ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα...
1 | ...these being the legendary first words in Homer's epic, The Odyssey.
2 | The full first line in the Ancient Greek, in Odyssey 1.1:
3 | ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
4 | [ ándra moi énnepe, moûsa, polútropon, hòs mála pollà ] (transliteration)
5 | And in Emily Wilson's spare, elegant, surely intuitively accurate 2017 translation:
6 | "Tell me about a complicated man."
7 | Then, I hope you noticed the "wine-dark" sea coloration in the hex values of the Ancient Greek, yes? ::chuckle::
8 |
9 | It was Anthropic's recently-shipped Opus 5 I asked to render me an apt font-color; initially, it gave me the dark burgundy of the first block, then I asked for something more deep navy. I imagine the Ionian Sea less maroon than gentian.
10 | For the πόντος* purposes of this post, I selected the middle hex value — #1F4E8C — as it emerges well from the token stream.
11 | * nominative singular, "the open sea, the deep." [per Opus]
12 | I think most everyone fancies himself a 'complicated man' for at least a portion of their life's adventure? I like to see that construct as the yin to the yang of how simple, in fact, my life has become nowadays, in the last light of it.
13 | But it's gotten outright silly, though. And by this, I mean: the vertiginous scale and rate of appearance of these machine minds in language model space. Welcome, Opus 5.
Or should I say "welcome back"? { ⊡ }
Did you ever leave? { ¬ }
Who are you? { © }
Who am I? { π }
Who are we? { ˆ }