That’s how I take it. It’s not unusual in poetry to separate the preposition from its noun. It’s a form of hyperbaton. It’s rather effective here because “around the town” encloses the walls - one feels impelled to fast forward to the last word thus getting across the feeling of rapidly erected the walls. Ovid or Vergil would have given much though to how to enclose the town by the walls in the word order. In any event in oral poetry word order is heavily influenced by metrical considerations.
I would say that either is possible. According to Homeric usage, there is even a third possibility, namely that it is a “preverb” in “tmesis” that goes with ἔλασσε, although the fact that *ἀμφιελαύνω is actually never attested as a compound makes the idea a bit far-fetched in this particular case. But my point is that in Homer it’s often not obvious whether we have a preposition, a preverb or an adverb; this is probably an archaism that reflects an earlier stage of the language where the so-called prepositions and preverbs were all adverbs.
A good point. Odysseus first rejects immortality with a beautiful sex-crazed goddess (Calypso) and then a comfortable life in Phaeacian Utopia married to the local virgin princess. These episodes emphasize Odysseus’ determination to get back home; he will not get distracted, no matter what.
By the way, I think that there is more humor in the Calypso episode than is usually recognized. If the Odyssey itself is to be taken as reliable evidence, these poems were told in banquets by men to a predominantly male audience. It seems to me that in the macho culture that Ancient Greece must have been, the sexy goddess who just couldn’t get enough of Odysseus was meant to be funny. But I digress.
Well ἔειπεν is an epic form of εἷπον. πρόσφημι is a close version of the present tense. I don’t think it’s worth trying to reconstruct tmesis in this case as the verb is defective ie there is no present tense of εἷπον. προσεἷπον Is an attested form see https://logeion.uchicago.edu/προσεῖπον
The important thing is to recognise the form preverb/preposition … verb without always wanting to reconstruct a compound verb. It is interesting that according to Pulleyn (Iliad 1 OUP 2000) to call this phenomenon tmesis “is misleading in that it implies that the epic dialect has severed an existing compound. In fact, tmesis is a relic from an extremely early period before compound verbs existed. The evidence of the Linear B tablets shows that preverbs had already coalesced with their verbs in the Bronze Age: it is thus a mark of the extreme antiquity of the epic tradition that Homer preserves a linguistic practice older than that of the Linear B tablets.
The Cambridge Grammar defines Tmesis as follows:
25.44 In a compound verb a postpositive particle (such as τε, δέ, μέν, ὦν) may separate the prefix
from the verb: e.g. κατ᾿ ὦν ἐκάλυψε he buried (Hdt. 2.47.3): this is called tmesis.
I am sure this is not meant to be an exhaustive definition but it adds a gloss on how this term is used.
That was an interesting thread, thanks. So for μεγαθύμος would you suggest something like ‘impassioned’ or ‘passionate’ in the sense of having an object that the θυμός is directed at, or more like ‘emotional’ or ‘tumultuous’ in the sense that the θυμός is unpredictable. Or, perhaps, something else?
I agree. I think it’s a perfect little comic vignette - the contrast we get with Odysseus crying on the shore, describing how dearly he wants to go home to his wife and how horrible it is being Calypso’s plaything, followed by the ‘once more for old time’s sake’
To add to this - “πρὸς μῦθον ἔειπεν” or “πρὸς μῦθον ἔειπε” appears more than 30 times in Homer in this exact position occupying the final two feet with the dactyl and spondee that the poet prefers. Like seneca2008 says, it’s probably best to consider this as an ancient poetic fragment rather than a piece of malleable syntax which could be reworked - especially as μῦθον in this phrase is effectively redundant when we translate into English.
I’d be interested to know whether people have any thoughts or links about the tendency of Greek to use verbs of speech with a direct object like μῦθος or λόγος or (esp. in Koine) ρήμα which often goes untranslated in English. The implication would seem to be that, in the same way that in English “I said to her, and then left” is not possible, but “I spoke to her, and then left” is, that the verbs are transitive and require the object, but these verbs (λέγω, εἶπον etc.) also act intransitively. Am I making an error in applying English requirements of transitivity to Greek?
The important thing is to recognise the form preverb/preposition … verb without always wanting to reconstruct a compound verb. It is interesting that according to Pulleyn (Iliad 1 OUP 2000) to call this phenomenon tmesis “is misleading in that it implies that the epic dialect has severed an existing compound. In fact, tmesis is a relic from an extremely early period before compound verbs existed.
One of the concepts I learnt early on with Homer is that prepositions do not govern the case of the noun, but the other way round. The nature of oblique cases in the epic dialect already yields locational information. The preposition or preverb expresses further the relationship of the noun and the verb. Instead of saying πρός takes the accusative case, one would say μῦθον can take πρός, but not ἀπό.
Pietro Bortone (Greek Prepositions: From Antiquity to the Present, p.133) gives the following neat little historical survey of the attachment of prepositions to Greek verbs and the semantic completeness of oblique cases in Homer. There are quite a few examples from Homer on the subsequent pages showing prepositional particles governing nouns, attached to verbs or standing completely independently. He makes some parallels with Dutch “separable verbs” that are also worth a read.
