Odyssey Reading Group: Book 6 Lines 93-118

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
1

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)Next week (Friday 12th July) we’ll be reading Book 6 Lines 119-140

2

93 αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πλῦνάν τε κάθηράν τε ῥύπα πάντα,
94 ἑξείης πέτασαν παρὰ θῖν ̓ ἁλός, ἧχι μάλιστα
95 λάϊγγας ποτὶ χέρσον ἀποπλύνεσκε θάλασσα.
96 αἱ δὲ λοεσσάμεναι καὶ χρισάμεναι λίπ ̓ ἐλαίῳ
97 δεῖπνον ἔπειθ ̓ εἵλοντο παρ ̓ ὄχθῃσιν ποταμοῖο,
98 εἵματα δ ̓ ἠελίοιο μένον τερσήμεναι αὐγῇ.
99 αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ σίτου τάρφθεν δμῳαί τε καὶ αὐτή,
100 σφαίρῃ ταὶ δ ̓ ἄρα παῖζον, ἀπὸ κρήδεμνα βαλοῦσαι·
101 τῇσι δὲ Ναυσικάα λευκώλενος ἤρχετο μολπῆς.
102 οἵη δ ̓ Ἄρτεμις εἶσι κατ ̓ οὔρεα ἰοχέαιρα,
103 ἢ κατὰ Τηΰγετον περιμήκετον ἢ Ἐρύμανθον,
104 τερπομένη κάπροισι καὶ ὠκείῃς ἐλάφοισι·
105 τῇ δέ θ ̓ ἅμα νύμφαι, κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο,
106 ἀγρονόμοι παίζουσι, γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα Λητώ·
107 πασάων δ ̓ ὑπὲρ ἥ γε κάρη ἔχει ἠδὲ μέτωπα,
108 ῥεῖά τ ̓ ἀριγνώτη πέλεται, καλαὶ δέ τε πᾶσαι·
109 ὣς ἥ γ ̓ ἀμφιπόλοισι μετέπρεπε παρθένος ἀδμής.
110 ἀλλ ̓ ὅτε δὴ ἄρ ̓ ἔμελλε πάλιν οἶκόνδε νέεσθαι
111 ζεύξασ ̓ ἡμιόνους πτύξασά τε εἵματα καλά,
112 ἔνθ ̓ αὖτ ̓ ἄλλ ̓ ἐνόησε θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,
113 ὡς Ὀδυσεὺς ἔγροιτο, ἴδοι τ ̓ ἐυώπιδα κούρην,
114 ἥ οἱ Φαιήκων ἀνδρῶν πόλιν ἡγήσαιτο.
115 σφαῖραν ἔπειτ ̓ ἔρριψε μετ ̓ ἀμφίπολον βασίλεια·
116 ἀμφιπόλου μὲν ἅμαρτε, βαθείῃ δ ̓ ἔμβαλε δίνῃ·
117 αἱ δ ̓ ἐπὶ μακρὸν ἄϋσαν· ὁ δ ̓ ἔγρετο δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς,
118 ἑζόμενος δ ̓ ὅρμαινε κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν·

3

A very small point to start off the discussion this week.

Line 104 - τερπομένη κάπροισι καὶ ὠκείῃς ἐλάφοισι·

κάπρος seems to be defined everywhere as boar, but Fitzgerald translates it as goat:

“chasing the mountain goats or ghosting deer”

Greek seems to be the only language where the PIE *kápros becomes something other than goat (caper, capra, gafr, &c.) and τράγος only appears in Homer once at Od. 9.239.

