Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

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cwconrad
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Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Well, my view is that until the end of the ptomelaic Koine period - after which Greek was predominantly in the mouths of foreigners, the cases were a structured association of things around a verb. Later cases seem to have become arbitrary.
I never meant to imply that the grammar of the text in question was arbitrary. What I have argued is that (a) it's meaning is perfectly clear (I do not think we're being told that the girl had hairy growth all over her shoulders and back!), even if we haven't reached a consensus on how to analyze the usage; and (b) my own preference is to understand οἱ as a dative indicating the girl herself as the person whose hair darkened her shoulders and back and the two accusatives as "direct objects" or "adverbial accusatives" construed with κατεσκίαζε.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Well, my view is that until the end of the ptomelaic Koine period - after which Greek was predominantly in the mouths of foreigners, the cases were a structured association of things around a verb. Later cases seem to have become arbitrary.
I never meant to imply that the grammar of the text in question was arbitrary. What I have argued is that (a) it's meaning is perfectly clear (I do not think we're being told that the girl had hairy growth all over her shoulders and back!), even if we haven't reached a consensus on how to analyze the usage; and (b) my own preference is to understand οἱ as a dative indicating the girl herself as the person whose hair darkened her shoulders and back and the two accusatives as "direct objects" or "adverbial accusatives" construed with κατεσκίαζε.
I see now - now that I'm a computer not struggling with a phone - that my expression was loose. I probably don't mean as much as it seems I could have meant by that statement.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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