Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-4ws75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-07T04:49:35.137Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ionic forms in Homer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

George Melville Bolling
George Melville Bolling*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

‘Homers Sprache ist nicht panhellenisch. Sie kann nur solches Sprachgut enthalten, das bei den Stämmen, die das Epos pflegten, lebendig war.’ Thus Wackernagel, SUH 222. On that principle a word limited to the Ionic dialect—'auf den ionischen Dialekt beschränkt', to use a phrase of Bechtel's—cannot gain entrance to the epos until the epos is being produced by speakers of Ionic. I present two examples: ϵ ὗντϵ, already a high-class word, doomed to early obsolescence, that could appear in poetry unchanged; and , for which an Aeolic-looking dress seemed more appropriate.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 31 , Issue 2: April-June , June 1955 , pp. 223 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © 1955 by the Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 The following works are cited by the author's name: K. F. Ameis and C. Hentze, Anhang zu Homers Ilias (Leipzig, 1888); F. Bechtel (a), Die Vocal-contraction bei Homer (Berlin, 1908); F. Bechtel (b), Die griechischen Dialekte (Berlin, 1921-24); L. Bloomfield, Language (New York, 1933); W. Brandt, Griechische Temporalpartikeln (Göttingen, 1908); K. Brugmann and A. Thumb, Griechische Grammatik 4 (München, 1913); P. Chantraine, Grammaire homérique (Paris, 1942 and 1953); E. Hermann (a), Sprachwissenschaftlicher Kommentar zu ausgewählten Stücken aus Homer (Heidelberg, 1914); E. Hermann (b), Die Nebensätze in den griechischen Dialektinschriften (Leipzig, 1912); O. Hoffmann and A. Debrunner, Geschichte der griechischen Sprache 3 (Berlin, 1953); J. B. Hofmann, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Griechischen (München, 1949-50); C. Robert, Studien zur Ilias (Berlin, 1901); E. Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik (München, 1939 and 1950); P. von der Muehll, Kritisches Hypomnema zur Ilias (Basel, 1952); J. Wackernagel, Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Homer (Göttingen, 1916)—in references s.v. EΥTE; J. Wackernagel, Vorlesungen über Syntax (Basel, 1926 and 1928)—in references s.v. EIΣ O KEN. My External evidence for interpolation in Homer (Oxford, 1925) should be consulted on O [64-77]. Lyric poets are cited according to the 3d edition (1949) of E. Diehl's Anthologia graeca.

2 Cf. Bloomfield 149. Other instances in Homer are discussed in an article to appear soon in AJP.

3 Incidentally, Brandt 34 mentions that Wilamowitz proposed to change ϵἴ σου to ϵὖτϵ σϵ in Theocritus 22.63.

4 Of course κϵν is subject to the usual rules of sandhi; but κ’ is found only in I 609 = K 89 (the only line showing a meaning ‘as long as') and in the plus verse O [70].