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THE HOMERIC TEXT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2015

Barbara Graziosi  and
Johannes Haubold
Barbara Graziosi
Affiliation:
University of Durham barbara.graziosi@durham.ac.uk j.h.haubold@durham.ac.uk
Johannes Haubold
Affiliation:
University of Durham barbara.graziosi@durham.ac.uk j.h.haubold@durham.ac.uk
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Extract

Two major editions of the Iliad appeared at the end of the twentieth century: Helmut van Thiel's for Olms (1996), and Martin West's for Teubner (1998-2000). They are radically different in their methodological assumptions, and hence in the texts they offer. Helmut van Thiel trusts the direct transmission, i.e. the best medieval manuscripts. He takes the position that ancient variants reported in the Homeric scholia are usually ‘suggestions’ of ancient scholars (for example Zenodotus) ‘towards the improvement of the text, or…deliberations about it’, and that they are therefore of little significance when constituting the text. He also insists that modern editors not indulge in conjectures of their own. What they should do, rather, is represent the medieval transmission as faithfully as possible. He concedes that this is a modest aim, but one which he considers appropriate, given what can and cannot be known about the Homeric text. According to him, ‘laurels in textual criticism are not to be won from the text of Homer’. Martin West would surely disagree: his edition offers a dazzling display of editorial ambition. He does not trust the medieval manuscripts, and sees his task as that of exposing and mending their shortcomings. In order to restore what he thinks was the original wording of the Homeric text, West makes use of weakly attested ancient variants; and, above all, employs his own critical acumen to weed out corruption and modernisation.

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Research Article
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Ramus , Volume 44 , Issue 1-2: New Essays on Homer: Language, Violence, and Agency , December 2015 , pp. 5 - 28
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Copyright © Aureal Publications 2015 

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References

1. Van Thiel sets out his editorial principles in the introduction to his Odyssey edition, van Thiel (1991), xxi-xxxiii; see also van Thiel (1996), III-XII.

2. Van Thiel (1991), xxviii.

3. Van Thiel (1991), xxiv.

4. For his editorial principles, see West (1998), V-XXXVII, and West (2001a).

5. E.g. Apthorp (1993); Janko (1994 and 2000); Nagy (2000 and 2003); Nardelli (2001); Rengakos (2002); West (2001b and 2004).

6. For example Nagy (1996a, 1996b and 2004).

7. On Nagy's multitext, see http://www.homermultitext.org/, with discussion in Dué and Ebbott (2004) and Dué (2009).

8. See Finkelberg (2000), with earlier literature.

9. For the early quotations of Homer see Ludwich (1898); Allen (1924), 249-70; Haslam (1997), 74-77; Olson and Sens (1999), 13-15; Dué (2001). Labarbe (1949) collects and discusses Homeric quotations in Plato; cf. Lohse (1964/1965/1967). For an up-to-date collection of references see West's edition of the Iliad.

10. See S. West (1967); Haslam (1997); Bird (2010).

11. Iliad 6 may not, of course, be representative of the poem as a whole: it is a specific and tightly composed episode, which may therefore display an especially low incidence of variants. Still, when working on an edition and commentary of it (Graziosi and Haubold [2010]), we found that variants generally catered to Hellenistic tastes: they seemed motivated by a desire to elucidate the text (see notes on lines 4, 21, 31, 71, 76, 148, 226, 237, 241, 252, 266, 285, 321f., 415, 511); make Homeric language more context-specific (112); or address perceived lapses of decorum (135, 160). Our findings tally with the more general argument, made by Fantuzzi (2001), 174-77, that Hellenistic scholars adjusted Homeric poetry to the sensibilities of their age; see also van der Valk (1963-4), vol. I; Janko (1992), 22-29. For different views, see Rengakos (1993); Dué and Ebbott (2012).

12. Graziosi (2013b) offers some preliminary observations that serve as a basis for this article.

13. Vallance (1999), 224.

14. A welcome exception to this general dearth of dialogue is Battezzato (2003).

15. Cairns (2010), 55f.

16. See, for example, ΣbT ad Il. 2.23a.

17. Ancient readers sometimes comment on internal explanations; see Erbse (1969-88), i. 87 ad v. 279 h (ἐξηγεῖται δὲ συνήθως σαφηνίζων ἑαυτὸν ὁ ποιητής); cf. ΣAT ad Il. 6.43; ΣAT ad Il. 18.265a; and the other passages collected in Erbse's Index III, s.v. ἐξηγεῖσθαι.

