Misplaced Pages

#997002

50-451: Cancer (♋︎) ( Ancient Greek : Καρκίνος , romanized :  Karkínos , lit.   'crab', Latin for the " Crab ") is the fourth astrological sign in the zodiac , originating from the constellation of Cancer . It spans from 90° to 120° celestial longitude . Under the tropical zodiac, the Sun transits this area between approximately June 22 and July 22. In astrology, Cancer

100-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

150-526: A century later, increased the number to fifty, while Euripides , Virgil , and others did not give an exact figure. Heraclitus the Paradoxographer rationalized the myth by suggesting that the Hydra would have been a single-headed snake accompanied by its offspring. Like the initial number of heads, the monster's capacity to regenerate lost heads varies with time and author. The first mention of this ability of

200-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

250-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

300-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

350-671: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in a wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

400-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

450-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

500-451: Is Moon. "Cancer" is an ancient word of Indo-European origin, derived from a root meaning "to scratch." In ancient Egypt , the sign of Cancer was conceived as a scarab beetle , while in Mesopotamia it was represented by a turtle . In each case, the animal representative of the sign was perceived as "pushing" the sun across the heavens, initiating the summer solstice . Latin cancer

550-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

SECTION 10

#1733085520998

600-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

650-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

700-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

750-492: Is the Moon . Due to the negative associations of the word "Cancer" with the disease of the same name , some astrologers refer to persons born under this sign as "moon children". Divine associations with Cancer in Renaissance astrology are Luna / Diana , both goddesses that represent the Moon, Cancer's ruling planet. In Hindu astrology , the sign of Cancer is named Karka and its ruler

800-507: Is the cardinal sign of the Water trigon , which is made up of Cancer, Pisces , and Scorpio . It is one of the six negative signs , and its ruling planet is the Moon . Though some depictions of Cancer feature a lobster or crayfish , the sign is most often represented by the crab , based on the Karkinos . Cancer's opposite sign is Capricorn . Cancer is the fourth sign of the zodiac , which

850-437: Is the element associated with Cancer, and, alongside Scorpio and Pisces , it forms the water trigon. The water trigon is one of four elemental trigons in the zodiac, with the other three being fire, earth, and air. When a trigon is influential, it is said to affect changes on earth. Cancer is said to be the house of Neptune and the exaltation of Jupiter, both astronomical bodies over those born under Cancer. Its ruling planet

900-498: Is the generic word for ' crab '. According to Greek myth , the symbol of Cancer—often a crab, though sometimes a lobster —is based on the Karkinos ( Greek : "Cancer"), a crab crushed under the foot of Heracles , and whose remains were placed in the sky by Hera , forming the Cancer constellation. In Roman variations of the story, it is Juno —Hera's counterpart in Roman mythology—who places

950-707: The Angim credited with slaying 11 monsters on an expedition to the mountains, including a seven-headed serpent (possibly identical with the Mushmahhu ) and Bashmu , whose constellation (despite having a single Head) was later associated by the Greeks with the Hydra . The constellation is also sometimes associated in Babylonian contexts with Marduk 's dragon, the Mushhushshu . Eurystheus ,

1000-478: The Suda does not give a number. Depictions of the monster dating to c. 500 BC show it with a double tail as well as multiple heads, suggesting the same regenerative ability at work, but no literary accounts have this feature. The Hydra had many parallels in ancient Near Eastern religions . In particular, Sumerian , Babylonian , and Assyrian mythology celebrated the deeds of the war and hunting god Ninurta , whom

1050-745: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

SECTION 20

#1733085520998

1100-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

1150-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

1200-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

1250-572: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Lernaean Hydra According to Hesiod , the Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna . It had poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent

1300-434: The Hydra in this way, Heracles called on his nephew Iolaus for help. His nephew then came upon the idea (possibly inspired by Athena ) of using a firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. Heracles cut off each head and Iolaus cauterized the open stumps. Seeing that Heracles was winning the struggle, Hera sent a giant crab to distract him. He crushed it under his mighty foot. The Hydra's one immortal head

1350-467: The Hydra occurs with Euripides , where the monster grew back a pair of heads for each one severed by Heracles. In the Euthydemus of Plato , Socrates likens Euthydemus and his brother Dionysidorus to a Hydra of a sophistical nature who grows two arguments for every one refuted. Palaephatus , Ovid , and Diodorus Siculus concur with Euripides, while Servius has the Hydra grow back three heads each time;

