On Writing Fiction

"20 Master Plots (And How To Build Them)"
Ronald B. Tobias

pp. 31-21
"There's a method for each of us. The writer must know how he works and thinks in order to discover which method works best. Somebody like Vladimir Nabokov, who was meticulous and structured, laid out his work on index cards from beginning to end before writing the first word. Other writers, such as Toni Morrison and Katherine Anne Porter, began at the end. 'If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin," wrote Porter. "I always write my last line, my last paragraphs, my last page first.'

"Other writers think that's a terrible idea. But then Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange, probably said it best when he described his method: 'I start at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop.'

"... But remember what Somerset Maugham said the next time you come across something some great writer said: "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.'"

Significado de los nombres griegos

Grecia: el país y el pueblo de los antiguos helenos; Emil Nack – Wilhelm Wägner

p. 174-175

Nombres de personas

La mayoría de los nombres griegos de personas son palabras compuestas. Los helenos tenían un solo nombre. Sólo para identificar particularmente al individuo mismo, se le añadía el de su padre en genitivo, por ejemplo: Sócrates, (hijo de) Sofrónico.

En los nombres propios se refleja muchas veces la idiosincrasia y la ocupación de un pueblo. Los nombres griegos indican generalmente cualidades nobles y actividades. Tal vemos en la gran cantidad de nombres terminados en klēs: Pericles = afamado, Sófocles = famoso por su sabiduría, Temístocles = famoso por su justicia, Dámocles = famoso en el pueblo, Cleófanes = de fama radiante. Muchos nombres denotan un espíritu lleno de aspiraciones, de vigor, de inteligencia y nobleza: Trasíbulo = audaz en el consejo, Demóstenes = poderoso en el pueblo. La afición a los caballos aparece en nombres tales como Philippos = amigo de los caballos, Hipparchos = jefe de caballería, Hippókrates = domador de corceles, Hippólytos = desenganchador de caballos, Xanthippos = caballo amarillo.

Alejandro es el que protege a los hombres, Andreas = varonil, Dédalos = artífice, Diógenes = hijo de Zeus, Eugenio = de noble linaje, Heródoto = regalo de Hera, Nikolaos = vencedor del pueblo, Orestes = morador de las montañas, Platón = de amplia frente, Teodoro = regalo de Dios, Theóphilos = amado de Dios. Nombres como Aristágoras = el mejor en la asamblea del pueblo, Protágoras = el primero en la asamblea del pueblo, prueban lo muy temprano que se impuso la democracia entre los helenos.

 
También los nombres femeninos aluden a méritos y perfecciones. Ágata = la buena, Agnes = la santa, Aspasia = la amable, Dorotea = don de Dios, Electra = la resplandeciente, Eudoxia = famosa, Helena = brillante, Ifigenia = engendrada con fuerza, Irene = pacífica, Catharina = pura, Medea = experta, Sofía = la sabiduría, Tecla = la de divina fama, Theresia = cazadora.

Some facts about the battle of Salamis (480 BC)

From "The Battle of Salamis", by Barry Strauss:

pp. 141-142:

“… in 472 B.C., Aeschylus would again win first prize at the festival, this time for a tragic trilogy that included The Persians, his play about Salamis. He wrote from experience, because he had served at Salamis himself. So says Ion of Chios (ca. 480s–before 421 B.C.), a poet who came to Athens, knew Aeschylus personally, and published memoirs with a well-deserved reputation for accuracy. But after Aeschylus died in 456 B.C., his gravestone mentioned only Marathon and not Salamis. Perhaps the poet had ordered that, in order not to look as if he was trying to outdo his brother Cynegirus.

But what might really have moved Aeschylus was snobbery. The better people in Greece, as the upper classes called themselves, loved Marathon but turned up their noses at Salamis. Marathon was won by good, solid, middle-class farmer-soldiers, but Salamis was a people’s battle, fought by poor men who sat on the rower’s bench. And Aeschylus, who grew ever more conservative with age, might have had ever less use for those people. So, the poet might have preferred to forget Salamis. “

p. 145:

“The Spartans provided the commanding general, so they were assigned the traditional position of honor at the extreme right of the line, at the southern end of Ambelaki Bay. The Greeks considered the extreme right to be the position of honor, because in an infantry battle, each hoplite held his shield in his left hand, which left his right flank exposed. Every man was able to protect his right by taking advantage of the overlapping shield of the man in line to his right, except for the man on the extreme right. He stood in the most dangerous and therefore the most honorable place.

Tradition also assigned a spot to the city that claimed the next position in importance: the left wing. At Salamis, that honor went to Athens, whose ships were presumably moored in Paloukia Bay. Aegina held the spot to Athens’s right, to judge from the close communication between an Athenian and an Aeginetan commander during the battle.

According to this arrangement, the Spartans stood opposite the Ionians and perhaps other Greeks, while the Athenians and perhaps the Aeginetans faced the Phoenicians. In other words, the best Greek triremes were matched against the best Persian triremes. …

With full complements, 368 ships would have been filled with about sixty-two thousand rowers. As they took their seats, the rowers turned to one another and shook hands. These men were the backbone of the battle, and yet we do not know the name of a single one. Only a few captains and commanders are known by name. In fact, the ancient literary sources –histories, dramas, lyric poetry, philosophy– never mention a single rower by name, except for mythical heroes like the Argonauts. Their silence reflects both an age-old tendency in naval warfare to focus on boats instead of individuals and the upper-class bias of ancient literature. But in spite of the literary writers, the names of several hundred rowers in the Athenian fleet around 400 B.C. do survive, preserved in a public document, that is, in a lengthy inscription on stone. There we learn, for instance, of one Demochares of the deme of Thoricus, an Athenian citizen; of Telesippus of Piraeus, a resident alien; of Assyrios the property of Alexippos, a slave; and of Simos, a mercenary from the island of Thasos. These names, of course, mean almost nothing today, but perhaps that is the point. At Salamis, the freedom of Greece depended on ordinary men with undistinguished names. It was indeed democracy’s battle.”

p. 193:

“But why did the Persian triremes continue to come forward after their best squadrons had been thrashed? Surely, somehow the message of defeat was spread from ship to ship. The problem was not communications; on the contrary, the more news of defeat, the greater the ambition of the rear ranks to get to the fore. Persian captains jockeyed for a place in the front lines in order to ram an enemy ship while Xerxes was watching and thus to be recorded in his list of men to reward afterward. While the Greek contingents at Salamis managed to put aside their rivalries and each fight for the common good, the Persian contingents each thought about its separate relationship with the Great King.

By the same token, the Persian ships had little interest in continuing the struggle past the point where they might collect their reward. Compare the Spartan willingness to fight to the last man at Thermopylae with the Phoenicians’ decision to turn and leave the line at Salamis after they realized that they could not defeat the Athenians. The Spartan king Leonidas served a transcendent cause, while the Phoenician king Tetramnestus merely calculated the odds. Freedom was worth dying for, but there was no percentage in giving one’s life in exchange for power from the Great King that one would never enjoy.”