Archilochus fragment

Greek Learning Greek
1

A fragment of Archilochus, numbered 112 in Campbell’s Greek Lyric Poetry (and 191 in West’s translation, but I’m not sure what critical edition the number refers to).

τοῖος γάρ φιλότητος ἔρως ὐπό καρδίην ἐλυσθείς
πολλήν κατ̣᾿ ἀχλύν ὀμμάτων ἔχευεν,
κλέψας ἐκ στηθέων ἁπαλάς φρένας

The meaning is pretty clear, but I have problem with the second line: apparently κατ̣᾿ goes with ὀμμάτων, but the interposition of ἀχλύν is strange to me. The other possibility is that κατ̣᾿ … ἔχευεν are in tmesis, but in that case the genitive in ὀμμάτων is difficult for me to explain.

Can anyone help?

Campbell’s book is great, but I’m a bit disappointed that apparently the saucier poems are not included. This is not the Archilochus I was expecting to get acquainted with… :wink:

2

ἡ ὁμλίχλη ἐκ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν σημαίνει τὰ δάκρυα? Compare Hamlet’s “the fruitful river in the eye.”

The meaning is pretty clear…

It is, and if you focus on meaning instead of form or grammar, I’m not sure that I see much of a distinction in meaning between your two possibilities.

3

αὐτίκα τῷ μὲν ἔπειτα κατ’ ὀφθαλμῶν χέεν ἀχλὺν
Πηλεΐδῃ Ἀχιλῆϊ

Il. 20.321-2

4

κατὰ δ’ὀφθαλμῶν κέχυτ’ ἀχλύς

What seems to be the problem? kata + gen basically means against/down on/over sort of thing and there are obvious Homeric parallels like the above demi-quote. This is seemingly a funny play on words for a Homeric death scene. If you mean the word order, then because its poetic. Worth reading out aloud a few times actually.

5

Thanks for the replies. The word order was troubling me, i.e. the interposed word akhlun. The language is so similar to Homer that I was surprised to find something that wasn’t typically Homeric (as far as I know). Then I started to wonder if I ought to interpret it otherwise, but that made even less sense and I got even more mixed up and began to wonder if it was some strange use of the genitive or something…

Campbell actually gives the same parallel as Joel, but I thought it doesn’t proove anything in itself because of the way formulas are re-interpreted.

Markos’ interpretation is nice but I think the “mist” here, like in early epic elsewhere and probably in other early poetry, isn’t really a physical barrier to vision (like our fog, or tears filling the eyes) but something more abstract that prevents people for noticing things - from seeing anything, if the point is that you’re dying, but also from noticing just one particular person, like when Athene covers Odysseus in achlus to prevent the Phaeacians from seeing him.

Comparing to the way achlus made Odysseus invisible, I even wonder if the idea of selective blindness is primary and the one of dying (as in the Iliad passage) secondary, but that’s just a thought…

Anyway, I got it now, thanks…

6

Yes formulae get re-organised as time goes on and across metres and performance styles. How much poetic style you want to read into word order is upto you. Sorry I couldn’t give you a full citation, I should probably stop quoting from memory, but I see some others beat me there. :stuck_out_tongue:

Re: mist. It depends, omikhlh is the wrong kind of mist here because it is a very literal mist e.g from moisture and actually that is literally what it means etymologically (cf Thetis’ appearance out of the grey sea in book 1). The word for mist here, akhlus, can cover a similar semantic field but should be taken close to words like zophos, that is it’s dark and so on. To get the full sense of the simile if you have to envision an absence of light/sight. Essentially he is dying, mist is descending because he’s going down to the underworld.

As I said earlier you’ll find a lot of Archilochian plays on Homeric/general epic turns of phrases and assumptions, take this one: αλλα μ’΄ λυσιμελής, ω 'ταιρε, δάμνατι πόθος. He’s overcame, limbs loose…but this time by love. Same idea.

7

Scribo hits the mark–I think this verges on epic parody, using heroic formulas in a decidedly unheroic way.

apparently the saucier poems are not included. This is not the Archilochus I was expecting to get acquainted with…

It’s a good selection, but you need to have a dirty mind to appreciate the good ones. Archilochus (or at least what we have of him, which is very little) isn’t explicit, but he can be very suggestive. The notorious Cologne fragment is in an Appendix to the Bristol Classical Text edition of Campbell, if that’s what you’re using.

The numeration of Archilochus is based on Diehl’s Teubner edition, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca (see p. xxxi). References to West are to his Iambi et Elegi ante Alexandrum Cantati.

8

What I like is the way he riffs off these themes straddle literary texture and occasional, so:

οὐ φιλέω μέγαν στρατηγὸν οὐδὲ διαπεπλιγμένον
οὐδὲ βοστρύχοισι γαῦρον οὐδ᾿ ὑπεξυρημένον
,ἀλλά μοι σμικρός τις εἴη καὶ περὶ κνήμας ἰδεῖν
ῥοικός, ἀσφαλέως βεβηκὼς ποσσί, καρδίηςπλέως.