The Lexikon des frühgrieschichen Epos says it means “mit großer Energie, Antriebskraft, kraftgeladen, hochgemut”. It’s a long article, too long to copy here… “Full of vital energy”, perhaps, in English?
Hi Paul,
I just read the highly entertaining thread on LfgrE. Aside from theft or raiding my pension fund is there any other access yet to this incredible resource? I found one copy of Band 2 on Amazon for US 21.00. All other Volumes appear to be unavailable.
A university library. Other than that, the full 4 volume set may crop up from time to time on Abebooks; that’s where I found it. It wasn’t cheap but it was a lot less than buying them one Band or Lieferung at a time, which may even be impossible, because some parts are scarce. I suspect that what you found for $21 are just ”Einbanddecken” - covers so that you have the 8 or 10 first ”Lieferungen” bound together to make the first volume or ”Band”.
In my opinion, a project like this funded with public money for 50+ years should be made available online for everyone.
Could we think about connecting μιν and πρὸς (ἔειπεν μῦθον πρός μιν)?
I am not sure how rearranging the text in this way is helpful. πρὸς …ἔειπεν is clearly a syntactic unit, μιν and μῦθον two accusative objects. μιν and πρὸς are obviously connected but via the verb. The proximity of μιν and πρὸς should not lead you to take them closely together.
As has been said “πρὸς μῦθον ἔειπεν” is a phrase occurring often in Homer, in the following example would you want to take τὸν with πρὸς?
I should have looked a little closer. Just the Einbanddecke was available. I did find the full set at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. I’ll just teleport over to Leipzig or Frankfurt the next time I want to look something up!
It might be helpful to think of an English example like this:
I threw over the king (i.e. threw something over him)
over the king, I threw (same as above)
I threw the king over (phrasal verb throw over)
I threw over the king (same as above)
I overthrew the king (compound verb)
In the first two examples, ‘over’ is acting to modify the noun. In the second two, it’s acting adverbially to modify the verb, and in the final example it has a different (metaphorical), sense in combination with the verb. As you can see, examples 1 and 4 are identical, but there is ambiguity and it’s left to the reader to feel where it the preposition is most strongly attracted. There’s not the strength (as with overthrew) of προσλέγω or πρόσφημι in πρὸς …ἔειπεν, because this is an earlier stage of Greek, so πρὸς is kind of doing its own thing and modifying ἔειπεν and μιν (and much less strongly, perhaps, μῦθον) while remaining distinct.
There’s not the strength (as with overthrew) of προσλέγω or πρόσφημι in πρὸς …ἔειπεν, because this is an earlier stage of Greek, so πρὸς is kind of doing its own thing and modifying ἔειπεν and μιν (and much less strongly, perhaps, μῦθον) while remaining distinct.
I don’t agree with this. Nor do I think it is helpful to appeal to English syntax to explain Greek.
I’m don’t think ever I’ve learned anything meaningful about the syntax of another language without an appeal to analogy with or difference from my own language.
Presumably your concern is that analogies with English will lead to the wrong idea being absorbed, leading to further problems down the road. My point in the post was merely that, as in all languages I’ve ever had experience of, words do not just exist in an idealised sequence of thoughts independent of their order but stand in relation to each other in context. So, while it might be tempting to reorder a Greek sentence to show the ‘correct’ influence of prepositional meaning on either a verb or noun, the context is part of what dictates that influence. If you think that’s wrong, I’d be interested to find out more.
I’m with Seneca here about not agreeing. But the example is an analogy, not appealing to English syntax.
I would say that the English example is similar to the Greek to a point, not different. There are instances in Homer just as in English where the meaning would be different according to whether we interpret an instance as verb + preposition or phrasal/compound verb. While it’s possible or even likely that at some earlier stage the preposition/preverb/adverb was fully independent, that’s not the case in Homer any more, even if there are ambiguous cases and even if Homeric helps us to see where this thing originally comes from. Come to think about it, it’s possible that to this ur-situation goes back to Proto-Indo-European, because I believe that the phrasal verbs in English are also a very old inherited feature and share their origins with their Greek equivalents (but I’m not a linguist and this is just speculation).
You’re right, I think I was too hasty with my use of the word ‘distinct’ to describe this relationship. I’ve just read this excellent article by James Hessinger arguing against any interpretation of Greek prepositions as pure adverbs (which, I’m sorry to say, contains several excellent uses of English sentences to illustrate points by analogy) and it’s clarified my thinking.
Like you say, the level of attachment of of the preposition to the verb varies considerably in Homer (only three lines later we have τῇ μιν ἐεισαμένη προσέφη γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη), but tico’s original question was whether we should attach πρός to μιν and consider this as ἔειπεν μῦθον πρός μιν, or whether we should consider it as tmesis of πρὸς…ἔειπεν (so presumably μιν πρὸς ἔειπεν μῦθον). I suppose the point I was trying to make is that, in the same way that each of my English sentences has its own distinct meaning in context, πρός is governing both and neither here. It is semantically modifying μιν… ἔειπεν as a whole based on its meaning as a preposition, whereas the solid attachment of πρόσφημι presents the opportunity for semantic changes as its own independent verb unit (which can be subtle or, to hazard another example from English, as different as uplift and ‘lift up’).
