Did you know there's a term for the ancient "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" form of rough justice? It's called the talionic code or lex talionis, from the obscure talion, which has the same source as our more-used modern word retaliation. No, it does NOT translate as "the law of the claw," as some sources have mistakenly claimed. Talion, talionic, and retaliation all come from the Latin root talio, "retaliation in kind," which in turn derives from talis, "like, of such a kind." The false etymology derives from talon or claw, which comes from talus, "anklebone." The reason I bring up the term, by the by, is that there's an intriguing new book due out at the end of this month called Eye for an Eye by William Ian Miller, examining the talionic code and its legacy. (Check out the no doubt unintentionally amusing cover art.)
In completely unrelated discoveries... did you know that if you plug a package tracking number into Google (such as those you'd use with UPS), it will spit out an neat little linky directly to your package's status? Well, now you do. : )
Posted by gris at November 15, 2005 02:37 PM