Participle/Finite Verb constituent order (again!)
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jul 19 17:47:46 EDT 2000
At 2:04 PM -0700 7/19/00, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>The old question about Participle/Finite Verb constituent order came up
>again yesterday in a private exchange.
>
>Anyway, I was just now taking a look at Homer's Iliad book 1 line 311 and
>noted:
>
>hEISEN AGWN
>
>I was wondering if someone would like to explain the connection between word
>order and temporal relationships here. It seems that AGWN could be either
>prior to hEISEN, or it could be a general idea which takes into view the
>whole event or AGWN may be an action which transpires after hEISEN.
>
>The fact that AGWN is not an aorist puts it outside the normal discussions
>of this matter, which usually focus on the aorist participle and the finite
>verb.
Text:
ATREIDHS D' ARA NHA QOHN hALADE PROERUSSEN 1.308
ES D' ERETAS EKRINEN EEIKOSIN, ES D' hEKATOMBHN 1.309
BHSE QEWi, ANA DE CRUSHIDA KALLIPARHiON 1.310
hEISEN AGWN, EN D' ARCOS EBH POLUMHTIS ODUSSEUS.1.311
What we have here is a sequence of actions, four by Agamemnon
(ATREIDHS)--bringing a ship off of the shore into the water (PROERUSSEN),
putting in the rowers (ES-EKRINEN), boarding the 100 oxen for the hecatomb
to Apollo(BHSE), settling Chryseis on board and the final one--boarding the
ship himself as a captain--by Odysseus.
It seems to me that the participle AGWN here, following as it does the verb
hEISEN, is circumstantial and in this instance explains HOW Agamemnon got
Chryseis onto the ship--by leading her. Yes, the verb is aorist; this is
the salient fact of this little expedition, his prize and mistress Chryseis
he is sending back to her father, the priest of Apollo, along with 100 oxen
to be offered to Apollo as appeasement. What does it mean that the
participle AGWN is present tense? Probably that he didn't simply give
orders as he did to the others involved in the dispatch of this little
embassy; she'd been his mistress and prize for some time and she'd been the
occasion of the bitter quarrel with Achilles, so he took her by the hand
and led her, step by step, into the ship and sat her down in it. I think
the present participle with the aorist verb is a nice touch: in this one
instance, at least, Agamemnon behaves like a gentleman rather than like a
swaggering WANAX ANDRWN.
>I have no theory to promote. I just saw this and was thinking that it might
>generate some discussion. I generally look for examples which put strain on
>the currently popular ways of thinking about things. I am not sure this
>example does that, but someone who has read Homer might be able to clarify
>this for all of us.
That's an attempt, at any rate.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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