Uniomachia: a digital edition is a splendid scholarly presentation of a text so obscure it doesn’t have its own Wikipedia page (as yet). I’ll quote the introduction (the right-hand column at the linked webpage):
Uniomachia was composed in 1833 as a response to a schism in the history of the Oxford Union Society, Oxford University’s famous affiliated debating society and members’ club. In protest at the election of a Liberal Standing Committee, the Society’s executive body, several Tory ex-committee members formed a new debating club which they named the Ramblers. Concerned that the latter was drawing away Union members, the incumbent committee motioned to expel all Ramblers from the Oxford Union in an acrimonious debate.
Concerned that this schism would tear both the Society and their friendships apart, two undergraduates of St Mary Hall, Thomas Jackson and William Sinclair, decided that the best way to heal the rift would be to immortalise the debate in poetry. The resulting work, Uniomachia or ‘Battle at the Union’ is a pastiche of Homeric epic, composed in Homeric hexameters and an absurd macaronic Anglo-Greek; the poem’s name recalls discrete battle episodes or -machies in early Greek hexameter poetry (such as the ‘Theomachy’ of Iliad Book 20 or the ‘Titanomachy’ of Hesiod’s Theogony 664-728) as well as ancient satires of the Homeric poems such as the Classical Batrakhomyomakhia or ‘Battle of the Frogs and Mice’. The text quotes liberally from Homer’s Iliad, equates its protagonists – various Union committee members – with Homeric heroes, and satirises Homeric style and narrative features for comic effect to turn what must have been a fairly unpleasant and petty argument into an honour-dispute between mighty warriors. The result lionises and legitimises both sides of the schism while exposing the fundamental triviality of the disagreement by contrast with the real tragedy and pathos of the Homeric original.
Upon its publication Uniomachia was an instant hit, with several improved editions published in the same year and a Popean translation following thereafter, which has been published on Taylor Editions by Dr Laura Johnson. Indeed, the poem as a whole owes much to Pope’s Dunciad (1728-43). Posing as a scholarly edition of an antiquissimum poema or ‘most ancient poem’, the Greek text is supplemented by a line-by-line translation into dog-Latin prose and a set of critical notes in which Jackson and Sinclair, as ‘editors’ under the pseudonyms Habbakukius Dunderheadius and Heavysternius respectively, puzzle over aspects of their text; this fourth and most complete edition was supplemented by a set of additional notes produced by Robert Scott (of the later Liddle and Scott Greek Lexicon) under the pseudonym Slawkenbergius. Intended partly to satirise contemporary textual and literary-historical scholarship, the notes provided by Jackson, Sinclair and Scott give the impression of a pretentious faux-erudition, with recondite Latin vocabulary, strong personal opinions unsupported by evidence, frequent insults directed at the intelligence of editorial ‘predecessors’, and shoehorned references to Classical sources.
There are obvious barriers to reading and enjoying the humour of Uniomachia. It is written in two ancient languages, and many of the jokes contained within it depend either on a knowledge of Classical philology or of the Oxford Union and city of Oxford in the 1830s. This edition attempts to surmount these barriers by offering a critical transcription of the text alongside a translation into modern English prose, both of which have been encoded with a high level of functionality to allow access by classicists and non-classicists alike.
I note with displeasure the misspelling of Liddell as “Liddle” (which is, of course, how it’s pronounced), but otherwise I am impressed. The first line is “ἩΥΤΕ τομκάττων κλαγγὴ περὶ γάρρετα σούνδει,” translated as “As around the garret sounds the screeching of tomcats,” which should give you an idea of the epic silliness of the thing. If only all our controversies could be resolved by Homeric hexameters and absurd macaronic Anglo-Greek!
strong personal opinions unsupported by evidence
That’s the spirit!
And who’s Laura Johnson?
Presumably this one.
WP, on Hypnerotomachia Poliphili:
BTW “Slawkenbergius” is from Tristram Shandy.
If only all our controversies could be resolved by Homeric hexameters and absurd macaronic Anglo-Greek!
Who says they can’t? I doubt we have evidence to tell.
Could not “AI” provide absurd macaronic Anglo-Greek? (Homeric hexameters are probably beyond it, though.)
LH, thx!
“absurd” – is code-switching (or rather borrowing) always absurd when done for fun, or only L1 to Classical?
@drasvi
I think absurd refers to the content, e.g., “screeching of tomcats”, which is not typical epic stuff
As a Celtic ex-student I can think of certain Very Epic tomcats…
Not bad… not bad at all.
Famously comes in three sizes: Little Liddell, Middle Liddell and Great Scott. I should mention that T-flapping is a thing in the general Oxford area today.
@DM: three cookies requisitioned and heading your way.
I always liked English “commandeered”.
Realised that we have it in Russian too. Usually not the verb, but the v.n. “commandeering” which means “business trip” (I think the idea is that you are commandeered to the goal of this trip) and is often good, because it is a trip for which you don’t pay.
lionises and legitimises both sides of the schism while exposing the fundamental triviality of the disagreement
one of the best possible results, really!
(someone tell the trotskyists! and maybe get a time machine and tell the early anabaptists?)
Yes! If only such reactions were more common, and the Leninist instinct to “intensify and extend the crisis” weren’t so attractive to so many…
A model for A. E. Housman?
om nom nom
(I think I learned the three names here somewhere.)
A model for A. E. Housman?
I imagine the practice goes back to antiquity, but it was certainly established in British philology before Housman.
https://www.umass.edu/wsp/method/philology/gallery/bentley.html