Might be a reference to the kaloskagathos type you see all over epic, something specific to Thersites (less likely for my money) or anchored in the reality of Arch’s life as a rover, he lead a colourful life full of fighting.

It’s fun to read this sort of stuff about chucking shields away and drinking and whoring next to the Iliad and Tyrtaios’ Eunomia.

EDIT: It’s amazing how well Campbell does its job given how old it is. I’d love to put a new one together but it’s not as if presses are interested and, let’s be honest, I would fill it with the naughty bits from Archilochus and Hipponax…

9

hi, just to reply on the original word order question, the preposition isn’t completely glued to the word it modifies: see 2.68.5.5 here for some homeric e.g.s of intervening words.

https://books.google.com/books?id=7QINybZNn2YC&pg=PA2735

i agree with everyone else above that the grammar here is heavily influenced by the homeric e.g.s which the listener would likely recall when hearing it - hard to say therefore whether it’s prep + modified word with an intervening substantive, or a verb in tmesis with its object in the genitive rather than acc.

cheers, chad

10

In fact the grammatical distinction is unreal here, isn’t it?, as it quite often is. I’d say that in such a case it’s wrong to think in terms of alternative possibilities. ομματων and εχευεν both feel the force of the κατα.

Or has seasonal jollity muddled my mind? νυν χρη μεθυσθην

11

hi mwh, yep i agree with you. cheers, chad

12

Looking at the fragment now I don’t know why I found any problem at all with it… But I would prefer to call κατα an adverb, as suggested by the book linked by Chad.

As for the other discussion, I agree that to some degree this must suggest heroic notes and parody them. But on the other hand, I think people must have always had feelings of this sort and sought a way of expressing them, and I wonder whether reducing the poem to mere heroic parody does justice to it. For this particular fragment we would need more context. The language is too similar to be Homeric imitation, in my opinion - it’s the same language.

For αχλυς, I don’t think it’s really close to darkness or that it implies (nearly) dying, at least here, but it’s more like αηρ, which ML West (in his Theogony commentary) defines, if I remember correctly, as the “very stuff of invisibility”. The two terms are used interchangeably in the Odyssey in the Phaeacian episode at least. Basically, the fragment says “he was so horny he couldn’t see things straight”. I’m not sure how much of this is borrowed from heroic vocabulary, how much from “common poetic stock”.

13

Double post deleted.

14

Sure, ‘adverb’ it is, if we have to give it a part-of-speech label. I was describing its activity.

I find it hard not to see at least a touch of humor in the redeployment of the epic death phraseology, though I wouldn’t call it parody. You’re right we really need more context, and it’s dodgy to go assuming Homeric priority.

αχλυς and αηρ may be used interchangeably in the Phaeacian episode but they’re normally quite distinct substances. I can’t imagine αηρ being poured over the eyes.

15

Yes, that’s what i was trying to say!

αχλυς and αηρ may be used interchangeably in the Phaeacian episode but they’re normally quite distinct substances. I can’t imagine αηρ being poured over the eyes.

Would you agree with me that the essential idea in αχλυς is that if blurriness or indisctinctness, not darkness per se? That’s the idea I’ve gotten out of the poetic occurences I’ve seen, and a quick look at LSJ didn’t change that idea. Of course, the when it’s dark, you don’t see things clearly, but to me darkness isn’t what the word suggests in the first place. When you faint, everything first goes blurry, hence the application of the word in the context of epic death – although I’m still not sure the passage at hand suggests death, epic or otherwise, or even fainting, but simply hindered perception due to emotional upheaval.

16

Yes that seems right to me. Could as well be white as black?? I tend to think of it as a strictly localized thick fog. But it’s always taken as being dark (in antiquity too). — Oh, and rightly so: Od.12.406, a κυανεη νεφελη ηχλυσε the ocean. Though I’m not sure how much color implication there is there.
How does it differ from ομιχλη? In application, certainly. And in conceptualization. It’s poured (sometimes, always?, by a god) (but not wet?, unlike ομιχλη. It was controversial whether ambrosia was wet or dry.) I fancy it’s properly of the fogging over of the eyes, with other uses being by metaphorical extension (rather than the other way about). When it’s poured over a whole person, rather than just his eyes, it functions as a cloak of invisibility, as something you can see out of but not into—or vice versa (like a one-way mirror?); you don’t see the stuff itself. This may be what you meant by “abstract” in your previous post, but it’s envisioned as an actual substance, Homer being Homer.
Then there’s νεφελη itself, e.g. Il.20.417 of Polydorus’ not-quite-yet-death closely followed by Hector’s non-death αχλυς 421.

