Odyssey - Book II - Use of imperfect

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
1

In the first 4 lines of book 2 of the Odyssey I see the use of imperfect and aorist, where I would only expect the use of the aorist:

ἦμος δ᾽ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς,
ὤρνυτ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐξ εὐνῆφιν Ὀδυσσῆος φίλος υἱὸς
εἵματα ἑσσάμενος, περὶ δὲ ξίφος ὀξὺ θέτ᾽ ὤμῳ,
ποσσὶ δ᾽ ὑπὸ λιπαροῖσιν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα,

ὤρνυτ᾽ is an imperfect , θέτ and ἐδήσατο are aorists. The aorists I can rationalise, the imperfect not so much. ὤρνυτ doesn’t sound like a continuous action, serving as a backdrop for the following actions, or as as a habitual action. I would have expected it to be an aorist also.

I am stuck at this. Can anyone clarify? It will probably be very simple and cause some facepalming on my side, but I just don’t SEE it.

2

Or does it convey that Telemachos usually got up at dawn?

3

It’s a imperfect because it expresses the beginning of a action. The emphasis is not just in the jumping out of bed (where you would have an aorist), but in the whole process of getting up and being up as a result.

Often the difference between the aorist and the imperfect are really fine nuances and even good translations get them wrong. In this case I don’t know if it matters in English, but in some cases it’s relevant.

The imperfect has no iterative meaning per se; though you would use the imperfect for that, you also need some other indication that the action is repeated regularly. (like -σκ-: εφίζω → εφίζεσκε)

4

I thought the aorist (inceptive/ingressive) was used to express the start of something? Then I would again expect an aorist here. If the ἐξ εὐνῆφιν would have been left out, it would have been easier to look at this as a kind of backdrop activity and therefore imperfect. To me, it just seems to be such a perfect candidate for an aorist …

I know I could easily step over this and continue, but I am in the process of wanting to figure out exactly why imperfect or aorist is used.

5

For this use of the imperfect, see Monro Grammar of the Homeric dialect (http://archive.org/stream/grammarofhomeric00monruoft#page/n5/mode/2up), page 64, §72 (3). I’d usually consult Chantraine’s Grammaire Homérique (volume 2), but I’m on a holiday trip and don’t have access to it.

I might be totally wrong, but I’m not sure if the inceptive aorist is a Homeric usage at all. I couldn’t find a mention in Monro (I wish I had my Chantraine!). Pharr at §1081 gives ἐδάκρυσε as an example, but that form doesn’t actually occur in the whole Homeric corpus. With this verb, the only instance that I think just might be an inceptive aorist is 11.55 = 11.87 = 11.395

τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ δάκρυσα ἰδὼν ἐλέησά τε θυμῷ,

But I’d rather translate this “I wept” than “I began to weep”.

I’ve actually thought about this before and haven’t found a clear answer… Can anyone give a clear example of an inceptive aorist in Homer?

But anyway, with this “inceptive imperfect”, the emphasis is the beginning of process.

6

OK, thanks, I have Monro on the shelf at home, will have a look later.

7

I’m back home and read the relevant chapter in Chantraine, vol. 2. There’s not much discussion of this use of the imperfect, just a couple of words stating that “(imperfect is used) avec des verbes exprimant le développement d’un mouvement”, i.e. with verbs denoting the development of a motion. As examples he gives ωρνυτο Il. 3.267 etc, αφιει Il. 1.25 etc., προιει Il. 1.326 etc., εζετο Il. 1.68 etc.

I guess the point with the imperfect instead of the aorist in ωρνυτο is that Homer doesn’t want us to imagine Telemachus quicky jumping out of bed, realizing he’s overslept - rather, the boy yawns, streches his arms and legs, says to himself “the early bird gets the worm”, sits up, turns around, puts his feet on the floor and finally stands up from the bed. Ok, I’m overdoing it a bit but you get the point.

As for the other thing - I don’t know what to think about Homer and the inceptive aorist. Chantraine doesn’t mention it. Certainly there must be occasions where the aorist is correctly translated “began to…”. But cases like εβασιλευσα “I became king”, with verbs indication a state or condition, just sounds un-Homeric to me though I have nothing to back up my claim. For δάκρυσα I’m not really that sure anymore, it’s really not comparable to εβασιλευσα. I cheched out 14 different translations of Od. 11.55 (English, French, Finnish, Swedish) all of which I think are good; 10 were consistent with “I wept” and 4 with “I broke into tears” - of which 2 in French and 2 in English, so apparently independently of each other.

The inceptive aorist is starting to haunt me so I’d be grateful if someone can help me out with this.

8

I had some comments on that when I was in the Pharr-b group here on Textkit, a long time ago. I will go through my notes tonight.