18. Theocritus, Idyll 16.50.

19. Hesiod, WD 161.

20. See e.g. ΣbT ad Il. 6.1c.

21. πνεύμων = ‘the breather’, as if from πνέω; see West (1998), XXXIV: ‘πλεύμων (Δ 528 = Μ 189a) verum est, non πνεύμων, quod ex etymologia populari invasit.’

22. The form πλεύμων is transmitted in Photius and Eustathius (two Byzantine scholars) and perhaps in one manuscript (fortasse ante correcturam, West). One papyrus also has it in an otherwise identical plus verse elsewhere in the poem: Il. 12.189a.

23. The issue is raised with characteristic clear-sightedness in Leumann (1950), 24f.; see also Giangrande (1970) on the specific issue of Doric forms in Homer. On Aristarchus' understanding of grammar, see Matthaios (1999); earlier perceptions of Greek grammar and the Homeric text are of course even harder to reconstruct: the starting point must be the Homeric text itself, and therefore circular arguments about how it should be edited are always a risk.

24. An instructive example of Homeric etymologising which Rank does not consider is Od. 11.38f., glossing ἀταλός as the opposite of πολύτλητος.

25. On Leumann's superb monograph, see Dihle (1970). On Homeric word formation, see also Risch (1974) and Hackstein (2002).

26. Leumann (1950), 49f.

27. For Homer see Leumann (1950), 36-156; for an example from South Slavic epic see Danek (2003), 67: irakli sapuna (‘soap from Iraq’) > i rakli sapuna (‘and rakli soap’, explained by performers as a brand of soap).

28. Chantraine (1948-53), i.47; see also Wachter (2000), 79f. n.24.

29. It seems significant that this happened in the speech of a Homeric character; for further discussion see below, pp.19-23.

30. Kretschmer (1912), 308.

31. The opening chapters of Chantraine (1948-53), vol. I, make the point in instructive detail.

32. Parry (1932); for a more recent treatment of this issue see Wachter 2012.

33. Discussion in Chantraine (1948-53), i.75-83; cf. Wachter (2012), 71f.

34. Aristarchus worried about these forms, but Parry explained that they arose for reasons of sound: the root of the verb contained an alpha, and so the stem retained it too; see Parry (1932), 34.

35. Wachter (2012), 70f.

36. Though it was older than has often been claimed: see Wachter (2000), 80 n.25; Passa (2001).

37. See West (1998), XXXII: ‘At praestat μοι, quod antiquius videtur syntagma quodque genitivo vulgari cessurum erat.’

38. Janko (2000), 1.

39. See West (1998), XXXII on μοι vs μευ: ‘Non est credibile, poetam modo hoc modo illud dixisse.’ Van Thiel (1991), xxiv-xxv, disagrees, retaining inconsistency, with this argument: ‘We cannot assume that the creators and users of the Homeric language consistently dispensed with possible alternatives with an eye to a kind of economy whose laws we determine intrepidly.’ See further Meier-Brügger (1986).

40. For brief overviews, see von Soden (1995), 298f.; Huehnergard (2011), 595-98. For a detailed case study, see George (2003), 418-43.

41. For Ionic metathesis and its impact on the language of epic see Meister (1921), 146-76; Chantraine (1948-53), i.68-73; Wachter (2000), 77f.

42. Von der Mühll in his 1962 Odyssey for Teubner is the most recent editor to emend ἕως. He resorts to the (unattested) compromise form εἷος, which he thinks is more in tune with the Ionic-Attic veneer of the transmitted text of Homer than ἧος: ‘cum necessarium sit traditas voces ἕως εἵως τέως τείως trochaica forma eloqui, non tamen sanas illas et bonas ἧος et τῆος posui sed εἷος et τεῖος, quae cum toto nostro Homero, ut est Ionico-Atticus, magis consentire videntur’ (Von der Mühll [1962], VII).

43. West (1967), 139: ‘Die Rhapsoden haben sicher nicht überlegt, ob ihre Verse “metrisch” waren, d.h. ob sie in irgendein abstraktes Schema hineinpaßten.’

44. West (1998), XXVIII: ‘ἀρηΐφιλος, διίφιλος olim binae fuerunt voces …, sed tam arcte coaluerunt ut pro compositis habere par sit singulo accentu praeditis, cum φιλος quasi encliticum sit factum. […] Codices Homerici saepe διὶ φίλος separatim praebent; compositum agnoscit Choeroboscus Orthogr. 192.16.’ See also LfgrE s.v. διίφιλος.

