Gnæus Dionysius Draco wrote:Well, I once read Greeks were credited with the invention of the word "motherf*cker".
Indeed, according to I.J. Pfeijffer, the satiric poet Hipponax was the first to use that rather scandalous word
Gnæus Dionysius Draco wrote:But as to the original question, mi Lupe, I haven't got a clue. My pea brain would simply trace it back to Greek society being extremely patriarchal, and that mentioning a girl's name would be like lifting a woman's veil in an extremely strict islamic country.
Reading ancient texts, I'm getting more and more convinced of the similarities between Greco-Roman and Islamic culture in what we, modern-day westerners, consider their negative aspects. For example, consider this fragment :
He (Gaius Sulpicius Callus, cos. 166 B.C.) repudiated his wife, because he had detected her out of doors with her head uncovered, with an abrupt yet somewhat justified decision : "The law", he said "prescribes my eyes only as the ones to which you may prove your beauty; it is for these that you should adorn yourself with embellishments of beauty, for these be good-looking, to the surer knowledge of these entrust yourself. If any one else looks upon you, because you have attracted him by a needless provocation, there needs must [sic] be suspicion and wrongful intent connected with it. - Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings VI iii. 9-12.
We discussed this text (and other similar ones) in a seminar at university and concluded that many things we regard as excesses of Islamist rigour in fact predate Islam, so that we should rather regard them as characteristics of an older and broader mediterranean cultural pattern.
Controversial as this hypothesis is, it may well lend itself well to a discussion in a separate topic. Therefore, I encourage people who would wish to react on it to start a new topic.
Valete,
Q. Pomponius Atticus