Chiasmus and Chalcis

Neoclassical art theorist Johann Joachim Winckelmann, in his 1755 book Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Art, says “art should aim at noble simplicity and calm grandeur” (translation via Kenneth Clark in The Romantic Rebellion). What struck me about the quote was its word order: “noble simplicity calm grandeur” can be called “chiastic.” The words “noble” and “grandeur” are linked semantically, that is, they come from the vocabulary of a shared idea of greatness, loftiness, etc.; “Simplicity” and “calm” are similarly linked. What makes them chiastic is that it you literally stack the pairs, “noble simplicity” atop “calm grandeur,” and draw a line connecting each semantic pair, it will form the Greek letter chi, X.

In my experience, chiasm in English literature is accidental, but I’m sure that it was done intentionally by Winckelmann, a Hellenist, that is, someone who studies Greek culture. Because Latin and Greek authors used chiasm with intent, I looked up the term in two grammar books, Essential Latin Grammar, ed. Anne Mahoney, and Smyth’s Greek Grammar, in the hopes of finding Classical examples as opposed to Winckelmann’s Neoclassical example. Smyth gave me Demosthenes: “having one body and soul sole” (my translation); Mahoney gave me Cicero: “That day was horrific for them, for us? Nice” (my translation). I looked up Biblical chiasmus, but mostly found narrative chiasm, where stories or parables are arranged in chiastic order by subject. So, I grabbed my Greek New Testament and was like, “alright, trying to find chiasmus, better start with John, the most Greek Gospel” and literally the first sentence: “the Word was with God and God was the Word” (my translation).

But, if I may, a note about chi: it’s pretty popular trivia that the term “X-Mas” is not an attempt to “take Christ out of Christmas,” but rather the innocuous substitution of the first letter in the Greek of the word Christ—chi, X. This may be an especially difficult idea for readers using the standard Roman alphabet, which has only one single-letter double consonant, X, which sounds nothing like X, chi, kh. The Greek alphabet has several: theta (Θ, th), xi (Ξ, ks), phi (Φ, ph), chi (Χ, kh), and psi (Ψ, ps) and the Roman alphabet came to the Romans from the Greeks via the Etruscans, but the Greeks and Romans pronounced the letter X differently. To account for this, I’ll be pulling from Greek Inscriptions by B.F. Cook and, in the same Reading the Past series, Etruscan by Larissa Bonfonte, as well as The Etruscans by Michael Grant

​Among the several broad dialects of Ancient Greek is Ionian, which would become the greater part of the Greek language that existed after all the dialects coalesced into Koine, literally “Common,” for you D&D nerds out there. So, we know that Ionian was a very influential dialect, but it had local alphabetical variants like Euboean, which is the one we’re concerned with. The “official” Ionian pronunciation of X is kh, which would be the case in Koine and modern Greek. But in Euboea (north of Athens and Thebes; the name means “good for cows), the sound values of Χ and Ψ were switched, probably because different places or peoples in Greece got their alphabet at different times from the Phoenicians after their native alphabet (a “syllabary” actually) from Crete died with the civilization that invented it. This detail is important because the first Greek folks to establish trade with the Etruscans, the inhabitants of northwestern Italy in a region called Etruria, north of Rome’s regions of Latium (hence, “Latin”) and Campania (hence, “campaign,” from where they held elections), were the Euboeans, particularly the Chalcidians from the island’s biggest city, Chalcis. With the Chalcidians where people from “Cyme,” a long-forgotten Euboean town, though it is possible (but quite unlikely) that these were from Cyme on the Greek coast of Turkey, called Ionia. From the people of Euboean Cyme came the name Cumae for the city that was the trading hub between Chalcidians and Etruscans. So, when the Etruscans got their alphabet from these Euboeans, X sound ed like ks, and the Romans would model their alphabet after the Etruscans’.

