διαμεῖψαι in Septem contra Thebas

Greek Learning Greek
1

I had been taking a short break from Plato and took a look at Septem, expecting to spend just a bit of time glancing through it since I was in no way ready for it. (The only tragedy I have ever read was Antigone about 50 years ago.) Well, it really appealed to me because of the suggestive language where words work in multiple ways.

I’ve ended up using multiple editions of the play. My primary edition is G.O. Hutchinson’s (1985) where he makes a fair number of changes from older versions such as Tucker (1908). Tucker’s commentary is very helpful, Hutchinson mostly focuses on his textual choices. Here are three lines from a choral ode – lines 333-335 in Hutchinson (which correspond to lines 320-322 in Tucker):

κλαυτόν δ’ ἀρτιτρόφους ὠμοδρόπους
νομίμων προπάροιθεν διαμεῖψαι
δωμάτων στυγεράν ὁδόν.

Hutchinson generally doesn’t provide translations even when he makes significant changes from older versions of the text, but in this case he does: “It is a lamentable thing that young girls should be plucked unripe and should travel to the end a hateful journey from their homes before time has come for the customary rites of marriage.”

My reading is different. I want to say: “It’s lamentable that young girls plucked unripe before the time of marriage rites should exchange their homes for the hateful road.”

The key is the interpretation of διαμεῖψαι. The primary active sense is to exchange. LSJ shows that the middle can mean to traverse, but for the active they provide a second definition “to finish (a journey)” – but their only reference is to this verse. I understand that generally διαμεῖβω takes two accusatives, but LSJ cites Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, line 397 “διαμεῖψαι Ἀσίαν Εὐρώπης” which suggests that the thing exchanged can be in the genitive.

Since no one seems to think that διαμεῖψαι should be understood as to exchange, I assume I’m missing something.

Mark

2

Certainly the idea of exchange is primary; -αμειψai guarantees that. But travel involves exchange of place (cf. 304), and I’m not sure how far your reading really differs from Hutchinson’s. He may perhaps squeeze too hard in privileging the sense of completion that δια- compounds often carry. In representing δωμάτων as a separative genitive, however, his version coheres nicely with the imagery of ἀρτιτρόφους ωμοδρόπους—fledglings plucked untimely from the nest.

But swapping their homes for a hateful road (i.e. captivity?) is indeed the main controlling thought, and I think you do well to follow the original in ending the sentence with that in your own translation. And we probably shouldn’t pin down the language of Aeschylean lyric too firmly, when much of its power lies in its suggestiveness.

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Thanks, Michael! I didn’t perceive travel as being closely related to exchange, but now I see that even in the quote from IT what I found translated as “exchange Europe for Asia” also means Io traveled from Europe to Asia.

As for the the suggestiveness of Aeschylus’s language, I have certainly come to appreciate that. It occurred to me that his lyric is not so much difficult as it is untranslatable.

Mark

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I feel like the comparisons should be to how αμειβω active is used for movement, which is common enough and also somewhat distanced from the original exchange idea. LSJ cites πορθμον and πορον as objects. While the πορον reference in Euripides is present tense for an incomplete action, the πορθμον reference is a completed action, the army already having passed across the Dardanelles.

πεπέρακεν μὲν ὁ περσέπτολις ἤδη
βασίλειος στρατὸς εἰς ἀν-
τίπορον γείτονα χώραν,
λινοδέσμῳ σχεδίᾳ πορθ-
μὸν ἀμείψας
Ἀθαμαντίδος Ἕλλας,
πολύγομφον ὅδισμα
ζυγὸν ἀμφιβαλὼν αὐχένι πόντου.

(Quoted in full because the “strait question” happens to be in the news this week, though it’s through now rather than across.)

Anyhow, rather than beginning with the LSJ article for διαμειβω, but instead considering this use of αμειβω, and adding δια, and noting the aorist of course, you can at least see the argument for completion, I hope.

Beyond that, the context provides some justification for the completed journey idea: the violation of these girls as captives in the new household seems the primary poetic image and the travails of their dark journey only secondary.

The LSJ supplement adds another completion use to the διαμειβω article, with a decade of years as an object, but I don’t have it in front of me and don’t recall whether that was active or middle.

EDIT: Supplement references CEG 477, for completion with respect to time, and is active. (I see that it’s 10 decades of years, of course, now that I have it in front of me.)

Λιττίας. Χοιρίνη. Λυσιστράτη.
εὐδαίμων ἔθανον δεκάδας δέκ’ ἐτῶν διαμείψας,
ὡραῖον πένθος παισὶν ἐμοῖσι λιπών.

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Thanks, Joel! The quote from The Persians clearly shows that Aeschylus uses the active voice of αμειβω to mean travel. Sometimes it seems to me that a verb prefix will substantially change the meaning of a verb, but my sense is that δια- generally does not. And I can see completion of the journey is a more powerful image than the road itself. Of course the sense of exchange can still resonate even when the primary meaning settles on travel.

Mark