In Homer, ὗς/σῦς (swine) is often used to qualify κάπρος:

λείουσιν ἐοικότες ὠμοφάγοισιν ἢ συσὶ κάπροισιν - Il. 5.782 and Il. 7.257
ἐπʼ ἀγροτέρῳ συῒ καπρίῳ ἠὲ λέοντι - Il. 11.290
συὸς κάπρου - Il. 17.20
συῶν τʼ ἐπιβήτορα κάπρον - Od 11.132 and 23.278

Regardless of Fitzgerald’s reasoning for his translation, is there perhaps a case to be made that when κάπρος isn’t qualified by ὗς in Homer it actually means something more like ‘four-legged hoofed wild animal’ and so could include goats?

4

I think Fitzgerald is just mixing up with Latin and/or other languages. But it’s interesting why κάπρος is so often used with together with the word ὗς/σῦς; I have no answer to that. The easiest solution is of course “for metrical reasons”, but I wonder if there’s more.

5

“wild boar”: the Odyssey displays a well-developed and versatile formulaic system involving καπρος and καπριος and αγριος with συς/ὑς. Parry would have liked it (though while it has wide ‘scope’ it doesn’t have quite total ‘economy’?).
καπρ(ι)ος is always a (wild) boar I think, male, destructive, and formidable (witness classic boarhunts, and Odysseus’ scar), and like αγριος it ties down the meaning of συς/ὑς, which otherwise is normally(?) female (cf. e.g. 11.132 cited by Sean above) and simply a pig like Eumaeus’s. συς καπριος etc. is like genus and species, practically Linnaean (cf. αιξ and τραγος, though not used in combination in Homer?).
(Fitzgerald’s “chasing the mountain goats” is a grotesque misunderstanding of τερπομένη κάπροισι, “delighting in boars,” which she sends against those who displease her. And Sean we can’t go defining Homeric words by reference to English translation of them!)

6

My first reaction was the same as mwh’s, namely that καπρος/καπριος further defines συς/ὑς as a wild boar. But although I didn’t mention it, I actually checked LfgrE, which gives two sub-meanings for καπρος: 1) wild boar, 2) domestic, and cites several examples for the second meaning, all passages being about sacrifice except Op 690, which is about castrating. (The entry says “κ. of sacrificial animal exc. Op. 690”, but what does the abbreviation “κ.” mean? “All cited passages”?).

Od 11.131
ῥέξας ἱερὰ καλὰ Ποσειδάωνι ἄνακτι,
ἀρνειὸν ταῦρόν τε συῶν τ’ ἐπιβήτορα κάπρον,

Il 19.197
Ταλθύβιος δέ μοι ὦκα κατὰ στρατὸν εὐρὺν Ἀχαιῶν
κάπρον ἑτοιμασάτω ταμέειν Διΐ τ’ Ἠελίῳ τε.
Beside these are cited, Il. 19.251, 254, 266, Od. 23.278.

Op. 690 (Hesiod):
μηνὸς δ’ ὀγδοάτῃ κάπρον καὶ βοῦν ἐρίμυκον
ταμνέμεν, οὐρῆας δὲ δυωδεκάτῃ ταλαεργούς.

But without looking any further, I suppose mwh is at the very least right in saying that the word further defines συς/ὑς and shows that the beast is a rather formidable one, not just any tame pig.

7

I don’t have the LfgrE (I wish I did), but that male pigs (boars) were sometimes sacrificed is unsurprising (so were female pigs and piglets, of course, a lesser sacrifice), and doesn’t affect what I said about the Odyssey’s use of καπρος etc in combination with συς etc. If your “first reaction” was the same as mine, Paul, I don’t know why you shouldn’t have stuck with it. I only wrote because you said you had “no answer” for it. (LfgrE’s “κ.” presumably stands for καπρος under the “domestic” subhead, by the way.)
Perhaps sacrificial boars were castrated before they could start tearing people to pieces?

Interesting, incidentally, that the same word is used for either operation: ταμέειν Il.19 (of sacrifice), ταμνέμεν Hesiod Op.790 (of castration). Both call for a knife.

8

It’s unlikely to be the sort of operation that you’d want to perform on an adult boar.

