alexconall: the Pleiades (Default)
"Worship the gods." The two-to-five-word format of the Delphic Maxims seems to imply that they are simple, however profound, but this is hardly simple. Polytheism is not simple, nor should it be easy.

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alexconall: the Pleiades (Default)
“Obey the law.” This seems a straightforward enough maxim. Stop at stop signs and red lights. Drive no faster than the posted speed limit. Get out of emergency vehicles’ way. The law exists to keep society moving smoothly, and it’s in everyone’s best interests not to be a roadblock or even a speed bump.

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alexconall: the Pleiades (Default)
“Follow God”. The singular is distinctly odd in the context of historical Greek polytheism. It’s also masculine, which may denote any of several things. It may be that the original Greek, meant to be gender-nonspecific, uses the masculine singular both as specifically masculine and as gender-nonspecific. It may be that English can only do the same—observe: ‘goddess’ is always female; ‘god’, while typically masculine, may be feminine or gender-neutral; ‘gods’, the masculine plural, is also the gender-neutral plural. It may be that a specifically masculine deity is meant.

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alexconall: the Pleiades (Default)
Rumor has it that the aphorisms carved into the walls of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi were first written down by Phemonoe, daughter of Apollo and first Oracle at Delphi. Rumor attributes the Delphic Maxims, of which the most famous are “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess”, to several other sources as well: Heraclitus, or Socrates, or the Seven Sages of Greece (among whose number there are rather more than seven names), or Apollo himself.

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alexconall: the Pleiades (Default)
Alex Conall, social justice bard

October 2015

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