Actually, while we’re here, I’d like to also add that the Etruscans are the reason F in the Roman alphabet signifies the sound f, when its antecedent in Greek sounded like w. Whatever they called the letter themselves, there was a letter in Ancient Greek that didn’t make it into the alphabet, F, which we call “digamma,” because it looks like two stacked gammas, Γ. The Greeks didn’t actually have a letter for the sound f, because Φ, phi, wasn’t pronounced the way we do today as in, ironically, “phonetic,” but more like p-h. To the Greeks, the letter eta (H) was a vowel and the reason we use it as a consonant is that the Roman alphabet doesn’t have separate letters for long or short Os or Es (omega and omicron, epsilon and eta), so they were happy with E from epsilon and appropriated H as a consonant, h. That is all to say that the Etruscan spoken language had the sound f, but the Greek alphabet reflected the spoken Greek language, which at the time didn’t have that sound, so they approximated it in Greek letters as FH and the Romans made the first letter their symbol for f. In modern Greek, “Euboea” is pronounced “Evia” because “eu” makes ef, but “b” makes v, and f and v are linguistically similar sounds, so they’re contracted into the “stronger” sound, v.

Do you need to distract yourself? Or are you simply bored? Here are some great websites to make the time pass.

• create pixel art
• Awesome photo editor and art program, all free…!
  
• Totally free transparent textures
• make a cute chibi
• draw some cool generative art
• be a graffiti creator
• create a picassohead (you don’t need to be a picasso to do so)
• paint online
• another awsome site to create pixel art on
• and another one
• create your own mandala
• or color one
• create an avatar
• or you can try creating your own superhero
• here you can interact with organisms in different environments to see how to music changes
• here’s a website that translates the time into hexidecimal colours,
• Here is a website where you can travel along a 3D line into the infinite unkown
• here is a website where you can listen to rain with or without music
• Need a model in a certain pose for drawing? here
• Want to build your own planet
• here is a website where you can create your own galaxies
  
• make your own pattern (very useful if you need a new background)
• create next hit comic
• make a city which looks like something from 90′s games
• draw a mandala like design
• jig saw puzzles
• more jig saw puzzles to solve
• create a stunning HTML5 animation - no coding!
• make a movie
• create and dress up dolls
• play a piano
• you can also play a guitar
• create sounds
• another sound creator
• create a logo
• design your dream home
• sketch rooms
• explore fashion trends and create your own sets
• build a website
• try this app for building a website
• Or maybe start learning how to code!
  
• design your own t-shirt or a beanie or sweatpants and order them
• design your own phone case
• pretend to be a graphic designer with this cool online tool
• Make your own Glitch art
  
• Here’s another glitch art maker
• And another!
• Holy hell, here’s a third!
• make an image look like it was created by a commodore 64
• freaking cool text generator!
• Easy to use word processor
  
• Make up really cool patterns or run your photos through it :)
  
• Write an essay on anything with no hassle
  
• Wanna see how something you write would look like if it was on JacksFilms YGS((Your Grammar Sucks videos on YouTube))?
  
• Make pictures out of text
  
• ASCII word generator
  
• Need an idea for some fanart-here :D
  

Still haven’t found something that would float your boat? Try these:

• watch a documentary
• learn to code
• do something yourself
• workout with the help of this great youtube channels
• learn things
• play pokemon or zelda or other awesome old school games
• waste your time on miniclip
• play games at additing games
• or try games at agame
• calm your thoughts
• the quiet place
• it will be okay
• vent or listen to someone
• pour out your soul
• explore the sky
• look at art from around the world
• virtually visit museum of iraq
• explore world with arounder
• create a music playlist
• list through rare books
• scroll useful science website
• create sand art
• brain games
• try out tastekid and discover new favorite band or movie or book
• interactive 3D anatomy
• random street view
• post a secret
• create a family tree
• find our what’s the difference between x and y
• help scientists and become volunteer researcher
• create your own font
• read a classic short story
• In the mood to read, but not sure exactly what book to go for?
• scribble on maps
• listen to letters
• play with acrobots
• listen to podcasts
• make a bucket list
• Ever want to see the most truly useless websites in creation?
  
