with an episode of puristic Atticistic discussions.3 A Cynic calls the table τρίπους (εἰπόντος τινὸς κυνικοῦ τρίποδα τὴν τράπεζαν), and one of the main characters in Athenaeus’ work, the severe Atticist grammarian Ulpian of Tyre, cannot tolerate it (δυσχεραίνει ὁ παρὰ τῷ σοφιστῇ Οὐλπιανὸς καὶ λέγει): “where does he get the word τρίπους from?” Ulpian, who is interested in the documentation of words and word-forms4 with his nickname Κειτούκειτος (“does-it-occur-or-does-it-not”), here states that the correct word for 'table' in Greek is τράπεζα, implicitly asking whether the word τρίπους is ever attested for a table.

After Epicharmus’ fr. 147 PCG in Athenaeus' list Aristophanes’ late fr. 545 PCG is quoted:

                    Α. τράπεζαν ἡμῖν <εἴσ>φερε

τρεῖς πόδας ἔχουσαν, τέτταρας δὲ μὴ ’χέτω.

Β. καὶ πόθεν ἐγὼ τρίπουν τράπεζαν λήψομαι;

                     (А) Bring us out a table

with three feet, it must not have four.

(B) And where shall I get a three-footed table?

The joke is based around the incompatiblity of the name τράπεζα (originally τετράπεζα, four-footed5) for three-legged tables. As in second century CE Ulpian’s case, Aristophanes’ fragment reflects contemporary linguistic discussions on the coherence of objects and their names.6 Both Epicharmus' and Aristophanes' fragments contain an explanation of the etymology. For Epicharmus, the explanation of τετράπους as ἔχει πόδας τέτορας is important, as well as his deliberate play with the morphemes τρίπους, τετράπους and δίπους. In Aristophanes, the etymology is given for the word τράπεζα which is supposed to have four (τέτταρας) feet but in this case should have three (τρεῖς πόδας ἔχουσα). Different word formations are juxtaposed: τρίπουν and τράπεζαν.

In both Epicharmus' and Aristophanes' fragments, the physical object is not necessarily brought on stage. This might be an imagined, reconstructed, or narrated situation. We cannot know from the surviving lines alone. In any case, both fragments provide sufficient linguistic information to evaluate a vivid materialised situation where the discussion on word meaning is brought into a spatial framework with body language and movement highlighted (τί δὲ τόδ’ ἐστί; <εἴσ>φερε, πόθεν λήψομαι). The material object is coupled with the sophisticated discourse on the origin and essence of things and names.

We do not know whether Aristophanes was aware of this specific comedy by Epicharmus. Such exercises must have been commonplace in Athens in the last quarter of the fifth century BCE, the context in which Aristophanes was active, where intellectual circles often engaged in rhetorical and linguistic debates. Through similar jokes such as the cosmological comparison of the sky with a baking-cover and about people with charcoal, Aristophanes intertwines natural philosophical, rhetorical and linguistic discourses.7

Transferring the lens of Aristophanes and the Athenian context in which he worked directly on to Epicharmus’ Syracuse, one might assume that Epicharmus was also engaged in mocking early linguistic studies (ἔστιν ὄνομ’ αὐτῶι) carried on by the Sicilian rhetoricians.8

Prior to discussion of the general context for contemporary intellectual, one further issue should be mentioned. Tragic playwrights and Euripides in particular relished name-giving, and etymological games.9 These tragic etymologies were reflected by comic playwrights on the level of both content and style. Thus a character in Philyllius’ comedy Dōdekatē addresses an amphora (ἀμφορεῦ) declaring that he/she is giving to this wine pot the honour to bear the name ‘measurer/moderator’ due to its ‘moderation’ (ἔχειν ὄνομα μετρητὴν μετριότητος εἵνεκα, Philyl. fr. 6 PCG).10

It is hard to decide who exactly was influenced by whom in this interaction of genres, and whether comic playwrights echoed tragic texts, contemporary intellectual discussion or each other, but it is at least clear that dramatic genres were deeply rooted in a broader and multi-faceted interest in semantic and more generally linguistic issues. The following sections discuss the contemporary proto-semantic discourses reflected in Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles and also in Gorgias, Thucydides, Democritus and the Hyppocratic corpus. Before continuing the discussion of comedy texts further, it is worth noting here in which context and in which debates comic performative discussions of semantic studies were embedded.

1.1 On names, bow and life in Heraclitus

Intellectual discourse from the end of the sixth century BCE devoted considerable attention to the nature of language, though this concern was already evident in the linguistic imagery of the earliest poetic texts. Principles established in language analysis which arose within philosophical studies from the sixth century BCE included the first classifications of language categories, rules governing the construction of sentences, and the correlation between thought and speech processes.11 One of the crucial questions connected to the origin and nature of language in Archaic poetry was the relationship of name to the denominated object. However, the singer did not employ specific vocabulary to bring this to the fore.12 Rather it was the early philosophers, in both eastern and western parts of Greece, who developed their thoughts on these problems.

Our understanding of Heraclitus’s views on language is vague since direct and indirect traditions differ. Despite the lack of direct evidence, later sources can be assumed to be correct in suggesting that the origin of language, the direct relationship between the sound structure and its corresponding meaning as well as the possibility of applying logical principles to the explanation of grammatical forms have been discussed by Heraclitus in the framework of his philosophical considerations.

Heraclitus’ most famous principle is notably that of the λόγος with its multiple meanings (DK22 B1 =D1 Laks-Most). The complex and much-discussed λόγος as ‘rule’ and ‘reason’ orders natural processes. This use of λόγος exploits the inherent ambiguity between word and object represented....