> [[nagy-g]]. "To trace a thread of thought starting from a Homeric song that seems to have no ending". Article in [[journal-classical-inquiries]]. > [chs](https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/to-trace-a-thread-of-thought-starting-from-a-homeric-song-that-seems-to-have-no-ending/) > [pdf](a/nagy-g2015-07-03.pdf) ## Excerpts > §6. Comparable to what we have just seen is the meaning of Latin _contexere_, derivative of _texere_ ‘weave’: essentially, _contexere_ means ‘restart the weaving’—that is, ‘restart’ it at the point where the weaver had previously left off weaving. [n7: Nagy 2009|2008 2§296] Here is a striking example involving the verbs _ordīrī_ ‘start the weaving’ and _contexere_ ‘restart the weaving’: *cum semel quid orsus, [si] traducor alio, neque tam facile interrupta contexo quam absolvo instituta* "Once I have started-weaving [_ordīrī_] something, if I get distracted by something else, it is not as easy for me to take-up-weaving-where-I-left-off [_contexere_] than to finish off what I have started." (Cicero _Laws_ 1.3.9) A weaver may finish a sequence of weaving only to restart it later in a new sequence—at exactly the point where he or she had last left off. In the case of Penelope, as we see the story recounted at _Odyssey_ 2.104–105 and 19.149–150 (also 24.139–140), the restarting is more radical: it is an undoing of everything that has been done up to a point and then doing it all over again. [n8: Nagy 2002:98n88.] > <br> > §7. **The idea behind the Latin word _contexere_, which gives us the English word _context_, can be found not only in Latin (and in Greek, as we have seen) but also in other Indo-European languages, as in Sanskrit**. For example, in one of the hymns of the _Rig-Veda_ (1.110), the singer starts the hymn by saying, at the very beginning of the song (1.110.1a), that this song is like a web stretched on a loom and that the song is getting restarted just as the work of weaving the web gets restarted: _tatám me ápas tád u tāyate púnar_ ‘the work that is stretched [on a loom] by me—here it is being stretched again’. [n8: Durante 1976:175.]