9

Innocent, m’lud, I swear! :innocent: It’s more that Fitzgerald’s mistake got me wondering about κάπρος for its own sake.

Sorry for being dense - if κάπρος is refining the meaning of ὗς/σῦς, then you’re saying this is a bit like roe/deer/‘roe deer’ where each noun can exist independently or together to refer to the same thing (rather than wild [animal]/pig/‘wild [animal] pig’ where wild is much more general)?

I’m still not sure why ungulate/pig/‘pig ungulate’ (κάπρος/σῦς/σῦς κάπρος) is ruled out by this line of thinking, but the reason I thought this was interesting is that I have quite a poor grasp of how lexicographers go about their work which I’m sure is being revealed here!

I suppose we would expect things along the lines of αἴξ κάπρος etc. if that was the case, though, which don’t exist.

Edit: I managed to copy κάπρος a load of times with smooth breathing marks instead of acutes and I couldn’t bear looking at them any more.

10

Fitzgerald got it wrong. Imagine that.

For what it’s worth, since Beeke is supposed to be methodologically flawed:


11

One thing this blunder seems to prove is that Fitzgerald was at least primarily working with the actual Greek text, not the Loeb or some other crib, as often seems to be the case with translators of classical works nowadays.

12

Should we imagine then that Greeks occasionally kept wild boars in captivity, perhaps mostly for sacrificial banquets? I know that wild boars are raised in captivity for example in France for their meat, but I don’t know how old the practice is (I don’t know much about farmkeeping).

13

I don’t know about the historical Greeks, but for internal evidence from the Odyssey the male σῦς with white tusks (so, a boar right? Animal husbandry not my strong suit either!) that Eumaeus kills at Od. 14.414-439 seems to have been kept captive to the age of 5 for the very occasion. But then was it originally wild and has it been castrated… :person_shrugging:

14

That σῦς is not called κάπρ(ι)ος in the passage, so perhaps we’re dealing with a domestic pig (i.e. a different species)?

15

Speaking from my massive ignorance of pig farming, I’d assume that pig litters would have both male and female young. I referenced Eumaeus’ pigs in bk.14. They are referred to as συες, collectively referred to as female (τας 411), but the one that Eumaeus orders for sacrifice is male (ὑων τον αριστον 414), and his men bring him a five-year-old porker (μαλα πιονα πενταετηρον), which is then ritually slaughtered and cooked. I imagine that this is exemplary of domestic boar-sacrifice. Hesiod prescribes the time for gelding as if it were normal practice, though presumably some would be needed as studs for breeding. Eumaeus’ boar has the formulaic epithet αργιοδων, white-toothed/tusked, but is not referred to as a καπρος. A wild boar would be impossible to control or contain (Artemis sends them to ravage crops, and hunting them is liable to get the hunters savaged or killed), and Homer certainly has no instance of their being kept in captivity!

(Written independently of the previous two posts.)

16

So, to sum up, κάπρος occurs 15 times in the early hexameter corpus; in 7 instances it refers to a domestic (?) male boar, every time in the context of sacrifice, except once in Hesiod (WD 790, not 690 like I said earlier), where we’re dealing with castration. The combination σῦς κάπρος occurs 3 times and always refers to a wild boar, as do the remaining 5 instances of κάπρος alone. κάπριος occurs 4 times (twice joined with σῦς), and always means wild boar.

Having now taken a closer look at the passages, I now think that κάπρος applied to a domestic pig refers to an uncastrated male (domestic?) pig. Perhaps male σῦς without κάπρος (as in the Od. 14.414-439 passage) would then always be castrated? Looking at the passages where κάπρος refers to a domestic boar, it’s interesting to note that beside the Hesiod passage that refers to castration (an operation after which, if I’m correct, it ceases to be a κάπρος), we have 2 instances of domestic κάπρος explicitly in the function of a stud for breeding, συῶν ἐπιβήτορα κάπρον “boar that mounts [female] pigs”.

