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xruse/w| a)na\ skh/ptw|, kai\ e)li/sseto pa/ntas )Axaiou/j

I'm fairly sure that the last three feet are - u u | - u u | - -, but there seem to be way too many vowels in the first part of the line.

Overall, scanning Homer seems slightly easier than Shakespeare, even though the latter is in my mother tongue.

GlottalGreekGeek wrote:xruse/w| a)na\ skh/ptw|, kai\ e)li/sseto pa/ntas )Axaiou/j

I'm fairly sure that the last three feet are - u u | - u u | - -, but there seem to be way too many vowels in the first part of the line.

The first word is scanned - u. First the έῳ has synizesis (Pharr section 586), resulting in a single long vowel. Then that is correpted (sec.1173) because of the vowel starting the next word.

After that first word is taken care of, the rest should be straightforward.

Thanks! I assumed that e/w| was synthesis, but I forgot about correpting which threw me off.

Same as Iliad I.1 isn't it?

phliadew Achilhos?

hi thucydides, there -dew isn't correpted, it stays as a long even though a vowel follows. will will be able to explain why... i only know that sometimes it's because a digamma used to be the 1st letter of the following word. i don't know much about the digamma thing though

chad wrote:hi thucydides, there -dew isn't correpted, it stays as a long even though a vowel follows. will will be able to explain why... i only know that sometimes it's because a digamma used to be the 1st letter of the following word. i don't know much about the digamma thing though

Swift-footed Wachilles, best of the Wachaeans...

hehe i don't know which words had the digamma, because (this is just an impression, i haven't looked into it so i could be wrong as usual) i think a lot of digamma reconstruction was based on the earlier theory that homer avoided hiatus like later greek poets and writers, but milman parry as part of his studies into homeric formulae and composition wrote a whole paper showing that homer used hiatus in many places without a doubt.

i'd be quite interested in will's (and others') opinion on digamma actually, how it worked according to modern views. i thought i read ages ago that the )Axaioi/ were written wa- something in linear b or mycenean suggesting that it had the digamma, but then line 2 of the iliad, muri/' is elided before it, suggesting that either )Axaioi/ didn't have digamma or that you could elide before digamma... i haven't looked at this before... thanks

We have two possibilities for πηληϊάδεω.

First, a long vowel in princeps position (i.e., in the required initial long of the dactyl) may stand before before another vowel without correption, leaving hiatus. The final position of a contracted dactyl requires fussier handling, like our golden example.

Second (and Pharr comments on this on line 1), it's possible the original was πηληϊάδαο (long alpha in that) - a legitimate masc. first declension genitive - and the final omicron elided.

As for digamma, I don't think it's in play here.

cool that makes sense, thanks. what about digamma and names in homer generally, are there some which most likely had digamma? e.g. i remember seeing a documentary saying that )/Ilioj comes up in hittite tablets as Wilios (or something like that). does anyone know if e.g. apollo, the achaeans &c are thought to have had the digamma.

chad wrote:what about digamma and names in homer generally, are there some which most likely had digamma? e.g. i remember seeing a documentary saying that )/Ilioj comes up in hittite tablets as Wilios (or something like that).

Yes, for )/ιλιος.

does anyone know if e.g. apollo, the achaeans &c are thought to have had the digamma.

No on all of these (Apollo hardly needs more metrical strangeness). You can find a good list in Seymour, section 14 (page 45 of the book; not sure exactly what page of the PDF).

The problem with digamma is that whoever composed the Iliad and Odyssey was probably working from memory of how certain words behaved in older recitations. Sometimes the verses act like the digamma is present, sometimes not. Strangely, Hesiod, who almost certainly spoke a dialect that preserved the digamma, used it less than the monumental poets. Perhaps he was trying to sound more Ionic, less bumpkin. No one knows for sure.

From what I understand about the digamma, there were a few obscure dialects of Ancient Greek where they were still pronouncing the digamma when they had writing, which is where the letter came from. From reading public records from those dialects and seeing which words had the digamma, I assume that linguistists could make good guesses where it had been in Epic Greek.

When later writers wrote in Epic, were they aware of the digamma?