Ὄνον ὄρνιν
[you call] a donkey a bird
Translated by William Hutton10 Jan 2010Vetting: high5 revisions
Translation
The story goes something like this: when a fortune-teller was being consulted about a sick man he saw a donkey getting up from a fall. He also heard another person saying, "How, if he's a donkey, did he get up?"1 And he said "the ailing man will get up," and he got up. And again: "consider2 everything that makes a distinction in prophecy a 'bird'." For they used to call them all 'fowls', even the things that were not avians. "[You call] a servant a bird": since they were accustomed to call certain ones of their servants3 'woodenfeet'4 and 'good-fowled'.
Greek original · Adler’s text
Ὄνον ὄρνιν· λέγεταί τι τοιοῦτον, ὡς συμβολικὸς ἐρωτώμενος περὶ ἀρρώστου εἶδεν ὄνον ἐκ πτώματος ἀναστάντα. ἀκήκοε δὲ καὶ ἑτέρου λέγοντος, πῶς ὄνος ὢν ἀνέστη; ὁ δὲ ἔφη· ὁ νοσῶν ἀναστήσεται. καὶ ἀνέστη. καὶ αὖθις· ὄρνιν νόμιζε πάνθ' ὅσα περὶ μαντείας διακρίνει. πάντα γὰρ οἰωνοὺς ἐκάλουν, καὶ τὰ μὴ ὄρνεα. θεράποντ' ὄρνιν. ἐπεί τινας εἰώθασι τῶν θεραπόντων καλόποδας λέγειν καὶ καλοιωνίστους.
Betacode
*)/onon o)/rnin: le/getai/ ti toiou=ton, w(s sumboliko\s e)rwtw/menos peri\ a)rrw/stou ei)=den o)/non e)k ptw/matos a)nasta/nta. a)kh/koe de\ kai\ e(te/rou le/gontos, pw=s o)/nos w)\n a)ne/sth; o( de\ e)/fh: o( nosw=n a)nasth/setai. kai\ a)ne/sth. kai\ au)=qis: o)/rnin no/mize pa/nq' o(/sa peri\ mantei/as diakri/nei. pa/nta ga\r oi)wnou\s e)ka/loun, kai\ ta\ mh\ o)/rnea. qera/pont' o)/rnin. e)pei/ tinas ei)w/qasi tw=n qerapo/ntwn kalo/podas le/gein kai\ kaloiwni/stous.
Notes (4)
- The headword phrase, along with the other quoted phrases, are excerpts from Aristophanes, Birds 719-721, with comments from the scholia. Some of the same material appears in omicroniota 167.
Bird-watching was one form of divination used by the ancients; terms for birds were generalized to the point that they could refer to omens of any sort. - 1In the scholia, the other person exclaims "Look how he, being a donkey, got up." "Being a donkey" (
o)/nos w)\n ) sounds very like "the sick man" (o( nosw=n ): thus the donkey getting up could be taken as an omen that the sick man would get up. ↩ - 2This is a singular imperative verb in the Suda, whereas Aristophanes has a plural that is probably indicative ("you (pl.) consider..."), though the form is ambiguous. ↩
- 3'[P]resumably the first servant one saw after waking up' (Dunbar). ↩
- 4Apparently the scholiast is interpreting the word
kalo/pous as being derived fromkalo/s ('good') andpou/s ('foot'). This is possible (cf. kappa 249), but all attestations of the word seem to derive the first element fromka=lon ('wood'), and refer to the shoemaker's last (wooden foot-model). ↩
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Revision history5 revisions · last 21 Jan 2021
- Revised — Catharine Roth
- expanded note — Catharine Roth
- cosmetics — David Whitehead
- another note; cosmetics — David Whitehead
- cosmetics, status — Catharine Roth
- Translated — William Hutton