Beside these, we’re left with 4 instances of domestic κάπρος that have not been accounted for; they all occur in the same passage of Iliad 19; it’s funny, as mwh already noted, that the word ταμέειν “to cut” which means “to castrate” in the Hesiod passage is used here in 19.197 in the context of sacrifice – perhaps a “contamination” from castration formulas to a sacrificial passage (if you understand what I mean)? And it is to be noted that in 19.251 the herald Talthybios seems to hold the κάπρος with a single hand κάπρον ἔχων ἐν χειρὶ – indicative of a rather young boar, I’d say.

Here are all the occurrences of κάπρος for your reference:

IL.5.783 ἢ συσὶ κάπροισιν, τῶν τε σθένος οὐκ ἀλαπαδνόν,
IL.7.257 ἢ συσὶ κάπροισιν, τῶν τε σθένος οὐκ ἀλαπαδνόν.
IL.11.324 τὼ δ’ ἀν’ ὅμιλον ἰόντε κυδοίμεον, ὡς ὅτε κάπρω
IL.17.21 οὔτε συὸς κάπρου ὀλοόφρονος, οὗ τε μέγιστος
IL.17.725 ἴθυσαν δὲ κύνεσσιν ἐοικότες, οἵ τ’ ἐπὶ κάπρῳ
IL.19.197 κάπρον ἑτοιμασάτω ταμέειν Διΐ τ’ Ἠελίῳ τε.
IL.19.251 κάπρον ἔχων ἐν χειρὶ παρίστατο ποιμένι λαῶν.
IL.19.254 κάπρου ἀπὸ τρίχας ἀρξάμενος Διῒ χεῖρας ἀνασχὼν
IL.19.266 ἦ, καὶ ἀπὸ στόμαχον κάπρου τάμε νηλέϊ χαλκῷ.
OD.6.104 τερπομένη κάπροισι καὶ ὠκείῃς ἐλάφοισι:
OD.11.131 ἀρνειὸν ταῦρόν τε συῶν τ’ ἐπιβήτορα κάπρον,
OD.23.278 ἀρνειὸν ταῦρόν τε συῶν τ’ ἐπιβήτορα κάπρον,
WD.790 μηνὸς δ’ ὀγδοάτῃ κάπρον καὶ βοῦν ἐρίμυκον
SH.172 ἤδη γάρ σφιν ἔκειτο μέγας λῖς, ἀμφὶ δὲ κάπροι
SH.387 κάπρος χαυλιόδων φρονέει [δὲ] θυμῷ μαχέσασθαι

17

Paul this is, I think, a significant contribution to swine scholarship.

In the interests of developing our burgeoning community of susophiles, I’ve been doing some reading on boar genetics and interbreeding (where I’m on more solid ground than classical philology). I don’t claim that any of this is relevant to our reading of κάπρος, but I thought it was interesting.

The Eurasian wild boar (Sus scrofa) is the same species as the modern domestic pig (S. scrofa domesticus - subspecies) and they can interbreed to produce viable offspring. There is still significant interbreeding between wild and domesticated boars/pigs today, especially in places (including modern day Greece) where domesticated pigs are allowed to roam rather than being kept exclusively in farm enclosures. Wild boar DNA is commonly found in domesticated pigs [1] and there are also wild (/feral) communities of boars/pigs with a high percentage of domesticated pig DNA [2]. Incidentally, that means it’s impossible to tell if boar/pig remains are from a domestic or wild pig just from the DNA.

In Neolithic Greece, the decline in the size of pig skeletons suggests that they were in beginning to be in relative (though not absolute) reproductive isolation from wild boars - analysis of tooth wear patterns also suggests these domesticated pigs were free to root for food rather than being confined to pens, but that their diet was different from wild boars (field rather than woodland) [3].

