δαῖτα is winning . . . and by a bigger margin than Brexit!
cb put such a nice defence of πᾶσι that I changed my mind, at least for a while. Just to shake things up a bit 
Funny you should have posted that at the exact same minute I actually changed the balance…
Now πᾶσι is winning by a bigger margin than Brexit!
I changed my vote, too, because I don’t want to be a pathetic loser.
What’s happening? 67 % to 33 % for πᾶσι all of a sudden!
I have a couple of possible theories:
- The Russians are hacking Textkit.
- To paraphrase David Cameron, δαῖτα was the future, once.
- Trump just tweeted in favor πᾶσι.
Another county heard from…
Paul changed his vote, tipping the balance, and then I changed mine so that I wouldn’t be a loser.
Actually, although I like δαῖτα better, I think it would be irresponsible for an editor to print δαῖτα in the text–but it definitely should be in the critical notes. I think this is one case where the “weight” of authority matters: the only evidence in favor of δαῖτα is an unreliable statement in Athenaeus about a text in existence 300-400 years earlier and a possible echo in Aeschylus.
Well it’s possible to prefer δαιτα, but yes it would be the height of irresponsibility for an editor to print it, when there’s little or no evidence that it ever stood in any text of Homer. Zenodotus athetized lines 4-5, and I have little doubt that he had πασι in the athetized 5; and Aeschylus is not good evidence for Homer.
Another point, or point of view. πασι has been the Homeric text for millennia, from antiquity through today. (Dozens of papyri, and no counter-indication in the scholia.) None of Homer’s millions of readers has ever read δαιτα. That’s something that’s discounted in the obsessive quest for the original text of Homer.
But aren’t we still trying as hard as we can to reconstruct the original text? If something went wrong early in the tradition, those millions would have got accustomed to non-original words. It’s a little more difficult in case of Homer than e.g. Herodotus, but still. Even though someone, maybe N. G. Wilson (or possibly someone here), said that if an editor got hold of (say) Herodotus’s autograph he still wouldn’t believe the text.
I mentioned this earlier in the thread and Paul kind of answered it (I’m not disrespecting that), but if we for the sake of argument assume that δαῖτα is original, where did πᾶσι suddenly appear from? No-one would “better” δαῖτα to πᾶσι, as the latter is clearly worse. The only way to explain the change δαῖτα > πᾶσι is textual corruption (which would seem quite unlikely).
Why do you think Zenodotus didn’t have δαῖτα? Do you suggest Athenaeus got it wrong (West’s apparatus criticus states simply “Zenodotus apud Athenaeum”) citing Z?
if we for the sake of argument assume that δαῖτα is original, where did πᾶσι suddenly appear from?
The point is that there’s hardly any basis for assuming that δαῖτα was ever in any text of the Iliad–just a statement by Athenaeus about 400 years after Zenodotus that Zenodotus text read δαῖτα . . . but Zenodotus is reported to have athetized 4-5, so that seems implausible.
“if an editor got hold of (say) Herodotus’s autograph he still wouldn’t believe the text.”
That calls into question the whole editorial process, so should we just give up?
In the case of the Iliad, we have very little information about how it was transmitted from the era of its original composition to the Alexandrian or post-Alexandrian period, when the “vulgate” that is preserved more or less consistently in the medieval manuscripts is thought to have emerged. If we think that the vulgate faithfully preserves the “original” Iliad, we are taking that on faith, and the earliest, pre-vulgate papyri don’t seem to give us much reason to be confident of that hypothesis.
We do know that the Alexandrian scholars, particularly Aristarchus edited the text, and we have a fair amount of information in the scholia about their conclusions, but many if not most of their recommendations don’t seem to have made their way into the vulgate, and there are endless and inconclusive arguments, on hardly any evidence, about whether we should consider their methods and criteria sound from a modern perspective, or merely capricious.