9

This is what I have in my Pharr-notes:

  1. δακρύσας ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθείς
    starting to cry sat down at once apart from his comrades falling down

Lesson Comments
The aorist participle δακρύσας in line 349 is a good example of an inceptive or ingressive aorist. See Smyth 1924, 1925


It always comes back to δακρύσας, it seems :wink:

10

I’m not sure if an aorist participle should be called an inceptive/ingressive aorist. But those must abound in Homer I guess.

I checked Smyth 1924: “The aorist of verbs whose present denotes a state or continued action, expresses the entrance into that state or the beginning of that action.” Looking at the list at 1925, most of these ingressive aorists seem unhomeric to me. Maybe εβλεψα, εδακρυσα, εθαρσησα might work. Maybe I’ll check those tomorrow.

11

I was wrong about that. Gildersleeve, Syntax of Classical Greek, doesn’t object to participles being called inceptive/ingressive § 239-242.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0074%3Asection%3D10%3Asubsection%3D14%3Asmythp%3D239

He also gives a couple of Homeric examples:

HOM. Il. 3.259: “ῥίγησεν” (gave a shudder) “δ᾽ ὁ γέρων”. 11.546: “τρέσσε”, He took to flight.

So I guess I was also wrong about the inceptive aorist not being Homeric, at least in large part. But I maintain that most of the examples given in Smyth would be wrong in Homer. I still think there must be some difference in usage I can’t pinpoint.

Sorry if I have mixed you up even more, this hasn’t anything to do with the original question anymore. The exact use of aorist and imperfect is in my opinion one of the single most difficult quirks in Homer, so don’t be discouraged too much.

12

Well, I will just trod on then :slight_smile: and finally get me through Book 2.

Thanks!

13

I’ve been thinking about this and did some study, and I think what I said here is misleading. The point with the imperfect here is not the beginning of a an action per se, but that the action takes some time or that the action is undelimited. Monro says that ὤρνυτ᾽ here is imperfect because it expresses the “beginning of a motion”; but the idea of “beginning” is just incidental; the real point is that the motion is not punctual, it’s not like Telemachus was first lying fast asleep and the next second up standing, but that that it’s a more gradual process. When you render the imperfect in English, sometimes you have to say “began to x”; but this is not a punctual, even instaneous, change of state like with an inceptive aorist.

14

For what it’s worth, at the beginning of Book 8 of the Odyssey, Alkinoos gets up in the imperfect, but in the next line Odysseus gets up in the aorist:

ἦμος δ᾽ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς,
ὤρνυτ᾽ > ἄρ᾽ ἐξ εὐνῆς ἱερὸν μένος Ἀλκινόοιο,
ἂν δ᾽ ἄρα διογενὴς > ὦρτο > πτολίπορθος Ὀδυσσεύς.

I’m not sure how to explain this, except to note that ὤρνυτ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐξ εὐνῆς/ὤρνυτ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐξ εὐνῆφι(ν) seems to be formulaic in the Odyssey: 2.2, 3.405, 4.307 and 8.2. (This doesn’t occur in the Iliad.)

Or perhaps the imperfect is used to set the scene?

But the passage continues with imperfects:

τοῖσιν δ᾽ > ἡγεμόνευ᾽ > ἱερὸν μένος Ἀλκινόοιο
Φαιήκων ἀγορήνδ᾽, ἥ σφιν παρὰ νηυσὶ τέτυκτο.
ἐλθόντες δὲ > καθῖζον > ἐπὶ ξεστοῖσι λίθοισι
πλησίον. ἡ δ᾽ ἀνὰ ἄστυ > μετῴχετο > Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη
εἰδομένη κήρυκι δαΐφρονος Ἀλκινόοιο,
νόστον Ὀδυσσῆι μεγαλήτορι μητιόωσα,
καί ῥα ἑκάστῳ φωτὶ παρισταμένη > φάτο > μῦθον:

15

χαίρετε φίλοι!

Every comment on this excellent thread (except possibly for the most recent one by Qimmik that ὤρνυτ᾽ is formulaic) assumes that Homer’s choice of the imperfect was semantic as opposed to euphonic.

I think Homer used the imperfect because it sounds better, but the problem with a view like mine is that it tends to end discussions like this.

To use an analogy from English, this epigram has come down to us in two slightly different versions:

John Harington wrote:
Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? > For > if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? > Why> , if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Ask 100 fluent English speakers what the difference in meaning is. Most will say there is no difference. Those who say there is a difference will not agree on the difference in meaning because it is so slight and nuanced. Very few fluent English speakers will use terms like “confirmatory” versus “asseverative.” A fluent English speaker will FEEL the difference and leave it at that. The will say one just sounds a little better.

