A Slip of the Tongue in Greeting (1-5)

When I began to write, I thought that I was taking on an impossible task, but as I went on I found

“Joy to you, you lord of this Tirynthian land,” [*]

“Joy to you, Achilles, there is no lack

Of meat for all alike.” [*]

“Joy to you! No longer mortal know me now,

To you a god divine.” [*]

“Joy to you! For now does darkness gird me

round.” [*]

Philippides, the one who acted as courier, is said to have used it first in our sense when he brought the news of victory from Marathon and addressed the magistrates in session when they were anxious how the battle had ended; “Joy to you, we’ve won,” he said, and there and then he died, breathing his last breath with that “Joy to you.” Cleon the Athenian demagogue also began his letter from Sphacteria with “Joy to you,” when he gave the good news of the victory there and the capture of the Spartiates. [*] However after him Nicias in his despatches from Sicily followed the old practice and began right away with the matter in hand. [*]

The admirable Plato himself, a most sound authority on such matters, altogether rejected the use of “Joy to you” as bad and pointless. He substitutes “Do well,” which implies a good state of both body and soul. In a letter to Dionysius [*] he censures him for greeting Apollo with “Joy to you” in his poem to the god; it is unworthy of the Pythian, he says, and not even for men of taste is it becoming, let alone gods.

The divine Pythagoras chose not to leave us anything of his own, but if we may judge by Ocellus the Leucanian and Archytas and his other disciples, he did not prefix “Joy to you” or “Do well,” but told them to begin with “Health to you.” At any rate all his school in serious letters to each other began straightway with “Health to you,” as a greeting