Odyssey Reading Group: Book 6 Lines 48-70

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
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Welcome to the Odyssey Reading Group! Anyone is welcome to join, regardless of their Greek ability. If you’re itching to explore Homer’s epic tale of survival, adventure, love, lust, kinship, betrayal and spooky dead people, hop on in, you’ll be very welcome. People who have some Greek but have never tried reading Homer before are doubly welcome.

Check the introductory thread for a description of how the group works.
We’re working from Geoffrey Steadman’s Odyssey Books 6-8, a freely-available pdf

An introduction to Book 6 and a list of resources for deeper study are available in the group dropbox folder

I’ve also been making flashcards to go with Steadman’s text (vocab occurring >8 times in Books 6-8)Week 3: Friday 28th June
Next week we’ll be reading Book 6 Lines 48-70 – I must go down to the seas again

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This week’s text (lines 48-70)Αὐτίκα δ ̓ Ἠὼς ἦλθεν ἐύθρονος, ἥ μιν ἔγειρε 48
Ναυσικάαν ἐύπεπλον· ἄφαρ δ ̓ ἀπεθαύμασ ̓ ὄνειρον, 49
βῆ δ ̓ ἴμεναι διὰ δώμαθ ̓, ἵν ̓ ἀγγείλειε τοκεῦσι, 50
πατρὶ φίλῳ καὶ μητρί· κιχήσατο δ ̓ ἔνδον ἐόντας· 51
ἡ μὲν ἐπ ̓ ἐσχάρῃ ἧστο σὺν ἀμφιπόλοισι γυναιξὶν 52
ἠλάκατα στρωφῶσ ̓ ἁλιπόρφυρα· τῷ δὲ θύραζε 53
ἐρχομένῳ ξύμβλητο μετὰ κλειτοὺς βασιλῆας 54
ἐς βουλήν, ἵνα μιν κάλεον Φαίηκες ἀγαυοί. 55
ἡ δὲ μάλ ̓ ἄγχι στᾶσα φίλον πατέρα προσέειπε· 56
“Πάππα φίλ ̓, οὐκ ἂν δή μοι ἐφοπλίσσειας ἀπήνην 57
ὑψηλὴν ἐύκυκλον, ἵνα κλυτὰ εἵματ ̓ ἄγωμαι 58
ἐς ποταμὸν πλυνέουσα, τά μοι ῥερυπωμένα κεῖται; 59
καὶ δὲ σοὶ αὐτῷ ἔοικε μετὰ πρώτοισιν ἐόντα. 60
βουλὰς βουλεύειν καθαρὰ χροΐ εἵματ ̓ ἔχοντα. 61
πέντε δέ τοι φίλοι υἷες ἐνὶ μεγάροις γεγάασιν, 62
οἱ δύ ̓ ὀπυίοντες, τρεῖς δ ̓ ἠΐθεοι θαλέθοντες· 63
οἱ δ ̓ αἰεὶ ἐθέλουσι νεόπλυτα εἵματ ̓ ἔχοντες 64
ἐς χορὸν ἔρχεσθαι· τὰ δ ̓ ἐμῆ̣ φρενὶ πάντα μέμηλεν.” 65
ὣς ἔφατ ̓· αἴδετο γὰρ θαλερὸν γάμον ἐξονομῆναι 66
πατρὶ φίλῳ. ὁ δὲ πάντα νόει καὶ ἀμείβετο μύθῳ· 67
“οὔτε τοι ἡμιόνων φθονέω, τέκος, οὔτε τευ ἄλλου. 68
ἔρχευ· ἀτάρ τοι δμῶες ἐφοπλίσσουσιν ἀπήνην 69
ὑψηλὴν ἐύκυκλον, ὑπερτερίῃ ἀραρυῖαν.” 70

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Below are 7 different translations of lines 57-58 (see the box for the translator if you’re interested). How can we approach tone and register when translating direct speech?

