Archilochus Fr. 287 (West IEG 97)=Scholia BE Hom. Il. 21.237

Greek Learning Greek
1

Dear Friends,

I have about 100 provisional translations for my catalog using GPT-3 Davinci 003 . The other 350 all have professional translations. I’m hoping I can post here for feedback. I’ve played with these a bit.

No. 10. Archilochus is our first written source attesting to a taurine form for Acheloios, and he seems to have done so because having a hero fight a river would be unthinkable. Homer, however, did do this, in Iliad 21, wherein Achilles fights Skamander.

Archilochus Fr. 287 (West IEG 97)=Scholia BE Hom. Il. 21.237

ἐντεῦθεν ὁρμηθέντες τὸν Ἀχελῷον ἐταύρωσαν Ἡρακλεῖ ἀγωνιζόμενον.
Ἀρχίλοχος μὲν οὐκ ἐτόλμησεν Ἀχελῷον ὡς ποταμόν Ἡρακλεῖ συμ-
βαλεῖν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ταῦρον, Ὅμηρος δὲ πρῶτος ποταμοῦ καὶ ἥρωος
ἠγωνοθέτησε μάχην. ἑκάτερος οὖν τὴν αὐτὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἐμέτρησε τῇ
δυνάμει.

GPT-3 Davinci 003 and Molinari:

Setting out from there, they matched Acheloios against Herakles in a contest. Archilochus was not brave enough to pit Acheloios against Herakles as a river, but as a bull, while Homer was the first to set up a battle between a river and a hero. So each measured their strength with the same circumstance.

Cordially,

Nick

2

ἐταύρωσαν is not “they matched” but literally they “bulled” him i.e. made him a bull (instead of a river)

3

I was going to invent the word “bull-formed him” for it, but wanted to think about this following part a bit before posting, which was a bit dark to me:

ἑκάτερος οὖν τὴν αὐτὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἐμέτρησε τῇ
δυνάμει.

The δύναμις, I think, is not each poet’s, but the river’s and the bull’s.

Each poet metered out, or communicated the measure of, the same subject, this contest, by the power either of the river, or of the bull.

This could as easily, maybe more easily, be read as a critical statement about each poet’s δύναμις, and what they were each capable of portraying. But I don’t think he’s actually saying that.

Entirely separately, ἐμέτρησε might also have some secondary connotation of “made metrical” here, though it’s not the primary thrust of it.

Or maybe ἑκάτερος is the bull and the river? That would make it flow even more easily. There’s just something anachronistic about “each poet measured the event with his own ability”. I dunno though.

4

Thank you both very much. I should have spotted the “ἐταύρωσαν”!

Revised verision:

Setting out from there, they used a bull-formed Acheloios in battle against Herakles. Archilochus was not brave enough to pit Acheloios against Herakles as a river, but as a bull, while Homer was the first to set up a battle between a river and a hero. So each poet metered out the strength [of the deity] based on the circumstance.