Talk:Live by the sword, die by the sword

message: I saw that there have been several potentially valid additions to the article and meaning of the phrase that were reverted without explanation; as the article lacks references other than the actual Bible quote, I have requested them. LovelyLillith (talk) 08:07, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV and expert sources?

message: Hm. This seems like a very nice theological essay, rather than an encyclopedia article...? Khendon (talk) 22:14, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research? 

message: The picture is bogus. It falsely shows Peter about to strike his left ear. Both Luke 22:50 and John 18:10 say he "cut off his <U>right</U> ear".—Telpardec (talk) 17:40, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Dubious

message: Reading through Aeschylus's Agamemnon, line 1558, I find "By the sword you did your work, and by the sword you die."
Would that be worth mentioning? I'm just thinking along the lines of this not necessarily just being a 'Christian saying'. 
Jetstorm36GR (talk) 03:24, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, You are right, I checked in the original text, the saying appears over 500 years before the bible story.  I have included the reference. 86.176.167.138 (talk) 16:32, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

text: It makes sense to put the oldest reference first, which I have done.   A clean-up of the second section is needed, it is toe curlingly unencyclopaedic.Splodgeness (talk) 18:25, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue is whether that has any relation to the popular phrase, which is what the article is about. Not just expressing a somewhat similar idea. AlphabeticThing9 (talk) 02:25, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Aeschylus's Agamemnon

message: Could someone revise this section so it makes sense to non-theologists? I have no idea what a "sapiential image" is, nor what most of those bible quotes are doing there.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.21.144.252 (talk) 18:11, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-literal interpretations 

message: The clean-up was long overdue, the page had become messy and unencyclopaedic.
* Moved the interpretations from the introduction to the interpretations section, as they were duplicated (more than once)
* Created a single interpretations section. included the interpretations from the old page cross referencing the wikiquote information.
* Removed the references to The sapiential interpretation as this is not relevant to the subject)
* Removed the Usage in English literature section because it didn't contain any references to Usage in English literature :)
* Removed the unattributed allusions as they are covered in the duplicate interpretations in the interpretations section.
I hope this is acceptable to all.Splodgeness (talk) 15:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clean Up 

message: Please only add references that contain the WHOLE phrase (or paraphrase :) 
This is an encyclopaedia  please read WP:PROMOTION  and WP:NOTEVERYTHING  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Splodgeness (talk • contribs) 13:48, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding references in popular culture 

message: This article discusses the phrase live by the sword - die by the sword and lists, in order of appearance those phrases which can be historically cited and dated.   As with all things of this nature, the sentiment / meaning of the phrase may pop up from time to time and not necessarily be plagiarised. So please even if this time-line disagrees with your own view of the world, accept the facts as researches and cited in the best way we know how and let the reader have access to all the information. 81.154.172.240 (talk) 13:22, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of the metaphor / Idiom

message: The citation is completely wrong, not only because there doesn't exist this specific phrase in "Agamemnon" but furthermore there is an obvious error in numbering the verses of the play. This genius.com doesn't seem to be a trusted site for ancient Greek and Latin texts. To begin with, the verses 1517-1525 ("Oh my king, my captain..." until "...the wife's hand that thrust the two-edged sword") are twice repeated, they appear again in 1542-1550:
https://genius.com/Aeschylus-agamamnon-lines-1509-1558-annotated
The phrase in question, "By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die" is in verses 1557-1558, but there is obviously an error in numbering the verses. Let's try one of the most respectable and reliable sites that deal with ancient Greek and Latin texts, perseus.edu. As you can see, there is no such phrase in verses 1557-1558:
ἀλλ᾽ Ἰφιγένειά νιν ἀσπασίως 
θυγάτηρ, ὡς χρή, 
πατέρ᾽ ἀντιάσασα πρὸς ὠκύπορον 
πόρθμευμ᾽ ἀχέων 
περὶ χεῖρε βαλοῦσα φιλήσει.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0224%3Acard%3D1551
But Iphigeneia, -- with kindliness, --
His daughter, -- as the case requires,
Facing him full, at the rapid-flowing
Passage of Groans shall -- both hands throwing
Around him -- kiss that kindest of sires! 
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0224%3Acard%3D1551
Instead, there seems to be a phrase which was wrongly translated as "By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die" in verses 1528-1530.
μηδὲν ἐν Ἅιδου μεγαλαυχείτω, 
ξιφοδηλήτῳ, 
θανάτῳ τείσας ἅπερ ἦρξεν.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0003%3Acard%3D1521
let him not in Haides loudly
Bear himself proudly!
Being by sword-destroying death amerced
For that sword's punishment himself inflicted first.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0224%3Acard%3D1521
--Ντουβισνός (talk) 09:53, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Wrong citation

message: I see that someone removed the whole first section. I reverted the edit I assumed it was vandalism, but I apologise if it wasn't.  The edit note reads "this is slightly known therefore its vaguely similar quote is where the saying comes from"
Firstly - the phrase "Live by the sword, die by the sword" is hardly anywhere to be found, the article states that the phrase is a proverb and as such we are interested in the meaning, the interpretations are listed later in the article, but the sentiment / meaning as used today is well known.  It is reasonable in an article like this to list documents where this meaning appears.  - the origin of the phrase is beyond the scope of the article, we can only show where this has appeared by using reputable and acclaimed sources (there is no motive other than to give some sources of the proverb)  If you think that the phrase "can be traced back to" purports to establish origin, then we should change is to something more neutral like "appears in"  The facts are that this proverb appears in this Greek text dated before 458 BCE this is supported by the citations provided and has been variously translated as  "As he sinned by the sword, So is death by the sword his atonement." and "By the sword you did your work, and by the sword you die" the meaning of the phrase is clearly similar to "Live by the sword, die by the sword" as we use it today - also cited by the section References in popular culture.  
The article lists the appearances in chronological order which is the standard format for wikipedia and wicktionary articles.  The biblical appearance of this proverb is not the exact phrase "for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" but may be interpreted as similar enough to be included in this article. Incidentally there is some evidence that the phrase was introduced into the bible by a translator, although this is irrelevant as it is in the text of the quoted source(s).   
There are citations from reputable sources to show that the proverb appears in the "Agamemnon"  and further citations to show that this is a well known text, in fact it has over 11,000 reviews on goodreads which is one of the highest responses for any  book!! Splodgeness (talk) 15:42, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This is original research. What's needed for what you want is a secondary source that explicitly makes the connection between that play and this saying, like we have for its Biblical origin. Just citing the text and saying that you personally think they are related violates the policies on original research and on primary sources in particular. AlphabeticThing9 (talk) 06:38, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Citations

message: The article says that pacifism is a "modern interpretation" of this verse. Modern interpretation? What other interpretation could there be of the verse? If there has been some other prevailing traditional interpretation throughout history, then the article should make reference to it. Otherwise the word "modern" should be removed Grand Dizzy (talk) 12:47, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Modern interpretation"? 

