<story><title>Sayings of Spartan women</title><url>https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/moralia/sayings_of_spartan_women*.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rgvr</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand the point of changing words like &amp;quot;many&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;mony&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;man&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;mon&amp;quot;. I mean if you&amp;#x27;re anyway writing the entire thing in modern day English then why do this.&lt;p&gt;Is it just for the effect of it I.e., making it look sophisticated? or is it some kind of attempt at retaining the originality&amp;#x2F;authenticity?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stult</author><text>I think I vaguely recall the explanation from a classics course many, many, many years ago, but I can&amp;#x27;t find a source without investing a ton more effort, so take this with a grain of salt: IIRC, Plutarch wrote the sayings in intentionally archaic (for his time) Greek. He lived hundreds of years after Sparta had disappeared as a power in the ancient world, so he could have intended it to demonstrate the great antiquity of the quotations, or he could have done so to paint the Spartans as rough-around-the-edges rustics. The translation attempts to mimic this effect by translating the archaic-sounding Greek as archaic-sounding English.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sayings of Spartan women</title><url>https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/moralia/sayings_of_spartan_women*.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rgvr</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand the point of changing words like &amp;quot;many&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;mony&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;man&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;mon&amp;quot;. I mean if you&amp;#x27;re anyway writing the entire thing in modern day English then why do this.&lt;p&gt;Is it just for the effect of it I.e., making it look sophisticated? or is it some kind of attempt at retaining the originality&amp;#x2F;authenticity?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pvg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s supposed to be conveying some kind of regional accent&amp;#x2F;dialect, I think. A bit from the same translation:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;A Spartan, being asked if the road into Sparta were safe, said, That depends on what kind of a mon ye are; for the lions gang about where they wull, but the hares we hunt over that land.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Edit: poking around the translation some, it looks like it&amp;#x27;s supposed to represent the Doric Greek dialect.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;Di0nGS9.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.imgur.com&amp;#x2F;Di0nGS9.png&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>