[B-Greek] EIKOSI with movable-nu?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Tue Aug 30 11:28:34 EDT 2005
On Aug 30, 2005, at 11:05 AM, James Tauber wrote:
>
> Does EIKOSI ever take a movable-nu in Hellenistic Greek?
>
> BDAG doesn't say so, but I assume it could.
LSJ-Glare notes the form EIKOSIN in Homer (more commonly EEIKOSIN, in
Aristophanes as regular, in Herodotus, in Philodemus (definitely
Hellenistic), but says it's not found in papyri or inscriptions. The
supplement notes a Doric form IKATIN before a consonant in a fragment
of Callimachus. So apparently it very rarely does appear, but it's
not a standard or common form. My guess is that it takes the movable
Nu by analogy with dative plurals in SI(N), but i don't think that's
an adequate explanation for Aristophanes' regular usage. So evidently
Philodemus (contemporary of Cicero, 1st c. BCE) is the only
attestation of Hellenistic usage.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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