45. Cf. also ἀρηΐφατος, ‘killed in battle’, ἀρηΐθοος, ‘swift in battle’.

46. Scansion further contributes to differentiating the two expressions: ἀρηΐφιλος, with short iota, fits comfortably into a pattern of word formation that is both common and semantically flexible; Διὶ φίλος, by contrast, retains the long iota of the old dative Δι(ϝ)εί. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for drawing our attention to this.

47. On the relationship between the earliest texts of Homer and oral performance, see the judicious and helpful assessment by Cassio (2002).

48. Translations are based on Verity (2011).

49. Cf. common γοόωντα, γοόωσα, etc. with diectasis (Il. 5.413 etc.); also γοάασϰεν (Od. 8.92), γοάοιμεν (Il. 24.664), γοάοιεν (Od. 24.190), γοήσεται (Il. 21.124, 22.353), γοήμεναι (Il. 14.502), γόων (Od. 10.567).

50. Previous attempts such as Meister's γόων, read as one syllable, can be safely discarded; see Meister (1921), 61, and Leumann's discussion at Leumann (1950), 187.

51. Chantraine (1948-53), i.392.

52. Leumann (1950), 186f.

53. See Hermogenes, De Inventione 4.7 (Rabe): ‘Parechesis is the beautiful effect created by similar words which mean different things but sound the same. It arises when one uses two, three or four verbs or nouns which have a similar sound but a different meaning, as may be seen…most clearly…in Homer: ἤτοι ὅ γ’ ἐς πεδίον τὸ Ἀλήϊον οἶος ἀλᾶτο.’

54. Hackstein (2007).

55. Hackstein (2007), 105.

56. For Aristotle see Poetics 1458a4-5. For Hellenistic scholarship see Index III to Erbse's Iliad scholia: Erbse (1969-88), vi. 271f. (s.vv. ἀποϰοπή, ἀποϰόπτειν). Examples of alleged apokope in the Iliad include ὅτι > ὅ (ΣAbT ad Il. 1.120bc); μινυνθάδιος > μίνυνθα (ΣbT ad Il. 1.416); ἤρανα > ἦρα (ΣAT ad Il. 1.572ab); δάϰρυον > δάϰρυ (Σb ad Il. 2.269e); ἔϰτανε(ν) > ἔϰτα (ΣAb ad Il. 2.662a and ΣA ad Il. 6.205b); παρά > πάρ (ΣT ad Il. 4.1b); ϰέρατα > ϰέρα (ΣAbT ad Il. 4.109a); ϰρῖμνον/ϰριθή > ϰρῖ (ΣAT ad Il. 5.196a); ἐάαι > ἔα (ΣAbT ad Il. 5.256a1b); ἁμαρτήδην > ἁμαρτή (ΣAT ad Il. 5.656ab1 and ΣAT ad Il. 23.162, quoting Aristarchus); σέλαι > σέλα (ΣT ad Il. 8.562-3a); ϰαθίσθανε > ϰαθίσθα (ΣA ad Il. 9.202a); τρόφιμον > τρόφι (ΣA ad Il. 11.307a, quoting Herodianus); ϰυϰειῶνα > ϰυϰειῶ (ΣA ad Il. 11.641); ἔπλετο > ἔπλε (ΣT ad Il. 12.11a2 quoting Zenodotus); ἄλλοτε > ἄλλο (ΣA ad Il. 14.249b with Eusth. 983, 17); ? > δαΐ (ΣA ad Il. 14.387a1); ὕπαιθα > ὑπαί (ΣA ad Il. 15.4a, quoting Tyrannion); ἠλεέ > ἠλέ (ΣAbT ad Il. 15.128ab); σφῶϊ > σφώ (ΣT ad Il. 15.146b); Μηϰιστῆα > Μηϰιστῆ (ΣAbT ad Il. 15.339); ἐπὶ ϰάρα/ἐπιϰαρσίως(?) > ἐπιϰάρ (ΣA ad Il. 16.392a); δείλαιε > δείλ(?) (ΣA ad Il. 17.201c, quoting a group of ‘exegetes’, οἱ ἐξηγησάμενοι). Few, if any, of these interpretations would be acceptable to modern scholars. Many were controversial already in antiquity, but the underlying principle was widely accepted, and was in turn grounded in the theory of morphological pathe; see Herodianus' discussion at ΣA ad Il. 5.256b and more generally Aristotle, Poetics 1460b.10.

