THALES AND HIS YET ANOTHER NAMESAKE

(This is not much of an entry even in its logically proper place, which is the Mirror section, and none at all if the reader expects it to be about Thales. This is actually a frivolous anecdote about… me and Thales, but, understandably, I do not want it in the Mirror. Over here, in the hoary antiquity, famous for its frivolity, it at least provides some questionable comic relief to the lengthy succession of Thales entries, which is probably the main reason why I have it at all, and why I have it here.)

In an earlier entry, I mentioned a certain confusion among Russian classical scholars in occasionally mixing up the name of Thales (in Russian, Fales) with the name of another ancient Greek philosopher Thaletas (in Russian Falet, which appears a lot like a derivation from the Latin genitive of Fales, as in veritas-veritatis). In this silly but funny entry, I am naming yet another namesake of Thales, courtesy of a peculiar confusion, which I experienced in my early learning years.

I was raised in an impropriety-free environment, for which reason I learned the name of ‘Fales’ long before I knew the meaning of the word phallus (‘fallos’). As can be expected, in my line of learning, I was coming across such terms as phallic symbols, cult of phallus, etc., and, as can be expected after all this preamble, an interesting confusion had resulted from this, as I predictably mistook all references to phallus as relating to Thales. In other words, I thought that “Fallos” was an alternative spelling of Fales, by the same token as a Latinized name of, say, Dionysus, would be more authentically spelled as Dionysos, etc.

Such is the rather frivolous and definitely improper story of Thales and his yet another namesake, in relation to my life as I was growing up. Imagine my shock when I eventually learned the truth about my confusion!

…I apologize to all Victorian readers for the shock of finding an entry like this in my usually “proper” book.