τῶν ἐκ τῆς Ἀργοῦς ἐπιβατέων παίδων παῖδες ἐξελασθέντες ὑπὸ Πελασγῶν τῶν ἐκ Βραυρῶνος ληισαμένων τὰς Ἀθηναίων γυναῖκας, ὑπὸ τούτων ἐξελασθέντες ἐκ Λήμνου οἴχοντο πλέοντες ἐς Λακεδαίμονα, ἱζόμενοι δὲ ἐν τῷ Τηϋγέτῳ πῦρ ἀνέκαιον.
The preposition ἐκ bothers me a bit. Does τῶν ἐκ τῆς Ἀργοῦς ἐπιβατέων παίδων παῖδες literally mean “the children of the children (=descendents) out of the embarkers of the Argos”? Is it usual to use the preposition ἐκ like this to indicate someone’s progeniture?
παίδων παῖδες = descendants “epic sounding” cf νῦν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει
καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται. (il.XX.307-8) Thus Asheri
“ἐπιβατέων” more like crew?
ἔκ (L&S)
of Parentage, ἔκ τινος εἶναι, γενέσθαι, etc., Il. 20.106,6.206, etc.; ἐκ γὰρ ἐμεῦ γένος ἐσσί (where γένος is acc. abs.) 5.896 ; “σῆς ἐξ αἵματός εἰσι γενέθλης” 19.111 ; “ὦ παῖ πατρὸς ἐξ Ἀχιλλέως” S.Ph.260 ; “πίρωμις ἐκ πιρώμιος” Hdt.2.143 ; “ἀγαθοὶ καὶ ἐξ ἀγαθῶν” Pl.Phdr.246a ; “τὸν ἐξ ἐμῆς μητρός” S.Ant.466, etc.
Thanks, I just wanted to make sure my understanding of the passage was correct. And sure, ἐπιβατέων means ‘crew’, but I was supposed to be literal!
I mentioned crew because if you look in L&S you find not crew but:
1.. ἐπιβάται, οἱ, soldiers on board ship, fighting men, opp. the rowers and seamen, marines, Hdt.6.12, 7.100, Th.3.95, Plb. 1.51.2, etc.
b.. merchant on board ship, supercargo, D.34.51, 56.10.
c.. passenger on ship, D.Chr.1.29, al., Plu.in Hes.8.
d.. subordinate officer in the Spartan navy, Th.8.61, X.HG1.3.17, Hell. Oxy.17.4.
etc
I wondered therefore (hence the question mark) whether we were supposed to read “the fighting men of the Argo”. In trying to be literal one can miss what the actual meaning is.
Looking at the LSJ entry for ἐπιβάτης it seems to me that it can mean almost anything that mounts something else, including ‘male quadruped’ (though typically of course someone mounting a ship). So without looking all those different words in context, it seems that it’s really a rather vague word that may be used quite generically, and that translations such as ‘soldiers on board a ship’, ‘merchant’, ‘passenger’ are determined by the context.
Yes indeed so what do we choose in this context!
I think that what H. means is the band/crew of heroes who manned the Argo. This is in the mythical, heroic past–the Argo was the first ship ever, and these events “occurred” a generation before the Trojan War. Maybe “the men on board the Argo.” A clear-cut distinction between sailors and marines doesn’t seem relevant in this context, and in any case, if I remember correctly, the heroes manned the oars.
Thanks Hylander. What I thought was an interesting issue is that L&S says soldiers as opposed to rowers setting up a binary opposition which clearly has a particular military/social context. So I wonder whether H. was involved in some kind of double thinking which whilst acknowledging that the heros of the Argos were in fact rowers, underlines that they were also heroic fighting men and that it this aspect he wished his readers to concentrate on. I think in the 5th century being a rower was not a particularly “heroic role” as they tended to be of lower social status compared to hoplites.
It seems to me that here as in other places the different “translations” given by the LSJ are not really translations but rather indicate the range of different contexts in which the word appears. This is at least how I’m used to read the LSJ; in this case, I actually did check the entry, and as the word didn’t seem to have any very specific or technical meaning, wrote simply “embarker”. But looking at the first entry now, it seems that even if ἐπιβάτης isn’t actually a heroic word, and even if, unlike in some other contexts, no binary opposition to crew members of a lower sort is intended, the word still has positive overtones.
Indeed the Argonauts were rowers themselves, at least in Apollonius. If I remember correctly, it was also explicitly mentioned there that Heracles (who rowed along with all the others) had to sit in the middle of the ship because he was so heavy.
The combination of εκ and επιβατεων does seem a bit odd. I guess επιβατης (α very prosaic word) is used in a faded sense, without reference to actual embarcation—much as we might say “the crew from the Argo” rather than "the crew of the Argo.”
(The Argo not the Argos by the way!)