What reading do you prefer in Iliad 1.5?
You can explain your reasons for your choice if you want in responses to this post, but don’t feel obliged to do so.
You can also change your vote.
When this poll runs out of steam, we will continue to select variant readings one by one by poll, until we have a complete Iliad text. Then we move on to the Odyssey, and from there, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.
γράφει Γαζῆς τὸ «καὶ τοῖς ὀρνέοις ἅπασι.»
A poll on who chose which would be just as much fun and no less instructive. I’m guessing Markos chose πασι because that’s the text that “Gaza” represents. Which is a worthless reason.
I have a gut feeling that the original was πᾶσι. But I voted for δαῖτα because it is better.
I am having difficulty in voting for both options at the same time.
Only seneca would be capable of simultaneously preferring both, a logical impossibility. 
Only seneca would be capable of simultaneously preferring both, a logical impossibility.
I think Gregory Nagy would, too, wouldn’t he?
Both readings are ancient. One showed up in the paradosis and all the manuscripts, including papyri and testimonia. The other may have been known to Aeschylus and apparently was found in Zenodotus’ text, according to Athenaeus, who must have lived 400 or more years after Zenodotus (and how could he have had access to Zenodotus’ text?).
Like Joel, I voted for δαῖτα because it’s better. But an editor has to put something in the text, and I guess maybe it makes sense to print the reading of the paradosis and relegate δαῖτα to the apparatus. I don’t think there’s any irrefutable basis for concluding that one reading is “original” and the other is not, even assuming that “original” has some clear meaning in the case of the Homeric poems. And readers can make the choice for themselves, based on whatever criteria they want to apply.
my guess is zenodotus would vote: neither. he athetised the verse. sure, his text had δαῖτα. but it athetised the verse containing it. west argues that zenodotus took an ionian rhapsode’s copy, full of variants already baked in, e.g. δαῖτα, and produced his edition basically by athetising verses (so that the textual variants aren’t attributable to him, but to the rhapsode who produced the copy that he subsequently athetised) - see chapter 2 of west’s text and transmission of iliad.
given that the most gruesome verses are athetised here, the only possible conclusion is that his great edition was a PG-rated version to be sung at kids’ parties. versions containing δαῖτα etc. were only to be sung after 8:30pm and with a parent or guardian present.
cheers, chad
I vote for δαῖτα, for the worthless reason that I like it more. Whichever originally stood in Homer’s autograph I’m not even trying to guess.
West in his Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad adduces Zenodotus’ reading δηιοι for τ᾽ ἄλλοι at I 594 – likewise, according to West, “more colourful, but secondary”.
Previously I was certain, along with all the best critics, that δαιτα was original, but now I’ve changed my mind, and believe that it was a 6th/5th-century Athenian “improvement.” Perhaps it’s what was recited by rhapsodes at the Panathenaia. But it’s very strange it finds no representation either in the manuscript tradition or in the scholia, exceptionally full in Iliad 1. (So I think the testimony about Zenodotus in Athenaeus must be false.) It may be that not even Aeschylus had ever heard δαιτα in a Homeric performance (let alone read it in a text): was it his own imaginative reconfiguration, and never in Homer at all? It’s very appealing in itself, but if it’s not Homeric I don’t like to prefer it, so I feel obliged to join Markos in voting for πασι.
An editor doesn’t necessarily have to choose between them. He could have Joel produce a text that would present one or the other at random each time a user looked at it, our equivalent of Schrödinger’s cat.
Voted for πᾶσι also, but every time I read that verse οἰωνοῖσί τε δαῖτα echoes somewhere in my brain.
Same for me, whatever stands in the text in front of me!
I can’t seem to get over the strong impression I have that δαῖτα is just much better (whether it’s original or not). “Spoils for dogs and dinner for birds” vs. “spoils for dogs and all kinds of birds”. One wants δαῖτα to be the original. I felt compelled to vote for δαῖτα. It could be original, dropped out from the tradition in the 6th century (but what could have effected the change δαῖτα > πᾶσι? misspelling ΔΑΙΤΑ ~ ΠΑΣΙ/ΠΑΝΤΣΙ???), A’s Suppl. recording an already half-forgotten reminiscence of it.