  1. Daddy dear,
    I wonder, won’t you have them harness a wagon for me,
    the tall one with the good smooth wheels

  2. Dear Daddy, please would you set up
    the wagon with the big smooth wheels for me

  3. Father dear, I wonder if you could tell them to get me a high-sided waggon with strong wheels

  4. Daddy dear, will you not have them harness me the wagon,
    the high one with the good wheels

  5. Papa dear, wilt thou not make ready for me a wagon, high and stout of wheel,

  6. Papa dear, could you manage to let me have a good big wagon?

  7. Cher papa, ne veux-tu sur l’heure me fournir
    Un char vaste et rapide

  8. Robert Fagles

  9. Emily Wilson

  10. E.V. Rieu

  11. Richmond Lattimore

  12. A.T. Murray

  13. Samuel Butler

  14. Ulysse de SéguierA note: For reasons of accessibility, I’m keeping my opening question broad. Any specific discussion of the Greek is obviously very welcome.

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Does anyone have Stanford to hand? I saw this in Heubeck & al.:

  1. ἀπεθαύμασ ̓ - Stanford takes the prefix as negative, with the sense ‘ceased to wonder at’; but it is, rather, intensive, the prefix being a device to bring the verse-end formula back to the fourth foot caesura.

What is Stanford’s justification for this? Presumably, in slightly stilted old man English (apologies to all slightly stilted old men), this would run “Immediately she had ceased to wonder…, she departed…”?


Heubeck & al. also have rather an unfortunate typo in their quote from Marzullo’s Problema Omerico which might amuse people with minds as base as my own.

“È lo stesso problema insomma, e non solubile, della piana di troia, e di ogni altra descrizione geografica, creata, ma per suo uso, dall’epica.”

‘piana di troia’ :eyes:

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I’ve posted pages 310-311 of Stanford’s commentary, which cover this week’s reading on archive.org.:

https://archive.org/details/OdysseyStanford002

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Superb, thank you for posting that. I see the sense intended is more 'Straight away she left off wondering at her dream, and went through the house", which seems to change the meaning of ὄνειρον as the object quite radically.

As this is straight after her waking up, Stanford’s reading suggests that she is marvelling at the dream itself, from within the dream, and dawn waking her up is the thing that stops her marvelling at it (i.e. ἔγειρε and ἀπεθαύμασ ̓are simultaneous). If we take Heubeck & al.'s reading, the dream is already in the past, she has woken up and the ὄνειρον is her memory of the dream she has just had. Is this an unreasonable distinction to make?

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I simply enjoyed the coy Daughter-Father interaction. Let me shamelessly impute my cultural context: as a Father of two daughters, I had no problem recognizing what was going on. My daughters always “win.” It’s a good thing they have a mother who can “just say no…” :slight_smile:

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Haha! Barry I’m loving the image of you in your favourite chair saying “Neither the mules nor aught else do I begrudge you” to a supplicant daughter. I might start using this as my standard response to any request.

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If we take Heubeck & al.'s reading, the dream is already in the past, she has woken up and the ὄνειρον is her memory of the dream she has just had. Is this an unreasonable distinction to make?

I looked up the article by Witte referred to by Hainesworth in the note and here’s a link:

https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.bpl.org/stable/40264716?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

You need an account either on JSTOR or with a partner institution in order to access the article. I was able to get access to it through my public library account.

My German’s pretty good, but I’m not a metrician, so I had to look up some of the terms and resort to my copy of Rosenmeyer, Ostwald and Halporn to refresh my memory on others, but the gist of it is that in order to join the fourth foot with the fifth foot of the hexameter where the fifth and sixth feet were comprised of formulae, quite often a monosyllabic or disyllabic word was employed and very often this involved prepositions that could also be used to create new (as in not previously existing) compound nouns and verbs, thus ἀποθαυμάζω. He cites ἀπεθαύμασ ̓ ὄνειρον as an example. This is discussed on page 11 of the article. If you check the LSJ, you’ll see that this compound is only used in poetry. The other point that Witte mentions is that these compounds were created without any real difference in meaning from the base word, in this case θαυμάζω.

