Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

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

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:What is the difference between a direct and an indirect reflexive?
Smyth 325d wrote:d. Of the forms of the third personal pronoun only the datives οἷ and σφίσι(ν) are commonly used in Attic prose, and then only as indirect reflexives (1228). ...
Smyth 1228 N3 wrote:ἑαυτοῦ, etc., are either direct or indirect reflexives, οἷ and σφίσι are only indirect reflexives.
For the forms of this pronoun in Homer, cf. Henry Clark Johnson. The First Three Books of Homer's Iliad with Lexicon. Second Edition. New York. 1890. Page 215. An edition of the Illiad written by an authour determined to keep it simple.

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
(Attrib. to Albert Einstein)
I think that I must have been a six-year-old when I last understood the difference between a direct reflexive and an indirect reflexive! When the question arises regarding the difference between direct and indirect elements, what comes to my mind is the distinction between πῶς and ὅπως, between ποῦ and ὅπου, between τίς and ὅστις. The first of each of these pairs respectively is a direct interrogative conjunction, the second is an indirect interrogative conjunction. The direct form is used in a direct question: πῶς ταῦτα ποιήσετε;, the indirect form is used in an indirect question: ἐπιδεῖξατε ἡμἱν ὅπως ταῦτα ποιήσετε. The indirect form is used in a subordinate clause. The same distinction holds for direct and indirect reflexives: the one is used in primary clauses, the other in subordinate clauses. Okay?
Thank you, this is a useful reminder.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by cwconrad »

There will be time, there will be time
... Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
ἡ δέ οἱ κόμη
4 ὤμους κατεσκίαζε καὶ μετάφρενα
Stephen Hughes wrote:Here is how things unfolded:
  1. You read it as refexive.
  2. I questioned that by suggesting that reflexive would refer to the hair.
I missed the implication -- sorry about that! I wondered, in fact, how I could ever have stated that οἱ was reflexive; it's the hair that overshadows the girl's shoulders. But of course: it's her own shoulder's -- but not the hair's shoulders!
The worst of the confusion is that each of us was confused -- but each about a different matter (I think, but I may be confused about this too!)
Stephen Hughes wrote:...,what interested me was not the error ... The only people who don't make errors are those who don't do anything, and that in itself is an error of sorts.
There's something good about errors, once recognized: they are learning opportunities. The very thing that I found most enamoring about the really good students I've been fortunate enough to have in classes over the years: they question things that I say all too glibly, and thereby help me to learn with much greater precision what I wrongly thought I already knew. And now, you've put together a couple errors, a couple hints from recent posts, and formulated a new question about reflexives and voice forms. θαῦμα θαυμάτων -- or ματαιότης ματαιοτήτων -- wisps of threads.
Stephen Hughes wrote:What I was interested in is the relationship between reflexives and subject affected verb forms, which is what your analysis proposed it as. I had wondered whether direct and indirect referred to them being used together with subject affected or object affected verbs. BUT of course the pondering persisted longer than the valid opportunity for it did. Not that there ever actually was an opportunity, but it is something that I have been meaning to get around to seeing if it exists to be looked at.
But there's no subject-affected verb involved here; the subject is ἡ κόμη, the verb is κατασκιάζειν. My own reason for referring to οἱ as an indirect reflexive is that I was thinking of it being the girl's own hair. It appears that my own confusion was contagious, engendering a different kind of confusion.
cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Another question, the verbs
ἔχουσα ... ἐτέρπετο ... κατεσκίαζε
are all present / imperfect.

