Arkhê kakôn. The second word in that phrase is a form of the Greek kakos, “bad,” which survives in the English “cacophony,” a “bad sound”—a reasonable way to describe the noise made by women as their young children are thrown over the walls of a defeated city, which is one of the bad things that happened after Troy fell. The first word in the phrase, arkhê, which means “beginning”—sometimes it has the sense of “early” or “ancient”—also makes its presence felt in certain English words, for instance “archetype,” which literally means “first model.” An archetype is the earliest instance of a
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