Greek: An Updating of a Survey of Recent Work, second edition

(The capitalized lettering here indicates ideographic symbols; the italic lettering transliterates the Linear В syllabary; the arabic numerals represent the Linear В digital system; the superscripts for ‘male’ and ‘female’ represent two different ligatures used by the scribe; the sign ⦚ shows the breaks in the tablet—as described by Chadwick in what I quote below.)

I§29. When it comes to the coexistence of archaisms and innovations in epic, the archaisms generally outnumber the innovations. For an example, I highlight 143 Homeric occurrences of noun + epithet combinations referring to the sea:

I§35. As for the Homeric Hymns, it is again by way of grammatical criteria that we can see how they are not directly derivative from the Iliad or the Odyssey and how their background may even have stemmed from an earlier phase of epic. This earlier phase may have dated back to a time before the establishment of the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have survived (for the notion of establishing fixed Homeric texts, I cite Lord 1960, especially chapter 6). [19] In other words, we may be dealing with a phase when the Dichtersprache of epic was not yet moribund (that is, before the onset of fixed texts). And such a phase may have given rise to elements in the Homeric Hymns that are clearly independent of the Iliad and Odyssey. Such independence is demonstrable wherever the Hymns preserve a grammatical archaism corresponding to an innovation in the Iliad and Odyssey. Granted, the situation is more often the reverse, and that is why it is assumed by many that the Hymns are in all respects more recent. A case in point is the innovative thematic-stem πολυπιδάκου ‘rich in springs’ (Ἴδης) in the Hymn to Aphrodite (54) as opposed to the older athematic-stem πολυπίδακος (Ἴδης) in the Iliad (XIV 157, etc.). But there are counterexamples, however rare. [20] I list here three such counterexamples, which are sufficient to show that while the Hymns may be in some ways newer than the Iliad and Odyssey, they are nevertheless at least partially independent survivals of an unattested stage of epic Dichtersprache that gave rise to the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns:

1. older athematic-stem χρυσάορα ‘with sword of gold’ in the Hymn to Apollo (123) vs. innovative thematic-stem χρυσάορον in the Iliad (XV 256)
2. older κατάκειαι ‘you lie down’ (with intervocalic σ phonologically lost) in the Hymn to Hermes (254) vs. innovative κεῖσαι (with intervocalic σ morphologically restored) in the Iliad (XIX 319).
3. older verse-final (τό σε φράζεσθαι) ἄνωγμεν ‘we bid (you consider this)’ in the Hymn to Apollo (528) vs. innovative *ἀνώγαμεν, with paradigmatic extension of α; the similarly verse-final but 1st singular (τά σε φράζεσθαι) ἄνωγα of the Odyssey (xx 43, etc.) could not have formulaically generated the older 1st plural ἄνωγμεν, while the predictable *ἀνώγαμεν could not fit metrically.

I§39. A case in point is a passage in Tyrtaeus F 7 (verses 21 and following), a text contextually parallel to a passage in the Homeric Iliad XXII (verses 66 and following), where we see Priam musing about his own fate:

I§40. Dover remarks: “All awkwardness could have been avoided if [Tyrtaeus] had availed himself fully of epic diction and said νέῳ δέ τε; but, like all the early elegists and the composers of verse inscriptions, he eschewed those combinations of particles which are characteristic of epic and distinguish it from drama and prose.” [22] Or again, in the preceding verse in the same passage from Tyrtaeus (verse 26), we read:

I§52. Allen’s theory forces a reformulation of the overall history of Greek accentuation: from the standpoint of the phonological evolution from ancient to modern Greek, the lexical heritage preserves the patterns of intonation and loses those of stress, but at the same time it replaces the phonological dynamics of intonation with those of stress. In other words, the evolution into the modern Greek stress-system, with patterns inherited from an old intonation-system, reflects a sort of chiastic compensation. As for the actual phonological conditioning of stress in ancient Greek, Allen’s formula is as follows:

I§53. Here are two examples, where the highlighting of the vowels of syllables indicates stress:

