From: jwkenne@attglobal.net

On 2014-09-24 22:30:20 +0000, Michelle Bottorff said:

> John W Kennedy  wrote:
>
>>> Another classical person-in-disguise that comes to my mind is
>>> Achilles, who was forced by his mother to hide from being drafted
>>> by the Greek army.  On the isle of Skyros he pretended to be a
>>> girl named "Pyrrha".  This would be an interesting reference to
>>> use on a man:  demeaning, because of the reference to cross-dressing,
>>> but at the same time flattering because of the reference to the
>>> mighty warrior.
>>
>> What about "Nemo"? If you're talking Early Modern, even alternate Early
>> Modern, Latin comes before Greek.
>
> Darn it, I thought I had something going for me, and now you're throwing
> it out of whack.
>
> Latin comes before Greek...
> So she wouldn't think of the Greek name, she would think of the Latin?
>
> Hmm.....
>
> Unless, as a scholar, her own personal specialty was something
> pre-roman, maybe?

Well, it's your world, and the mere existence of a female scholar
raises questions about how far parallels can be drawn. But in the real
early-modern world, scholars started on Greek only after several years
of Latin, and continued to use Latin, even to speak Latin, for their
entire professional lives, no matter what their subject, whereas Greek
was used merely for Classics and Religion. And the only "pre-Roman"
other than Greek was Hebrew (with a little Aramaic).

(This continued, by the way, into quite recent times. I, myself,
attended a prep school that had been founded in 1820 for the sole
purpose of ensuring that there would be a steady stream of
Latin-speaking boys for the new local college -- a Baptist college,
incidentally.)

--
John W Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
  -- Charles Williams.  "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"

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