Spotted last week in a New Jersey supermarket:
[Photograph by Rachel Leddy.]
Oikos
(οίκος) is one of my favorite ancient Greek words. Its meanings include house, dwelling, household, and family (as in “the house of Atreus”). Oikos the source of ec- and eco-, as in ecology and economics. It’s a key word in Homer’s Odyssey, which is about finding one’s way back home.
The cover of Stanley Lombardo’s translation of the Odyssey makes this point beautifully, with a cropped version of “Earthrise,” an Apollo 8 photograph of our one oikos, taken as the astronauts orbited the moon. When the Odyssey begins, Odysseus may as well be on the moon: he has been removed from all possibilities of human culture.
Earthrise (NASA)
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(Thanks, Rachel!)
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