Herodotus 4.113

Greek Learning Greek
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4.113.3 ὁ δὲ νεηνίσκος, ἐπεὶ ἀπῆλθε, ἔλεξε ταῦτα πρὸς τοὺς λοιπούς· τῇ δὲ δευτεραίῃ ἦλθε ἐς τὸ χωρίον αὐτός τε οὗτος καὶ ἕτερον ἦγε, καὶ τὴν Ἀμαζόνα εὗρε δευτέρην αὐτὴν ὑπομένουσαν. οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ νεηνίσκοι ὡς ἐπύθοντο ταῦτα, καὶ αὐτοὶ ἐκτιλώσαντο τὰς λοιπὰς τῶν Ἀμαζόνων.

“The youth went away and told his comrades; and the next day he came himself with another to the place, where he found the Amazon and another with her awaiting them. When the rest of the young men learned of this, they had intercourse with the rest of the Amazons.” (Perseus translation) (I think it would be better to translate ἐκτιλώσαντο “tamed”, not “had intercourse”.)

I have trouble understanding the construction I have underlined. What is the function of αὐτὴν? What is the subject, and the object, of ὑπομένουσαν?

About Amazons: Why did they have such a prominent place in Greek mythology? Where did the Greeks find them, or more precisely, their idea about Amazons? Now frankly I don’t believe a lot in Amazons, scarcely more than I believe in Cyclopes or in Androphagoi, but I’m sure there’s some sort of cultural scenario behind them (to use a term Stirling used some time ago). The Oxford commentary just lazily gives a list of references for differing points of view (which I didn’t care to start looking into) and notes that the subject of a “residue of matriarchy” is moot. Now I think I don’t really think the subject is moot, as I’m fairly convinced that theories that find remains of matriarchal societies here and there are all likely to be tosh, motivated for the most part by the sensitivies and, frankly, ideological debates of our own times. But would like to see an honest appreciation of Amazons, their meaning and their “origin”.

I’ll note that I do know the difference between matrilineal and matriarchal societies, the difference being among other things that the former have really existed and I suppose still exist, while the latter are the stuff of folk tales – ancient, modern, and academic.

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Yes, Jews in particular are matrilinear, the best explanation for this being that it is always certain who is the child’s mother. It is pathetically trivial of me to say that fathers can often remain unknown—or at least it was so until DNA tests in modern times.

As to the legitimation of the existence of the Amazons, I suppose you asked a difficult question. I read the first chapter in Pauly—Wissowa s.v. Amazones, and to paraphrase it very tersely, this would seem to be the most difficult question in Greek mythology. They are amongst the oldest myths of the Greeks, says PW, and emphasises that they are located outside the Greek world, to make them particularly clearly barbaric.

Perchance the Amazons are an example of inverse or even perverse thinking, i.e. imagining how things should be in this meilleur des mondes possibles and then turning it upside down?

But surely there are newer monographs on this riveting subject?

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δευτέρην αὐτὴν – This is an idiom.

LSJ αὐτός I.1.6:

added to ordinal Numbers, e.g. πέμπτος αὐτός himself the fifth, i. e. himself with four others, Th.1.46, cf. 8.35, X.HG2.2.17, Apoc.17.11, etc.:—αὐτός always being the chief person.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dau)to%2Fs

LSJ δεύτερος II.2:

  1. the second of two, δ. αὐτή herself with another, Hdt.4.113,

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Ddeu%2Fteros

LSJ τρίτος:

τρίτος αὐτός himself the third, i. e. with two others (v. “αὐτός” 1.6)

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dtri%2Ftos

I think it would be better to translate ἐκτιλώσαντο “tamed”, not “had intercourse”.

That’s what LSJ might say, but I’m not sure it’s right. It’s clear that the boys did have intercourse with the Amazons. Rams are associated with male potency in many cultures. While κτιλοω might mean “tame” in some contexts, I suspect that here the association with “ram” rather than “tame” might underlie this instance.

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τὴν Ἀμαζόνα εὗρε δευτέρην αὐτὴν ὑπομένουσαν –

τὴν Ἀμαζόνα . . . δευτέρην αὐτὴν ὑπομένουσαν is simply the direct object of εὗρε. “He found the Amazon waiting [for him] with another [Amazon].”

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He found the Amazon, herself a second-of-two (δευτέρην), awaiting him? Thus it is not an accusative absolute construction, but an appositional one?

More or less. I would say not appositional but predicative.

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δευτέρην αὐτὴν is simply an idiom. I don’t see a contrast with οὗτος αὐτός: “He came himself and he brought another with him.”

Note that I changed my previous post slightly after you posted.

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Thanks, Hylander! The construction is clear to me now.

δευτέρην αὐτὴν “her_self_ the second” - the point of αὐτός being that the “second” is contrasted with an (implied) “first”. The Amazon herself is now only the second of two.

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I was a bit unclear. There’s no question that they had intercourse; my point was that Herodotus elected to use a more unusual word than, say, ἐμίσγοντο. I thought that the idea is that the Amazons were fearsome, uncontrollable creatures, and the boys subjugated them. It would seem to me that if this meant that “the boys rammed the Amazons”, even if weren’t quite as vulgar as (I think) it is in English, it still seems a bit too graphical an image to be used by Herodotus.

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Ah, sorry, I misunderstood you. (οὗτος) αὐτός is used in contrast with ἔτερον. “He came himself and brought someone else”.

Oops: I accidentally first edited your post (hard to be a moderator…) instead of answering it.

The Oxford commentary says something like this too (although with more moderate wordings), and it might be probably true.

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I learned this idiom by stumbling over πέμπτος αὐτός when I read Thucydides.

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I looked at the beginning of this thread and had some trouble finding the problem with the syntax. Went away and looked it up in Cooper; no reference to it. Concluded that the accusative pronoun with the participle were simply part of the predicate of the main verb, came back and found a host of new posts and Hylnader had already settled the question.

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what is the purpose of αὐτός? Would not οὗτος serve just as well without it?

“He came himself and he brought along someone else.”

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On the Amazons, without getting too graphic, I wonder whether the idea of women warriors and women engaging in “manly” actitivies like hunting or athletics was somehow sexually titillating to Greek and Roman men, just as some men find pornography involving sex between women titillating today. I’m thinking in particular of stories such as Actaeon and Hypodameia and other stories involving women engaging in manly activities, especially when they aren’t interested in men or are difficult of access. That doesn’t seem to be true of the Amazons here, but I wonder whether some sort of fetishistic impulse like this kept the Amazon stories alive. That’s purely speculative and unprovable, of course.

Edit: Atalanta, not Hypodameia.