1400-449: The Hydra, wielding either a harvesting sickle (according to some early vase-paintings), a sword, or his famed club. Heracles then attempted to cut off the Hydra's heads but each time that he did so, one or two more heads (depending on the source) would grow back in its place. The Hydra was invulnerable as long as it retained at least one head. The struggle is described by the mythographer Apollodorus : realizing that he could not defeat

1450-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

1500-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

1550-413: The beast she raised to kill him, placed it in the dark blue vault of the sky as the constellation Hydra . She then turned the crab into the constellation Cancer . Heracles would later use arrows dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood to kill other foes during his remaining labors, such as Stymphalian Birds and the giant Geryon . He later used one to kill the centaur Nessus ; and Nessus' tainted blood

Cancer (astrology) - Misplaced Pages Continue

1600-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

1650-556: The crab in the sky. Naturalist Richard Hinckley Allen , in 1899, deemed Cancer the "most inconspicuous figure in the zodiac," adding that its mythology "apologizes for its being there by the story that when the Crab was crushed by Hercules, for pinching his toes during a contest with the Hydra in the Marsh of Lerna, Juno exalted it to the sky." During the Middle Ages , the zodiacal symbol of Cancer

1700-611: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

1750-415: The firebrand, he declared that the labor had not been completed alone and as a result did not count toward the ten labors set for him. The mythic element is an equivocating attempt to resolve the submerged conflict between an ancient ten labors and a more recent twelve. Greek and Roman writers related that Hera placed the Hydra and crab as constellations in the night sky after Heracles slew him. When

1800-663: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

1850-602: The guardian of the city of Verona . The Cancer symbol is also depicted in Agostino di Duccio 's sculpture View of Rimini Under the Sign of Cancer (1450). In Giorgio Vasari 's fresco , the Chamber of Fortune, Cancer is represented in the northern compartment of the ceiling, pictured by Diana, holding the moon, along with a crab. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes

1900-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

1950-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

2000-492: The king of the Tiryns , sent Heracles (or Hercules) to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised just to slay Heracles. Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna , where the Hydra dwelt, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He shot flaming arrows into the Hydra's lair, the spring of Amymone , a deep cave from which it emerged only to terrorize neighboring villages. He then confronted

2050-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

Cancer (astrology) - Misplaced Pages Continue

2100-400: The oldest images of the monster are found on a pair of bronze fibulae dating to c. 700 BC. In both these sources, the main motifs of the Hydra myth are already present: a multi-headed serpent that is slain by Heracles and Iolaus . While these fibulae portray a six-headed Hydra, its number of heads was first fixed in writing by Alcaeus (c. 600 BC), who gave it nine heads. Simonides , writing

2150-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

2200-466: The sun enters at the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere Those who are born from approximately June 22 to July 22 (depending upon the year) are born under Cancer. Individuals born during these dates, depending on which system of astrology they subscribe to, may be called "Cancerians". Cancer is a northern sign, and its opposite sign is Capricorn . Cancer is a cardinal sign . Water

2250-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

2300-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

2350-537: Was applied to the Tunic of Nessus , by which the centaur had his posthumous revenge. Both Strabo and Pausanias report that the stench of the river Anigrus in Elis, making all the fish of the river inedible, was reputed to be due to the Hydra's poison, washed from the arrows Heracles used on the centaur. When Eurystheus, the agent of Hera who was assigning The Twelve Labors to Heracles, found out that Iolaus had handed Heracles

2400-485: Was cut off with a golden sword given to Heracles by Athena. Heracles placed the head—still alive and writhing—under a great rock on the sacred way between Lerna and Elaius, and dipped his arrows in the Hydra's poisonous blood. Thus, his second task was complete. The alternate version of this myth is that after cutting off one head he then dipped his sword in its neck and used its venom to burn each head so it could not grow back. Hera, upset that Heracles had slain

2450-508: Was deadly. The Hydra possessed many heads , the exact number of which varies according to the source. Later versions of the Hydra story add a regeneration feature to the monster: for every head chopped off, the Hydra would regrow two heads. Heracles required the assistance of his nephew Iolaus to cut off all of the monster's heads and burn the neck using a sword and fire. The oldest extant Hydra narrative appears in Hesiod's Theogony , while

2500-589: Was included in devotional books and incorporated into monumental sculptures. The depiction of Cancer as a crab is most prevalent in Mediterranean and Western European art. In Dante Alighieri 's Paradiso , he makes reference to Cancer, writing: Thereafterward a light among them brightened, So that, if Cancer one such crystal had, Winter would have a month of one sole day. Cancer is figured in Giovanni Maria Falconetto 's 1517 painting, Cancer , as

#997002