2 πολλὰ δʼ ἄρʼ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθʼ ἴθυσε μάχη πεδίοιο
3 ἀλλήλων ἰθυνομένων χαλκήρεα δοῦρα
Seymour, T. D. (1891). Homer’s Iliad, Books IV-VI. Medford, MA: Ginn and Company.
Any opinions on this? Before I read the note I just naturally took it as a GA.
Leaf’s commentary shows it as a genitive absolute. “as they aimed at one another”, (with no subject)
Willcock just gives the same translation, which would be a normal translation for a gen. abs.
Ameis as well indicates that it’s a g.a. with an implied subject of “die Kämpfer” (οἱ μαχητοί or in this case, τῶν μαχητῶν)
What does the referenced “§ 3 f.” say?
Can’t find Para. 3, but here’s what Seymour has to say about the genitive absolute in Homer:
https://archive.org/details/firstthreebooks02homegoog/page/n27
EDIT: I should say I found para. 3, but it has nothing to do with uses of the genitive. Para. 3 in Seymour’s introduction contains the definition of an epic poem.
Thanks for posting the image, Joel. As you can see, this is under Paragraph 19 in his introduction.
“ἀλλήλων ἰθυνομένων ‘as they aimed at each other’ (ἀλλήλων goes with ἰθυνομένων, which is best taken as a genitive absolute, rather than as a qualifier of μάχη).”
“Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold”
Homer: Iliad Book VI (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)
Another more up to date view (2010).
I would be more interested in their reasoning than their publication date, unfortunately not provided.
The German Seymour based his notes on probably didn’t consider αλληλων as properly a “subject”, making this a rare or unique case (if the intro is to be believed) of a genitive absolute in Homer without a subject. I imagine that we could find a treatise on genitive absolute in Homer somewhere that this all comes from (likely German).
Ironically, the German that Seymour bases his notes on is none other than Ameis, who calls this a genitive absolute with an implied subject. Here’s the page in Ameis:
https://imgur.com/a/dSZUyUq
Thank you for the link. Seymour is clearly replying to Ameis here, rather than translating him.
Antonia Ruppel’s “Absolute Constructions in Early Indo-European” (2013) has an appendix with a full list of what she considers unambiguous genitive absolutes in Homer (and some ambiguous cases), but does not include Z3. I think that this is simply an oversight. She refers the reader to Vasilaros “Der Gebrauch des Genitivus Absolutus bei Apollonios Rhodios im Verhältnis zu Homer” (1993), which includes it, along with detailed discussion of the GA in Homer, but his index misreferences it, which may explain why it is not included by Ruppel. He mentions it as one of 3 cases of “Sichere GA” in Homer where there is no explicit subject for the genitive participle. The other two are Λ458 and Ψ521. Ambiguous “Wahrscheinliche GA” are Γ210/211, Ε665-667, δ19.
That said, if we accept Ameis’ use of N497ff to explaining Z3, as Seymour does, it becomes much harder to agree with it as “Sichere GA.” And it becomes easy to see why Seymour objects:
N497 … περὶ στήθεσσι δὲ χαλκὸς
Ν498 σμερδαλέον κονάβιζε τιτυσκομένων καθ’ ὅμιλον
Ν499 ἀλλήλων…
Here, τιτυσκομένων would depend on χαλκὸς and is not genitive absolute.
Hi Joel,
I checked N497ff. in Ameis and he makes the same comment as he does in Z3 (ἀλλήλων ist von τιτυσκομένων abhängig). He doesn’t call this a genitive absolute, rather he’s noting that ἀλλήλων is the object of τιτυσκομένων in N497ff., and of ἰθυνομένων in Z3. Only in Z3 does he add the note that it’s a GA. BTW, I came across an article by Edward Spieker that may explain Seymour’s rejection of ἀλλήλων ἰθυνομένων as a genitive absolute. The title is “On the So-Called Genitive Absolute and Its Use Especially in the Attic Orators”. I’m still reading it, so I’m not sure if I’ll find something concrete, but it looks promising! If you have access to JSTOR, here is the link:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/287084?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=genitive&searchText=absolute&searchText=Edward&searchText=Spieker&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dgenitive%2Babsolute%2BEdward%2BSpieker%26amp%3Bacc%3Doff%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone&ab_segments=0%2Fdefault-2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=search%3A04467ef529cd7c23757b0bcfb9126bb9&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents