An Antic Disposition

A few thoughts on the Epitheton Ornans, or ornamental epithet. This is more than a nickname, but a formalized word or phrase associated with a person. Classical epic poetry makes heavy use of this rhetorical device. For example, in Homer Achilles is often referred to as “podas okus” or “swift-footed”, whereas Agamemnon is often “anax andron” or “ruler of men”. There is internal evidence that these poems used a stock list of epithets of different lengths and stress paterns to fit into whatever metrical context was needed. In this way, the epithets could aid improvized oral performance, much as a jazz musician has a repetoire of riffs and chord progressions at his command which can be inserted to fill out a phrase.

The Romans allowed the honor of an “agnomen” for significant military victories. So Publius Cornelius Scipio, after defeating the Carthaginian Hannibal, became Scipio Africanus. Over the centuries, this trend escalated. So, by the 4th Century A.D., we have awe-inspiring names such as “Imperator Constantinus Maximus Augustus Persicus maximus, Germanicus maximus, Sarmaticus maximus, Britannicus maximus, Adiabenicus maximus, Medicus maximus, Gothicus maximus, Cappadocicus maximus, Arabicus maximus, Armenicus maximus, Dacicus maximus”. (Today We just call him “Constantine the Great” which is a great time-saver)

The trend continued. If you’ve seen an old British penny, from 100 years ago, you would read the legend “VICTORIA D G BRITT REG F D”, short for “Victoria, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, Defender of the Faith”.

But the use of epithets has been on the wane for many years now, at least in the optimistic parts of the world. North Korea may have its “Dear Leader” and the late “Great Leader”, but we never even considered formally naming Eisenhower “The German Slayer”. We ended up with “Ike”. I guess we like our leaders to be mere men, and not gods. The Cult of Personality is difficult to maintain in a democracy with a free press. “No man is a hero to his butler”.
Sure, we have our little nicknames, “The Artist formally known as Prince”, “Iron” Mike Tyson or the “Scud Stud”, but that is done in jest, or in the entertainment world (which amounts to the same thing). We will never see “Scud Stud” carved in marble or engraved in brass.

But once a year, on this date (or the nearest Monday) I am reminded of the most prominent example of epitheton ornans in common use today. I refer to the ubiquitous use of the phrase “Slain Civil Rights Leader”. The fact that I do not need to name the owner of this epithet demonstrates its currency. A search of Google News shows almost 1,500 uses of this phrase in recent press clips. This epithet is so tightly associated with him that can be used as a substitue for his name, much as a medieval scholar could speak of “the Philosopher” to refer to Aristotle without ambiguity.

I’m trying to think of any other prominent examples of such epithets in common use today. I can’t think of any. Can you?

One wonders how long this epithet will remain? Will it outlast the generation that heard his message and headed his Dream? We can hope so. But I do note that in the generation after the assasinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinnley, all three were popularly acclaimed with the epithet “our martyred president”. But a search of Google News shows zero hits for “martyred president”, though there are 271 hits for “President Lincoln”.

The word is “deaccession”, a fancy way of saying a museum is selling off a portion of its collection. This can happen for many reasons. For example, the museum may have received a bequest that was outside the parameters of its collection, it may have acquired items in the past that are now outside of the museum’s mission, or it may sell off some lesser works in order to raise funds to acquire a more significant piece of art. In any case, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts deaccessioned a number of ancient coins, one of which I was able to acquire, and which you see above. A close up view is here.

The obverse of this coin features a bust of Zeus/Ammon facing right. This was a composite god, conflating the chief Egyptian and Greek deities, under the Alexandrian practice of syncretism.

The reverse shows an Eagle grasping a thunder bolt, with a cornucopia under the rear wing. The legend reads ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΟΥ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ or “of Ptolemy, (the) King”.

You may notice the small central pit on each side of the coin. This is called the “centration dimple”, and is an artifact of the production method.

This particular coin type is a well-known type from Ptolemy IV, who reigned from 221 BC to 204 BC. The Ptolemies were the Greek/Macedonian rulers of Egypt in the period after the death of Alexander the Great and before the rise of Roman control. By all accounts Ptolemy IV was an ineffectual leader, more interested in orgiastic rituals than ruling the nation. His one notable military victory was at the Battle of Raphia in 217 BC where he defeated the troops of the Seleucid King Antiochus III. In this battle, Ptolemy supplemented his Greek army with native Egyptians trained as phalangites. This infantry advantage proved decisive, and Ptolemy won the day, preserving Syria and Palestine in Egyptian hands. This was a mixed blessing, since the Ptolemaic dynasty, foreign rulers of Egypt, had now to contend with the newly armed and trained Egyptians, as well as external threats.

The reign of Ptolemy IV, including the Battle of Raphia, as seen from the perspective of an Egyptian Jew, is told in 3 Maccabees, a book canonical to the Bibles of Eastern Orthodox churches, though apocryphal to others.

