Apopudobalia

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The New Pauly: In the first edition of this ancient scholarly encyclopedia there is a fictitious lexicon article about the supposedly ancient sport "Apopudobalia"

Apopudobalia ( Greek Ἀποπουδοβαλία ) is a bogus lexicon article (a so-called “submarine” ) contained in the first edition of the ancient scholarly reference work Der Neue Pauly (Volume 1, Column 895 ). The article was written by the then student and now Professor of Ancient History, Mischa Meier . The deliberately incorrect entry is now considered to be one of the most famous “submarines” in modern lexicography.

content

According to the encyclopedia, Apopudobalia is an ancient sport that was already mentioned in the "gymnastics" of the "Achilles tactic" in the early 4th century BC. Chr. Is mentioned. The article gets its revolutionary character from the assertion that Apopudobalia could be regarded as a forerunner of the modern football game , which contradicts the generally accepted view that the English invented the world-wide popular ball game.

The article also states that the sport found its way to Rome in the late Hellenistic period . Here the new type of physical activity allegedly found so many followers that the most prominent apopudobalonts are said to have been listed "in the Ps. Ciceronian writing De viris illustribus (3.2) ". By the 2nd century, Apopudobalia was spread by the Roman legions to Britain , from where the sport was successfully introduced into the world for the second time in the 19th century. The unusual fact that apparently, despite the great popularity of the sport from the 4th century to modern times, there is no longer any evidence of apopudobalia, is explained by the aversion to early Christianity ( Tertullian ).

The difficulties in finding more detailed information on the subject appear understandable when one takes into account that the entry on Apopudobalia is completely fictitious and lacks any scientific basis. "Apopudobalia" is an ancient Greek art translation for "football", which, however, violates the rules of Greek word formation. Reference is made to a “Festschrift M. Sammer ” - published by an A. Pila (= “A Ball”) - which is recommended as “basic”, and to the essay by B. Pedes (= “Two feet”) in "Zschr. für Antike und Sport 4, 1995, 1–19 “.

In fact, a ball game called harpaston , which resembled rugby and has forerunners in ancient Greece, was popular with the Romans. However, the ball was small and more like a softball and was mainly played with the hands.

background

The idea of ​​writing the bogus Apopudobalia article came to Mischa Meier spontaneously when he was writing numerous articles for the New Pauly for his professor at the time . The Metzler-Verlag only noticed the joke article , which was not originally lemmatized, due to the considerable deadline pressure on the part of the editorial team, after the first edition had been printed and published, when specialist criticism of the wrong word formation came up without recognizing the ironic undertone. The publisher then threatened Meier to have the copies already printed destroyed at his expense, but after positive feedback from various amused historians, abandoned the project. According to a statement issued in 1997 by a publisher's spokeswoman, they wanted to "tie in with humanistic traditions [and] bring some humor into it."

The article is not included in the English version of the New Pauly , but the Brill publishing house temporarily considered adding an alternative joke article.

reception

The article is flanked by Stephan Geiger in the science satire Sokrates! A short history of philosophy of football cited as an important and trend-setting research achievement. In the meantime, this thread is spun further through similar pseudoscientific commentaries on the topic of "Apopudobalia".

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Werner : Footballers of all countries, unite! In: Forum Classicum . 47th volume, no. 2 , 2004, ISSN  1432-7511 , p. 93 f . ( online [PDF; 5.6 MB ]).
  2. ↑ "Joke entries in lexica: Von Steinläusen und Kurschatten" , Spiegel Online , March 7, 2010
  3. ↑ Personal details : Matthias Sammer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1997, pp. 230 ( online - May 19, 1997 ).
  4. ↑ Stephan Geiger: Socrates crosses! A small history of philosophy of football ., Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-930450-71-2 , p. 17.