[B-Greek] Can Brotos Refer to Animal Mortality (Ez Trag
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Oct 14 08:34:57 EDT 2009
On Oct 14, 2009, at 8:21 AM, Brian Abasciano wrote:
> Do you happen to know if it is ever used to refer to aimal life or
> animal
> life is included in the meaning?
I think this is the question being asked when we arrived. Since all
that the lexica report to us is that it is used of human beings, I
would think that the burden of proof that it's ever used of non-human
creatures rests upon you. One observation that may be useful or not is
that BROTOS is pretty clearly a poetic word corresponding to the prose
equivalent QNHTOS and used in poetry particularly to contrast death-
doomed humanity with immortal gods. I've always thought that the
adjective BROTOS is a wistful sort of word reflecting the distinctly
human sense of mortality. Non-human creatures seem to have an instinct
to survival, but they haven't informed us that they share our human
anxiety about death.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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