I was in my ancient Greek history section, and we were talking about the Peloponnesian War. When we were discussing the end of the war, in which Athens was defeated by Sparta, I mentioned something that I had read (I think it was Xenophon) in which supposedly when the news of the defeat got to the the port near Athens, a wail was heard progressively along the route from the port to the city of Athens itself, a route which was surrounded by the so-called Long Walls. So I started talking about how a wail was heard moving along the Long Walls, when I noticed that everyone was looking at me strangely.
"A whale was heard moving along the Long Walls?" asked an incredulous student.
At this point, I could not stop myself from laughing. "No, the people were wailing," I said. "Lamenting. Because Athens lost."
"Oh," was murmured throughout the room.
I was subsequently subjected to periodic bouts of uncontrolled laughter as I pictured a whale slowly, but surely, moving and moaning as it made its way along the wall from Piraeus to Athens.
-Philip
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Sound of Those Whales
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1 comment:
I'm laughing too. :) This story reminds me of another story actually:
In my Spanish class we always have to define our vocab words in Spanish and we share our definitions with the person next to us at the beginning of class. One day I happened to overhear another pair talking. One of the words on our list was "gemido" which means "wail." From the conversation I heard, I gathered that one person had definied "gemido" as something along the lines of "the biggest animal." His partner was saying she didn't know what word he was talking about.
"How can you not know what I'm talking about? What's the biggest animal?" he said.
"A wale, I guess," said the girl, and then she realized what he was talking about.
"Right," said the boy. "Wail. Gemido."
"Wrong kind of wail!" said the girl.
"I didn't know how to define the other one," he explained.
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