12 ΔΕΚΕΜΒΡΙΟΥ 2025
EPOPS Atticus
by
by Professor Michalis Z. Kopidakis
As a man named Tereus, I was unhappy, but once transformed into a bird, I found bliss, if only for the fact that, no longer a wingless biped, in accordance with Plato ’s definition of man, provoking mockery by the cynic philosopher Diogenes, I was now a biped in possession of wings. Gods and humans alike, and all creatures great and small, attest that I am endowed with beauty without compare. The crowning glory of my elegance is my crest, more famous than even Hector’s helmet with its horsehair plume, or Coma Berenices, or Absalom’s long mane. This crest – by rights it should be called my triple-crest – serves too as a barometer of mood and feeling, rising and falling to reflect my joy or pain or melancholy. Zeus himself, in appreciation of my beauty, transformed himself into Epops to seduce Lamia, who was the most beautiful woman in the world, and the most ill-tempered, and struck fear and terror in the hearts of little children.
My name, Epops, is neither humiliating convention, nor arbitrary linguistic sign, but majestic onomatopoeia, representation of my nature, imitation of my voice.
Yet the false etymologies proposed, those too I find flattering, for example Epops derived from epoptis, one admitted to the highest grade of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Neither do the hybrid Tsalapeteinos (from the Turkish çalı, ‘bush’), or peteinos (rooster) displease me, for I am no narrow-minded purist of a linguist.
In his longest, most profound, most subversive comedy, The Birds, Aristophanes provided me with the opportunity to amply demonstrate my virtues as a diplomat, a politician unintimidated by the utopias of intellectuals, and above all a mellifluous soloist composing and performing the most sensitive of poems, the pinnacle of this inspired art. Seizing this opportunity, however, I expounded, with the feeding of birds as my excuse, on my ecological concerns, and moreover demanded that the great and timeless matter of intergenerational solidarity be discussed, that takes on dramatic proportions when it comes to the affection children owe their parents, especially their fathers in old age. The playwright could have done no less, because our tradition, both ancient and folk, has it that Epops, as well as the stork (pelargos, c.f. antipelargisis, the return of owed affection and care to one’s elderly parents), are renowned for their devotion to their progenitors.
I therefore graciously grant your newly established publishing house the right to adopt the high poetry and many meanings of my name, on the condition that priority will be given to the fields that have preoccupied me, such as art, literature, philosophical thought, ecology, and social empathy. There may be those poison-tongued individuals that will find fault with my self-referentiality and irksome boasting, but isn’t our era naught but the long century of narcissism?
