Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

98 Magic [CH.
boys all glad and eager to welcome her. The first boy says ' Look,
there's a swallow ' (ISov %eXtS&>^) ; a man answers ' by Herakles,
so there is ' (vrj rbv 'Hpa/c\ea) ; another boy exclaims ' There she
goes ' (avTijl) ; and then ' Spring has come ' (eap ijSr}).
Fig. 15
I have advisedly translated opviQas Kp'ivwv ' knowing in birds'
rather than ' reading or discriminating omens.' A convention in
construing and even in literary translation prevails, that the word
opvis, whenever it has anything to do with presage, is to be
translated omen. The habit seems to me at once ugly and I
slipshod. All the colour and atmosphere of the word opvi? is
thereby lost ; lost because with us the word omen is no more a
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winged word. It is safer, I think, to translate opus as bird, and
realise by a slight mental effort that to the Greek a 'bird' is
ominous.
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