Just musing, not considered opinion. Ancient scholars will have covered all this ground very thoroughly. αηρ/αιθηρ was a hot topic. Meteorological writings should help pin it down outside of epic. Anything useful in LfgrEpos or comms? Etym. not known?

West’s number presumably IEG. Fascinating fragment. Epodic, so distinctly non-epic despite the language. Neoboule a strong possibility, I’d say.

17

I’m not going to wager anything for αηρ without my stuff in front of me, because I think pinning down a singular form amongst its variants would be hell. I’ll offer something for αιθηρ though.

I really thinking it has something like stark/bright/ to it. If you mess about with PIE sound changes you get something akin to ed(h)a or aid(h)a in Sanskrit which is like kindle/burn/bright. Same as root as αιθω? would make sense and the roots are productive across the same range of semantic ideas. Brightness, burning, clear, soot.

Do I think these are distinct from the other types of mist? etymologically, yes. In usage? I don’t know. I think some more than others.

Either way I defend my reading, it’s riffing off the idea of being “struck down” by love and follows typical inversion you see in this genre. I don’t think I’d want to reduce it to “mere parody” (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), more like the kind of aristocratic play you see everywhere else.

Neoboule? It would be thematically appropriate, I think the effect would be cheapened if it were just another filly.

18

I like Scribo’s “aristocratic play”… But for the exact meaning I differ a bit in that I think the passage first quoted by Joel (Il. 20.321) more exact a parallel than those portraying a heroic death. Here it is in a bit more length:

Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ τό γ’ ἄκουσε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων,
βῆ ῥ’ ἴμεν ἄν τε μάχην καὶ ἀνὰ κλόνον ἐγχειάων,
ἷξε δ’ ὅθ’ Αἰνείας ἠδ’ ὃ κλυτὸς ἦεν Ἀχιλλεύς. (320)
αὐτίκα τῷ μὲν ἔπειτα κατ’ ὀφθαλμῶν χέεν ἀχλὺν
Πηλεΐδῃ Ἀχιλῆϊ· ὃ δὲ μελίην εὔχαλκον
ἀσπίδος ἐξέρυσεν μεγαλήτορος Αἰνείαο·
καὶ τὴν μὲν προπάροιθε ποδῶν Ἀχιλῆος ἔθηκεν,
Αἰνείαν δ’ ἔσσευεν ἀπὸ χθονὸς ὑψόσ’ ἀείρας.

Poseidon doesn’t strike Achilles down, just “blinds” him (or that’s how I understand it). But I guess the distinction isn’t even very important, the point is that it’s a poetic way of saying that an external agency robbed a person of his senses, whether fainting occurs or not. Darkness isn’t explicitly mentioned, and the αχλυς is removed in 341.

I checked LfgrE. I’m not going to misrepresent it by summarizing it, my German being what it is. Three scholia for αχλυς are given, one gives ἀορασία (this especially seems to support me), others σκοτιάς (whatever that means) and ἠ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν σκότωσις. I’ll quote a bit:

Obwohl ἀ. bei Hom. meist ‘dichter (die Sicht verhindernder) Nebel’ oder ‘Dunkel’ ist (nur die zweite Bed., in versch. Schattierungen, auch später, aber rel. selten u. anscheinend meist poet.), wird man deshalb die primäre Bed. eher bei etwa ‘Dunst, Himmelstrübe[whatever that is]’, ‘Trübung des Lichtes, Glanzes, Auges’ (gegenüber θολός, θολερός ‘trübe’, vom Wasser) suchen.

This seems pretty close to my idea, though I might be tempted to leave the caveat (“Obwohl…”) out. The word occurs sometimes associated to darkness, sometimes to “mist”, what is the common denominator?

αιθηρ: That’s a funny word. Do you have an opinion as to whether it’s really connected to Αἰθίοψ (Ethiopian) as well? If it is, the evolution from “bright” to “black” is interesting indeed.

19

Funny thing, this made me think of Locrian Aias. Perhaps he wasn’t always such a negative figure?

20

Locrian Ajax was short, but does anything else fit? His main characteristic seems to be he was fast on his feet, hardly ροικος, and ἀσφαλέως βεβηκὼς ποσσί sounds more like his namesake.
And was the Locrian in fact a negative figure? He eventually fell foul of Athena (could there be a submerged reflex of that in the foot-race mishap of Il.23?), but he’s not at all negatively portrayed in Homer is he? Nor elsewhere? Alcaeus attributes the fixed mythological datum of the sanctuary violation to a fit of madness (λυσσα) during the sack of the city (an occasion that tends not to bring out the best in people). And his comrades didn’t see fit to punish him for it, though (or rather since) history would be different if they had.

Neither of Arch’s contrasted figures relates at all well to epic representation, it seems to me. They’re seemingly constructed without reference to epic typology. But the piece is not necessarily “occasional” on that account. He strikes a certain stance, and the characterizations follow.