Wasps quick-bending
One of the many stretch metaphors used by Homer. When you see a comma followed by ‘as …’ it can be a signal to take a good intake of breath to carry you through to the end of the image. Here it is feisty bees and quick-bending wasps who convey the...
The lobsters of Skopelos
Hyperbole, nothing like it when suitably blatant, creative and outrageous. You couldn’t possibly eat one of these, only engage them in a civilized conversation about world affairs, or in a game of chess.See, from the same book, a similarly improbable yet...
Fast and strong
Three triologisms to describe the fine, fast, strong ships that brought the Greeks to Troy. I particularly like ‘sea-wandering’. May you be fast-running and strong-benched, wherever you wander. See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich...
Here comes Hera
One goddess you should never cross, quick to rouse to wrath and terrible in her exactions. Divinely, drop-dead gorgeous, of course.There are several heart- prefixed triologisms in Homer, emphasizing the human pain, terror and sorrow of war and hostility; see, for...
In praise of the Greeks
Three triologisms describing the Greeks convey something expansive and vital, though the same could be said of the Trojans. However, I liked this amalgam of ‘great-hearted’, ‘flowing-haired’, and ‘glancing-eyed’, the last having...
Mamma turns up
A few signals to keep an eye out for so you don’t miss the moment a god may show up: it could be aural, olfactory, visual or just a change in temperature. In this case it was the perfume of oceanic lavender that first hinted at the arrival of a goddess-mother,...
Helot-haunted lowlands
Helots were the serfs of ancient Sparta, from the town of Laconia and only a notch above slaves. They were sometimes induced to appear drunkenly before the youths of Sparta in order to put these respectable kids off getting trashed. An interesting approach, wonder if...
Cormorant-haunted castle
An abandoned fortress, occupied only by cormorants. No wonder, the human inhabitants probably fled an atmosphere described as the ‘architecture of hatred’. ‘The great storm beaten and cormorant-haunted castle at Coroni as “the architecture of...
Not yet fully formed
A wonderful comment by Zorba regarding the mental development of his boss. Not, perhaps, a line to try on your own boss, however true it may seem. See also his equally crushing comment on his boss’s behaviour towards the workers. “I hope you don’t mind...
Career choices
Here Zorba points out the choices his boss has to make, since you can’t prattle about socialism and be a capitalist at the same time, or at least not without some hypocrisy. See him also put his boss in his place as far as mental development is concerned. “Look...
Pard-like stubble
I can only imagine this refers to a patchy or spotted colour combination, as ‘pard’ means leopard or panther, or another animal resembling either. ‘Perhaps this permanent pard-like stubble …’ Source: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in...
A load of old bull
Here Patrick Leigh Fermor tests the veracity of a much touted myth about Maniots in the Peloponnese being bull wrestlers. I liked the progressive debunking of the myth, starting out with simple denial, then embellished with further evidence, all the way down to a tin...
