Archilochus/ Enualios

[jeidsath]

Yes, a great deal of grammar has come in for me over the last six months (when it was almost zero at reading speed), but I still don't distinguish aorist from imperfect. I think that I need some composition practice directed entirely at that.

So with the imperfect, the verb is "was rising to flood tide"? I note that this doesn't follow ρέω, which should be ἔρρει, ἔρρεε or ῥέε.

Demeter's fruit is grain of some sort (though not maize), and going by the lexicon entries above instead of Plutarch's usage: a "Prienean donkey corn-fed stud."

οἱ confused me, but I see that it's a enclitic form of οὗ , οἷ , ἕ.

[mwh]

ἡ δέ οἱ σάθη ... ὥστ’ ὄνου Πριηνέως
κήλωνος ἐπλήμυρεν ὀτρυγηφάγου

Note the imperfect ἐπλήμυρεν.

And pray what would the aorist be, Paul?

[Paul Derouda]

That' obviously a trick question of some sort. I suspect there's no aorist, at least LSJ doesn't give one. It also says μύρω doesn't have one in the active (if I'm right to think that πλημύρω is formed from it). If the verb has no aorist, that's beside the point, since the imperfect has the force of an imperfect even when the verb has no corresponding aorist - a continuous or repetitive action. Here I think it invites us to picture the idea of an uninterrupted, interminable flood. One that goes on and on. I hope the image is not too vivid. (but after all, this is an Archilochud thread).

Now don't tell me it is actually an aorist... Since obviously you're up to something...

[mwh]

Sorry Paul I shouldn’t tease. I simply meant that given the rho, aor and impf would be identical in 3 sing.—aor. 1st pers. ἐπλήμυρα (<*-υρ(ε)σα), cf. e.g. (-)ἔσυρα, (-)ἔκειρα, and other liquids. In confirmation, now that I look it up, I find ἀνεχύθησαν glossed ἐπλήμμυραν (the geminated μ the normal etymologically motivated spelling). In the Archilochus I don’t see that we can tell which is meant, and it doesn’t seem to me that it much matters—could be either or both.

—I notice that LSJ invents a special meaning for this occurrence, “swell”—that would make it a hard-on rather than an actual ejaculation? But that’s obviously wrong. The basic use of the word is of a river overflowing its banks, and it should always entail some liquid substance flooding out from its customary confines (so it’s used of a flood of tears from the eyes, for example). In the only other reference LSJ gives for “swell,” in Apollonius (3rd cent. epic), the word is used of the teats of a sow that’s just given birth, ἔτι μαζοί | ἐπλήμυρον, which will surely mean that they were exuding milk, in quantity. The only thing special about these two cases is that it’s not the normally contained liquid (semen, milk) but the container itself (****, breasts) that’s the subject, as we might speak of a cup overflowing (I look up the Septuagint’s “my cup runneth over” from Psalm 23(22) but that’s a quite different image, from drunkenness!). — But all that’s by the way.

The size of a donkey’s penis features in many a ribald tale. Usually sex between a donkey and a woman is involved (Apuleius, mimes, Juvenal, etc etc), the premise being that women like big dicks. Here, where the penis is presumably a man’s but described as being like (or as big as) a donkey’s, I expect there’s a desirous woman on the scene.
— Archilochus the archaic equivalent of online porn, then? Hardly. It's culturally sanctioned, integrated into the social life of the community, and more truly entertaining.

I don’t know how much force there is to the epithets. A well-fed donkey’s ejaculation may be thought to be powerful and plentiful. Prienean may be mostly for color, and I expect Priene had the reputation of a rich and powerful trading city in this period. Perhaps that would be enough. Or were Prienean asses prized as studs? Did a Prienean donkey have the same sort of cachet as a Stradivarius violin, say? I don’t suppose there were any on Paros. It’s of no great consequence. The donkey is the important thing.

I adduced the fragment so as to set it alongside the more decorous language of the Cologne epode, where we have [?θερμ]ὸν ἄφηκα μένος (“I released my hot force”) in the final verse.

