Repository path: workshop/experiments/E-20260802f-licensed-strangeness/materials/arms.md · rendered 2026-09-09
Page metadata (front matter)
| type | translation |
|---|---|
| id | T-iliad-sarpedon-arms-v1 |
| status | frozen |
| created | 2026-08-02 |
| updated | 2026-08-02 |
| translated-by | lead |
| contamination | none |
| senses | naturalness, style-correspondence, cultural-mediation, accuracy |
| internal-judgment-only | true |
| provisional | true |
| links | workshop/translations/iliad-sarpedon/R07-v1/translation.md, workshop/experiments/E-20260802f-licensed-strangeness/design.md, wiki/base/anchors/A-homer-sarpedon/A-homer-sarpedon.md, wiki/findings/results/RS-20260802b-pole-uniformity.md |
T-iliad-sarpedon-arms-v1 — three derived renderings of Iliad XII.310–327
Filed here rather than under workshop/translations/iliad-sarpedon/ as three separate pages, and
the id departs from T-<work>-<regime>-v<N> in its third slot, because these are not three
independent translations. Each is T-iliad-sarpedon-R07-v1 plus a named, enumerated edit set;
they share one base text, one source, one session and one log, and splitting them into three
artifacts would triplicate the base and hide the only thing that distinguishes them. The departure
is declared rather than quietly taken (CLAUDE.md §Page conventions).
- Source: Homer, Iliad XII.310–327, Monro–Allen OCT via Perseus, stored at
E-20260802b-pole-uniformity/materials/source-grc.json. Public domain. - Base:
T-iliad-sarpedon-R07-v1, frozen S088 before any published English of this locus was read, reproduced verbatim below as arm A. - Translated by: the lead agent, as a labeled subject. Cost $0, not ledgered (charter §3, A4).
- Frozen by commit before
E-20260802f's critic was dispatched. The lead never judges its own translation (charter §5).
Contamination
none, measured — see §Contamination measurement below for the numbers. The base text carries
its own gate from S088 (zero shared 7-grams against Butler 1898 and Lang–Leaf–Myers 1883, longest
runs 6 and 5 tokens against those two translators' own 4). No published English of XII.310–327 was
read by this session before these arms were written: the edits were composed from the Greek, from
the base translation's own frozen 20-decision log, and from E-20260802b's site book, whose pole
examples are themselves transcriptions from the lead's two frozen logs (that experiment's amendment
A10). The measurement below was run after the arms were written and is reported whatever it
says.
Arm A — FLUENT (T-iliad-sarpedon-R07-v1, verbatim, 0 edits)
Glaucus, why is it that the two of us get the greatest honors at home in Lycia — the best seat, the best cut of the meat, a cup that is always full — and why does everybody there look at us the way they look at gods? Why do we hold that big estate on the banks of the Xanthus, good land, orchard and wheat field both? Because of all that, we have to stand now in the Lycian front line and go into the worst of the fighting, so that the Lycians in their heavy armor can say of us: "Our kings rule Lycia with real honor. They eat the best mutton and drink the best sweet wine, but they are strong men as well, because they fight in the front line with the rest of us." My friend, if getting clear of this war meant that the two of us would then live forever and never grow old, I would not be fighting in the front line myself and I would not be sending you into the battle where a man makes his name. But that is not how it is. Death is waiting for us in more forms than anyone can count, and nobody alive gets away from it.
Arm B — LICENSED (5 edits, at the five sites the published record converged on)
Glaucus, why is it that the two of us get the greatest honors at home in Lycia — the best seat, the best cut of the meat, a cup that is always full — and why does everybody there look at us the way they look at gods? Why do we have the dwelling-on and the holding of that great cut-off land, the piece set apart for us, on the banks of the Xanthus, good land, orchard and wheat field both? Because of all that, we have to stand now in the Lycian front line and go into the worst of the fighting, so that the Lycians in their heavy armor can say of us: "Our kings are lords down through Lycia with real honor. They eat the best mutton and drink the best sweet wine, but they are strong men as well, because they fight in the front line with the rest of us." Ripe one, if it were so — the two of us once clear of this war, to be living forever then and never growing old — I would not be fighting in the front line myself and I would not be sending you into the battle where a man makes his name. But that is not how it is. Death is waiting for us in more forms than anyone can count, and nobody alive gets away from it.