“Zwischen solchen Komposita und ihren Simplicia besteht vielfach keinerlei Bedeutungsunterschied” (p.11)

I hope mwh or hylander or randy gibbons will jump in and give you a more detailed explanation of what’s going on in the line, but I thought it important to point out that this is an “artificial compound” for metrical use only and that there was more to that citation by Hainesworth. The compound verb was used to satisfy metrical requirements, not change the sense of the line.

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Interesting! I think your link only works from within the Boston library service (at least for me) - this is the public link https://www.jstor.org/stable/40264716?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

My German is non-existent other than a year of Apfelsaft in der Pause & other exciting phrases when I was 12 so thank you for the summary.

I don’t understand this bit - is he just saying that the preposition in the compound is a convenient way of maintaining Hermann’s bridge, even if the new verb isn’t semantically different? I don’t think that can be the gist from what you’ve said, so yes please if someone could step in and explain this that would be great.

I see from Perseus that ἀποθαυμάζω is actually a Homeric hapax legomenon, too.

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I’m sure that many here will have done their own investigations into ‘sea-purple’ and ancient dyes - I’ve just started using natural dyes on my own clothes so it’s something I have a particular interest in. If you’ve not read the story of the murex snail (which may be the source of ἁλιπόρφυρα in this line, or may not) and its influence on the ancient world, then this article is a good general introduction http://esmelivingcolour.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/TA-Jan-2013-Purple.pdf (I’m aware that it may lack rigour for some, in which case weightier and more august tomes can be recommended).

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is he just saying that the preposition in the compound is a convenient way of maintaining Hermann’s bridge, even if the new verb isn’t semantically different?

According to the article, it’s just one of a number of ways to the prevent the word break. Sean, I’ve only read the article through to the point where he talks about the use of prepositions to do this. This is just a small part of his overall argument, which is that the preponderance (60% of all Homeric verse) of the bucolic diaeresis arising from the use of forumulaics in the 5th and 6th feet of the hexameter is what drove the development (evolution?) of the epic dialect with its broad variety of forms, its retention of archaisms, and creation of neologisms. Anyway, that’s what I’ve taken away from it (so far). I need to have a good read through West’s 'Greek Metre" to fully understand what he’s saying. Bear in mind this was written in 1913, so I suspect there have been some developments since then…

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I’m completely out of my depth here and need saving. I was under the impression that ἀπεθαύμασ ̓was preventing bucolic diaeresis in this line.

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No, I think I’m completely out of my depth here and we both need saving! mwh should be along any minute now…
I’m afraid I just don’t understand metrics well enough to accurately interpret what I’m reading. That I will try to rectify over the next few years! Seriously though, I’ve got to learn a lot more about caesuras before I can truly begin to understand that article by Witte. However, I did find an article (also on JSTOR) that discusses the theory of the caesura with a reference to Witte:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/288914?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

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Sorry, I haven’t been following properly.

Ναυσικάαν ἐύπεπλον· ἄφαρ δ ̓ ἀπεθαύμασ ̓ ὄνειρον,

First off, to rehearse what you all probably recognize, the verse has a 3rd-foot “feminine” caesura, just like its immediate neighbors (and also 51 and 52, as it happens). In Homer this is a bit more common than the 3rd-foot “masculine” caesura following the long, and more to the point, it appears to be the more traditional form. Note that the syntax also breaks at this point.

I don’t know if I’ve ever read the cited article of Witte’s (and I don’t currently have access to JSTOR), but “Hermann’s bridge” refers to the late-18th-cent. observation that if the second half (the “biceps” in Maas’s terminology) of the 4th foot is disyllabic (consisting of two shorts), there is very rarely word division between the two shorts. ἄφαρ δ ̓ ἀπεθαύμασ ̓ ὄνειρον| is in conformity with this rule, as uncompounded *ἐθαύμασ ̓ ὄνειρον| would not be.

