The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

Somnus
438
World War I, fought in a devastated landscape of
mud and corpse- strewn trenches. <strong>The</strong> fi rst day of
the battle resulted in the British losing 60,000
men, the greatest loss on a single day ever suffered
by the British army. <strong>The</strong> atrocious weather had turned
the fi eld into something resembling the Somme. See also
fl anders; passchendaele; ypres.
Somnus (somnbs) Personifi cation of sleep. Somnus
was the god of sleep in Roman mythology, equivalent
to the Greek Hypnos. He was said to be a
son of Night and a brother of Death. <strong>The</strong> call of
Somnus was almost irresistible, but he knew he must stay
awake until the relief arrived at dawn.
sons of Adam See adam.
sons of Bacchus See bacchus.
sons of Belial See belial.
sons of thunder See boanerges.
Sophie’s Choice (sofeez) An agonizingly diffi cult
decision. <strong>The</strong> allusion is to the 1979 novel by U.S.
writer William Styron (b. 1925) about a Polish
woman called Sophie Zawistowska who struggles
to come to terms with having to choose which of
her two children should go to the gas chambers of
a German concentration camp and which should
survive. <strong>The</strong> book was turned into a highly successful
movie, starring Meryl Streep, in 1982. She was
forced into a Sophie’s Choice between her two children.
sophistry (sofi stree) <strong>The</strong> use of subtle reasoning
to deceive. <strong>The</strong> word alludes to the Sophists, wandering
teachers and phi los o phers throughout
ancient Greece in the fi fth and fourth centuries b.
c. <strong>The</strong> word means “wise man,” although the widely
variant skills and motives of these teachers meant
that in time it came to refer to those who cynically
used their cunning to mislead or dupe others. “He
looked at her imploringly, as if he would willingly
have taken a lie from her lips, knowing it to be
one, and have made of it, by some sort of sophistry,
a valid denial” (Thomas Hardy, Tess of the
D’Urbervilles, 1891).
Sophoclean (sofbkleebn) Direct, simple, clear,
and reasonable. <strong>The</strong> Greek playwright Sophocles
(c. 496–406 b.c.) is considered perhaps the fi nest
classical writer of tragic drama, seven examples of
which survive out of a total of some 130. He is
admired for his economy and simplicity of style
and for his relatively straightforward approach to
character and plot in such plays as Oedipus Rex,
Antigone, and Electra. No one present could have failed
to be impressed by the Sophoclean explanation he gave of
the company’s actions.
sop to Cerberus (serbbrbs) A bribe or gift
designed to neutralize a potential threat. In Greek
mythology, Cerberus was the terrifying threeheaded
dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld.
When a person died it was customary in
classical times to place with the body a cake or
some other choice offering with which to pacify
Cerberus and thus gain entry to Hades unmolested.
When Aeneas ventured into the underworld he
went past Cerberus by feeding him a cake of honey
and poppy that put him to sleep. This offer of fi nancial
compensation is nothing more than a sop to Cerberus,
a bribe to prevent the complainants from going to court.
sound and fury Meaningless commotion and
uproar. <strong>The</strong> phrase comes from William Shakespeare’s
tragedy Macbeth (1606), in which it
appears in a famous speech delivered by Macbeth