work expands to fill the time you have to do it. maybe I should have gone to dancing this evening?

[zorpisuttle]

I am really quite flummoxed by Oedipus Tyrannos (lines 435-446). I don't know if I'm just really bad at parsing, or if Sophocles just uses weird conjugations or something. Or both. But the commentary is no help- what exactly is "historical present" supposed to tell me? Is it a tense? And if so, how does one English* that

Comments

[golgibody]

I think historical is a mood? Like indicative or subjunctive. I could be wrong, though; in fact I have no idea where I even learned what historical was, but I remember hearing it before.

[autophage]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_present
http://txstate.edu/slac/Writing/documentation/present_tense.html

One of the most confusing sentences in the Greek language is the very start of Antigone. It's the one referenced in the "Fragment of a Greek Tragedy" you've read at Storytellers - it comes out to something like "O doubly-common-headed sister Ismene".