Funny Greek Word

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu May 13 14:25:06 EDT 1999


At 1:26 PM -0400 5/13/99, TonyProst at aol.com wrote:
>I hope someone can take a crack at this one. It appears in Book 11, line 24
>of the Paraphrase of John by Nonnos, corresponding to John 11:6
>
>the word is:  telessimorou
>
>the line reads (in perfect dactyllic hexameter):
>dichthadie^s parameibe telessimorou dromon e^ous.
>
>it is paraphrasing:
>tote men emeinen (epi to^i topo^i) duo hemeras

TELESSIMOROS ought to mean "fate-accomplishing." MOROS is one of the
regular Homeric words for "doom" or "fate," sometimes equivalent to MOIRA;
TELESSI- is the verbal stem for TELEW, "accomplish," "bring to fulfillment."

A check of LSJ at Perseus doesn't show this word but shows several other of
these TELESSI- compound adjectives.

In this line I would TELESSIMOROU must construe with HOUS and the line
should mean something like, "let pass the running of fate-fulfilling Dawn
twofold."


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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