57. The evidence is not entirely clear-cut (see Chantraine [1948-53], i.105-12), but it is certainly sufficient to suggest that early listeners accepted at least the possibility of ad hoc abridgment.

58. LfgrE s.v. γηράσϰω, ἐγήρα B 1; according to the Lexikon, the Iliad regards ἐγήρα as an aorist, while the Odyssey treats it as an imperfect.

59. Hdt. 2.146 (ϰατεγήρασαν) and 7.114 (γηράσασαν). Intriguingly, one manuscript of Herodotus preserves the variant reading γηράσαν: haplography, hyper-correction or genuine tradition?

60. Hes. Op. 188 and fr. 304.2 MW.

61. Here too, however, we see a trend from the root aorist towards sigmatic forms. Homer uses only the root aorist. Herodotus retains the participle φθάς (Hdt. 3.71) and the infinitive φθῆναι (Hdt. 6.115), but sigmatic aorists encroach in inflected forms such as ἔφθασα (Hdt. 7.161; cf. Aeschyl. Pers. 752).

62. Heubeck (1979), 164-69; cf. Janko (1992), 35-37.

63. Cf. ΣT ad Il. 6.291c.

64. For the alternative explanation, dismissed by Apollonius, according to which ἐπιπλώς is a Doric form, see Giangrande (1970), 261.

65. Herodotus uses only sigmatic aorists of πλέω: first pers. sg. ἔπλωσα (Hdt. 4.148), inf. πλῶσαι (Hdt. 1.24), part. πλώσας (Hdt. 4.156, 8.49).

66. As Hackstein (2007), 104, observes, epic parechesis may include entire formulaic patterns.

67. The two explanations need not have been mutually exclusive. For a similar alternative between apokope and Doric dialect see Herodianus' discussion of the form Μηϰιστῆ in ΣAbT ad Il. 15.339.

68. Scodel (2002).

69. Griffin (1986). Finkelberg (2012) notes that the language of character speech is less traditional than that of the main narrative, and explains the phenomenon not only as an aspect of characterisation but also as a means through which the poet reflects on inherited tradition.

70. De Jong (2004).

71. See Chantraine's complaint that the form is ‘extrêmement déconcertante’ (Chantraine [1948-53], i.459 n.1). More recent discussion in Kirk (1985), 82; Latacz (2000), 113f.; Hackstein (2002), 112-17; Hackstein (2007), 109-11.

72. For the present case, it seems relevant that word play on θεός and τίθημι is common in epic: see θεοὶ θέσαν at Il. 9.637, Od. 11.274, 555, 23.11; and θῆϰε θεός/θεά at Il. 1.55, 24.538, Od. 5.427, 15.234, 18.158, 21.1.

73. Hackstein (2007), 111.

74. On the relationship between that tradition and the Iliad, see Graziosi and Haubold (2010), 7 and 155f.

75. We know that Zenodotus had views on adjectival declension; see Graziosi and Haubold (2010), notes to lines 266 and 285.

76. E.g. common ἐρίηρες ἑταῖροι as against ἐρίηρος ἑταῖρος at Il. 4.266; for further examples of heteroclisis in Homeric adjectives see Chantraine (1948-53), i.252-54.

77. E.g. Il. 5.845, 24.244-46; for discussion of the post-Homeric reception see Rank (1952), 36.

78. Kirk (1990), 197; also Stoevesandt (2008), 98; Graziosi and Haubold (2010), 156f.

79. Graziosi and Haubold (2010), 177f.

80. Graziosi and Haubold (2010), 178.

81. West (1973), 57 n.9.

82. On this statement, see further Graziosi (2013a).

83. On the way in which speeches are framed and presented in Homer, see further Beck (2005) and (2012).

84. For further exploration of both factors, see Edwards (1970), Beck (2012).

85. See Riggsby (1992).

86. Plutarch makes this point in De audiendis poetis 19b-c: we are grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

87. On the poet's comment, see Goldhill (1990), 376; Graziosi and Haubold (2010), note to line 62; Bostock (2015), with further literature. Bostock argues that the comment is neutral (‘changing Menelaos' mind as to what was appropriate in the circumstances’). On ancient and modern reactions to Agamemnon's speech, see ΣbT ad Il. 6.62a; Fenik (1986), 26; Kirk (1990), 191; Yamagata (1994), 118; Wilson (2002), 166f.; Stoevesandt (2004), 152-55.