αποῥαφανιδωσις

[ecosophia]

Among the things I find most interesting, and most entertaining, about history are the little details that suddenly make it clear that the past really is a foreign country. Past eras aren't simply dress-up games for people who think exactly the same way we do -- human beings in those eras really did understand the world in ways that we don't. One of my favorite examples is the belief, tolerably widespread in Europe in the Middle Ages, that of all the men who had ever lived or would ever live, only Jesus of Nazareth was exactly six feet tall. 

But I have a new favorite example, courtesy of James Davidson's Courtesans and Fishcakes, a history of Athenian passions. Think of ancient Greece, and what comes first to mind? White marble temples gleaming in the Mediterranean sun, the robust poetry of Homer, the origins of philosophy and formal mathematics? 

Radishes. Radishes, more to the point, used in a very undignified way. 

Under Athenian law, a man who caught another man having sex with his wife or his concubine -- male or female -- had the right to kill the adulterer on the spot. This draconian law -- literally Draconian, as it was part of the early Athenian law code established by Draco in the 7th century BC -- was almost never enforced. Normally the aggrieved husband was satisfied with a whopping fine, but there was another option if the guy caught in flagrante didn't have the money. It was called αποῥαφανιδωσις, aporhaphanidosis, which can be translated quite precisely as "enradishment." 

You got it. The husband had the legal right to have a radish inserted in the adulterer's rectum. 

The sources I was able to find on enradishment don't mention who first came up with this idea, nor do they mention whether the radish was generally peeled or not -- I suspect it was, and given that ancient Greek radishes were apparently quite hot, I suspect this was the point of the exercise. Nor have I been able to find out how often it happened. Greek writers, including the comic playwright Aristophanes, mention it, and the scholiasts who dutifully annotated the classic Greek texts in Hellenistic and Roman times explained what those mentions meant. Catullus, the bad boy of Roman poetry, also threatened to enradish one of his friends if the friend in question messed with Catullus' boy-toy, but then Catullus was as erudite as he was scatological and probably got the idea from Greek literature. 

Two final notes before you run for the brain bleach.  First, the past really is a foreign country; they do things differently there -- including things with radishes. Second, as a longtime fan of well-chosen euphemisms, it occurs to me that the verb "to enradish" deserves modern use. I'm pleased to say that my wife is a pioneer here; on learning that the teachers' union across the river in Providence just lost a lawsuit in which they were trying to defend their mismanagement of one of the worst public school systems in the nation, Sara turned to me and said, "Well, the Providence teachers' union just got enradished." 

Comments

WARNING: Do not insert in any bodily orifices...

[brenainn]

The motivations might be quite different but the horror stories I've heard from gynecologists and ER physicians came to my mind as I read this. When I did EMT training a decade ago, the instructor told us about one guy who got a paper clip stuck up his rear. He swore his buddies did it as a practical joke. They were conveniently absent when the medics arrived but still, he certainly didn't do it for a thrill. It is an interesting, if somewhat bizarre, world we inhabit (past and present).

Re: WARNING: Do not insert in any bodily orifices...

[ecosophia]

True enough. There's a certain widely circulated story about Richard Gere and a hamster wrapped in duct tape...

White marble temples

[(Anonymous)]

Even our image of Greek architecture is subtly skewed. Most temples were richly painted like Hindu temples of today. The same thing that happened to ancient Greek temples is apparently also true for Medieval Cathedrals..The colors got washed/weathered away and we are left with a completely different impression...A riot of colours is replaced by plain stone surfaces. Here is a link to a Medieval example: https://www.churchpop.com/2015/02/23/medieval-cathedrals-color/ And some reconstructions of Greek statuary: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-sculpture-color-polychromy

Re: White marble temples

[ecosophia]

Or not so subtly! Yes, I know -- the last time I was in Britain I saw, I forget where, a section of medieval wall painting that had been preserved more or less by accident in a church. It was pretty vivid even after all those centuries.

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, your gateway ‘s bad again on the other site.

—Lady Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

I just checked and its up again. My tech guy is looking into it. Thanks for the heads up!

:)

[(Anonymous)]

LOL!!!!!!!!!!

Re: :)

[ecosophia]

Just one of the ways I brighten everyone's day. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Enradishment of every presstitute in this country, and nearly all the politicians, would go far towards holding back the decline.

I think I just discovered a new custom of Reality, thanks, JMG! I’d never heard of Enradishment.

—Lady Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

Neither had I, until I read the book I cited. Clearly we need a better standard for classical education in this country!

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if I could persuade the Covid people that radish enemas protect against the disease: getting the lockdown people to perform self-enradishment seems like as good a way as any to pass the time in yet another complete Ontario-wide lockdown....

[ecosophia]

This strikes me as an excellent idea. The only difficulty is that the media and the establishment is only interested in treatments that will make a bundle for the pharmaceutical industry.

[(Anonymous)]

I’m going to propose adding enradishment to the list of penalties in the Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association’s long and horrible oath of obligation… probably right before the offender is tied to the poetry appreciation chair. Oh, but I’ve said too much already!

[ecosophia]

The poetry appreciation chair sounds particularly fiendish. I can recommend some Pagan or, shall we say, Pagon poets for causing the worst offenders to wish they had never been born.

[(Anonymous)]

This opens up new vistas of historical adventure fiction. The heroine can be in danger of being ravished, as it has always been, but now the hero can be in danger of being radished!

—Lady Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

The hilarious thing is that if you set your adventure in ancient Athens, the threat of enradishment was real.

Where, oh where, is Chuck Tingle when we need him? Pounded In The Butt By An Ancient Greek Radish would fit in perfectly with his oeuvre!

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe Shakespeare would have followed up the enradishment sentence by serving the "used" radish to the offender in a salad, as in (more or less) Titus Andronicus.

punishments

[ritaer]

According to historical novelist Patrick O'Brian, if a British sailor in the Napoleonic era was convicted of bestiality the other members of his mess had to eat the animal he had had congress with. It was common for navy ships to carry cows or goats for milk, chickens for eggs and sheep or other small livestock for fresh meat for the officers. The group punishments was, I assume, intended to encourage crew members to keep an eye on their messmates; communal policing.

Rita

[(Anonymous)]

In my country (in central-eastern europe) during middle ages punishment for sleeping with another men's wife was as strange as in athenes and much harsher in my opinion.

Such men was taken to a bridge, than he was forced to sit on bridge handrail. Than he was nailed to this handrail in spot beneath penis and above scrotum. Then people gave him razor and left.

Our hero had two choices:
1. Sit on handrail as long as he could but eventually he would loose balance, rupture his insides and die.
2. If he act fast enough he could use the razor to cut his balls off. Then, if he would be patched soon enough, he would live- but then he would have to forget about having children.

I don't know what i would do in such situation. You are right Mr. Greer, people in past were different. Much different.

[lincoln_lynx]

Cheating must've been rare there...

LOL!

[(Anonymous)]

Enradishment! Oh, you have made my day. Knowing Catullus, I can see how he'd get a huge kick out of it! Remembering his vivid portraits of "busy fingers" in the bath-house, and other miscreants he delighted in skewering. And calling Julius Caesar a [Roman equivalent of a well-known nickname for "Richard" - and referencing the same male organ.]It wasn't all whining about his off-again-on-again lady love!

Oh, and for WofH fans, Catullus had a poem which celebrated the marriage of Pelleas and Thetis, at lest until he went off into a long digression about their bedspread and Ariadne Forsaken! Thetis, of course, being a Deep One.

Re: LOL!

[ecosophia]

You know, the thought of a Haliverse rewrite of ancient Greek mythology hadn't occurred to me, but you have a point there...

Enradishment

[(Anonymous)]

Never a dull moment around here: one moment we're reading about Wilhelm Reich and his orgone accumulators, or how to do banishing rituals properly; and the next we're reading about, um... unique uses for garden produce. >:)

I tried to read the word in the title before I read the article, and mistranslated it as something to do with an aversion to radishes. I bet that anyone who had been subject to enradishment would have an aversion to them from then on!

I'm quite fond of reading history, and it's true that visiting past times, even fairly recent ones in our own land, is like visiting a foreign country. One of my pet peeves is the historical novelist (or sometimes even the historian) who can't quite get out of the "dress-up game" mentality, and comes across like the clueless American tourist complaining about not being able to find Cheetos while touring Egypt.

T.O.R. (Taupe Orthogonal Raccoon)

Re: Enradishment

[(Anonymous)]

This site reminds me of the old Mother Angelica unscripted TV talk show—she had a wide variety of guests and thus a similar eclectic mix of topics. And here too the host is a religious leader.

—Lady Cutekitten

[(Anonymous)]

Not *that* different ... the modern equivalent of enradishment is "figging" - substitute fresh ginger root for that radish (but, yes, the aims are a little different nowadays). And, as always, using duckduckgo as a search engine for this sort of thing (rather than the usual) is *highly* recommended....

[ecosophia]

As far as I've been able to determine, nobody in ancient Greek times used enradishment as a variety of sex play...

Linguistics

[(Anonymous)]

"enradish" in English sounds pretty formal and serious to me.
So I ventured to translate into my native tongue...

"Radish" are "ředkvičky".(I wanted to insert here a link with the pronunciation but did not find an audio online..., if you are interested in phonetics, you may want to check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHUFhQgRfkg video for how "ř" is pronounced. Unfortunately, the word "ředkvičky" is not among the examples.)

If the concept of "enradishment" gets known in my country, I believe there will be several expressions in common use:

být zředkvičkován: be enradished - get the punishment
zředkvičkovat se: enradish yourself - get drunk after the event of being enradished in order to forget
zředkvičkovatět: enradish, as in: He enradished. - lose motivation/some cognitive abilities because of the repeated events of enradishment or in order to pretend not being capable of doing anything deserving the punishment...

