Τεκμήρια
Short essays reading the Eulogikon corpus closely: the ancient Greek text, its commentators, and what the words actually meant.
Sophrosyne: the word everyone knew and no one could define
From Theognis' departed goddess to the Charmides and the Neoplatonic turn: sophrosyne is a shared, public word whose referent every Greek speaker knew, even as its definition kept shifting. Twenty-one passages in Greek, transliterated and translated, from the archaic period to the end of Classical Antiquity.
aergoí and energoí: idle land, idle money, idle tools
Before enérgeia was a technical term it was a word for land under cultivation, mines in production, ships in commission, and money out on loan. Complete coverage of the family in pre-Aristotelian originals: 24 passages read closely, 56 more cited, 89 units disposed.
Philostorgia: attestations across seven centuries
Every philostorgia attestation in the Eulogikon corpus, from Xenophon and Aeschylus through the full Stoic core to Clement, Iamblichus, and Simplicius.
What Marcus Aurelius prays for
Marcus keeps Homer's ordinary word for prayer and redirects its object: not external outcomes, but the absence of fear, desire, and distress. Seventeen passages from Homer to Epictetus, with the three terms he never uses.
Ἀλήθεια: the word that fights, lights, and is a body
A corpus survey of alḗtheia from Homer and the Presocratics through tragedy, history, medicine, and oratory to the corporeal alḗtheia of the Stoics. Sixteen passages in Greek, transliterated and translated, each at its station.
Corrective punishment: kólasis in the Greek corpus
From physical ordeal to soul therapy: a diachronic survey of kólasis (643 attestations) from the Greek Anthology through Aristotle, Chrysippus, and the patristic tradition. Ten passages in Greek, transliterated and translated.
Περὶ φιλίας: love in the Stoa
Do the Later Stoics talk about love? A word-search returns almost nothing in Epictetus and Marcus; but behind them stand Zeno, Chrysippus, and Cleanthes, with definitions, a taxonomy of érōs, and the cosmic binding of opposites. Nineteen passages across five authors, in Greek, transliterated and translated.
παράκλητος · paráklētos · the one called to your side
81 attestations of παράκλητος across six centuries in the Eulogikon corpus. Greek, transliterated and translated, each at its station.
τετράγωνος: the four-square man and the four-square ψυχή
The image of the four-square person from Simonides to Damascius, and the four-square ψυχή of the Pythagorean tradition. Eleven passages across the corpus, in Greek, transliterated and translated, each at its station.
What Aristotle attributes to Socrates
At Metaphysics 1078b, Aristotle credits Socrates with two things: inductive arguments (ἐπαγωγή) and universal definition (ὁρισμός), and marks one word, χωριστά, that separates him from the Platonists. The passage in Greek, with Alexander and Diogenes.