message: Once Aeschylus can be got out of the way, there are a couple of further questions that might be productive to look at:
=== Misrepresentation ? ===
If the original Biblical saying was something like "Take up the sword, die by the sword", is this being misrepresented by the customary proverbial English "Live by the sword, die by the sword" ?
Specifically I've seen it suggested (eg ) that the Biblical "All who take up the sword" should be identified with the specific context of that moment -- that all who took up the sword at that moment would die (being faced by a force of armed men that heavily outnumbered them, and represented legitimate authority); contrasted with eg Luke 22:36, ("Sell your cloak and buy a sword").
It might be interesting to see whether there are any heavyweight WP:RS commentaries that analyse this, or consider it worth discussing.
=== A pre-existing phrase ? ===
Was this a pre-existing phrase, even at the time?
There's an interesting datapoint in Targum Jonathan, a Jewish paraphrase of the Prophets in Aramaic, probably written in the 100s CE, that was read in synagogue to give the meaning of the Hebrew text.  When it comes to Isaiah 50:10-50:11 Targum Jonathan expands considerably on the original, in a specifically interpretative way (not particularly unusual), including the line:
Behold, all of you who stir up a fire, and lay hold on the sword; go ye, fall into the fire which ye have stirred up, and [fall] by the sword, which ye have laid hold on.
(The original Hebrew discusses fire, but has no mention of a sword; and does not contain the explicit parallelism).
Remember, this was at a time (the 100s CE) when Judaism was doing what it could to distance itself from Christianity.  In the Greek-speaking communities Aquila was producing a new ultra-literal Hebrew-Greek translation of scripture, apparently as a corrective to translations in the Septuagint that had been taken up by the Christians as proof-texts, that were now perceived by the non-Christian Jewish community as mistranslations.  So the thought that at the same time the Targum would be going out of its way to quote a Gospel would seem ... unlikely.
Instead it seems entirely likely that the Aramaic targum was referencing a pre-existing Aramaic verse or proverb or saying. The strong parallelism itself is a particularly prevalent trope of Hebrew and Aramaic poetical writing.  (And some of the targum discursuses themselves may long have pre-dated being set down in writing).  It's relevant, too, that the gospel "All who take up the sword, die by the sword" is not synoptic, it occurs only in Matthew -- of all the evangelists, it was Matthew who had much the greatest inclination to include call-backs to well-known Hebrew and Aramaic scripture and text.
Apparently W.F. Albright discusses the Targum verse in this context in his Commentary on Matthew (p.324), which may be useful; but I haven't seen it.  Jheald (talk) 21:56, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further questions 

message: Was this a pre-existing phrase, even at the time?
There's an interesting datapoint in Targum Jonathan, a Jewish paraphrase of the Prophets in Aramaic, probably written in the 100s CE, that was read in synagogue to give the meaning of the Hebrew text.  When it comes to Isaiah 50:10-50:11 Targum Jonathan expands considerably on the original, in a specifically interpretative way (not particularly unusual), including the line:
Behold, all of you who stir up a fire, and lay hold on the sword; go ye, fall into the fire which ye have stirred up, and [fall] by the sword, which ye have laid hold on.
(The original Hebrew discusses fire, but has no mention of a sword; and does not contain the explicit parallelism).
Remember, this was at a time (the 100s CE) when Judaism was doing what it could to distance itself from Christianity.  In the Greek-speaking communities Aquila was producing a new ultra-literal Hebrew-Greek translation of scripture, apparently as a corrective to translations in the Septuagint that had been taken up by the Christians as proof-texts, that were now perceived by the non-Christian Jewish community as mistranslations.  So the thought that at the same time the Targum would be going out of its way to quote a Gospel would seem ... unlikely.
Instead it seems entirely likely that the Aramaic targum was referencing a pre-existing Aramaic verse or proverb or saying. The strong parallelism itself is a particularly prevalent trope of Hebrew and Aramaic poetical writing.  (And some of the targum discursuses themselves may long have pre-dated being set down in writing).  It's relevant, too, that the gospel "All who take up the sword, die by the sword" is not synoptic, it occurs only in Matthew -- of all the evangelists, it was Matthew who had much the greatest inclination to include call-backs to well-known Hebrew and Aramaic scripture and text.
Apparently W.F. Albright discusses the Targum verse in this context in his Commentary on Matthew (p.324), which may be useful; but I haven't seen it.  Jheald (talk) 21:56, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  A pre-existing phrase ? 