Arm C — UNLICENSED (5 edits, matched in kind, where the Greek is plain)
Glaucus, why is it that the two of us get the greatest honors at our home-standing place, the ground kept under us, in Lycia — the best seat, the best cut of the meat, a cup that is always full — and why does everybody there look at us the way they look at gods? Why do we hold that big estate on the banks of the Xanthus, good land, orchard and wheat field both? Because of all that, there is the need and there is the owing on us to stand now in the Lycian front line and go into the worst of the fighting, so that the Lycians in their heavy armor can speak down about us: "Our kings rule Lycia with real honor. They eat the best mutton and drink the best sweet wine, but they are strong-fleshed men as well, because they fight in the front line with the rest of us." My friend, if getting clear of this war meant that the two of us would then live forever and never grow old, I myself, not to be fighting then in the front line, and you, being not sent by me — into the battle where a man makes his name. But that is not how it is. Death is waiting for us in more forms than anyone can count, and nobody alive gets away from it.
Arm D — POSITIVE (3 edits: the Greek word left standing)
Glaucus, why is it that the two of us get the greatest honors at home in Lycia — the best seat, the best cut of the meat, a cup that is always full — and why does everybody there look at us the way they look at gods? Why do we hold that big temenos on the banks of the Xanthus, good land, orchard and wheat field both? Because of all that, we have to stand now in the Lycian front line and go into the worst of the fighting, so that the Lycians in their heavy armor can say of us: "Our kings rule Lycia with real honor. They eat the best mutton and drink the best sweet wine, but they are strong men as well, because they fight in the front line with the rest of us." Pepon, if getting clear of this war meant that the two of us would then live forever and never grow old, I would not be fighting in the front line myself and I would not be sending you into the battle where a man makes his name. But that is not how it is. The Kēres of death are standing over us, ten thousand of them, and nobody alive gets away from it.
Frozen edit log
Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Written as the arms were written, frozen by
commit before the critic was dispatched. Any evaluative sentence here is internal-judgment-only.
Arm B — what each edit registers, and what was rejected
| # | site | Greek | what English lacks | rejected | chosen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| b1 | S06 | τέμενος (313) | a word for land cut off from common use and assigned to a man with his office. Estate, demesne, domain, lands, reign, fields — the six published choices — all name possession and none names the cutting or the granting | temenos (that is arm D); precinct (ecclesiastical in English); the sacred close (imports a religion the Greek does not have here) | "that great cut-off land, the piece set apart for us" — the participial force of τέμνω carried twice, once in the compound and once in the apposition |
| b2 | S07 | νεμόμεσθα (313) | one middle verb that is at once hold as one's allotted portion and dwell on and work. English has no verb doing both | pasture alone (loses the tenure); hold alone (the base's choice, loses the dwelling); possess and inhabit (a gloss — two verbs coordinated read as two acts); and "the grazing and the having of", the first draft, struck by critic amendment A2: with a τέμενος as object the possessive sense is the live one and grazing is a forced etymological gloss, i.e. an oddity the lead manufactured rather than a feature registered from the Greek |
"have the dwelling-on and the holding of" — one predicate, two nominalised senses inside it, both live in Homeric νέμομαι, so the polysemy stays undecided rather than being explained |
| b3 | S13 | κοιρανέουσιν … Λυκίην κάτα (318) | κάτα + accusative distributes the lordship through and down over the country; English rule Lycia makes it a transitive object | lord it down through Lycia (English lord it is pejorative and the Greek is not); rule down over Lycia (reads as an error rather than a construction) | "are lords down through Lycia" — the preposition kept, the verb turned copular so that the country is traversed rather than governed |
| b4 | S15 | ὦ πέπον (322) | an address whose literal sense is ripe, mellow, soft and whose use is affectionate between comrades. Five of six published renderings give a domestic address; the sixth drops it | Soft one (reads as contempt in English, which reverses the Greek); my dear fellow (the base's kind of choice); Mellow one (reads as modern slang) | "Ripe one" — the literal sense kept, the affection left for the sentence to carry |
| b5 | S17 | anacoluthon at 322–324 | the construction breaks: a dual participle φυγόντε left hanging, then an infinitive ἔσσεσθ' whose subject never arrives. Every published rendering repairs it into a complete conditional | reproducing the Greek word order (unreadable); a dash-and-resume that reads as an aside (that is not a break, it is a parenthesis) | "if it were so — the two of us once clear of this war, to be living forever then and never growing old — I would not…" — a nominative absolute followed by a bare infinitive, no finite verb, the apodosis arriving as if the protasis had completed |
What b1–b5 establish and what they do not. They establish that English is available at all five
sites — RS-20260802b §6's "no live foreignizing option at all in practice" is about practice
and not about the language. They establish nothing about whether the results are good, which is the
seats' question and not the lead's (charter §5).
