Did Homer use the Ϝ (or something like it) in performing his poem? I read recently that it’s just an artifact of his base of poetic material, and he wouldn’t have ever pronounced it himself.
The erstwhile digamma is sometimes inoperative in Homer (i.e. the meter behaves as if it were non-existent), so it must have already fallen of use. It’s conceivable that it was still pronounced in some cases, but the evidence is against it.
If that is the case, digamma should be buried in an inherited phrase nearly every time, right? If the distribution looked more random, you would suspect later editors instead.
For example, in this case, the following would be a completely inherited phrase:
ατρειδης τε ϝαναξ ανδρων και
If “ϝαναξ ανδρων” were all the poet had inherited, I would think that he would have naturally elided τε.
Actually this is somewhat similar to French “aspirated h”. In French, the letter h is no longer pronounced, but in some cases (called “aspirated h” or "h aspiré) it has left vestiges and still causes hiatus at word boundary, preventing contraction and liaison from happening.
For example:
la hache (the axe)
However, in some cases the h doesn’t affect pronunciation in any way (“h muet”, “mute h”) and is only an orthographic convention.
l’heure (the hour), pronounced exactly like l’Eure (a place name).
What I mean is that even if ϝ is no longer be pronounced in Homer’s time, it’s quite possible that it still causes hiatus. What happens with present day French “h aspiré” is a good parallel.
Note that in both cases there are many exceptions to the rule. Homer doesn’t always respect digamma, and in French, many native speakers make “mistakes”, which shows that this sort of thing must be pretty unstable and will probably disappear from the language quite quickly.
Forvo pronunciations for Paul’s examples:
https://forvo.com/word/la%20hache
https://forvo.com/word/l’heure
https://forvo.com/word/l’Eure
The French parallel is an interesting way of understanding the question. The non-hiatising h- has, from the point of view of the French language, never been pronounced but is merely orthographic. The hiatus-inducing h (“h aspiré”) used to be pronounced in French but is no more; they are all loan-words, particularly from neighbouring Germanic languages. For example, haut ‘high’ is interesting as it derives from the Latin altus but was mixed with Germanic hoch uel sim., which gave its formerly pronounced and now hiatus-inducing h. Romanian, by the way, is the only Romance language I know which has the sound [h], which is fascinating.
An example near me and Paul: it should be Université de Helsinki, but I think Université d’Helsinki is nowadays more common.
French h is a mess, and only the “aspirated” ones are relevant here. I think with huile “oil” the h was added as an orthographic convention to distinguish from vil(e) “vile” at a period when v and u were not distinguished.
Just in case I still wasn’t clear enough, the question is whether the finite article le/la is elided before a word beginning with h + vowel.
In the same manner French huit ‘8’ has an orthographical h- to distinguish it from vit ‘lives’, and huis ‘door’ << Latin ōstium again has an added h- to distinguish it from vis ‘I live / thou livest / live thou!’. Homme has and an etymologic h-, whereas avoir hasn’t although it should have < Latin habēre (Italian avere, but Spanish haber). It’s indeed a mess.
Hodiē ‘today’ gives the obsolete hui, which has however been preserved in aujourd’hui, actually au jour de hui ‘on the day of today’, and in spoken French au jour d’aujourd’hui (!) can sometimes be heard, although it’s definitely not recommendable.
Before this turns into a thread about French …
Joel, What the poets inherited were fixed and adaptable phrases in which τε αναξ (e.g.) was always three syllables: the metrical effect of the erstwhile digamma was built in, a persistent relic of an earlier stage of the language. (The aspirated or rather “aspirated” h in French is analogous up to a point.) More novel locutions were apt to be rather less true to tradition.
Editors don’t really come into it, any more than F does. In the written tradition conventions such as movable nu and double consonants often serve to eliminate what had become metrical irregularities consequent on loss of digamma (hiatus, for example, or εδ(δ)εισεν), but even that may reflect Homeric performance practice. What stayed unchanged was what was least amenable to modernization. Isn’t that always the way?
Wasn’t there a Homeric edition (Iliad or Odyssey or even both?) from 1800’s I think with digammas printed? I’m sure I saw a page of it displayed by the teacher in my Greek metrics course. Do you know what and by whom it is (there can’t be many different ones, can there?) and could it by any chance be freely accessible online? Just for the sake of curio. I’m sure it’s already out of copyright. And I’m sure I have asked this from Paul in person but unfortunately forgotten his answer, for which I apologise.
At least Fick’s edition, though I’m not sure if it’s the only one or the first one.
Here is Fick: https://archive.org/stream/diehomerischeil00fickgoog#page/n59/mode/2up
He seems to insert word-initial digamma in several place, but nothing for line 33.
Thank you. How wonderfully quaint! A lot of psilosis and Doric α (μᾶνιν), as well. And you’re right, Joel, it should be ἔδϝεισε. Strange that Fick doesn’t mark it, as he should have known it. Fick’s preface might shed light on his editing principles, but he is obviously reconstructing according to his views.
Richard Bentley, who (re)discovered the digamma in Homer, characteristically believed that all verses where it couldn’t be restored were corrupt. Some of his emendations have been confirmed by papyri and have rightfully gained a place in the text (without a written digamma, of course). Between him and Fick towards the end of the 19th century were quite a number of scholars (mostly German and Dutch) who made important follow-up investigations and discoveries; they often wrote the digamma when quoting Homer, and many of them believed that Homer himself wrote it too, but so far as I know Fick was the first (and I expect the only) scholar to produce whole editions with it. That’s certainly what he’s best known for.
Fick himself influentially believed—on good evidence—that the poems were in Aeolic before being converted where possible into Ionic (the thesis is still widely accepted today), and he deemed digamma Aeolic (as indeed it is), in conformity with ancient doctrine. Psilosis and “Doric” alpha also Aeolic of course. The result may look “quaint” to us, but it was underpinned by serious and groundbreaking scholarship.
“the poems were in Aeolic before being converted where possible into Ionic (the thesis is still widely accepted today),”
Isn’t the current version of the Aeolic hypothesis that the tradition, particularly the epic diction and formulas, and not the poems themselves, was originally Aeolic but eventually taken over by Ionic aoidoi, and the formulas and diction were converted into Ionic where possible b ut remained Aeolic where the Ionic form would not be metrical?
I think the 1895 edition of van Leeuwen and Costa prints the digamma, too.
And Ionic was as psilotic as Aeolic. I understood that rough breathings were added at some point, maybe even in the Byzantine era, to words that had them in Attic, but not to Ionic words that didn’t exist in Attic.
Welcome back Hylander. You’ve been missed.
You’re right of course about the Aeolic thesis. In its modified form it’s the earlier epic tradition that was Aeolic, rather than the poems themselves as Fick thought. The chronology has been pushed back, but in both variants ionicization came later.
The basic thesis has been challenged by the idea that the poems represent a fundamentally Ionic tradition into which seeped forms from a parallel Aeolic tradition (again I simplify, and probably distort), and this competing “diffusionist” theory seems to have been gaining ground in recent years. But there are so many things in favor of an earlier Aeolic phase with subsequent Ionic overlay and partial replacement that I’m reluctant to accept it. Maybe some kind of synthesis will eventually be possible.
van Leeuwen too, yes, I’d forgotten him.
As to psilosis, it’s well recognized that that doesn’t necessarily point to Aeolic, since it was East Ionic too. It’s alphabets with a letter for h that count, of course—inscriptions. Even Attic was not uniform.
A lot of psilosis and Doric α (μᾶνιν), as well.
I think Fick would call it Aeolic α. The raising of α to η was of course a sound change limited to Attic/Ionic (and only partial in Attic), and did not occur elsewhere in Greek, including in “Aeolic” in Asia Minor. I believe it is thought to have occurred relatively late (after 1000 BCE, which is around when the Greek in Asia Minor first came into contact with the Mada, whom later Greeks called Μηδοι).
I definitely didn’t mean to disrespect Fick. His work is great, but from today’s point of view it gives a “quaint” impression. I like quaint myself. I have added digammas in (small) part of Homer, mainly as an exercise, and tried to separate true ει [ei] and ου [ou] diphthongs from the long closed vowels ε̄ [ẹ] and ō [ọ], the distinction obscured by the (in other ways great) 404 BCE Attic-Ionic spelling reform.
I take your critique on “Doric α”. It was meant a short-hand for “α where Attic-Ionic would have η”, but I realise it is too misleading, as Homer doesn’t have so much Doric.
Is there a list anywhere that enumerates all the words that historically had Ϝ in them? Has it been ever compiled? It would be of great help as a reference. I suppose anyone could collect them oneself gradually as they appear in texts, but better maybe (and faster) if someone has already done it.