As if the soul’s fulness didn’t sometimes overflow into the emptiest
of metaphors, for no one, ever, can give the exact measure of his
needs, his apprehensions, or his sorrows, and human speech is
like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make
bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity.
Flaubert in Madame Bovary
Just as on our personal lives our worst fears and best hopes will
never adequately prepare us for what actually happens . . . so each
event in human history reveals an unexpected landscape of human
deeds, sufferings, and new possibilities which together transcend
the sum total of all willed intentions and the significance of all
origins. It is the task of the historian to detect this unexpected
new with all its implications in any given period and to bring out
the full power of its significance.
Hannah Arendt in The Human
Condition
Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm
me.
Siberius
War Words and Words of War:
Thucydides’ Corcyra and Euripides’ Trojan Women
J. Peter Euben
Duke University
Prepared for delivery at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the