I§58. For an example of such devices, I focus on the utilization of an exceptional space allowing disagreement between stress and ictus: if the penthemimeral caesura of the iambic trimeter divides a spondee, that is, if a word-break in the third foot occurs between two long syllables, then stress clashes with ictus (both stress and ictus are indicated by way of highlighting; “|” is foot-juncture, “‖” is caesura):

vs. hypothetical

I§59. Nor is a spondee avoided in this space: according to Allen’s statistics, verses with penthemimeral caesura have a spondee for the 3rd foot 75 per cent of the time. [48] Allen therefore raises the possibility that the resulting tension between stress and ictus here was deliberately induced, as a verse-initial counterbalance to the cadence. [49] That the non-avoidance is deliberate is also suggested by the fact that Sophocles often uses this space for the sake of contrast in repetition, as we see in this example (with stresses highlighted):

Here is another example:

I§61. The occasional discovery of a relatively complete ancient text containing an early lyric composition, such as the Louvre papyrus (ca. first century CE) containing Alcman’s Partheneion, may reveal the inaccuracy of the later transmission that had previously been the only basis for establishing the text. Here, for example, are (1) lines 64–65 of the Partheneion as attested in the Louvre papyrus, followed by (2) the version derived in quotation-form from the medieval textual tradition:

Such examples show the need for sound and systematic grammatical investigation of the lyric fragments. [52]

I§67. Extending this principle from poetry to prose, Meillet offers the following formulation:

I§68. What with the firm establishment of Ionian as the official vehicle of prose, it becomes clear why Athenian prose had such a hard time becoming Attic:

I§69. It is characteristic of Meillet, who is known for “die Betonung, dass die Sprache und jedes Wort ein Glied des sozialen Lebens ist,” [67] that he gives a social motivation for the dialectal repartitions of Greek Kunstsprache:

I§70. After considering the full extent of Kunstsprache in ancient Greek, we come to the realization that what we really lack is a sufficient attested corpus of the natural language:

I§71. Given that the Hellenic institution and way of life subsumed under the term πόλις was pivotal in the maintenance of individual dialects in the earlier part of the first millennium BCE, the emergence of a common Greek language, a Κοινή, became inevitable in the later part of that millennium, with the emergence of powerful leagues and empires that transcended the institutions of the πόλις. But the dialectal components of this Κοινή need not have been inevitable. How, then, do we explain the Attic-Ionic basis of the Κοινή that actually did evolve? Even in the era of the πόλις, there had been a latent tendency toward the ultimate leveling-out of localized idiosyncrasies:

I§72. A prototype of une langue commune, a Κοινή, was the Ionic dialect as spoken in the second half of the first millennium BCE. [71] But the constitution of what actually goes under the name Κοινή was more complicated, resulting from a whole series of dynamic historical processes: (1) the hegemony of the Achaemenid Empire over Ionian cities, (2) the growth of the so-called Athenian Empire, (3) the ascendancy of Macedonia in the Hellenistic world, (4) the conquests of Alexander the Great, and (5) the superimposition of the Roman Empire. The consequent social effects on the evolution of the Greek language have been masterfully outlined by Meillet. [72] The key to the prevalence of Attic through these processes is cultural prestige:

I§73. The mixed Attic-Ionic basis of Κοινή is most clearly explained by Meillet:

II§6. The basic formulation of Dehnungsgesetz goes back to Wackernagel (1889/1953), who used the comparative linguistic evidence of Greek and Indo-Iranian combined. Basically, Dehnungsgesetz can be defined this way: when two vowels come together as the final and initial elements of two compound-formants, the resulting contraction will entail the elision of the first vowel (V₁) and the lengthening of the second vowel (V₂):