• Prank a friend with this blue screen of death!
  
• Zone out watching the colors drip down

Maybe none of these peeked your interest-maybe you’ve been wanting to create an o.c, but never really knew how to start-or you just enjoy making O.C’s….

_{This masterlist is to help you in making your own OCs….it can also apply to developing RP characters i suppose!} (´ヮ`)!

_{How to Write Better OCs:}

• _{basic tips on how to make your oc even better}
• _{tragic backstory? learn how to write one/make yours great}
• _{writing specific characters}
• _{a wordier, great guide on how to develop your character}
• _{kick out those vague descriptions and make them AWESOME}

_{Character Development:}

• _{how to actually make an OC}
• _{Q&A (to develop characters)}
• _{more Q&As}
• _{giving your character a backstory}
• _{how to write an attractive character}

Need an Appearance idea?

• Humanoid generator? check
  
• Here’s another one
• and maybe if you didn’t like those this’ll work
  
• Need Monsterpeople?
  
• Well, then here ya’ go
  
• Maybe you need Cats?
  

_Diversity

• _{adding more racial diversity}
• _{avoiding tokenism, AKA, how to add diversity to your cast not just because you “need” it}
• _{writing sexuality and gender expression (doesnt include non binary, if you have a good ref to that, please add on!)}
• _{masterpost on writing more diversity into your story}
• _{cultures of the world}
• _{guides to drawing different ethnicities (not just a great art reference, but also really helpful in appearance descriptions!)}

_{Mary Sue/Gary Stu}

• _{Test to see if your character is a Sue}
• _{Explains subdivisions of Sues/Stus}
• _{Powerful Characters Don’t Have to Be Sues}

_Villains

• _{villain generator}
• _{need an evil sounding name for your evil character? bam}
• _{villain archetypes}
• _{what’s your villain’s motive for being a villain?}

_{Relationships}

• _{character perceptions (What your character thinks of themselves and what others think of them)}
• _{how to write strong relationships between two characters}
• _{8 ways to write better characters and develop their relationships with others}
  
• _{OCxLove Interest Handbook}
• _{develop your couple with good ol’ Q&A!}
• _{how to write realistic relationships}
• _{how to write relatives for your characters (this is more OC related to a canon character, but will help in writing family members in general)}

_ARCHETYPES

• _{12 common archetypes}
• _{8 archetypes for male/female characters}
• _{female archetypes (goes pretty indepth from two main categories)}
• _{a list of archetypes}

_NAMES

• _{how to name your character}
• _{random name generator}
• _{most common surnames}
• _{surnames by ethnicity}

_APPEARANCE

• _{tips for better design}
• _{basic appearance generator}
• _{pinterest board for character design (includes NSFW and images of skeletons/exposed muscle (?) so tread carefully!)}
• _{clothing ref masterpost}
• Clothing generator
• Another clothing generator
• More clothing generator
• Aaaand even more
• Steam punk clothing
• Char Style preference
• Dress Generator
  

_DETAILS

• _{give your character better powers}
• _{a list of professions}
• _{proactive vs reactive characters}
• _{positive and negative traits}
• _{interest generator}
• _{skills generator}
• _{motivation generator}
  
• _{123 ideas for character flaws}
  
• _{list of phobias}
• Oh shit someone died
  
• Backgrounds and stuff? yep
  
• Quirks
  
• Personality. you need that shit
  
• Need something fandom related?
  
• City generator hell yeah
  
• location? got ya
  
• World-building?
  
• make your own god damn laws
  
• Landscape.
  

Need Item names?

• Fantasy/sci-fi/etc. medicine names
  
• Stuff to make things more interesting.Weapons, clothes, treasures… whatever your characters need.
• Item & Artifact Generators

Other stuffs!

• Genre, Plot, & Story Prompt Generators
• How did your characters meet?
• Fanfic plots. you bet your ass.

my art style is called “i am strongly influenced by detailed and beautifully coloured art but also very cute cartoony art and i dont know which direction i want to go in”