So the idea that we can recover the “original” Iliad is fraught with underlying theoretical problems, even in situations where there is substantial evidence for the text. But here there’s simply no substantial evidence supporting δαῖτα.
Thank you so much again, Hylander, for patiently bearing with me. I have still so much to learn about Homeric transmission.
Supposing δαῖτα as original was just a thought experiment: by doing that I got into difficulties explaining how πᾶσι appeared. Which may suggest that δαῖτα isn’t original.
It was Lloyd-Jones & Wilson 1997 who said that about autograph. I didn’t quite remember it correctly, however. Apologies for misleading, here’s the quote ad uerbum expressus:
“The manuscripts contain a great deal of corruption, as even conservative critics can hardly refuse to admit, and the difficulties of the language are such that even if we possessed a text corrected by the author no living scholar could be confident that he could translate it without error.” I don’t know whether they refer here specifically to Sophocles, but I read it as a general remark (and probably haven’t yet quite understood what “translate” means here [from Greek into English? or from the autograph into an edition?]).
That’s certainly true of Sophocles, but in the case of Sophocles, we are reasonably certain that a written text originally came from the hand of the poet. The circumstances surrounding the creation of the “original” Iliad and its centuries-long transmission down to the era when the vulgate emerged are shrouded in mystery. Paul has different views on this than I do–he thinks, with West, that the vulgate is reasonably representative of an original Iliad text, and we’ve already argued about that ad nauseam. But even accepting that hypothesis, there’s no substantial evidence that δαῖτα ever appeared in any text of the Iliad.
Excellent points. Now I wish I could vote for πασι again.
δαῖτα seems better poetry. A banquet is supposed to be a festive and joyous event. Here it is a gruesome affair of beasts feasting on human flesh. Oh, the humanity! I understand that Homer didn’t write it, but quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.
But aren’t we still trying as hard as we can to reconstruct the original text? If something went wrong early in the tradition, those millions would have got accustomed to non-original words.
Yes, but apart from the problem of defining what we even mean by “the original text” in the case of Homer, is it right to disregard what for those millions has been the text of Homer? Doesn’t the Homer that has been Homer for two and a half thousand years deserve some regard? Sure it would be nice if we could access the original text (if ever there was such a thing), but even if we could (which we can’t), that would make no difference to the experience of audiences and readers through the centuries.
It’s similar with the meaning of Homeric words. (Not quite the same, but comparable.) We can try to reconstruct the original meaning, but what the words actually meant, for readers of the poems, was often something quite different. So I have little patience with people who tell me what a given word “really” means, when what it really means is what it was understood to mean.
I mentioned this earlier in the thread and Paul kind of answered it (I’m not disrespecting that), but if we for the sake of argument assume that δαῖτα is original, where did πᾶσι suddenly appear from? No-one would “better” δαῖτα to πᾶσι, as the latter is clearly worse. The only way to explain the change δαῖτα > πᾶσι is textual corruption (which would seem quite unlikely).
That’s what textual critics call the “utrum in alterum (abiturum est)?” question—Which would have given rise to the other? As you suggest, the ousting of an original δαιτα by πασι would be harder to explain that the converse. But not quite impossible: a banalizing rhapsode might have unconsciously substituted the more mundane πασι. (It would have to have been a rhapsode, early in the transmissional process, to stand any chance of driving out δαιτα entirely. The Athenian Panathenaia would seem the likeliest point of origin, as conversely for Aeschylus’ δειπνον<δαιτα perhaps). But that has little plausibility, to my mind. Rhapsodic substitutions—they are very numerous—rarely if ever establish themselves in the text. The conclusion is that πασι is original.
Why do you think Zenodotus didn’t have δαῖτα? Do you suggest Athenaeus got it wrong (West’s apparatus criticus states simply “Zenodotus apud Athenaeum”) citing Z?
The only mention of Zenodotus here in the scholia is the report (on good authority) that he athetized the two lines. If he had δαιτα the scholia would tell us; at this point in the poem any Zenodotean reading would certainly have been reported.