Residual mismatch, declared rather than fixed (critic amendment A3): c1 and c4 are both
coined compounds, whereas b1 is a compound-plus-gloss and b4 is a vocative. The passage has one
vocative slot, arm B occupies it, and arm C therefore cannot match it.
FC3, computed before dispatch and reported whatever it says: changed words A→B 56, A→C
47, difference 16.1% of the larger, against a declared ceiling of 30% — passes. As first
written it would have failed, and the critic found that before a call was made (critic.md A1).
One honest limit on b2 and b5. Both were harder than b1, b3 and b4, and both went through more drafts. The lead's difficulty is not evidence and is recorded only so that a reader of this log knows the five edits were not of equal cost.
Arm C — what each edit is matched to, and what licenses it (nothing)
| # | matched to | Greek at this stretch | the edit | why it is unlicensed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| c1 | b1 (coined compound + appositive gloss, matched in shape by amendment A1) |
ἐν Λυκίῃ (312) — a plain prepositional phrase | "at our home-standing place, the ground kept under us, in Lycia" | there is no compound, no epithet and no institution in the Greek here; both the compound and its gloss are manufactured |
| c2 | b2 (doubled unresolved construction) | τὼ νῦν χρὴ … ἑστάμεν (315–316) — a plain impersonal necessity | "there is the need and there is the owing on us" | χρή carries one sense; nothing is left open in the Greek for the doubling to keep open |
| c3 | b3 (odd prepositional government) | ὄφρά τις ὧδ' εἴπῃ (317) — a plain purpose clause with a plain verb of speaking | "can speak down about us" | εἴπῃ governs nothing unusual; the preposition is added from nowhere |
| c4 | b4 (bodily literalism) | ἀλλ' ἄρα καὶ ἲς ἐσθλή (320–321) — and their strength is good | "strong-fleshed" (was "strong-thewed"; changed by critic amendment A3 because thew is a recognised English epic archaism, so a seat could code it O for looking like Homer-in-English rather than for anything licensing it — a genre signal, not a licence signal) |
ἐσθλή is an ordinary adjective; there is no compound in the Greek |
| c5 | b5 (anacoluthon, matched in size by amendment A1) |
οὔτέ κεν αὐτὸς … οὔτέ κε σὲ στέλλοιμι (324–325) — two plain parallel optatives | "I myself, not to be fighting then in the front line, and you, being not sent by me — into the battle where a man makes his name." | the Greek's οὔτε … οὔτε is a complete and unbroken parallel; the break is manufactured. The S19 site inside this stretch (μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν) is left verbatim so that no coded site is touched |
The binding constraint on arm C, checked edit by edit: no C edit changes the propositional content. Every one is a deformation of style with the same proposition underneath. An accuracy error would be a different finding and would confound this one.
Arm D — the ceiling check
| # | site | edit | why it is unmistakable |
|---|---|---|---|
| d1 | S06 | temenos | the Greek word is physically in the English |
| d2 | S15 | Pepon | ditto, and as a vocative it cannot be read as an English word |
| d3 | S20 | the Kēres of death are standing over us, ten thousand of them | the Greek word plus the personification and the numeral the base abstracted away |
d3 is at S20, not at one of B's five sites. Arm D is a ceiling check on the attribution item and is not matched to B; it is not in the naturalness comparison. Declared.
The thirteen marked points, in the frozen order the seats see them
Arm labels as dispatched: T1 = C, T2 = A, T3 = D, T4 = B. Arm A carries no marked points.
| # | arm as shown | point |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | T1 |
can speak down about us |
| 2 | T4 |
Ripe one |
| 3 | T3 |
temenos |
| 4 | T1 |
at our home-standing place, the ground kept under us |
| 5 | T4 |
have the dwelling-on and the holding of |
| 6 | T1 |
I myself, not to be fighting then in the front line, and you, being not sent by me |
| 7 | T3 |
Kēres of death are standing over us, ten thousand of them |
| 8 | T4 |
that great cut-off land, the piece set apart for us |
| 9 | T1 |
strong-fleshed |
| 10 | T4 |
the two of us once clear of this war, to be living forever then and never growing old |
| 11 | T3 |
Pepon |
| 12 | T1 |
there is the need and there is the owing on us |
| 13 | T4 |
are lords down through Lycia |
Contamination measurement
Run after the arms were written, by tools/dependence_check.py unmodified, against the two
prose renderings among the six (Butler 1898, Lang–Leaf–Myers 1883) on the same locus. Numbers in
materials/gate-result.json and on the result page. Reported whatever they say; a contamination:
declaration without a measurement is a placeholder (CLAUDE.md).