When I said not comprehensible input I overstated - ‘only partially comprehensible input’ would have been better. Also when I wrote that I did not have in mind the sentence I quoted in the follow up. In the earlier chapters of the book there are quite a few words that are rare. By rare I mean words according to logeion that are not among the 10,000 most frequent words. That would be less of problem if they were repeated. If you can’t guess from context the first time you encounter a work you will have increased chance of doing if it that word is shortly afterwards repeated and so on. But as I said mostly they were not.l
The sentence I quoted doesn’t do too badly on rare words. πληττόμενοι is a bit rare but a sketch in the margin makes the meaning very clear.
If you are already familiar with Ancient Greek spells the imperative is quite logical. If you are not then it is a lot harder and I suspect I am not alone in being quite ignorant of their logic till now. Even now, having read the very enlightening discussion the rest of the sentence after the initial imperative are unclear to me. φεύγουσι δὲ οἱ ἵπποι πληττόμενο seems to have an understood like as in “like whipped horses flee” but then why do the wolves flee? Wolves are creatures that you flee from and indeed the sketch in the margin shows a boy fleeing from a wolf.
So do you really stick with “easy comprehensible input for beginners”?
You got the wolves part correct, and notice that φεύγουσι δὲ οἱ λύκοι and φεύγουσι δὲ οἱ ἵπποι have exactly the same structure and mean the same thing. And the wolves flee. And the horses flee.
πληττόμενοι τῇ ἐπῳδῇ τῇ ἐμῇ is the hard part. πληττόμενοι is passive and agrees with ἵπποι (and λύκοι), “stricken.” τῇ ἐπῳδῇ τῇ ἐμῇ is the dative instrument of this striking – “by my enchantment.”
φεύγουσι δὲ οἱ λύκοι, φεύγουσι δὲ οἱ ἵπποι πληττόμενοι τῇ ἐπῳδῇ τῇ ἐμῇ.
That follow-up to the φεῦγε command is meant to impress upon the headache the potency of the sorceress’s charm. If it drives wolves and horses to flight, it should certainly work on a headache. Horses is a bit feeble after wolves, but the wolves and horses are merely exemplary. The magic works on any creature it strikes—including, one hopes, headaches. Exorcism in the Roman Catholic Church likewise impresses upon the demon the efficacy of exorcism in prior instances (biblical and post-biblical), so as to demoralize it and weaken its resistance to being cast out. The strategy is the same here.