II§10. So much for instances where the obsolescence of a phonological rule in the natural language permits the ultimate extension of the same rule beyond its etymological confines, in the retentive poetic language of the epic. Retention can also be static, however, and subject to ultimate attrition. For example, let us consider the early loss of ϝ (= *ṷ or “digamma”) in a prehistoric phase of Ionic, the last major dialectal phase of Homeric diction. As Milman Parry points out, ϝ was lost in epic diction “neither sooner nor later than it was lost in the daily speech, but the singers who had to compose in a rigorous and therefore highly conservative verse-form, still used the old phrases and verses because that was their way of making poetry, because to have given up the traditional phrase wherever the loss of the digamma now caused hiatus or failure to make position, would have been to destroy the diction almost entirely.” [6] Thus in contrast to roughly 300 Homeric cases of elision despite digamma, there are still roughly 2,000 cases of non-elision because of digamma. [7] As Parry said, directly challenging Richard Bentley, “Homer’s language has traces of the digamma, but not the digamma itself.” [8] But although the formulaic language of the epic is an admirable preservative of traditional patterns dating back to a time when digamma was still extant, new patterns ignoring the etymological digamma eventually emerge—sometimes even in the most overtly formulaic expressions. To quote Parry again: “Just as we can show the metrical usefulness of the older phrase, and the fixed place which it holds in the diction, so can we do for phraseology with newer forms.” [9] For instance, before loss of ϝ, the following verse-type could refer only to a masculine speaker:

II§11. In the Iliad and Odyssey, there are 30 occurrences of this verse; but there are also 9 others where the speaker is feminine, and the necessitated elision is possible only without ϝ:

II§12. At times the same formulaic verse will entail both the presence and the absence of the digamma-factor in the metrical pattern, as in the following type of Homeric verse (IV 403, XVII 90, XVIII 5, etc.):

II§19. Conversely, the evolution of Greek writing-systems is inextricably linked with the {36|37} evolution of the Greek phonological system itself. Here I highlight the important contemporary trend of recognizing the extent to which linguistic conditions affect graphic conventions. We can illustrate this relationship by observing the representation of

by way of

in the post-Euclidian Attic alphabet, as opposed to the cumbersome representation of all three by <ε> in the pre-Euclidian Attic alphabet. The basic motivation for this eventual orthographic reform was not the genius of some εὑρετής, but rather, the accidental convergence of (1) the studious but mechanical application of the acrophonic principle of the alphabet and (2) phonological shifts in the Attic-Ionic vowel-system. Of the two Semitic aspirate-signs ḥēth and hē the former was apparently the closer approximation to the single Greek spiritus asper, whence the original generalization of Semitic ḥēth = <η> as representing Greek h– (or hē-, on the acrophonic principle). Consequently, there was no need for another aspirate-sign, and the initial element of hē is viewed simply as ē from a Hellenic standpoint: hence the original generalization of Semitic hē = <ε> as representing both short-e and long-e in Greek. With the onset of psilosis (loss of spiritus asper) in East Ionic dialects, however, the initial element of ḥeth / <η> becomes viewed as ǟ (which later loses its distinction from ę̄), whence now the restriction of <ε> to representation of e and ę̄ only, vs. the generalization of <η> for ę̄ (< ǟ).

II§48. Kiparsky applies the principle of conjunctional reduction to the declension of nouns as well as to the conjugation of verbs. [37] Given that the vocative is a marked nominative (see Part III below), Kiparsky adduces several Vedic instances of vocative + conjunction followed by unmarked nominative. Since the conjunction -ca is enclitic, the actual Vedic realization of this conjunctional reduction is Voc Nom + –ca. As for Greek, the cognate of –ca is enclitic τε, and, significantly, the same ancient construct as in Vedic is attested in Greek. The attestation in Greek, however, is limited to the Homeric corpus, and there too we find it only once:

II§76. A basic prerequisite of etymological studies in general, as Benveniste has pointed out, is simply “common sense”:

II§77. But the “sens” of a linguistic form must be viewed in the entire ensemble of its distribution. One of Benveniste’s most striking illustrations involves the Greek word πόντος ‘sea’ and its formal cognates in other Indo-European languages: Latin pōns ‘bridge’, Armenian hun ‘ford’, Old Church Slavonic рǫtǐ and Old Prussian pintis ‘path’, Sanskrit pánthāḥ, and Avestan pantå ‘path’. The problem is to bridge the semantic gulf between e.g. Greek πόντος and Latin pōns. Benveniste maintains that the key to the solution is to discover which, if any, of the cognates preserves the primary meaning, the least common denominator. [76] The secondary meanings of the other cognates could then be motivated as divergences from (or modifications of) the primary meaning. After arguing that the semantic spheres of e.g. hun ‘ford’, πόντος ‘sea’, and pōns ‘bridge’ must be secondary because they are mutually irreconcilable, Benveniste shows that the semantic common denominator survives in Indo-Iranian, most clearly seen in the Vedic usages of pánthāḥ, commonly glossed as ‘path’, ‘chemin’:

II§79. The notion of ‘une étendue périlleuse ou accidentée’ is still latent in Homeric collocations of πόντος with the harmless-looking epithet ἰχθυόεις ‘swarming with fish’:

II§80. (There are other collocations of πόντος with πάσχειν, perhaps likewise relevant to pánthāḥ from the comparative point of view: Odyssey i 4, ii 370, v 377.) The original selection of ἰχθυόεις was probably motivated not by a striving for fanciful descriptions of the sea, but rather, by the implication of dangers lurking underneath the ship:

II§83. The formulaic system of Homeric poetry has insured the preservation of grammatical patterns stemming from such varied diachronic phases as to span about a millennium. In Homeric poetry, the following phrases are relevant to the etymology of θέλγω:

II§85. At times the collocational patterns of a given word in epic may suggest an etymological connection with another Greek word, even without the additional aid of any comparative Indo-European evidence as in the case of θέλγω. An example is ἥρως. From the internal evidence of Greek, it is possible to compare the feminine proper names Πατρώ Μητρώ ‘Ηρώ with the masculine substantives πάτρως μήτρως ἥρως. [83] But beyond this point it is difficult to make further morphological {50|51} generalizations. In epic meter, the archaism of ἥρως is apparent from the highly restricted positional range of e.g. its nominative. Although the dactylic hexameter could have theoretically allowed eleven positions for this form, ἥρως is actually found in only three positions: (1) absolute verse-initial, (2) absolute verse-final, (3) paired with the preceding word γέρων, after the trochaic caesura. In one of these positions (2), there is an interesting precedent for substitution: whereas the formula αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾽ ἥρως occurs after the bucolic diaeresis 7 times in the Homeric corpus, there is also one instance of αὐτὰρ ὄ γ᾽ Ἥρην (XXI 367) attested in the same metrical position. [84] According to one explanation, this formulaic interchange between Ἥρην and ἥρως was motivated by “l’association des sons.” [85] I argue that there is more to it. We may consider another instance of such substitution in absolute verse-final position: ἤγαγεν Ἥρη in V 731 vs. ἄγεν ἥρως in X 179; here too the explanation of “l’association des sons” could be invoked, but now we will see other instances of this association of ἥρως and ῞Ηρη that must have resulted from a deeper motivation. For example, the absolute verse-final ἤλυθεν ἥρως of iii 415 is matched by the common formula ἤλυθεν Ἠώς ‘dawn came’ of x 541, etc. To explain this match as a mere “sound-association” is an oversimplification, since there are attested further matchings that have nothing to do with sound-association, such as ἤλυθε μήτηρ ‘the mother came’ (VI 251) and ἤλυθεν ὄρνις ‘the bird came’ (VIII 251, xx 242) in the same metrical position. It is essential to note that there is a latent contextual link connecting these words Ἥρη, Ἠώς, μήτηρ, and ὄρνις:

II§86. In the passage from the Odyssey, the attributes of a hero are being conferred on Telemakhos by the goddess appearing as a bird. So also in the Iliad, Hera and Athena appear in a joint epiphany as birds for the sake of helping the Achaeans:

II§87. Thus even contextually as well as formulaically, the ἥρως is correlated with goddesses. And the fact that ῞Ηρη as the mother-goddess par excellence (even Athena is her surrogate: e.g. I 194–195), is included in these correlations with ἥρως now takes on a {51|52} formal significance, which is this: the language of epic betrays traces of an early period when the masculine configuration *hērōs was still synchronically motivated by a feminine *hērā. There may even be traces of stylistic juxtaposition, we see in these verses:

II§89. In view of these examples of establishing etymologies with the help of collocational evidence from archaic Greek poetry, it is important to add that collocational evidence from the archaic poetry of other Indo-European languages also occasionally helps settle the etymology of a Greek word. For instance, the derivation of νέκταρ ‘nectar’, a most ancient word owing its preservation in alphabetic Greek perhaps solely to its transmission in the language of epic, can be resolved only with reference to Vedic poetry. The central etymological problem in the word νέκταρ is the semantic connection between its components. There is little difficulty with the initial νεκ-: it is what Benveniste used to call “theme II” of the root, *h2nek– ‘death’, also seen in e.g. νεκ-ρός, νέκ-υς, νέκ-ες (·νεκροί: Hesychius), Latin nex, ē-nec-tus, nοxa, noceō, etc.; Hittite ḫenk-an ‘pestilence, death’ is an example of radical “theme I” *h2enk-. [88] As for the final segment -ταρ, however, Benveniste’s explanation in terms of a suffixal formation leads to semantic problems, since the Homeric contexts of νέκταρ / ἀμβροσία are associated not with death but with the negation of death. [89] Thieme proposed a solution to the problem: that -ταρ is not a suffix but rather the second constituent of a compound, from the root *tr̥h2– as seen in the Sanskrit verb tárati ‘overcome’: in terms of this proposal, the two components of this word would be reconstructed as *h2nek– and *trh2-, with prevocalic external sandhi-generalization of the zero-grade *trh2– into -ταρ. [90] The ideal corroboration of this proposed etymology would be the Indic attestation of a syntagma involving ‘death’ + *trh2– corresponding to νέκταρ, that is, corresponding to the Greek attestation of a compound originally motivated by this syntagma. Thieme could find no such combination in the Rig-Veda. [91] But his efforts were not in vain. Schmitt succeeded {52|53} in finding the combination in the Atharva-Veda. [92] In the refrain of a song of praise to the odaná-, the ‘rice-mess’ of the Brahmans, we read:

Likewise elsewhere in the same hymn:

Likewise in another source:

The Homeric word νέκταρ, then, is a faint vestige of a whole nexus of related ritualistic terminology stemming from the indogermanische Dichtersprache.

II§90. There are instances where an etymological solution is achieved without direct use of the comparative method but rather with internal analysis of the relevant Greek morphology and syntax. In the case of the Attic-Ionic particle ἄν, attempts to connect it with Latin an and Gothic an have proved unsuccessful, simply because the formal plausibility of this connection is not matched by the functional. Neither the Latin nor the Gothic an is used as a potential particle. The problem is described well by Palmer (1963):

Attic-Ionic ἄν, then, must be compared with its equivalents in the other dialects: Arcadian (κ)αν, Doric κα, Aeolic and Cypriote κε(ν). Το repeat, all these particles are syntactically equivalent to each other.

II§91. Now the zero-grade of a full-grade κεν would be *kn̥ > κα (in preconsonantal position) or καν (in prevocalic position). Then we can set up a proportion:

As for Doric κᾱ (vs. κα), it can be explained as a metrically-conditioned variant. [96] At this point, only ἄν remains to be motivated. The solution of Forbes (1958) is that ἄν is a new positive to a negative οὐκ ἄν. [97] The etymologically false division of οὐκαν as οὐκ ἄν instead of οὐ καν must have been triggered by the morphophonemic alternation of prevocalic οὐκ vs. preconsonantal οὐ. The implications go further:

II§105. Most relevant is the fact that the θεράπων par excellence in the Iliad is the hero Patroklos, who is killed wearing the armor of Achilles himself.

II§106. From the internal evidence of the Iliad itself and with an approach completely different from that of van Brock, Whitman (1958) has also noticed the same sort of surrogate-motif in the rôle of Patroklos, “who represents the human side of Achilles”; [111] “Achilles is indispensable, but Patroclus is dead.” [112] At the climactic moments of the onslaught of Patroklos who is taking the place of Achilles, even the epithet of Patroklos is switched from just the patronymic (Μενοιτιάδης) or qualifier (ἱππεύς ‘charioteer’) to the title δαίμονι ἶσος ‘equal to a god’ (XVI 705), even at the moment when Patroklos confronts Apollo himself (XVI 786), just before the god destroys him. Significantly, the epithet δαίμονι ἶσος is later applied to Achilles too (XX 447), whose onslaught is mirrored by the earlier onslaught of Patroklos. We can see in this mirroring a reference to an identity in rôles. [113] Whitman explains: [114]

Dialectology

Footnotes

Part III: Conclusions

Footnotes