There’s a book written by jesuit priest Manuel Briceño Jáuregui called “El genio literario griego” (The literary greek genius) in three volumes. Each of them has a dedication in greek that reads as follows:
Searching on the internet I could translate most of the words. The books are dedicated to the most holy ever virgin mother of God, Mary, as a present of love. But I can’t find what ΟΔΙΓΗ means. I don’t know if its misspelled; I searched a lot of dictionaries and lexicons and none of them had it.
Can someone help me translating the word ΟΔΙΓΗ or giving me a hint of what word could be given the context?
Can you help me with the meaning of the phrase? I can’t figure out the use of the word “guide” in the phrase meaning. Are ὁδηγη and φίλη the accusative declensions of ὁδηγός and φῖλος? If δόσις is the noun, the phrase could mean “A gift for you, my love and my guide” or “A gift for you, with my love and with my guide”? Other thing that confuses me is the -οι suffixes of Θεοτόκος and αείπαρθένος and the -ηι suffix of Μαρία, aren’t they used for the plural form of the nouns? Thanks for your patience
Those suffixes are to represent the dative: To the most holy Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary a gift, though small, is welcome. Also δόσις and the adjectives are in the nominative.
I thought that the quote belonged to Iliad 6: “and he sent me to Troy and straitly charged me ever to be bravest and pre-eminent above all”. That confused me and I didn’t read Odissey’s verse. Thanks a lot.
“A gift is small but welcome” is quite possible and probably likely. But there’s also a slight possibility that φίλη is used here (in the Odyssey passage) in the “active” sense, i.e. dear/nice to the person who gives – “giving is a small thing do and a nice thing to do”.
Perhaps this is how the Jesuit priest understood the verse when he wrote the dedication?