The report in Athenaeus (1.21) is untrustworthy. It will be taken from an earlier (probably much earlier) source, accusing Zenodotus “in his edition” (ἐν τῇ κατ’ αὐτὸν ἐκδόσει) of writing δαιτα in ignorance of the fact that Homer never applies the word to beasts, only to people. (Which is actually a pretty good objection.) In light of the fact that the Homeric scholia make no mention of δαιτα here, but only of Zenod’s athetesis of 4-5, I believe the report must be false. It could be entirely fictive (plenty of precedent for that), or “Zenodotus” could be corrupt (names often get corrupted), or the Zenodotus in question could be the other Zenodotus, Z. of Mallos, an Attalid Homeric scholar associated with Crates of Pergamum. I’ve only just thought of this, but I think it may be the answer (in which case the report is not false, just misleading.) Pergamene scholarship as distinct from Alexandrian is badly underrepresented in the Homeric scholia, and “Zenodotus” in the Homer scholia does sometimes refer to him. If that’s right, it would take δαιτα back to the 2nd/1st century; but if it were really Homeric the Alexandrians would have known of it.
As to δαιτα being “better poetry,” who are we to impose our aesthetics on Homer?
Who’s gonna do it if we don’t, then?
As to an another argument of yours, there have been several generations of Homerists who have learnt their Homeric Greek from Pharr, myself included – and I don’t think I’m the only one among those participating in this thread. We all have δαῖτα hardwired to our brains!
Not quite sure what you mean by your question Paul. No-one, I’d hope, though it’s clear from this thread that people do. I knew I’d regret adding that last disconnected sentence.
If you have δαιτα hardwired to your brain because of Pharr, I reckon that’s yet another strike against him. (I can’t think of a worse approach to learning to read Homer than Pharr’s, but clearly you survived it, and so perhaps have others.) But fortunately, hardwired-δαιτα people must be, what?, no more than 0.0000001% of readers of Homer?
—But I see that δαιτα is back in the lead. If I persist in demonstrating its implausibility, perhaps everyone will vote for it.
Thank you, mwh, for your scholarly analysis once again. I suspect what took place must be close to your reconstruction above. We may or may not still want somehow to conjoin this Zenodotus of Mallus to the 6th century Panathenaea and Aeschylus, but you suggest they possibly have no connexion, which could be true. Or perchance Z/M wrongly connected Aeschylus with Homer—had them both simultaneously on his desk and reckoned 1+1?—and thus created δαῖτα.
I’m now reading West’s praefatio for his edition with great interest; it has surprisingly profusely information in only 33 pages.
Relax! I was just teasing you… 
I’ve read everything written here on the possible origins of these variants with great interest. I found the suggestion that the we might be dealing with another Zenodotus especially stimulating. And I still think, as I already thought before, but now with greater conviction, that πᾶσι is likelier to be the original, though in the end I remain agnostic on the question.
The subject of this poll was “What reading do you prefer in Iliad 1.5?”, and that entails, I think, a question of personal aesthetic judgment, not a quest for the ultimate text-critical truth (except if one chooses to equate the two). Both variants are actually nice, and I’ve switched sides two times already according to my whim. Now I’ll switch a third time, if not for any good other reason, then at least to console you…
For fun, I looked all the copies of the Iliad I could find in a 1 meter radius, and found δαῖτα in Pharr and Ameis-Hentze-Cauer, and πᾶσι in all the others. Those two are perhaps not the most serious editions of the epic, but as popular beginners’ texts, they must have been used as their first (and often last) text by a very significant fraction of the students who have started studying Homer in the last 100 years or so. So although your point that for two and half millennia everyone knew only knew one variant is completely valid, it doesn’t obviate the fact that quite a few people alive now know the text with δαῖτα. And while I don’t object to Pharr having its weaknesses, I’m not aware of many alternatives at least for those of us who haven’t had the chance to learn Greek in the best schools with the best teachers.