Did Greek of this early period have similar aspect distinction to Hellenistic times? Why are the full verbs imperfect here?
Is there something more involved here than depiction of an event unfolding in the course of a (relatively) brief span of time? My reading is this: it is the unfolding of a scene; the poet caught a glimpse of the girl in a quiet moment of observation and described what was happening during that brief interval of his contemplation of the girl. Poets and six-year-olds -- and readers of lyric poetry -- tend to be quiet observers and eavesdroppers.
Stephen Hughes wrote:It could be that the image lasted in his mind for a long time or recurrently. The "brief interval" that you mention become long in his memory.
I think it is brief intervals observed that tend to become long-time memories that are converted into lyric poetry. Much of the beauty of Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn is its meditation on the way that art crystallizes the passage of meaningful moments into static images.
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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Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Could ἡ ... οἱ κόμη mean "her hair"? I mean is the word order significant?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Could ἡ ... οἱ κόμη mean "her hair"? I mean is the word order significant?
Not semantically. oἱ is enclitic and its placement is governed by Wackernagel's Law.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
cwconrad
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Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Could ἡ ... οἱ κόμη mean "her hair"? I mean is the word order significant?
Not semantically. oἱ is enclitic and its placement is governed by Wackernagel's Law.
To be sure; but it comes around to being equivalent in meaning. In the old days we used to speak of an "ethic dative" -- it always seemed such a quaint term, rather like Wallace's "aporetic" cases serving as catch-alls for leftover items that don't fit elsewhere. Earlier I mentioned German Bavarian dialect's usage of the dative with a possessive pronoun to show possession: dem Georg sein Buch = "George's book." Of course we have the "dative of possession" too, but that is ordinarily employed with an existential verb: ἐμοί ἐστιν τὸ βιβλίον -- "It's my book. Here the sense of ἡ δέ οἱ κόμη ὤμους κατεσκίαζε καὶ μετάφρενα must be "And (her) hair darkened (her) shoulders and (her) back."
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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Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Is there any chance of taking κατασκιάζω with a dative object and two accusatives of respect?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Is there any chance of taking κατασκιάζω with a dative object and two accusatives of respect?
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Horace wrote:caelum, non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt
horae fugiunt, opera manent
It seems to me that the real problem of this text is that we know very well what it means but we can offer no account of it that will satisfy everyone. What is a direct object but an accusative respect (seems to me we've agreed -- you and I, at least -- on that point)? What kind of an object is a "dative object"? Grammarians like to "divide and conquer"; they will carve the dative into umpteen categories. Latin grammarians might call this a "dative of the interested party" and distinguish it from a "dative of purpose" (as in cui bono?.
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
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

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

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Is there any chance of taking κατασκιάζω with a dative object and two accusatives of respect?
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Horace wrote:caelum, non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt
horae fugiunt, opera manent
It seems to me that the real problem of this text is that we know very well what it means but we can offer no account of it that will satisfy everyone. What is a direct object but an accusative respect (seems to me we've agreed -- you and I, at least -- on that point)? What kind of an object is a "dative object"? Grammarians like to "divide and conquer"; they will carve the dative into umpteen categories. Latin grammarians might call this a "dative of the interested party" and distinguish it from a "dative of purpose" (as in cui bono?.
Is that a yes or a no?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: Archilochus 30-31W: Afternoon of a nymph?

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Is there any chance of taking κατασκιάζω with a dative object and two accusatives of respect?
cwconrad wrote:It seems to me that the real problem of this text is that we know very well what it means but we can offer no account of it that will satisfy everyone. What is a direct object but an accusative respect (seems to me we've agreed -- you and I, at least -- on that point)? What kind of an object is a "dative object"? Grammarians like to "divide and conquer"; they will carve the dative into umpteen categories. Latin grammarians might call this a "dative of the interested party" and distinguish it from a "dative of purpose" (as in cui bono?.
Stephen Hughes wrote:Is that a yes or a no?
It's a very firm "Maybe" accompanied by a reluctance to prefer it to alternative accounts. For one thing "dative object" just doesn't sound very specific to me. Heck, I'd just as soon say that οἱ is an "indirect object" and that ὤμους and μετάφρενα are "direct objects."
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
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

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

Post by Stephen Hughes »

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.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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