[…] forth then from her fragrant high-roofed chamber came Helen, like Artemis of the golden arrows. (A.T. Murray 1919)
I came accross this rare combination ἐκ+vowel (not the usual ἐξ+ vowel) and I wondered why such a thing. It seems a correction from Bentley (PBUH). It’s published in Platt, A., J. Phil. XXII, 26.198 (so says the introduction) and in Patt’s Homer (Cambridge 1892) but I couldn’t read it yet.
Without reading Bentley’s notes (if any), I dare to say that he did such a conjecture because it is a case of tmesis and it doesn’t go with the inmediately next word ἐξ Ἑλένης - ἐκ Ἑλένη… ἦλθε but… is this frequent?
Have you encountered this thing in other authors, texts or the very Homer?
ϝελένη is actually attested in two early Laconian inscriptions, according to M.L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, p. 231. (Didn’t bother to copy the ultimate reference) This is also discussed in S. West’s Oxford commentary on the Odyssey, see the entry on this line.
S. West questions whether the elimination of δ’ is justified. It will be interesting to see what M.L. West thought about this when his posthumous Odyssey edition comes out (hopefully later this year, but don’t count on it).
“[…] formerly disputed but now established by epigraphical evidence, probably to be dated to the sixth century, from Helen´s sanctuary at Therapne: see Catling and Cavangh, “Two inscribed bronzes from Sparta”, Kadmos XV 145-57 (SEG xxvi 458) […] Few traces of this lost digamma are discernible in Homer; we may instance the lenghtening of the last syllable of Ἀλέξανδρος Ἐλένης πόσις ἠϋκόμοιο (Il. iii 329 etc.), though lengthening before the caesura is too common for this to have much weight […] Whether we should follow Bentley here is debatable; there is a danger of ´correcting´ the poet himself. Certainly apodotic δέ after a temporal protasis is very common in Homer.”
(Heubeck, A.-Hainsworth, J.B.-West, St., A Commentary on Homer´s Odyssey, Oxford 1990, p. 201)
The inscription reads as follows:
τᾶι ϝελέναι
(SEG 26 458 Menelaion. Dedication to Helen: bronze meathook, 6th cent. B.C.)
It’s just a meat hook (ἅρπαξ) as offering to Helen… but in the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum I’ve not found any other instances of meat hooks as an offering. I guess that these meat-hooks were used as a tool for the sacrifices.
Indeed I find it ugly as well; if it stood in some manuscripts we could accept it, but as a conjecture…?
Bentley had discovered the digamma, which certainly explains some oddities in Homer, but he apparently tried to restore it wherever he could somehow fit it.
How did he actually know Helen had had a digamma? (Or should we rather spell Whelen, like the relative/interrogative pronoun who, for consistency?)
In two early Laconian dedications to Helen her name is spelled with a digamma, Ϝελένα.[115]
[115] SEG 457 (c.675-650), 458 (sixth century). The digamma is also attested by grammarians: Dion. Hal. Ant. 1. 20. 3; Marius Victorinus, Gramm. Lat. vi. 15. 6; Astyages ap. Prisc. Inst. 1. 20, who quoted a verse ὀψόμενος Ϝελέναν ἑλικώπιδα (PMG 1011a, perhaps Alcman). It is mostly neglected in Homer except in the formula (δῖος) Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἑλένης πόσις ἠϋκόμοιο.
I think it was mentioned that he discusses this in the Making of the Odyssey? Is that available to anyone?
if it stood in some manuscripts we could accept it, but as a conjecture…?
I don’t think the manuscripts are useful on a point like this. The medieval manuscript tradition is ultimately the product of editing in the Hellenistic period that would have eliminated such inconcinnities if they existed in the text up to that point. I believe that hiatuses left by the disappearance of digammas and other instances of sandhi (is that the right term, Timothée?) were frequently “fixed” by adding δ’ or some other elided particle. If some manuscripts happened to omit δ’ here, it would be difficult to tell whether the omission reflected access to a pre-Hellenistic source, or was just an error in one strand of the trandition. In any event, the modern printed texts are generally based on a small number of manuscripts, since in the case of the Homeric poems there are just too many to take into account and apply the principles and techniques of textual criticism that work in the case of other texts.
Here S. West questions whether Bentley’s conjecture is necessary, and apparently there is little other evidence of digamma in Helen’s name in the Homeric poems. Once he had discovered that many apparent metrical anomalies could be explained by digammas, Bentley got carried away with his discovery, and he probably inferred the digamma in Helen’s name from the formula δῖος Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἑλένης πόσις ἠϋκόμοιο, noted by S. West.
If we could find that ἐκ Ἑλένη was also part of a formula in which the trace of the digamma might have been preserved, then we might accept Bentley’s conjecture, but otherwise, I would think that Ionic aoidoi would not have allowed the weird ἐκ Ἑλένη, especially with κ followed by a rough breathing.
Do sandhis need levelling? I’m not sure and would doubt it, but maybe thus was done in any event. Sandhi (= saṁdʰi ‘combination, union’) is assimilation on word-boundary (common in many languages), and this is always written in Sanskrit, which has a lot of them. In Greek Allen cites inscriptions like τετταρομ ποδον, hιερογ χρεματον (genitive plurals) (it’s more common in cases like εγ κυκλοι, also cited in Allen), but in modern (literary) editions they are surely never written.
