Translation by Buckley:
As a bull in the herd is greatly eminent above all, for he surpasses the collected cattle, such on that day did Zeus render Agamemnon, distinguished amongst many, and conspicuous amongst heroes.
The word ἔπλετο < πέλω is extremely common in Homer, and usually seems to mean something like “turned out to be.” But in this passage, Homer is describing a general fact about how a bull is dominant, so it makes sense that Buckley translates it simply as “is.” I don’t see any reason to use a secondary tense here to describe a general truism, and it’s not clear to me why one would use πέλω rather than εἰμί (or just omit the copula entirely, which is actually what Homer seems to do 90% of the time). Is it just because this word fills out the meter nicely?
Thanks for your reply. Right, I realize that one of its meanings is “to be.” However, I’m unclear on why it would be in the imperfect here, and why it would be used instead of the other, simpler choices.
1.) If it means “to be” how could it be aorist in the past (a completed action would be “become”)? Had to be imperfect. 2) It’s a poem. But we have some similar expressions that maybe show why turning verbs tend copular. [pun!] German has turn built into werden, as the LSJ article mentions. But we say “inclines to corpulence” to mean “a bit overweight.” We say “tends” to mean “frequently is”. “Turns out” means “comes about.” “Winds up” too. Maybe it’s baked into Indo-Germanic thought patterns.
This sentence triggers the neurons in my brain for “screw” used as a verb.
Yeah, it would be interesting to look through usages in Homer and see if there is any different semantic flavoring for the different ways of expressing the copula. I have in my notes that the mp of πέλω has the same meaning as the active, but I don’t know where I got that or whether it’s accurate. Maybe the bull turns out to be dominant because of his own efforts and nature, or his dominance is for his own benefit, and that makes it something that is suitable for expression using the mp of πέλω as opposed to the active of πέλω, or εἰμί, or omitting the copula.
For fun and reading practice, I thought I would go through the Iliad and see if I could get any insight into whether there was any difference in meaning between the active and the medio-passive of this verb. I found the first five instances of ἔπλετο and the first five instances of πέλεν in the Iliad and translated them, peeking at the Loeb edition when I wasn’t sure.
Iliad 2.480
ἠΰτε βοῦς ἀγέληφι μέγ᾽ ἔξοχος ἔπλετο πάντων ταῦρος·
like a bull who is preeminent in the herd
Iliad 6.433 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.12689/page/n307/mode/2up
λαὸν δὲ στῆσον παρ’ ἐρινεόν, ἔνθα μάλιστα
ἀμβατός ἐστι πόλις καὶ ἐπίδρομον ἔπλετο τεῖχος.
and station the army near the fig tree, where most easily
the city is climbed and its wall is overrun
Iliad 7.30 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.12689/page/n319/mode/2up
ὕστερον αὖτε μαχήσοντ’ εἰς ὅ κε τέκμωρ
Ἰλίου εὕρωσιν, ἐπεὶ ὣς φίλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ
ὑμῖν ἀθανάτῃσι, διαπραθέειν τόδε ἄστυ.
at last fighting again until we find the end
of Troy, since such is welcome to
the hearts of you immortals, and to sack that city.
Iliad 8.556 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.12689/page/n393/mode/2up
ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἐν οὐρανῷ ἄστρα φαεινὴν ἀμφὶ σελήνην
φαίνετ’ ἀριπρεπέα, ὅτε τ’ ἔπλετο νήνεμος αἰθήρ·
and as when the stars in the sky shine around
the blazing moon, when the air is calm:
Iliad 10.531 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.12689/page/n489/mode/2up
μάστιξεν δ᾽ ἵππους, τὼ δ᾽ οὐκ ἀέκοντε πετέσθην
νῆας ἔπι γλαφυράς· τῇ γὰρ φίλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ.
and he whipped the horses, and not unwillingly they flew
to the hollow ships, for it was good in their hearts.
Iliad 6.433 is interesting, because Homer does a parallel construction using εἰμί and πέλω, where clearly he considers the verbs interchangeable and I would guess is just picking them based on the meter.
I don’t see anything obvious that looks like a systematic semantic difference between the active and mp.
