Odyssey, Book 8 and 9

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
1

Book 8

    1. λᾶος ὑπὸ ῥιπῆς: ὁ δ᾽ ὑπέρπτατο σήματα πάντων
  1. ῥίμφα θέων ἀπὸ χειρός. > ἔθηκε δὲ τέρματ᾽ Ἀθήνη
  2. ἀνδρὶ δέμας ἐικυῖα, ἔπος τ᾽ ἔφατ᾽ ἔκ τ᾽ ὀνόμαζεν:

Does it mean that Athena cheated the game?
2. > 214. πάντα γὰρ οὐ κακός εἰμι, μετ᾽ ἀνδράσιν ὅσσοι ἄεθλοι:

I would expect πάντας instead of πάντα, because ἄεθλοι is
masculine.
3. > 225. οἵ ῥα καὶ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐρίζεσκον περὶ τόξων.

Why is τόξων plural?
4. > 349. τὸν δ᾽ αὖτε προσέειπε περικλυτὸς ἀμφιγυήεις:

  1. "μή με, Ποσείδαον γαιήοχε, ταῦτα κέλευε:

  2. δειλαί τοι δειλῶν γε καὶ ἐγγύαι ἐγγυάασθαι.

  3. πῶς ἂν ἐγώ σε δέοιμι μετ᾽ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν,
  4. εἴ κεν Ἄρης οἴχοιτο χρέος καὶ δεσμὸν ἀλύξας;"

Could you analyze the third verse? Here is my best try:

When it is about the δειλῶν, even pledges are evil (δειλαί γε καὶ
ἐγγύαι). But I don’t know what to do with the infinitive
ἐγγυάασθαι. Is it an epexegetical infinitive?

Cambridge G&L just book called the attention over the polyptote of
δειλῶν and ἐγγύαι-ἐγγυάασθαι, but didn’t give any further explanation.
5. > 362. ἡ δ᾽ ἄρα Κύπρον ἵκανε φιλομμειδὴς Ἀφροδίτη,

  1. ἐς Πάφον: ἔνθα δέ οἱ τέμενος βωμός τε θυήεις.
  2. ἔνθα δέ μιν Χάριτες λοῦσαν καὶ χρῖσαν ἐλαίῳ
  3. ἀμβρότῳ, > οἷα θεοὺς ἐπενήνοθεν αἰὲν ἐόντας,

I didn’t grasp the meaning of the last verse. Is οἷα used adverbially?
What is the meaning of ἐπενήνοθεν? I understand that the last is a
defective and difficult form, but I just want to get a notion of the
meaning of the verse as a whole.
6. > 527. ἀμφ᾽ αὐτῷ χυμένη λίγα κωκύει: οἱ δέ τ᾽ ὄπισθε

χυμένη → χευαμένη (from the first aorist ἔχευα).
7. > 564. ἀλλὰ τόδ᾽ ὥς ποτε πατρὸς ἐγὼν εἰπόντος ἄκουσα

  1. Ναυσιθόου, ὃς ἔφασκε Ποσειδάων᾽ ἀγάσασθαι
  2. ἡμῖν, οὕνεκα πομποὶ ἀπήμονές εἰμεν ἁπάντων.
  3. φῆ ποτὲ Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν ἐυεργέα νῆα
  4. ἐκ πομπῆς ἀνιοῦσαν ἐν ἠεροειδέι πόντῳ
  5. ῥαισέμεναι, > μέγα δ᾽ ἧμιν ὄρος πόλει ἀμφικαλύψειν> .
  6. ὣς ἀγόρευ᾽ ὁ γέρων: τὰ δέ κεν θεὸς ἢ τελέσειεν
  7. ἤ κ᾽ ἀτέλεστ᾽ εἴη, ὥς οἱ φίλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ:

Which is that ὄρος that he is talking about? Is it something that will
happen later? According to Cambridge G&L scholars, this passage is
repeated on book 13 and thus Homer is somehow anticipating the bad
ending that this trip will have to the Phaenicians. That’s fine, but I
was thinking about a shipwreck, so it called my attention that
the presage seems to involve the city of the Phaenicians (πόλει
ἀμφικαλύψειν), and not just the πόμπη that they will send for
Odysseus.

Book 9

    1. ναιετάω δ᾽ Ἰθάκην ἐυδείελον: ἐν δ᾽ ὄρος αὐτῇ
  1. Νήριτον εἰνοσίφυλλον, ἀριπρεπές: ἀμφὶ δὲ νῆσοι
  2. πολλαὶ ναιετάουσι μάλα σχεδὸν ἀλλήλῃσι,
  3. Δουλίχιόν τε Σάμη τε καὶ ὑλήεσσα Ζάκυνθος.

