Motion of waves and words of laughter in ancient Greek

What is it about?

In an open-access article in Classical Philology — since 1906 a renowned journal of classical antiquity at The University of Chicago Press —, we pinned down isolated passages in the ancient Greek literature stating that sea waves laughed. Just like us speaking of a 'smiling landscapes', ancient Greeks used to speak of 'laughing seascapes'. Nobody, nonetheless, ever scratched the surface of this usage. The attestations surveyed are from fragments of unattributed tragedies; from Aeschylus’ tragedy Prometheus Bound, in the fifth century BCE; from Plato’s political essay the Republic, in the fourth century BCE; from the Problems, the collection of scientific questions and answers attributed partly to Aristotle and partly to his pupils (presumably third century BCE); and, finally, from Strabo’s Geography, an encyclopedic account of the known world during the early Roman empire, across the first centuries BCE and CE. What did the metaphor of laughing waves mean? After cross-checking the texts in the light of the physics of waves, we suggest that the loud laughter of waves meant their breaking onshore. Contrast our talking of ‘humans breaking into laughter’ with their talking of ‘waves laughing into breakers’. The breakers’ motion makes seawater crash, froth and splash. As if in fits of laughter, wave breaking produces at once brightness similarly to a grin and loud noise similarly to a voice burst. Intriguingly, in the ancient Greeks’ eyes, the shore was the location where the sea laughed.

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Photo by Jens Aber on Unsplash

Photo by Jens Aber on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Some traditions had hampered recognizing a common denominator in the attestations of laughing waves. Plato's waves in the Republic had often been interpreted as metaphors of philosophical paradox rather than occasions for witty wordplay. The wave-related questions in the Problems had received little attention, flawed translations and thin commentaries. Finally, the passage in Strabo’s Geography had even been earmarked for expunction, because contextualising laughter in the scenery of a delta's mouths proved awkward. In contrast, our study puts forward an interpretation of the Greek laughing waves that is consistent both linguistically and physically, covering centuries of literature. How could words of laughter have come to signify sea states? Both laughter and sea waves are self-evident and inherently complex processes. Changes to a state of great intensity occur abruptly and naturally in both. Indeed, the ancient Greeks expressed fine distinctions and developments of human laughter by means of compound verbs — think of nuances like those implied in 'laughing' and 'laughing out'. Their sensitivity to laughter even encompassed the level of paroxysm and disfigurement — think of “laughing with someone else’s jaws” in the Odyssey. Likewise, other passages concerning only sea waves attest their sensitivity to the onset of chaotic motion when waves break. Therefore, the ancient Greeks certainly appreciated the full wide range of both laughter and wave phenomena. Ostensibly, then, a parallel of facts could have generated a parallel of words. After all, we do also speak of mouths for rivers, as did the ancient Greeks. The metaphor that the sea shore is the sea’s mouth specifically rests on the parallel between the sea shore, as the seat of breakers, and the mouth, as the seat of laughter. Think then of waves ranging from sparkling and murmuring ripples to dazzling and roaring froth, and of laughter ranging from a suppressed chuckle to an exuberant guffaw. Either implicitly or explicitly, this factual analogy could have stimulated the transfer of words from descriptions of human laughter to descriptions of sea states, evoking a potent metaphor. Close-up observations of seascapes could thus have inspired the usage of laughter words for waves. Louder laughing could easily have been attributed to wave breaking along the coast, at the scale of either individual waves or the surf zone. Our article ‘Laughing waves in ancient Greek’ undertakes a grand review of the ancient Greek canon and quotes Homer (8th century BCE), Aeschylus (died 455 BCE), Euripides (died 406 BCE), Xenophon (died 354 BCE), Plato (died 347 BCE), Aristotle (died 322 BCE), Strabo (died 24), Lucian and Alciphron (2nd century). It analyses lexicons, editions and translations with commentaries, specifically re-evaluating the annotations on the Problems by George of Trebizond (died 1486) and by Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire (died 1895). We consulted contemporary research on Greek laughter, comedy and natural philosophy. The dynamics of coastal waves provided a unifying reality check, repairing at once the disconnect from a physical scene and the lack of clarity. The interpretations proposed in our study are thus contextualised as natural processes and provide consistent explanations for all attestations. The laughter-related terminology also integrates seamlessly with the Indo-European roots and with other ancient Greek words expressing wave breaking in mechanistic terms, like in motions of throwing and of falling water. From our novel viewpoint, thus, the laughing waves were equally relevant for widely diverse styles to represent reality. The passages in tragedy, comedy and science eventually find a shared origin in everyday experience. Along the way, a comedy set-piece at the central point of Plato's Republic is restored. Also, sea waves are older than mankind. Their being generated by the wind somewhere, transformed into swell over the open sea, and broken onto the shore is a primordial going of things. Their life cycle must have raised questions ever since. After clearing the mist of obscure wording, we identify that the Peripatetics grappled with that subject, whereby natural philosophy was pioneering wave mechanics and physical oceanography already in the 3rd century BCE. Unveiling the vivid vocabulary of laughing waves thus unlocks a significant milestone in the history of science.

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