If we’re agreed that (re)importation of digamma into the Homeric text would be wrong, as I thought we were, we can’t write Fελενη, as we might if we wanted to go back into prehistory. So if Bentley was right to posit original asyndeton—and I think he probably was—I don’t see there’s any choice but to write εκ δ’ Ελενη, since that’s the means by which the loss of the digamma was made good. The text has to be metrical, and εκ Ελενη is not. Other potential compensations—lengthening the ε of εκ, doubling the kappa, substituting εξ for εκ—are not really on, and besides, the tradition shows they didn’t happen. The accession of δ’ here is analogous to instances where it served to avert hiatus consequent on loss of digamma, e.g. τον (δ’) ιδον at Od.4.556 (δ’ del. Bentley, confirmed by papyrus) or oισετε (δ’) αρνα at Il.3.103, and this is analogous.
So whether Bentley was right or not, we still end up with ἐκ δ’ Ἑλένη.
EDIT. — Or not? At Od.4.556 τον ιδον (without δ’) survived in the text until at least the 1st cent. CE. Unless we want to re-introduce the digamma, that must have been actualized by prolonging the ν of τον. But would the κ of εκκ would have been prolonged before ελενη rather than becoming ξ? I very much doubt it. Was the development *εκ Fελενη ⟩ *εξ Ελενη ⟩ εκ δ’ Ελενη?
As to sandhi, there’s not much logic to refusing to write εγ κυκλοι but insisting on writing εγκυκλιος. Lexical independence is hardly an either/or thing.
I’m not sure that I understand the reasoning here. Is it the claim that it was Homer, composing in a time when digamma had dropped out of speech, who invented things like “ἐκ δ’ Ἑλένη,” or “ἔδδεισεν,” and not later editors?
Two basic postulates: (1) digamma was no longer pronounced when the Homeric epics were composed, and certainly not by the time they were first written, and (2) Homeric verse is metrical; if ever it doesn’t look metrical on the page, it would have been metrical in performance. I hope we’d all agree on these, which I take as givens. So I guess εδδεισεν corresponds well enough to how the word was realized in Homeric performance. (We know it was read that way.) εκ Ελενη is more problematic. I’m speculating that εκ may have become εξ in accordance with what regularly happens to εκ before vowels, whether in tmesis or not; that makes it metrical. The accession of δ’, eliminating the asyndeton and converting εξ back to εκ in the process, would be later (whether on the part of rhapsodes, editors, or copyists; I wouldn’t say “invented.”) But I’m obviously uncomfortable about this. For one thing, once εκ became εξ there’d be less incentive to remove the asyndeton (though not none). Perhaps the κ of εκ was simply prolonged all along, but εκ|κελενη syllabication would have to be somehow avoided. The problem is less acute with τον(ν), which is fairly well paralleled.
And of course if Bentley was wrong to posit original asyndeton (though we now know he was not wrong to posit original digamma with Ελενη), we don’t have to fret about it.
I’m as puzzled as Joel here. Isn’t there some circularity in this reasoning? Isn’t there quite a few lines out there that are unmetrical without the digamma? Like this one
For sure, we can argue that 1) this was pronounced οὔ τοι ἔπιδ δέος, and/or 2) this is a traditional formula (based on an original οὔ τοι ἔπι δϝέος) and is accepted as such, and for that reason only.
And there are lines that are unmetrical without any apparent reason, such as (taken from West’s Introduction to Greek metre):
Il. 5.539 φίλε κασίγνητε κόμισαί τέ με δός τέ μοι ἵππους
Il 23.2 ἐπεὶ δὴ νῆάς τε καὶ Ἑλλήσποντον ἵκοντο
Again, it might be argued that these are traditional formulas. But wouldn’t the very existence of traditional unmetrical formulas (that is, unmetrical when the aoidos composed the verses, but not when the formulas first came into existence) encourage the aoidos to compose, just occasionally, verses that are unmetrical without any clear explanation? In these cases, perhaps the fact that they are line-initial might have contributed to their being accepted. Don’t these examples provide evidence against the postulate that “Homeric verse is metrical; if ever it doesn’t look metrical on the page, it would have been metrical in performance”.
And how about the countless lines beginning with εως? I know the manuscripts are divided between that and ηος, but for reasons I ignore West prints εως.
I have nothing against mwh’s postulate 1) “digamma was no longer pronounced when the Homeric epics were composed, and certainly not by the time they were first written”
In some earlier thread, I proposed that the digamma is analogical to modern French “h aspiré” - a sound that is no longer pronounced, but still prevents contraction and liaison.
I agree that it wouldn’t be a guide in one particular case taken in isolation, such as this one, and in this respect my formulation was careless. Still, don’t we have plenty of examples where the tradition didn’t always smooth out metrical irregularities? Anyway, since we also have plenty of cases were the digamma is not respected, I thought that in the lack of any decisive evidence either way it would perhaps be better not to emend in an isolated ambiguous case, if the tradition doesn’t provide any evidence to support that.
EDIT: At the same moment I posted this reply, Hylander removed his comment. I’ll still leave mine, if that’s ok.
