Thursday, June 27, 2013

Who would YOU be?

Greek philosopher 101 - fabulous beard.
A friend sent me an email out of the blue with the single line:

"If I were a Greek Philosopher, my name would be Mediocrates."

And oh, how I did snigger aloud.  Because that's pretty imaginative and funny, right?

Got me to thinking.  What the heck do I know from Greek philosophers?  I mean, I get the Mediocrates is a play on Socrates, so that made me feel smart, but to do my OWN play what would I have to know?

Another Greek philosopher, that is NOT Plato, because it's hard to play on Plato, amirite?

Of course I am, so I did the most natural and right thing in the world and Google'd "Greek philosophers" (as ye do) which came up, of course, with this.

That's right, a giant honking list of Greeks who thought philosophistry was their bag, man, and somehow got captured in the annals of history (ew!) to the point that sometimes they reached the pinnacle of record keeping and somehow their birth AND death years were recorded! Yowza!  What a legacy.

Naturally, some were more memorable than that, if only for their names, no play on 'em necessary.  To wit::

Agapius
Antipater (3 of 'em)
Cassius Longinus
Chamaeleon
Clitomachus
Crates of Athens
Democrates
Gorgias

And the list goes on and on.  Some so famous as to have been visited by Plato!  Some so infamous as to have, still, the note on their permanent record as 'founded a school; it did not go well.'

Some converted Christians, some deniers of any incorporeal beings, some imagineers of oxen-shaped gods (dreamt up by the oxen themselves), some Epicureans, some cynics or skeptics or Pythagorists, all plucked from the pages of history and arranged for our reading pleasure, in alphabetical order.

Mmm, alphabetical order.  It's what makes sense when nothing else does.

Hey - wasn't it Alphabeticus who said "life is best when Omega Follows Alpha, thus shall it ever be"?

Pretty sure that's right.  I should go look it up.

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If YOU had a Greek philosopher's name, what would it be?  Mine's moving toward Spaetius, a little closer every day.

Tiff out.

4 comments:

kenju said...

Hilarious. I love Mediocrates and Clitomachus.

Middle Girl said...

Hah, the new Brin could be a Greek philosopher! But, then again, perhaps not.

I had occasion to stumble upon a list of fears, as there was some discussion as to which phobia was the fear of heights. Good golly...massive list.

LL said...

I could go with the obvious Testicles, but that would just be cheap and way too easy, so I won't do that...

I'll have to get back with you though when I come up with a good one...

LL said...

Stop by the ol' blog and gimme some Tiffy... ;P