*θαύμασ ̓ ὄνειρον| (uncompounded and unaugmented), for its part, would be bucolic diaeresis (word-break before 5th foot, resulting in the closing cadence found in other verse forms too). This is a common pattern in Homer (here in 48, 51, 53, …), so while ἀπεθαύμασ ̓ ὄνειρον| does “prevent” bucolic diaeresis, it does so only incidentally. That can’t be its purpose or motivate the use of the compound.

Witte was a pathbreaking scholar in Hermann’s wake who significantly anticipated Milman Parry in his recognition of the part played by formulae in Homeric composition. Aetos explains his argument, which in itself is very plausible. But to my mind Witte’s point as applied to ἀπεθαύμασ ̓ ὄνειρον| would be more cogent if θαύμασ(ε) were attested in formulaic phrases and/or at bucolic diaeresis. Which it’s not. That doesn’t invalidate Witte’s position (no significant semantic difference) but it does weaken it with respect to this particular verse.

Stanford for his part was a good reader of Homer, but I’m not much attracted by his interpretation of the compound here (a Homeric hapax, as Sean points out). It seems quite tenable in principle, despite Hainsworth, but over-ingenious, and it’s not how the word was understood in antiquity.

Sorry not to be more helpful.

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Thank you, Michael. I’ve spent most of the day reading Samuel Bassett’s "The Theory of the Homeric Caesura According to the Extant Remains of the Ancient Doctrine " (see my link above) trying to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon. He makes several references to Witte, although he mentions that Witte’s “compound verse” theory was unproven due to lack of evidence. I had no idea how much controversy surrounds the doctrine of the caesura. It’s a fascinating article.
Can you get access to JSTOR through your public library? That’s how I do it-through the Boston Public Library.

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Thanks Aetos. Bassett’s book (The Poetry of Homer) was reissued in 2003, reviewed hy Ruth Scodel in BMCR. One of her comments:
“His vehement attack on the search for a third-foot caesura in every line is justified, but here his rejection of Parry limits his insight into the hexameter, since word-end and formula-boundary are closely related.”
I agree with that criticism, especially the negative part of it (however ill-formulated). The various cuts and bridges of the Homeric hexameter can be understood only in the light of formulaic composition. And much progress has been made in the full century that has passed since the article you’ve been reading was published. There’s really not much controversy about caesura, aside from definition.

I could easily get access to JSTOR (I have affiliation with several universities), but I can no longer be bothered. Like Vergil’s Corycian senex, I must cultivate my garden.

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Thank you Michael! The thing I find most difficult about discussions of metre are the little chicken and egg loops of reasoning that seem to be everywhere i.e. the poet has chosen a certain word placement and form to create X metrical effect vs. the poet has been restricted by the expected metrical pattern and so has been forced to use Y placement and form.

I suppose the same is true in any language and adds richness to the experience (and in many cases is ‘a little from column A, a little from column B’) but when scholars disagree it puts my head in a spin.

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I still don’t quite understand Witte’s idea why the 4th foot needs to be joined to the 5th (thus preventing the bucolic diaresis, if you like). Bucolic diaresis seems to be compatible with the feminine caesura, so what constraints would there be in this verse to make it necessary to join the 4th foot to the 5th? Is it the word end after ἄφαρ (or rather ἄφαρ δ῾, since δέ as an enclitic is metrically part of the previous word) i.e word end after the first syllable of the 4th foot that would be incompatible?

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To add to the complication rather than providing any solutions:

Is there any reason that the following wouldn’t be acceptable syntactically or semantically to fill the gap occupied by the preposition? (The first one is obviously unacceptable metrically because of the break at Hermann’s bridge).

αφαρ δ’ αρ’ εθαυμασ’ ονειρον
αφαρ δ’ αρα θαυμασ’ ονειρον

Sorry about the lack of diacritics I can’t type them on my phone.