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Kairos as ‘Profit’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John R. Wilson
John R. Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Extract

Lexicographers have always considered ‘advantage’, ‘profit’ as a possible meaning of kairos. And yet none of the ten passages cited in LSJ under this meaning (s.v. iv) is convincing. No less than four of these instances exemplify kairos as ‘due measure’ (s.v. i). Three other instances exemplify spatial kairos (a sense ignored by LSJ but recognized in W. Pape's Griechisch-Deutsches Handwörterbuch s.v.). The remaining instances exemplify the meaning ‘opportunity’ that develops from temporal kairos (‘the right time’). In none of the examples are we encouraged to take the further step from ‘what is morally, spatially or temporally appropriate’ to the ‘profit’, if any, deriving therefrom. Before considering whether kairos can ever bear this meaning, I will start from the citations in LSJ.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , December 1981 , pp. 418 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1981

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References

1 For kairos in Pindar see especially Burton, R. W. B., Pindar's Pythian Odes (Oxford, 1962), pp. 46–8Google Scholar. See also my article in Glotta 58 (1980), 177–204Google Scholar.

2 Burton's translation, op. cit., p. 101.

3 The meaning of kairos in this passage was already recognized by Stephanus in his Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.

4 The other supposed instance of kairos as ‘profit’ in Euripides is at Med. 128, for which see Wilamowitz, , Kleine Schriften i, pp. 42–6Google Scholar and Regenbogen, Otto, Eranos 48 (1950), 24Google Scholar.

5 For a list of indices and lexica consulted, see the asterisked volumes in Harald, and Riesenfeld, Blenda, Repertorium Lexicographicum Graecum (Stockholm, 1954)Google Scholar, to which add or substitute the following: the indices to M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci, to Denys Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, and to Edgar Lobel and Denys Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta; G. Fatouros, Index Verborum zur frühgriechischen Lyrik; W. J. Slater, Lexicon to Pindar; G. Italie, Index Aeschyleus; J. T. Allen and G. Italie, Concordance to Euripides; C. Collard, Supplement to same; W. A. Goligher and W. S. Maguinness, Index to the Speeches of Isaeus; L. Brandwood, Word Index to Plato.

6 For this meaning see Pape's Lexicon s.v. ad fin.

7 Th. 4. 59. 3; A. PV 379; S. OC 809; E. Ba. 1287, Rh. 443, fr. 149. 18 Austin (Nova Fr. Eur.) Bacch. 25. 2 Snell; Plato, Soph. 260A1, Pol. 307B1, Laws 916D8. At fr. 745. 1 Nauck, Euripides uses the phrase attributively in the sense of ‘timely’.