  4. αὐτὴ δὲ χθαμαλὴ πανυπερτάτη εἰν ἁλὶ κεῖται

  5. πρὸς ζόφον, αἱ δέ τ᾽ ἄνευθε πρὸς ἠῶ τ᾽ ἠέλιόν τε,
  6. τρηχεῖ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ἀγαθὴ κουροτρόφος: οὔ τοι ἐγώ γε
  7. ἧς γαίης δύναμαι γλυκερώτερον ἄλλο ἰδέσθαι.

I’m not sure about verse 25. From LSJ, I infer that πανυπερτάτη is
referring to the altitude of the island, and χθαμαλὴ to its distance
from the continent. So Ithaca is very visible (for the men of
continent), because it is the highest and nearest island, am I right?
2. > 125. οὐ γὰρ Κυκλώπεσσι νέες πάρα μιλτοπάρῃοι,

  1. οὐδ᾽ ἄνδρες νηῶν ἔνι τέκτονες, οἵ κε κάμοιεν
  2. νῆας ἐυσσέλμους, αἵ κεν τελέοιεν ἕκαστα

  3. ἄστε᾽ ἐπ᾽ > ἀνθρώπων ἱκνεύμεναι, οἷά τε πολλὰ

  4. ἄνδρες ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλους νηυσὶν περόωσι θάλασσαν:

Should not be ἄστε᾽ ἔπ᾽ (because of the anastrophe)?

This is how I translated: “The Cyclops do not have ships, nor they
have men skilled in ships (νηῶν ἔνι τέκτονες) to fabricate ships (οἵ
κε κάμοιεν νῆας). Ships that may come to the cities of men (ἄστε᾽ ἔπ᾽
ἀνθρώπων ἰκνεύμεναι) and accomplish everything (αἵ κεν τελέοιεν
ἕκαστα)”.
3. > 261. οἴκαδε ἱέμενοι, > ἄλλην ὁδὸν ἄλλα κέλευθα

Just to confirm, these accusatives are synonymous, right?
4. > ἀλλ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἀναΐξας ἑτάροις ἐπὶ χεῖρας ἴαλλε,

Again, why ἐπί doesn’t throw back its accent?
5. > 382. οἱ μὲν μοχλὸν ἑλόντες ἐλάινον, ὀξὺν ἐπ᾽ ἄκρῳ,

  1. ὀφθαλμῷ ἐνέρεισαν: ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἐφύπερθεν ἐρεισθεὶς
  2. δίνεον, > **ὡς ὅτε τις τρυπῷ δόρυ νήιον ἀνὴρ
  3. τρυπάνῳ**> , οἱ δέ τ᾽ ἔνερθεν ὑποσσείουσιν ἱμάντι
  4. ἁψάμενοι ἑκάτερθε, τὸ δὲ τρέχει ἐμμενὲς αἰεί.

I would expect that the verb of the simil (τρύπῷ) should be in the
subjunctive mode, because it is a present general clause. Why is it in
the optative mode?
6. > 455. Οὖτις, ὃν οὔ πώ φημι πεφυγμένον εἶναι ὄλεθρον.

I have seen this redundant use of φημι other times. I wonder if it is
used with some emphasis purpose, I haven’t another examples at hand
now, but I would say that it is always used to make some solemn
affirmation “I say, now and here…”, could it be?
7. > 522. ὣς ἔφατ᾽, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ μιν ἀμειβόμενος προσέειπον:

  1. ‘αἲ γὰρ δὴ ψυχῆς τε καὶ αἰῶνός σε δυναίμην
  2. εὖνιν ποιήσας πέμψαι δόμον Ἄϊδος εἴσω,

  3. ὡς οὐκ ὀφθαλμόν γ᾽ ἰήσεται οὐδ᾽ ἐνοσίχθων.

How is the last verse connected with the rest? Merry says that there
is a οὕτως implicit, but I still don’t get it.

2

Now that we’re discussing Odyssey 8, I’m going to post a link I’ve posted many times before on Textkit, because τοῦτό τί μοι κάλλιστον ἐνὶ φρεσὶν εἴδεται εἶναι.

It’s Stefan Hagel’s reconstruction of the song of Ares and Aphrodite.