Away from genetics, Ekroth’s “Animal Sacrifice in Antiquity” in the Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life has lots of interesting things on the relationship between castration, animal age and the value of the sacrifice. There’s too much to quote but on p.344 “Eumaios kills a five-year-old castrated fatted boar at home”, which agrees with Paul’s conclusion about this particular porker - I think on the grounds that castrated boars >3 yrs have more fat content and are therefore better eating, as Eumaeus’ appears to be, though its not clear.


Ekroth (p.334): “Overall, fully male victims were rarely sacrificed—presumably due to their scarcity in the flocks—and here the ritual practices adapt to the practicalities of animal husbandry, where one uncastrated male would be enough to service ten to twenty females depending of the species”

18

I am somewhat surprised by the language used here to describe the translation of this line by Fitzgerald. Is it really appropriate to describe it as a “grotesque misunderstanding of τερπομένη κάπροισι” or a “blunder” as if we were “Gradgrind like” marking his homework.

Fitzgerald was a poet and he is not writing a crib, he seeks to create a work of art. I think the line is beautiful, “Ghosting deer” is strikingly original.

I have found the subsequent exchanges on animal husbandry about as far as one can get from poetry and Homer.

Although the discovery of Odysseus comes in the next section it is worth noting here that the identification of Nausicaa with Artemis the virgin huntress sets up an interesting reversal of the Artemis/Actaeon myth. Here Odysseus is the naked and not very appealing (caked in salt) object of Nausicaa’s gaze.

Perhaps we could come back to this next week but I think its worth thinking about where this scene is set. The sea shore is a liminal space between the unknown and potentially hostile sea and the comforts of land and home. Potentially dangerous things happen here like the bull from the sea killing Hippolytus (another devotee of Artemis).

Finally there may be some people who are not familiar with the ball playing bikini ladies of the Villa Romana del Casale:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Romana_del_Casale#/media/File:Villa_romana_bikini_girls.JPG

19

If we’re going to consider it purely as a line of English poetry, then I think “chasing the mountain boar or ghosting deer” is a better line (I say that as someone who was introduced to Homer by Fitzgerald and who loves this translation). Boar sets up a pleasing doublet with deer of words that could be singular or plural, adding some welcome ambiguity to her etherial τερπομένη. Boar is also the less clichéd choice of animal - goats and deer, for me, produce a picture of unthreatening gambolling play. The boar is less bucolic, more threatening, and invites more questions about the power dynamic between Artemis and these animals. Whereas ‘mountain goat’ is a specific type of goat, the unfamiliar collocation of mountain and boar is refreshing and evokes the setting more distinctly.

“ghosting deer” is undoubtedly beautiful and if I were to argue in favour of “goats” it would be to keep the echoey half-rhyme of “goats or ghosting”.

That aside, what we were talking about above started as semantics and lexicology and ended up with what I thought was an interesting digression into ethnoarchaeology. I can only speak for myself, but I get the impression everyone involved knew they weren’t discussing poetry and were just interested by a different aspect of Homeric studies. We can talk about poetry here too, there’s lots of room.

[:police_car_light: Disclaimer: I don’t want to end every week with a lengthy discussion about reception - the views above are my own reception or however you want to label them and we don’t need to get into how each point is only my opinion]

20

The boar is less bucolic, more threatening, and invites more questions about the power dynamic between Artemis and these animals.

A good point, although I think the power dynamic is unambiguous. The threatening nature of boars, which mwh alluded to above, is a loss in this translation.

Otherwise I was just expressing my frustration with the approach simply based on the assumption that a poet got something “wrong” as opposed to trying to appreciate how this “error” expands our understanding of the text. I don’t share your image of “gambolling play”. Wild goats can be pretty threatening as indeed can “domestic goats” as anyone who has walked in Greece will testify.

I agree that there is space for everything here. Although I am thinking of marshalling my thoughts on slaves in a separate thread.

Whenever we speak about or translate [a text] it’s an act of reception so “reception” is unavoidable.