Hi,
I came across some examples of ὤ being used with the genitive instead of the vocative, and I was wondering if there’s any special meaning that the genitive brings or is it just equivalent to the vocative? I thought I had seen something about it but I looked it up in all my usual places but couldn’t find anything.
The actual examples are:
ὢ ἀφάτου καὶ ἀῤῥήτου ἀνοχῆς!
ὢ θαυμάτων ξένων! ὢ π?αγμάτων καινῶν!
i don’t think there’s any difference in meaning. although the element of direct address might be lacking… i.e. the speaker is saying something to himself/herself. it might be similar to the accusative of exclamation in latin… “o tempora, o mores.”
aso, thanks. After taking a closer look at the contexts and seeing when the vocative and when the genitive is used, I think you’re right that the genitive corresponds to a lack of direct address. To give the whole context of my first example, it’s
Ἰησοῦ γλυκ? μοι καὶ σωτή?ιον φῶς τάφῳ πῶς ?ν σκοτεινῷ κατακέκ?υψαι; ὢ ἀφάτου καὶ ἀῤῥήτου ἀνοχῆς.
So there is some direct addressing going on, but now I’m guessing it would be probably better to understand the last phrase as “What ineffable and unutterable patience!” instead of seeing άνοχή as somehow standing in for the original vocative. Is that right?
This reminds me a bit of how φεῦ works, either by itself or with a genitive of the thing you’re φεῦ-ing about.
That makes sense – so here the genitive would indicate the thing you’re ὤ-ing about. Thanks.
Attention: ὤ is different from ὦ. The accent shows this…
Nothing like Greek accents to get a philologist excited!
LSJ s.v. ὦ and ὤ:
“In the first sense [sc. an exclamation, expressing surprise, joy, or pain] usu. written ὤ, in the second [sc. with voc., a mode of address, whether at the beginning of a sentence or in a parenthesis] ὦ: [examples omitted]: Thom.Mag p.408R prescribes ὤ with the gen., but ὦ with the voc., e.g. ὦ Ἡ?άκλεις, where the whole expression, and not merely the ὤ (ὦ), expresses surprise (but A.D_Adv_.127.24 seems to imply ὦ in both senses); [many more examples, many citations of the opinions of ancient grammarians, some discussion of papyri].”
I don’t have any manuals of accentuation to hand, so I’m not sure if more details can be adduced. I would imagine the orthography here boils down to editorial preference backed up by accepting either some tradition or some grammarian as the One True Guide to Right and Proper Accentuation.
I was also under the impression that you can’t always “trust” the accentuation – at least I can’t in the text I’m reading now. Just flipping through I can find examples like Ὤ Θεὲ καὶ Λόγε, ὦ χα?ὰ ἡ ?μή and there’s two parallel verses, one that starts off with Ὤ γλυκ? μου ἔα? and the other Ὦ φῶς τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν μου. And then later, in a similar stretch of verses, it only seems to use ὦ, including in such places as ὦ τῆς πα?αφ?οσ?νης, which seems to be the same kind of thing that first made me bring the question up.
Might it be as in φεῦ τοῦ ἀνδ?óς!(φεῦ+gen., dennoting a vocative) ?
Χαἰ?ετε