  1. I think it simply means that Athene is disguised as a referee of some sort, the person who is in charge of marking the throws with pegs or something and of measuring whose throw was best. It’s not that she cheated, it’s just that she was acting as the person who was best placed to evaluate how far Odysseus threw, so that disguised as the referee she was also naturally the first to comment upon it.

  2. πάντα is neuter plural, acting as an adverb “altogether”.

  3. I can’t think of any place where I could look up for an explanation, but I think it’s because the whole discipline of archery is meant, not some particular bow.

  4. This has troubled many people before you. I guess you could call it an epexegetical infinitive, I suppose, I’m not very good with this sort of terminology. You could look at Peter Jones’ review of Garvie’s (in my opinion very good) Green-and-Yellow, which has a discussion of this passage and Garvie’s treatment of it. (You can read 3 articles at JStor for free every 14 days – which you probably know already…). Deilos doesn’t really mean “evil”, it’s more like “worthless”, “good for nothing”.

So if we translated also ἐγγυάασθαι it would give, in bad English, “the pledges [made on behalf] of the worthless are worthless for accepting” (Garvie’s interpretation) or “the pledges [made] by the worthless are worthless for accepting” (Jones’ interpretation).

  1. οἷα is an adverb, like neuter adjectives often are, both singular and plural. The verb form is too difficult, I don’t have anything to say about that one… :slight_smile:

  2. Hey, I’m not going to ruin your suspense by telling what is going to happen later… But what do you think, btw – will Odysseus ever get home?

3

Book 8

  1. οἷα θεοὺς ἐπενήνοθεν αἰὲν ἐόντας – don’t worry if you don’t understand this: no one else does either. ἐπενήνοθεν is usually explained as a perfect, and the phrase seems to mean something like “as it, i.e., “Ambrosian” olive oil, covers the skin of the eternal gods”. “Ambrosian” is a special brand of olive oil that confers, or is somehow associated with, immortality (or in this case maybe immorality). It’s an Aeolic word, derived from a (alpha privative) + the root “mr” (cf. Latin morior, mors) + suffix t/s"; the beta developed epenthetically between mu and rho (originally probably a vocalic rho).

  2. χυμένη – it’s explained as an athematic 2d aorist passive; the more usual aorist passive would be χυθεῖσα.

Which is that ὄρος that he is talking about? Is it something that will
happen later?

Maybe, maybe not.

Book 9

  1. τρυπῷ – This is the reading of the manuscripts, but there is apparently some authority for subjunctive τρυπᾷ. La Roche (1866) and Heubeck (in the Oxford Commentary) endorse τρυπᾷ, and von der Muehll adopts it in his Teubner edition (1945).

  2. ἰήσεται – this is a short-vowel aorist subjunctive, I think (it could also be future indicative): so that not even Poseidon [ἐνοσίχθων] could heal your eye.

    That’s all I have time for right now.

4

Book 9.

  1. We are not sure if Odysseus’ Ithaca was the same island as the one known by that name nowadays. There are many theories that it’s actually one or the other of the neighbouring islands, or perhaps Leukas, which is on the continent. χθαμαλὴ is a big problem, because it seems to mean “low”, which doesn’t very well apply to Ithaca, which raises very high. I’ve tried to rationalize the problem by thinking that χθαμαλὴ means “low on the sea”, that is, that the shore is not steep, and thus easy of access for sailors, regardless of how high the island then raises, but I don’t know if there’s any basis for this.

  2. For anastrophe, you could check a treasure found by Qimmik, Chandler, A Practical Introduction to Greek Accentuation, p. 256, sec. 910. Maybe doesn’t have anastrophe because it is elided and thus doesn’t count as a disyllable? I’m not sure.

Not necessarily. The Oxford commentary says “they have travelled a great distance on a false course of many stages”. ὁδὸν could be the whole journey, κέλευθα individual stages.

  1. This is how I understand it: anastrophe occurs if a disyllabic preverb/preposition occurs right after the word it governs. So here, if ἐπί were a preposition (or, rather, a postposition) governing ἑτάροις, it would have anastrophe. But as it is a preverb here, it doesn’t have anastrophe, as the verb ἴαλλε does not immediately precede it. But I’m not completely sure about this.

  2. φημι often means “I think”, like here.

5

I wonder whether it’s really productive to nail down all the minute details of anastrophe.

