Picking a username has always been tricky for me. I breathe a sigh of relief every time I see a website that lets me just put in my email and be on my way, and every time I see a “username” above a blank white box I kinda freak out. I mean, what is a username anyway? Is it supposed to represent me, or something I find quirky, or is it shorthand for people to find something out about me off the bat? Is it a first impression or a formality? If I use the same username here that I did on Steam, will anybody notice and does it matter and does that one translate well to this particular platform?
This may seem like quite a bit of overthinking, and that’s mostly because it is, but it’s a process I have to go through to have any real peace of mind. And so, after my customary freak-out upon seeing that this WordPress account needs a username, I had an idea. This blog’s about a Greek galley, and I’m a part of it, so I’ll just name myself after one of the rowers and that’ll be that. So I popped over to Google, searched for “rowers of a Greek Galley” and picked the first cool Greek-sounding word that caught my eye: zygite. And so @zygites it became, job well done, time to move on.
But then I started digging.
Turns out I had picked one of three types of rowers on a Greek Trireme, i.e. a “galley” with three banks of oars. The guys I chose to adopt as my own were the rowers directly in the middle, sandwiched between the people on top and the poor sods sitting in puddles of water at the bottom. None of the rowers could actually see the water, and so they rowed blindly, but they were coordinated surprisingly well by methods we aren’t quite sure about today – pipes or rhythmic rowing chants seem likely.
As per usual with me, this set me on a path of contemplating the nature of society itself, trying to analogize my random username choice and rationalize some sort of meaning from it. Maybe the zygite could be a representation of the cruelty of class division, with the rowers of each literal strata ostensibly resenting the other while all under the control of the siren song of the elites on the top deck. However, couldn’t he also represent it’s righteousness? The thranites on the top deck, while being “high and mighty” above the rest, had the heaviest load to pull, and hence had to be the strongest. Maybe the zygites were an analogy for the deep state or societal oppression, with humans crammed into a ship’s hold having no control over where they were going, doing back breaking labour “for the glory of their Polis (city-state)” while (again) taking orders from the men on top. Just like that, I had embedded the poor zygites in ideological warfare over two millennia after they sailed the Aegean Sea.
Feeling a bit sheepish after that failed exercise in “clever” metaphor, I sought to connect myself with the zygite. After all, am I not just a cog in the societal machine? I’m expected to pull my weight, do my part to keep the “ship” afloat, keep the oars moving smoothly and without fuss. Is this good or bad? I still can’t really say. The zygite could represent my longing for freedom from societal norms, my desire to fulfill the duties and responsibilities I set for myself, my will and determination to smite the sounding furrows (sneaky Ulysses reference), or any number of things.
Frustrated, I decided that maybe the whole concept of trying to make these poor long-dead Greeks into some grand metaphor or analogy was pointless. You can look at this small snippet of reality in infinite ways, through infinite lenses at infinite angles. Anybody can use the humble zygite to justify what they already believe in, to represent their views in the proxy war of public discourse, as a shield behind which to hide vague, ill-defined beliefs.
But maybe, just maybe, this was the true beauty of the zygite.
Through my over-examination of these rowers, I had accidentally brought their memory back to life millennia after they passed. Any zygite plucked from the hold of a Trireme and dropped into today’s world would feel as alien as I would if someone dropped me into 5th Century (BCE) Athens. Yet we form two small parts of the interconnected chain of human experience. I had just used him – or a generalized version of him, at least – to try and help me understand the world I find myself in today, to act as an excuse to have a meaningful and creative username so that I could just stop overthinking and move on to more important things. But in the grand scheme of things, the motion of his oars and the “important things” on my agenda are equal in their insignificance, as are the zygite and I. The zygite, though a human being with intricacies and complexities, is reduced to a mere generalized character, defined by a mere role he played at a point in his life. In time, I too will be a generalization, and if I’m lucky some future human will remember whatever I am categorized into and use it in their own contemplations and musings.
And so I decided that I wouldn’t break my head over trying to find the real meaning and connection behind the zygite that would justify it being my username, because to choose one interpretation negated all others – but most importantly, it negated the zygite himself, and that I cannot do with a clear conscience. The zygite remains as he was for those who take the time to notice him: a placeholder for human experience, a proxy for a multitude of perspectives, a treasure trove of insight, and a name I am proud to keep at the heart of this blog.
The Galley with No Name 