I do this a lot. When I hear about a supposed semantic distinction in Ancient Greek, I find an English analogy and I try to get fluent English speakers to do to English what we do to Greek. It never works. Linguistic analysis tends to find things that are in the mind of the analyzer, not the speakers or hearers of real language.

Off my soap box, now. :smiley: γένοιτο πάντα καλῶς ὑμῖν!

16

Interesting comment. Does indeed throw me off bit :smiley:

I am overfocused on recognizing aorists and imperfects and trying to understand why one is used. And I do tend to look only at the semantics.

17

Maybe everybody is right here? Basically the examples treated in this thread are ones where both imperfect and aorist would be correct, and whatever difference there was in these examples, it is a slight one of nuance. When the poet makes a choice with what form to use, all of these aspects (shade of meaning, formulas available to him, euphony) influence him (unconciously of course).

Early this year I read a whole book that more or less concentrated on this question (Maria Napoli: Aspect and Actionality in Homeric Greek). I have of course forgotten most of by now ( :slight_smile: ) but if you have an unhealthy interest in this stuff like I have, you might want to have a look at it too… The main point I think is that the imperfect (or the present stem in general) is used for an undelimited action, and the aorist for a punctual action (the book used of course a much more refined and nuanced linguistic vocabulary). With transitive verbs, it’s often pretty straightforward to translate in English:

I shot him (dead). AORIST
I shot at him. IMPERFECT

With intransitive verbs (i.e. verbs that don’t have an object), translation is often a bit more difficult. A very tentative translation for the beginning of Book 8 of Odyssey:

When Dawn appeared,
Alkinoos got [leisurely] out of bed,
and Odysseus sprang up too.

But if there really is a difference in meaning, it’s definitely nothing as strong as this. Alkinoos is at home in his own kingdom, he can take all his time to get up, while Odysseus is insecure amid the Phaeacians and has yet to show them what he’s worth, hence a more prompt getting up from bed.

Let me quote also Chantraine’s “explanation”, which I don’t understand, so I don’t attempt to translate it. (But note passé simple in jeta, imparfait in faisait)

"A côte de l’aoriste, l’imparfait indique un procès qui se déroule auprès de celui qu’exprime l’aoriste: A 3-4 πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν / ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν “elle jeta en pâture tant d’âmes fières de héros, tandis que ces héros mêmes elle faisait la proie des chiens…” Other examples given are Od 8.532, Od 8.63

(Grammaire Homérique t. 2, p. 193)

There seems to be two other instances of aorist ὦρτο for getting up from bed: Od 14.499 (clearly means “sprang up” and Od 23.348 (not so obvious, but a quick waking up seems preferable to me, because the hasty runover lines suggest some immediacy there).

18

That seems very possible to me. Perhaps one reason this verb is typically used in the imperfect when it means waking up is precisely because waking up typically starts a scene?

19

Well generally speaking this is obviously a set phrase with some subtle variations, either ex eunephin, ex eunephi, ex eunes. It is, iirc, restricted to the Odyssey.

This imperfective aspect is used even when you’d expect a more perfective sense, however: οἱ δ’ εὕδειν ὤρνυντο κατὰ πτόλιν, οὐδ’ ἄρ’ ἔτι δὴν (Od 2.397) So it goes beyond the set phrase.

I’d basically settle for the distinction here just being use, then for any particular reason. So take Agamemnon in the Ilias:

3.267 ὤρνυτο δ’ αὐτίκ’ ἔπειτα ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Ἀγαμέμνων

7.162 ὦρτο πολὺ πρῶτος μὲν ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Ἀγαμέμνων, cf ὦρτο πολὺ πρῶτος μὲν ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Εὔμηλος

There’s little point doggedly playing off aorist vs impef here alone, if you need to look at the metre, the background of the formula system, pitch counter and euphony. Unfortunately I don’t have my notes on Homer to hand, and I don’t remember enough of the Odyssey to help out with it specifically.

20

Ha! Your post makes me more dogged than ever! I agree that in many cases the choice between imperfect and aorist is affected by all those other factors mentioned above, perhaps more than by semantics. But the examples you give are best explained doggedly in aorist vs. imperfect.

Od 2.397: imperfect is used, because the action is not punctual/delimited: the suitors don’t necessarily get up all at the same time, they don’t all walk together like an army marching, they go to different places (each his own home).

IL 3.267: despite αὐτίκ’, Agamemnon doesn’t “spring up”, but he sets out to do something that’s going to take a while. It’s an imperfect in the middle of other imperfects, which all indicate leisurely, undelimited actions.

Il 7.162: Here the aorist is clearly needed. The heroes are springing up one after the other, “I’ll go!”, “No, I’ll go!”. In this instance I think the imperfect would be clearly wrong. Maybe some lazy coward would get up with an imperfect here, but not these guys.

So while I agree in principle, your examples aren’t good… :wink: