Iliad 3.224: οὐ τότε γ’ ὧδ’ Ὀδυσῆος ἀγασσάμεθ’ εἶδος ἰδόντες
The context is that Antenor is describing to Helen his impressions of Odysseus from an earlier diplomatic mission. He says that Odysseus was an unimpressive physical presence, but that this initial impression was turned around by his exceptional voice and intelligence. This final sentence is seemingly meant to cap off the description.
I initially took this to be something like, “Oh, but then [after hearing his words] we were not amazed by the sight of Odysseus.” But that doesn’t make sense in context. (Beekes and the Cambridge Greek Lexicon gloss ἄγαμαι as “admire, envy” and “be full of admiration,” which although a little different still doesn’t seem to make sense here. The etymology is ~μέγα.)
Buckley’s translation is “And beholding, we then marvelled not so much at the aspect of Odysseus, [as at his words].” The intention of the Buckley translation is to be as literal as possible. This seems fine as a way of conveying Antenor’s meaning, but I don’t see any grammatical cue that a comparison is being expressed. My understanding of how comparisons are expressed is that you say a comparative like “bigger,” and then if you want to make explicit what you’re comparing with, e.g., “bigger than a house,” then you use the genitive. So if a comparison was intended, even an implicit one, I would expect to see a comparative meaning something like “as much,” which doesn’t seem to be there. Or can γε imply this?
Buckley’s meaning also seems a little illogical to me. Probably the majority of all humans are uncomfortable and not practiced at speaking effectively in public, so seeing someone act physically awkward and unprepossessing in front of an audience is not something to marvel at one way or the other.
The verb ἄγαμαι actually has two meanings, “to be amazed” and “to be jealous or offended.” Could this sentence then be better translated as follows? “Oh, but then [after hearing his words] we were no longer inclined to be disdainful of how he looked.” This seems like the only possibility that makes logical sense, but it seems to require stretching the semantics of the verb a little beyond what Cunliffe describes.
Benner, Selections from Homer:
" ‘Then we were not so much amazed at seeing Odysseus’s looks’ as we were at his words (scholium).’ His oratory was an agreeable surprise."
Leaf, Commentary on the lliad:
“The line was condemned by Bentley. It is most awkward as well as tautological, and the digamma of root “ϝιδ” is twice violated. Giseke remarks that it would come better after 220; but it seems to be only a variant of 223, added by way of recapitulation of the whole speech. ὧδε must then mean ‘so much as we did before’; whereas the proper sense is ‘so much as we do now.’”
Both Bowie (2019) and Kirk (1985) agree with your final suggestion.
Kirk glosses ἄγαμαι as “be surprised or annoyed at,” while Bowie suggests “it was not then that we were so displeased when we looked at his appearance.”
You’re in good company with your final read of the line.
As an FYI, some of the particles in this speech (207-224) get extended treatment in Bonifazi et al., Particles in Ancient Greek Discourse, Part II, chapter 3.3, section 51 (available at https://chs.harvard.edu/read/bonifazi-drummen-de-kreij-eds-particles-in-ancient-greek-discourse/ (p. 575)). You might already be aware of this resource and using it, but I thought I’d pass it along just in case.
Thanks, I’d never come across that. It’s unfortunate that their online presentation seems to break every web standard known to man. There is the “read as book” format that you linked to, and also a version of the book in a separate format that seems intended to work correctly with bookmarking, hyperlinks, and search engines: https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/table-of-contents/ . But then when I try to use that version from its table of contents, the links don’t work. I can only seem to access it by finding some text in the “read as book” version, putting it in a search engine, and then using that URL.
The sources of information I’d been using on the particles were mainly Monro and Denniston. The Bonifazi book seems vast, but worth dipping into. They seem to have some discussion on how a particle should be defined, which I want to look at. It seems like the older books don’t always agree on what’s what, and also don’t necessarily agree with how modern linguists define particles. I find it kind of confusing. It seems like there may be some overlap in the Venn diagram between particles and other parts of speech, and cases where a particular word historically changed its allegiance.