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Mythos_Ruler
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Topic: What is the greek word for "slinger"? Posted: 03-May-2005 at 02:36 |
What was the Greek word for slinger? You know, the vexatious light ranged unit that slung rocks at those hoplite slugs.
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Perseas
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Posted: 03-May-2005 at 06:42 |
Its "sfendonistis" and its plural is "sfendonistes".
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Yiannis
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Posted: 03-May-2005 at 15:45 |
From "Sfendoni"=sling
Rodians were reputed to be the best at it...
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The basis of a democratic state is liberty. Aristotle, Politics
Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin
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TheodoreFelix
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Posted: 03-May-2005 at 15:55 |
balearic slingers were quite reknown also. I remember Hannibal recruiting them in his army.
Edited by Iskender Bey ALBO
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Spartakus
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Posted: 05-May-2005 at 13:34 |
Originally posted by Yiannis
From "Sfendoni"=sling
Rodians were reputed to be the best at it... |
They were also reputed to be very short people.
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"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. "
--- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)
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Yiannis
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Posted: 06-May-2005 at 03:26 |
Rodians were short? Never heard that before
Where did you read this, I have some Rodian friends that I can irritate with this info!
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The basis of a democratic state is liberty. Aristotle, Politics
Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin
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Molossos
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Posted: 06-May-2005 at 14:56 |
The correct ancient Greek spelling is , which is written and pronounced as "sphendonetes" according to the Herasmian system, although it is not sure. It is a noun that comes from the Greek word "sphendone" () which means sling.
Edited by Molossos
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Temujin
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Posted: 06-May-2005 at 15:40 |
what about Psilos/Psiloi? I thought the light infantrymen in ancient Greece were called as that? and their weapon was the sling IIRC.
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Perseas
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Posted: 06-May-2005 at 16:06 |
Originally posted by Temujin
what about Psilos/Psiloi? I thought the light infantrymen in ancient Greece were called as that? and their weapon was the sling IIRC. |
Firstly, Molossos is right. The correct ancient greek word is "sphendonetes".
Psilos is a kind of skirmisher. Some of them were throwing Javelins and others indeed were using slings.
The difference i can distinquish between them and sfendonetes was that Psiloi were a bad copy of sfendonetes. As far as i know, Sfendonetes were being considered as a more reliable unit.
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Perseas
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Posted: 06-May-2005 at 17:13 |
Some images about ancient greek slingers.
More pics here:
http://www.slinging.org/historygallery.html
and a quite informative text about ancient greek slingers is here:
http://www.slinging.org/30.html
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Phallanx
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Posted: 06-May-2005 at 17:35 |
I recall seeing on some TV series someone refering to football fans as:
OI POLLOI or as anyone that read ancient Hellinic in a foreign school would spell it:
HOI POLLOI
I still laugh when I remember the HO-I POLLO-I (ho-e pollo-e) pronounciation.
They screwed up a perfectly "musical" language, because it's much
easier for a non-Hellin to pronounce all binary combinations of letters
in the Erasmic manner. The damn fools.
Edited by Phallanx
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To the gods we mortals are all ignorant.Those old traditions from our ancestors, the ones we've had as long as time itself, no argument will ever overthrow, in spite of subtleties sharp minds invent.
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Molossos
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Posted: 07-May-2005 at 06:02 |
Phallanx, I agree too that the use of the Herasmian system of pronounciation sounds kind of weird to our Greek ears. However, we must not ignore the strong evidence and facts that suggest how ancient Greek was pronounced. The existence of daseia before vowels in the beginning of words meant that a light "h" was pronounced.
The lingual phenomenon of "iotakismos" (pronouncing ei, oi, upsilon, heta as iota) in modern Greek is part of the evolution of our language throughout the centuries. Our ancestors were practical people and I don't think they would use two syllables and three letters to pronounce a single vowel (iota). What do you believe about that?
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Phallanx
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Posted: 07-May-2005 at 21:27 |
You do have a point with "iotakism".
The basis for this "theory" (Erasmian) is that words adopted by the Latin language
were spelled differently from the way they were pronounced in Hellinic.
Do you honestly concider this to be any kind of hard evidence to
support this theory on?
In all the languages of the world we can find loan words, are they all spelled exactly as they are pronounced? I think not.
This was actually introduced as an "easy to learn guide" but does not
represent neither ancient nor new testament Hellinic. This can be
easily understood when you're in church and hear the priest psalm in
perfect non-affected by evolution (kathareuousa and demotiki) Hellinic.
As for practical people. No I don't think so, people that would
continuously discuss philosophy, astrology, geometry..............
aren't practical but perfectionists.
Anyway I've found this great article some time ago, that does give alot of info on the pronounciation debate :
THE ERROR OF ERASMUS
AND UN-GREEK PRONUNCIATIONS
OF GREEK
http://www.bsw.org/?l=72081&a=Art06.html
Edited by Phallanx
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To the gods we mortals are all ignorant.Those old traditions from our ancestors, the ones we've had as long as time itself, no argument will ever overthrow, in spite of subtleties sharp minds invent.
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Molossos
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Posted: 08-May-2005 at 11:19 |
The argument of Herasmus that the loan words from Greek were pronounced differently by Latins is not that strong I must admit, because they are too many! Thanks for that piece of information, I didn't know he based his theory on that argument.
Regarding our ancestors nature and character, we already know that the use of the alphabet had been introduced centuries before the golden era of Athens during which philosophy and sciences were at a high level. So, you can't call perfectionists the Greeks of the geometric or the archaic eras who by the way used the script according to the alphabet we borrowed from the equivalent Phoenician.
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Phallanx
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Posted: 08-May-2005 at 22:06 |
who by the way used the script according to the alphabet we borrowed from the equivalent Phoenician. |
Idon't know what you've been reading ADERFE Molossos, but I suggest you
try Passa, Tziropoulou,Georgiadis and a number of other recognized
scholars by Oxford and Heideberg.
You'll find some really interesting stuff.
If you'd like to do some personal research I'd suggest, to try to
"link" the Minoan script to Phoenician, then try to find the
continuety of Linear B' to ancient Hellinic, Koine, Demotiki and the
connection to modern.
Let's continue this by PM, if you'd like to.
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To the gods we mortals are all ignorant.Those old traditions from our ancestors, the ones we've had as long as time itself, no argument will ever overthrow, in spite of subtleties sharp minds invent.
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