Would you guys mind giving me the contextual meaning’s of the above prepositions in these particular contexts. I’m reading Alexandros. Τὰ Μεγάλα Παναθήναια ἀνὰ τέτταρα ἕτη γίγνεται, πέμπτω δὴ ἔτει. A full translation would help on this one as the last clause is tripping me up, too.
Πολλάκις δ’ ἄγομεν ἑορτὰς καὶ Ἄθήνησι καὶ κατ’ ἀγρούς. My guess is that its locational, but the exact sense escapes me. My best try is: Often we celebrate the festivals both in Athens and in the fields. If it’s locational, why is kata better than en?
τὰ μέν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς Ἄθήναις αὐταῖς, τὰ δὲ ἐν ταῖς κώμαις καὶ κατὰ τὸ πεδίον καὶ κατὰ τοὺς λόφους. Some are in Athens itself and others are in the villages: both in the fields and in the mountains.
Τὰ Μεγάλα Παναθήναια ἀνὰ τέτταρα ἕτη γίγνεται, πέμπτω δὴ ἔτει: this is the “distributive” use of ἀνὰ: “every four years", i.e. it’s a quadrennial festival. πέμπτω δὴ ἔτει “in the fifth year”: the cycle is 1-2-3-4-|5 etc.
Πολλάκις δ’ ἄγομεν ἑορτὰς καὶ Ἄθήνησι καὶ κατ’ ἀγρούς: yes, κατὰ is locational. It’s a common usage, a bit more general than ἐν. The contrast is between festivals held “at Athens” i.e. within the city and those held “in fields” i.e. elsewhere in Attica.
Extremely unlikely. ἀνά is traceable all the way back to PIE, and the distributive usage is attested throughout all periods of ancient Greek. The paragraph cited above also employs the genetic fallacy.
For the record, while still not trying personally to defend it, that’s not what he’s saying. Rather he’s defending that the word ἀνά, certainly extant in Greek/PIE (as he himself says), might have gained in Greek, on top of its usual “upward movement” sense, the distributive use through the influence of Akkadian. It’s not clear when he (or Horovitz) thinks this may have happened, whether in the Archaic or in the so-called Dark Ages, or if earlier through Mycenean or Minoic times. We’d have to see whether distributive ανα is extant in Linear B, which should actually be easy to check, although given the fact that the Myceneans were already part of the Eastern Mediterranean trading and political atmosphere of the era before the Bronze Age collapse, I’m not sure even that would falsify the hypothesis.
The fact that it’s not falsifiable doesn’t mean it’s likely, though. I am curious enough about this that I’d like to read the source quoted. Burkert’s is a strange book, full of likely insights but also overly eager in many things. I would be curious to know how it was received (West’s East of Helicon is a different beast with a different focus). Yet it does have a certain intuitive reasoning to it, in the way trade mannerisms do tend to propagate through languages.
Also I’m not sure what you mean by genetic fallacy in this context.
Perhaps I’m troubling a thread that’s already been hosed and stabled, but to put a saddle back on it for trot round Mark 6:40 let me layout the following third question in the couple:
