I’ve checked out a couple of translations of The Iliad recently, and I’ve noticed an anachronism. Often horses are said to be eating corn. But, I’m fairly certain that pre-Columbian Europeans didn’t know what corn was.
The only translator I can site right now is Samuel Butler, but I’m fairly certain he’s not the only one to do this.
Were the translators unaware of this? What is the common English name of the ancient Greek plant that’s being translated as corn?
In English English “corn” usually means wheat (possibly it usually means oats in Scotland). In general, it means the staple grain crop of the country. (However, British people do use the terms “sweetcorn” and “corn-on-the-cob” to refer to forms of maize.)
It hurts, hurts I say, to read that. Pass the butter.
And that’s butter in the sense of actual butter, made from milk/cream, came from cows. Not “butter” meaning any pale yellow glop that some people put on bread. Kids these days don’t seem to know the difference. And what are they doing on my lawn?
(FTR, the Devil household keeps a tub of some sort of oil-based product in the freezer for guests who for some reason want it (read: mothers in-law). Otherwise, all we keep in the fridge is butter (salted and unsalted), so I’m completely with you at the dig at the plasticine goop.)
I’ve seen more than one production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in which the “corn” is depicted as Maize. That’s not the worst anachronism, however, since Pharaoh is portrayed as Elvis.