The Homeric texts weren’t consistently provided with accents until the Roman period, hundreds of years after the poems themselves were composed, and the reason for doing this was precisely that people were beginning to forget the rules, as Greek moved from a pitch accent to a stress accent. Under those circumstances, it’s questionable to what extent the ancient scholars who fixed the accentuation can be relied on for the more obscure points. In fact, the ancient authorities, to the extent they can be gleaned from extant sources, weren’t in complete agreement on the rules, especially those that are of minor significance, and modern editors follow different editorial practices.

While the main rules of Greek accentuation are relatively well-established, and it can be useful to understand how they work, I would question the value of tracking down all the fine points, particularly in reading the Homeric poems. You might try to do this in Chandler, which is available online, but it strikes me that unless you intend to publish a new printed edition of the Greek text, figuring out all the minor details of Homeric accentuation will slow down your reading of the text without enhancing your understanding and appreciation.

6

I think Qimmik is right, we shouldn’t worry too much about anastrophe. Understanding the phenomenon could be, in principle, of some help for understanding the text (or at least, for understanding how the editor understood the text) – for example, I think in the above example the lack of anastrophe shows that ἐπί can’t be a postposition governing ἑτάροις but has to be a preverb in tmesis with ἴαλλε. But there are so many exceptions to the rules, that it’s really probably not worth the trouble, especially as different editors follow different rules.

I think ἔνι stands for ἔνεισιν – “nor are there shipwrights there”

7

Thanks for sharing that!

That’s a relief :slight_smile:

I feel more agree with Peter Jones’ treatment. It is a brief review,
so he had no place enough to mention his reasons, but what do you
think about this: isn’t καί giving a clue of which is the correct
interpretation? If we take “the pledges [made] by the worthless”, we
can explain καί saying “even the pledges [as well as the other things
made by the worthless]”, but if we take Garvies’ “the pledges [made on
behalf] the worthless”, καί sounds odd: “even the pledges [as well as
the other things made on behalf the worthless”.

It helps me to translate thus: the things of the worthless men are
worthless (δειλαὶ τοι δειλῶν), even their pledges (γε καὶ ἐγγύαι).

All this time I was with the idea that second aorist passive was
formed in the same way as first aorist passive, except that the second
didn’t add θ. But now I’m confused, because χυμένη and χυθεῖσα have
different endings.



:slight_smile: I didn’t hear anything of that.

I’ve taken it as a purpose clause with the shortened subjunctive, but
it has sounded a bit strange to me that the purpose is “that not even
Poseidon could heal your eye” instead of “that not even Poseidon could
bring you back to life”. But reading now your translation and
considering it again, I think that one thing
implies the other, so it is not illogical after all, and he was
answering to Polyphemus’ “αὐτὸς δ’, αἴ κ’ ἐθέλῃσ’, ἰήσεται”, so it is
enough for me.

Ok, I had taken ἔνι with νεῶν (with the anastrophe,
by the way), as νεῶν ἔνι τέκτονες. But with εἰσιν is clearly more
natural. If I would have not listen at the good counsel of Qimmik, then I
would ask now if the anastrophe applies when the verb in tmesis is
implicit in the sentence.

8

χυμένη – these forms, χυ- + middle secondary endings, without thematic vowel, are an irregularity unique to this verb. They coexist with the more regular aorist passive in -θη-. From LSJ:

Pass., . . . aor. 1 ἐχύθην [υ^] Od.19.590, etc.: later ἐχέθην, . . .: also Ep. aor. χύτο [υ^] Il.23.385, Od.7.143; “ἐξ-έχυ^το” 19.470; ἔχυντο, χύντο, 10.415, Il.4.526; part. χύμενος, η, ον, 19.284, Od.8.527, and Trag. in lyr., A.Ch.401, Eu.263, E.Heracl.76:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dxe%2Fw

ἔνι with paroxytone accent means ἔνεστι or (in Homer) ἔνεισι.

Smyth 175:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Smyth+grammar+175&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0007

ὡς οὐκ ὀφθαλμόν γ᾽ ἰήσεται οὐδ᾽ ἐνοσίχθων – more like a result (consecutive) clause than a purpose clause, it seems to me on second thought. I might have expected an optative, but here you have a future indicative or a subjunctive. Since it seems to be a result clause, maybe future indicative is the better answer. Anyway, the meaning is clear, and switch from optative to indicative or subjunctive perhaps adds a pointed and malevolent emphasis to the wish, as if the wish expressed in the optative, αἲ γὰρ δὴ . . . σε δυναίμην . . . πέμψαι δόμον Ἄϊδος εἴσω, were not a wish but an expression of Odysseus’ intent–πέμψω rather than αἲ γὰρ δὴ δυναίμην πέμψαι.