M:-)

Linguistics II

[(Anonymous)]

Along the same lines…
Idioms:

“Běž se zředkvičkovat!“(inf.) - Go, enradish yourself! -Bugger off.
“Zaředkvičkujeme.” (slang) - Let’s enradish. – Let’s party.
“Život je ředkvička.” - Life’s radish. – Life’s tough.
Would those sound natural in English?

M:-)

Re: Linguistics II

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure "natural" is the exact term you're looking for. I don't really finding anything on this whole thread to be particularly "natural" or "wholesome"; although, depending on how the radishes are sourced, possibly "organic". Your translations do scan gramatically and lexically sound, no matter how unnatural their referents may be.

Might I recommend "Life's a radish." for "Život je ředkvička." That would pull in lots of rich associations in English, like "Life's a radish, and then you die." Or "Life's a bowl of radishes, and I always end up with the pits."

Good Lord, now I'm thinking of other idioms that are significantly altered by inserting a radish into them. (Aren't we all?) How about "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's radish." Or "If life gives you radishes, make ____." Hmmm, let's not go there!

— Christophe

[stcathalexandria]

I just saw this meme yesterday "In 2020, there were 287 cases of people dying - by putting foreign objects in their anus. This is more people in single year than people who have been killed by ARs in the last 5 years."

Of course "fact checkers" say there is no data on how many died of objects in the rectum. But it seems common if you talk to ER staff. An whole eggplant more than 20cm across was the strangest one that duck duck go gave me when searching.

[ecosophia]

The things I learn from my readers... ;-)

Other lost items

[adwelly]

Reminds me of a (ahem) passage in Grahame Chapman’s biography covering his period as a junior doctor before he hit the big time as part of Monty Python. One of the most memorable things was the wide variety of foreign object removals he and his colleagues had to undertake.

Apparently the oddest was a ceramic salt cellar inscribed with the cheery message “A present from Clacton”

Re: Other lost items

[ecosophia]

The things I learn from my readers, part deux... ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

From the Victorian era to the present day, we use peeled ginger for such purposes instead now. Though from the girth of those radishes in the picture, I do see where Athenianism applies.

[ecosophia]

That's a very nuanced use of "we," you know.

[(Anonymous)]

This post gives me hope (in addition to a good laugh) that people in the future will have vastly different views of the earth, the environment and our place in it. They could even possibly be a little bit wiser in their use of technologies and resources.

Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

A big 👏👏 to perspicacious Sara for coining the word “enradished “! I hope she’s having as much fun with it as the rest of us are.

My spellcheck picked up “enradish” almost immediately. I’m not sure if this is worrisome or not.

—Lady Cutekitten

[(Anonymous)]

Lady Cutekitten, thank you! Yes, I'm having great fun with it, and if it has spread to JMG's commentariat then my work here is done. ;-) --- Sara

[(Anonymous)]

I discovered there is a more exact word for the Greek practice of "enradishment". Rhaphanidosis.
I even found an article about it.

https://sarahemilybond.com/2019/07/13/consider-the-anus-radish-etymologies-adultery-and-the-defense-of-the-microhistory/

Joy Marie

[ecosophia]

Rhaphanidosis and aporhaphanidosis -- the latter being of course the word I used -- are both correct; both appear in ancient Greek sources.

[(Anonymous)]

So from a practical home defense standpoint, what varieties of radish have the desired properties of size and heat?

I'm thinking a bilingual English/Attic Greek "Beware of the Radishes" garden sign.

[ecosophia]

I like the idea of the sign, but you know, I'm going to let other people take care of the practical experimentation necessary to answer your first question...

[(Anonymous)]

Oh that sounds very nice in German, too: rettichen.

"Ich werde dich rettichen," schrie der gehörnte Ehemann und eilte, ein ungeheures Gemüse Unheil verheißend durch die Luft schwingend, mit wildem Blick aus dem Gemüsegarten hervor und auf das Haus zu.

Thank you!
Nachtgurke

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds like a scene from a European film that only shows in arthouses in the United States. (>.<)

[peter_van_erp]

I still have a few spots left in the garden where I could sow a row of radishes.... Of course, I would never need them for my own use, as neither Lady Khan nor I would be caught en flagrante. I will be glad to pass them on to the official Enradisher of the Horde of Green Wizards, however.
Peter Khan of Potlucks

[(Anonymous)]

The weed of crime bears bitter vegetables.

Butt wait, there's more! One never knows what facts will turnip here. I'd better stop before I become a pun gent.

stcathalexandria: "An whole eggplant more than 20cm"
This shows the urgent need to develop a Strategic Radish Reserve, so that this sort of thing never happens again!

Thanks for the most bizarre, entertaining thing I've read any first weekday evening this week!

- Mr. New-Writer