About me

My name is José M. Ciordia. I am a teacher of Ancient Greek at a secondary school in Zaragoza, Spain. I am not a specialist in any area of Classical Studies, but I like reading about many topics. Also, I have been a sailor in a Laser Class yacht for a few, but unforgettable, hours. My personal web is jmc.

Some years ago I felt like writing a scientific article about something. I decided to write about the misunderstood Greek word κυανός, on coming to the conclusion that it meant “lead”. But my research went much much farther, probably because some vital experiences pulled me in this intellectual direction.

During these years I enjoyed the results of my research a lot, but I also suffered very much: I became tired, often insecure, fed up. Now I am at the point where I need to receive some positive feedback to continue this work, because I cannot quite combine writing this book with my other activities.

This is the first reason to publish the preliminary versions of this book on the web. The second one is that I am conscious of the fact that I and my prospective readers could die any moment. So I would like some people, whose books I have enjoyed a lot, to take some pleasure in reading this one. Reading has been a pleasure and a friend to me all my life from the distant day I read The Mother by Maxim Gorky. Now I would like to give other people this pleasure.

About the site

Πομπίλος is the Greek word for the pilot fish, Naucrates ductor, who was believed to lead sharks and ships. It was considered to be divine, like the dolphin, and probably was revered by navigators.

The site is published with Textpattern, by Dean Allen of Textism, running in a Macintosh, and hosted by Phi:hosting. To display Greek texts, you must have installed any Unicode font with Greek extended characters.

About the book

Written with Mellel, using Palatino Linotype, an Unicode font drawn by Hermann Zapf. Greek texts searched at the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. CD-Rom E. Curiosity, imagination and the sentence of Herakleitos (Fr.18): ἐὰν μὴ ἔλπηται ἀνέλπιστον οὐκ ἐξευρήσει, ανεξερεύνητον ἐὸν καὶ ἄπορον, “If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it, for it is trackless and unexplored”.

Naval Archaeology links

© José M. Ciordia, 2005 | Zaragoza, Spain | Syndicate RSS or Atom.