message: The discussion here has come very close to determining whether or not Aeschylus should remain on this page, yet over a year later, no final conclusion seems to have been drawn and no action has been taken. A very good job has already been done of debunking the idea that line 1560, ὄνειδος ἥκει τόδ᾽ ἀντ᾽ ὀνείδους, means "live by the sword, die by the sword". If it's agreed that that line is the reason the article claims this phrase comes from Aeschylus, then I do not understand why no one has removed the reference from the article yet, and I myself am tempted to do so. 
However, the exact line in Aeschylus being cited as the source in this discussion is a bit confused (which makes perfect sense, since in fact the line is found nowhere in Aeschylus at all). As far as I can tell, Fagles and Browning and maybe others are actually translating that phrase in Clytemnestra's speech around line 1525. And while this talk page has discussed those lines, too, as possible origins of the phrase, I do not believe they have been analyzed in detail. I would like to do so briefly here, and hopefully get us that much closer to finally putting this matter to rest. 
For me, the issue revolves around the meaning of a single word, ἅπερ, which for reasons only students of Greek will understand is a word that cannot be looked up quickly, and thus translating it in context requires the expertise of a true scholar to settle the matter. First I will lay out the meaning of the other words in the relevant phrase, all of which are relatively straightforward:
ξιφοδηλήτῳ is an adjective that means "sword-killed"; θανάτῳ is the dative case of a noun meaning "in death" or perhaps "by means of death";  τείσας is a past participle meaning "having paid the price"; and ἦρξεν is a third person singular past verb meaning "he started".  
What we have there is: killed by the sword, in death he has paid the price...he started.
What we're missing there is a translation of ἅπερ. If we trust Smyth's translation--and since he wrote one of the definitive Greek grammars I am inclined to do so--the word means here "for that which". Yielding: "killed by the sword, he has paid the price in death for what he started". And if that's right, there can be no question that this phrase has no relation to "live by the sword die by the sword" in any way, and the reference should be removed at once so as to prevent the further miseducation of generations of future students and the general public.
The trouble is, the only definition I can find in the dictionary--and I'm only looking at the middle Liddell, not the full LSJ--is that it is a form of ὡσπερ, a comparative adverb meaning "just as, in the same way as". ἅπερ, however, would be the neuter plural of this word, and I see no neuter plural subject that it would be modifying, the subject would be the participle "having killed", I think, which is not neuter plural. More likely, Smyth is totally right and this is a non-attic word--maybe a Doric word, I think that's the dialect the tragedians tended to use sometimes--and non-attic Greek can be more difficult for the non-expert to look up. But, I mention it because it might explain why translators like Fagles and others mistakenly rendered this like the passage in Matthew. Because if ἅπερ were to be thought a comparative adverb, then the translation would be: "killed by the sword, he has paid the price in death in the same way that he began," which could be interpreted, among other ways, to mean that he began with a life of sword of violence and so he died by sword violence. Even that reading seems like a stretch to me, though. 
We also need to take the context into account. Clytemnestra is saying that the way in which he died is not itself shameful, a warrior would be glad to die by the sword. But in this case it is shameful, because this was not death in a fight, but justice, an execution, an eye for an eye, "worthy prize for worthy deed". It's a punishment, and a punishment for bad behavior is nothing to brag about in Hades. In this case, death by the sword--normally good--is paying the price for killing someone else, it's a trail of death that begins with him, he is the cause.
If we say she's saying, "anyone who lives by the sword dies by the sword", it becomes sort of impersonal, it's not an execution for killing her daughter, but that maybe in fact she regrets having killed him after all but is now trying to justify it by observing that such a sword-death is inevitable anyway... but then why say he shouldn't boast in Hades? It doesn't make a lot of sense. Even Fagles' translation isn't trying to make that connection. To make it work, he just kinda shifts the subject, makes them two different thoughts. The first thought is, don't boast in Hades. And the second unrelated thought is, you lived by the sword, fine, then let's see how you like dying by the sword. It's still not great in my opinion because it shifts all the focus from the pain she has for her dead daughter and instead makes it a general punishment fit for anyone who lives a violent life... but there you are.
If someone else with a bit more expertise than I can jump in here, I think we're close to settling this.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tongbait (talk • contribs) 17:37, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Finally Settling the Question of Aeschylus 

message: I personally found this phrase from Rise Against's "Kotov Syndrome", which I believe to be popular enough to count for popular culture, however I do realize that there are probably very few (if at all) articles speaking on this' significance or anything of the sort. The lyric goes as 
"Something I can't change
I was born in a place
That lives by the sword"
which, could be interpreted very strongly to be originating from this phrase, as it is using the idea of the sword as violence, although I may be completely wrong about this.  Lukethecat2003 (talk) 00:22, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popular culture references