Procrustes

"Damastes" redirects here. For the huntman spider, see Damastes or Sparassidae.

Theseus and Procrustes, Attic red-figure neck-amphora, 570–560 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 2325)

In Greek mythology Procrustes (Προκρούστης) or "the stretcher [who hammers out the metal]", also known as Prokoptas or Damastes (Δαμαστής) "subduer", was a rogue smith and bandit from Attica. Procrustes was a son of Poseidon with a stronghold on Mount Korydallos, on the sacred way between Athens and Eleusis. There, he had an iron bed in which he invited every passer-by to spend the night, and where he set to work on them with his smith's hammer, to stretch them to fit. In later tellings, if the guest proved too tall, Procrustes would amputate the excess length; nobody ever fit the bed exactly because secretly Procrustes had two beds.^[1] Procrustes continued his reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, travelling to Athens along the sacred way, who "fitted" Procrustes to his own bed:

"He killed Damastes, surnamed Procrustes, by compelling him to make his own body fit his bed, as he had been wont to do with those of strangers. And he did this in imitation of Heracles. For that hero punished those who offered him violence in the manner in which they had plotted to serve him."^[2]

Killing Procrustes was the last adventure of Theseus on his journey from Troezen to Athens.

Derived meanings

A Procrustean bed is an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced. Sometimes the term is applied to the pan and scan process of cropping motion pictures for television and home video.

Procrustes analysis is the name for the process of performing a shape-preserving Euclidean transformation to a set of shapes. This removes variations in translation, rotation and scaling across the dataset in order to move them into a common frame of reference. This is generally the precursor to further statistical analysis. A related problem in linear algebra is the orthogonal Procrustes problem of finding the closest orthogonal matrix to any given matrix.

Procrustean rhyme is a form of enjambment wherein words are split to create rhymes for ordinarily unrhymable words, as in "The four eng- / ineers / wore orange / brassieres."

A "Procrustean solution" is the undesirable practice of tailoring data to fit its container or some other preconceived stricture. A common example from the business world is embodied in the notion that no résumé should exceed one page in length.

In statistics, instead of finding the best fit line to a scatter plot of data, first choose the line you want, then select only the data that fits it, disregarding data that does not, so to "prove" some point you are making. Its a form of deception that rhetoricians make so to forward their own interests at the expense of others. The unique goal of the Procrustean solution is not win-win, but rather that Procrustes wins AND the other loses. In this case, the defeat of the opponent justifies the deceptive means.

In computer science, a Procrustean string is a fixed length string into which strings of varying lengths are placed. If the string inserted is too short, then it is padded out, usually with spaces or null characters. If the string inserted is too long, it is truncated. The concept is mentioned in the Sinclair ZX81 user manual, where a portion of a string is replaced by another string using Procrustean assignment — the replacement string is truncated or padded in order to have length equal to the portion being replaced.^[3]. Although the term did not catch on in wider usage, it appears in some references, notably FOLDOC.^[4]

In the 1959 science fiction novel Eden by Stanisław Lem, Procrustics is the name of a fictitious information-theory based social engineering discipline of molding groups within a society and ultimately a society as a whole to behave as designed by secretive hidden rulers, to create a hideous form of social control in which the very existence of the governing powers is denied and individuals appear to themselves to be free yet are being manipulated and controlled. One example described in the novel is "concentration camps" without any guards that are designed so that the prisoners stay inside apparently of their "free" will.

In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services a Supreme Court plurality likened the use of the trimester framework for determining the Constitutionality of a government regulation of abortion to the application of a Procrustean Bed.^[5]

In the novel "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy, a ferry across the Colorado River where the fares were adjusted according to the passengers' ability to pay is referred to as a procrustean ferry.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Procrustes

• Generalized Procrustes analysis
• Harrison Bergeron
• Procrustes analysis

Notes

References