One last close look at the coin. Notice the “Ε” between the eagle’s legs? This the “regnal date”, giving the year according to the year of the rules reign. Epsilon (Ε) was the 5th letter in the Greek alphabet. This would this correspond to 217BC, the year of the Battle of Raphia. So, a nice piece of history.

Labels: Coins, Egypt, Numismatics

This post seems to get a large burst in traffic in December each year, almost entirely based on Google queries for "jingle bells batman smells". Presumably that is why you are here. Let me cut to the chase and give you what you are looking for:

There are several variants of this song. The one I grew up with was:

Jingle Bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
The Batmobile lost a wheel
and the Joker got away

Other reported versions include:

Shotgun shells, Santa smells,
Rudolf ran away,
Oh what fun it is to ride
in a beat-up Chevrolet!

or

Jingle bells, shotgun shells,
Santa Claus is dead,
Rudolf got a .22
and shot him in the head.

or

Jingle Bells, Shotgun Shells,
BB's in the air.
Oh, what fun it is to ride
in Santa's underwear!"

or

Jingle Bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg,
The Batmobile lost a wheel,
and the Joker joined ballet , Hey!


Check the comments for other variations. Some have alternate lyrics to the verse as well as the chorus. It would also help my little research if any old-timers (say over 40 years old) left a comment indicated what version you heard first, where you heard (what town or state) and approximately what year you heard it. I'd like to figure out what the original version truly was, and where it came from and how fast it spread.

Also, if you are interesting in crazy Christmas music, then I highly recommend Dr. Demento's Greatest Christmas Novelty CD of All Time. It is filled with many old school holiday comic classics.


That's it on Jingle Bells. What follows is an blog post only tangentially related. You probably won't find it very interesting.

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I’ve been cataloging my book collection, an accumulation of years of book buying by a wide-ranging and impulsive reader. I’m using BookCat from FNProgramvare, a simple program with a killer feature for me — the ability to download book information, including author, title, publisher, copyright date, etc., based on ISBN or LOC codes. This promised to make the work much faster and removed the last excuse I had for leaving this task undone.

Any such cataloging effort inevitably becomes a journey into my past, as I recall when and where I purchased the book and what I learned from it. I also find the most curious things stuck between the pages of the books, old bookmarks from stores no longer in existence, shopping lists, an unpaid gas bill from 1993, a scrap of paper will a phone number but no name. In the end, having the database software did not bring the tremendous performance increase I had hoped for. The bottleneck is not the data entry — it is my day dreaming.

I came across my old copy of David Bohm’s Quantum Mechanics, a well-worn paperback, not pretty to look at. But it is one of my Dover paperbacks, and I keep those. Dover Publications has a special place in my heart. Their paperback reprints of classic texts in mathematics and physics were my constant companions during my 20’s, and were part of something of a weekly ritual. Every Saturday, except in the dead of winter, I would walk the two miles to Harvard Square, go to Wordsworth bookstore (now gone), pick up a new book, and walk across the street to The Skewers (now also gone) for a falafel sandwich, or perhaps to Elsie’s (alas no more) for an Eslie Burger and a knish. I’d eat and read, and then head over to JFK Park (still here) and read some more, and then walk home, or more likely take the #86 back to Somerville.

Helmholtz’s On the Sensation of Tone, Weyl’s Space, Time, Matter and Smith’s A Source Book in Mathematics“, are books I remember in particular. I think I learned more in my years after Harvard than I did when I was there.

So, after musing over the creased covers of my misspent youth, I decided to see if Dover was still around and what they had had in their catalog today. A quick search revealed their online store. I had them send there printed catalog to my home. (Sometimes I need to hold paper). I put in an order and a week later a box of books arrived.

I’m reading now Games and Songs of American Children by William Wells Newell, a reprint of the 1903 edition. I find it fascinating to trace transmission of this part of culture from generation to generation, of games like “Tag”, “Button button who has the button?”, “The church and the steeple” or “Odd or even?” These games are not learned from teachers in a school, or read in a book, or typically even taught from parents. For the most part they are transmitted from child to child, from an older sibling, or a peer, through the most casual pathways. They defied every propriety of authority or hierarchy. Culture was supposed to be a top-down thing, from the elites to the masses, right? But yet, games like this have spread across the country and beyond without any overt effort. In a way, it is like Language.

So, that made me think about the “classic” children’s parody of Jingle Bells, the one with the words “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells/Robin Laid an Egg/The Batmobile lost a wheel/and the Joker got away”. I assume there is no part of this country where these words are not known to every child. But it exists in no songbook. What great rhapsode first sung these words, and when and where was it done? How fast did it travel? I think if a sufficient survey was done of adults of various ages, as to when and where they recall first hearing these lyrics, one could attempt a reconstruction of the migration of this bit of modern folklore. Those who heard it earliest would have heard it closer to its source.

The Edge Foundation’s 2006 question is framed as: