EUPALINOS, OR THE ARCHITECT by Paul Valéry

(written in 1932)

Phaedrus was a follower of the Greek philosopher Socrates and a frequent inter-locutor in many of Plato’s dialogs.

Plato’s dialogs estab-lish the foundations of philosophy in the western world. Plato was the student of Socrates and Aristotle was Plato’s most im-portant student.

In this dialog, Soc-rates and Phaedrus are in the afterlife as shades, immortal ghostly like entities that have no material existence.

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Alcibiades was a Greek general, Zeno,

a philosopher, Menex-enus and Lysis were

both characters in Plato’s dialogs.

Ilissus was a river near Athens and also

a river god.

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Piraeus is the port of Athens.

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Boreas was the god of the north winds.

Artemis was the god-dess of the forest, the moon, childbirth, vir-ginity. She was among the most revered of the gods.

Megara is a town in the western part of Greece’s Attica peninsula.

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Orpheus was a legendary Greek mu-siciian whose playing had a hypnotic effect

on its listeners.

In addition to all their many gods, the Greeks also believed in an all-encompass-ing God who created

the cosmos. This God is often spoken of as a

Demiurge.

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This rarely used word has no relationship

to a racial epithet. It means stingy. miserly,

or ungenerous.

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Aesculapius was the Greek god of medi-cine. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and patron goddess of Athens.

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Architecture is often compared to

music and the ancient Greeks were the orig-

inators of this idea through the philoso-

phy of Pythagoras.

A sustained discus-sion of the relation-ship between archi-

tecture and music begins on page 29.

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The Elysian Fields were the final resting place of the most virtuous people.

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literally “Glory of long desire, Ideas!”

He is referring to Stéphane Mallarmé, the late 19th century French symbolist poet. His writing influenced a later gen-eration of writers and artists such as Picas-so, Dalí , Paul Valéry, Cubism, Surrealism, Dadaism. Mallarmé’s writing deliberately included multiple readings, non-linear organization, and other characteristics that were crucial to both modernist and postmodernist artis-tic practices.

The capitalization of the word idea as Idea is an important aspect of Plato’s thought, which considered the non-material world of ideas more real than the world of matter. Each material thing is an imperfect version of the Idea that defines it.

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The Pythia is the term for the oracles,

i.e., soothsaying priestesses, at Delphi

who were consulted by people wishing to

know their fate on important matters.

The Pythia were said to have inhaled mys-terious vapors from a cavern beneath their

Temple of Apollo, The vapors put them into their fortune-telling

trance.

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Corinth is a city of the northeastern part

of Greece’s Pelopon-nesian peninsula. It is said that the

Corinthian order was invented there by

Kallimachos. The Co-rinthian order is the least tectonic of the

column orders and its proportions embody

the slenderness of a maiden.

a “daemon” is a be-nign nature spirit in

Greek mythology.

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A “peristyle “is a ring of columns surround-ing an open space or a built form. A “porti-co” is a porch usually supported by a group of columns.

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Aristippus was a student of Socrates

and the founder of a particular school of

philosophy in the city of Cyrene.

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Minerva was the Ro-man goddess of wis-

dom and is essentially equivalent to Athena in Greek mythology.

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He is describing an ancient process for

casting metal objects. It is called the “lost wax process” and is

still used today by craftsmen.

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This referes to the parable of the footrace between Achilles and a tortoise that was an illus-tration used by the philosopher Zeno to demonstrate the main premise of his school of philoso-phy that holds that motion is purely an illusion. The p[arable is known widely as an illustration of Zeno’s paradox.

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Diocles was a well-known Greek physi-

cian and philosopher. At the time of Valéry‘s writing of this dialog,

it was believed that Diocles was a contem-

porary of Plato. He was, however, actually

a contemporary of Aristotle.

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In Roman mythol-ogy, Cacus was

a fire-breathing cannibal who was

ultimately killed by Hercules.

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Homer was a blind poet of the 8th centu-ry BC who authored the Iliad and the Odyssey. Peleus was a great hero among the Greeks. His exploits were well known even before the epics of Homer.

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Hellas is the Greek word for Greece.

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Danaïd refers to the 50 daughters of Danaus, who fled from Egypt to settle on the Greek isalnd of Argos. His daugh-ters were forced to marry the 50 sons of his brother, who had forced him into exile. Danaus commanded each of his daughters to slay her husband in retribution.

In Greek mythology, Proteus was an old man who tended the sea’s flock of seals. He knew both past, present, and future, and could take on any form he wished -- he was a shape shifter.

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Ictinos was the archi-tect of the Parthenon, Chersipheon was the architect of the first Temple of Artemis at Ephesos, Spintharos designed the third Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

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Ixion was a king in Greek mythology who

betrayed and killed his father-in-law.

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Anaxagoras and Melittos were pre-Socratic Greek philosophers.

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Thales is often regard-ed as the first of the

Greek philosophers.

Ulysses is the hero of the Odyssey, Jason is the hero of the myth of the Argonats, Tri-

don was a Phoenician saileo from the city of

Sidon.

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Delos is a sacred island in the Aegean

Sea where, according to mythology the god Apollo and his sister, the goddess Artemis

were born.

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Eumenides are the Greek deities of ven-geance.

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