@jeidsath There are, confusingly, two forms, πλημυρέω and πλημύρω. Impf. of the former would be επλημύρει (<-εε) like έρρει. But here it’s the latter, whether impf or aor, see above.

EDIT. I did not write ****, I wrote an admittedly four-letter word beginning with d and ending with ick. Why is that a forbidden word, when a plurality of "dicks" is not? No answers please.

[jeidsath]

The LSJ also has some references under πλημύρω, which it says is equivalent in meaning. Panyassis 12.18:

τῶι σε χρὴ παρὰ δαιτὶ δεδεγμένον εὔφρονι θυμῶι
πίνειν, μηδὲ βορῆς κεκορημένον ἠύτε γῦπα
ἧσθαι πλημύροντα, λελησμένον εὐφροσυνάων.

It's talking about the vulture being full, isn't it?

That said, it's proverbial in English how a horse behaves after being fed oats: "feeling its oats" we say.

[mwh]

How to behave at a banquet: don't gorge yourself so that the food overflows from your mouth. Vultures are known for vomiting up their food aren’t they?

[jeidsath]

ὥσπερ αὐλῷ βρῦτον ἢ Θρέϊξ ἀνὴρ
ἢ Φρὺξ ἔμυζε· κύβδα δ᾿ ἦν πονεομένη.

Sumerian drinking straws:

[Paul Derouda]

mwh: no problem, I'm comfortable with this sort of teasing. You had me give some thought to those verb forms and it seems more likely that I remember them the next time... Sometimes those aorist and imperfect forms are a pain indeed. The way I see it, as an imperfect this image in question here would be slightly more... arresting. But I'm not contesting you when you say that it might be either or both, and that it really doesn't matter.

Chantraine agrees with what mwh hinted at, that the πλήν + μύρω = πλημμύρω is a false ancient etymology.

As for the meter, to me there seems to be something missing (beside the "...", a lacuna?): ἡ δέ οἱ σάθη can't begin a iambic trimeter, or can't it?

Joel: That image is informative indeed. No need for other comments on Thracian and Phrygian drinking habits. I have only grammar and meter questions left. Is Θρέϊξ (for Θρῆιξ) just poetic license, or what? And is there one syllable missing from the first verse, because it doesn't seem to fit the iambic trimeter?

[mwh]

ἡ δέ οἱ σάθη could be the end of an iambic trimeter, and that’s how West prints it, then a lacuna of the first five feet (i.e. up to caesura) of the next verse. Neither text nor meter is altogether certain, but it’s a trimeter that it ends with.

Joel’s image shows what a good simile it is. She’s apparently being simultaneously taken from behind too, or have I been watching too much porn?

Θρέιξ not Θρῆιξ is apparently the proper ionic form (cf. Hdt. Θρεισσα). The manuscript reportedly has θρὰιξ.

[Qimmik]

She’s apparently being simultaneously taken from behind too, or have I been watching too much porn?

You've been watching too much porn. This is decorous Archilochus, after all. She must be a Lesbian--this is what Lesbian women were famed for. I actually read something about this somewhere in Wilamowitz once.

[mwh]

Ha! I didn’t say all Archilochus was decorous. And Lesbos was evidently not the only island whose women had fellating skills. For the tail end, I suggest you watch some porn.

[Qimmik]

Wilamowitz, as I remember, wrote that "Lesbian" in the modern sense of the word was a term invented by Photius or some other Byzantine. (The ancient term, I think, was tribadism.) I think W. was trying to absolve Sappho, as scholars of his era were wont to do. Then he explained, very obliquely, what Lesbian women were associated with in antiquity. It adds some color to Catullus, whose Lesbia certainly wasn't a Lesbian, at least not when Catullus was around.

For the tail end, I suggest you watch some porn.

I found something like this in the Loeb Greek Anthology when I was an undergrad by looking for epigrams translated into Italian or Latin, I forget which.

[jeidsath]

From the Atticista of Aelius Dionysius

λεσβιάσαι· μολῦναι τὸ στόμα.

There are some other quotes in TLG if you look up the word. A Google search for the Pedieus painter would give mwh examples that could fit various numbers of participants for the Archilochus scene.