Ever since I have understood (in broad outline) West’s view on the provenance of the Iliad I have thought it to be more or less correct (West’s detailed reasoning/justification is still beyond my grasp). A faceless committee (or something to that extent) putting it together maybe in the 6th century is unsatisfactory. But I wonder whether δαῖτα could be taken as a nod towards Nagy, who, if I’ve understood it correctly, thinks something like committee.
If dead people are allowed to vote in Texas, I don’t see why Neophytus Doukas should not get a vote. But his paraphrase
seems to me to combine both readings. (I’m thinking the βορά picks up on the idea of δαῖτα more than ἑλώρια.)
So, I voted on Doukas’ behalf, one vote for each option.
Sorry Markos, you’ve misunderstood. There’s no evidence that Doukas even knew of δαιτα. βορα εγενετο represents ελωρια τευχε. His paraphrase goes “but their bodies (~ αυτους δε) became food (~ ελωρια τευχε) for both dogs and birds (κυνεσσιν οιωνοισι τε) … all (~ πασι).” He wouldn’t have left ελωρια unrepresented, and he wouldn’t have rendered both δαιτα and πασι.
But maybe this will impel you to cast another vote for δαιτα, this time on behalf of your misapprehension of Doukas. I know you enjoy being defiant.
I don’t think it could be due to a misspelling of any sort, whichever way the corruption took place. Most likely someone thought that δαῖτα was nicer that πᾶσι, in all likelihood a rhapsode who got a living from performing the poem. Probably this took place before the text took on the almost sacred status it later enjoyed. Maybe (and this is just a wild flight of fancy) it was Homer himself: He had already committed the first book of the Iliad into writing when it occurred to him that δαῖτα would be better; he didn’t alter the text but from there on he would say δαῖτα in performance. His disciples/fellow poets, who would have heard him perform that particular passage quite often (as it was the most important in Homer’s repertory), would also remember the passage with δαῖτα, not πᾶσι, and that version would have had some currency in oral performances for some time before dying out, but it might have crept into some written copies as well before eventually dying out without ever gaining much currency except maybe amongst some copies of the text that belonged to Ionian rhapsodes.
I admit that this frivolous theory is somewhat similar to what Nagy proposes, but here we are dealing with the beginning of the Iliad, which in all likelihood was performed more often than any other part, and which in all likelihood many people who did not possess a text would have known by heart. So perhaps it’s not altogether irresponsible to suggest that there where “performance variants” that didn’t make their into the tradition too well? I general, though, I don’t think there’s much evidence of fluidity of the tradition in Homeric texts.
Michael,
Ι’m not sure what you mean by misunderstood and misapprehension. All I was suggesting is that Doukas’ choice to render ἑλώρια with βορά might have been influenced by his awareness of δαῖτα. Or really, not even suggesting that, but just having a little fun with the fact that one could read it that way in light of the fun we were having with the poll.
hi all, quite interesting, i’ve always thought personally that πᾶσι reads better than δαῖτα (but i have no position on which is more likely historically to have been introduced first). πᾶσι for me rounds off the previous two quantity words μυρί’ and πολλάς, binding in a rhetorical way the 3 consequences of the μῆνις οὐλομένη (pains, deaths, desecrations - each has a quantity word in there).
however, this personal impression is quite possibly because i’ve projected a pattern into it myself, rather that it being objectively likely or legitimate text-crit-wise. i can’t remember if anyone else has said this, i assume they have though, these opening words have been closely studied by more than a few!
cheers, chad
It’s also possible that Athenaeus’ (and maybe Xenodotus’) δαῖτα was influenced by Aeschylus, rather than the other way around, isn’t it?
Deipnosophists viii 347e:
…Αἰσχύλου, ὃς τὰς αὑτοῦ τραγῳδίας τεμάχη εἶναι ἔλεγε τῶν Ὁμήρου μεγάλων δείπνων.
The fish slabs that Athenaeus refers to – the choice part of the feast – are missing from Homeric fare. And no doubt he meant μεγάλων δαιτῶν.