[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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