The Legacy Of Aphrodite: Anchises' Offspring In The 'Homeric Hymn To Aphrodite'

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite has traditionally been understood to pay honour to a family of Aineiadai who once held power in the Troad, but in more recent years some scholars have rejected this view. This article first revisits this controversial issue, suggesting that concentrated attention paid in the hymn to the birth of Aineias and his lineage supports the position that the poem was composed for a group that identified itself with Aineias. It then goes on to consider the view that the Hymn to Aphrodite narrates the end of Aphrodite's mixing gods and mortals in love. It is argued that this reading is not required by the text of the poem.Classic

The use of the optative in Iliad 2,-493

In this article I address the use of the optative (appearing alone or in in contrast with the subjunctive or indicative) in Iliad 2,1-493 (the part before the Catalogue of Ships starts). This part of the book describes Agamemnon’s (failed) attempts to rouse the army and Odysseus’ intervention to restore the damage caused by Agamemnon’s blunder(s). In these lines there are about 110 subjunctive and optative forms, and they provide a small but reliable corpus of instances in different constructions and are therefore sufficient to serve as basis for an investigation and can be used to check if results acquired in other investigations can be confirmed or refuted. As the optative is the mood with the widest array of uses (from the unreal to the almost-certain-future), I focus on the passages in which the optative is used, either alone or in contrast with the subjunctive or indicative

The difference between the optative and the “modal” indicative in Homeric Greek: four case studies. Part 1: The optative

In epic Greek both the optative and the indicative (the so-called “modal indicative”) can be used in contexts where the degree of realization is uncertain or even impossible, while in Attic Greek only the indicative is used. In these two articles I discuss whether there is a difference between the optative and the modal indicative in these contexts and/or if it can be determined which was the original mood. As there are about 1500 optatives and 250 modal indicatives in Homer, it is not possible to discuss them all and, therefore, I focus on the passages in which aorist forms of γιγνώσκω, βάλλω and of ἴδον appear, and those conditional constructions in the Odyssey in which the postposed conditional clause is introduced by εἰ μή with either a “modal” indicative or optative. The corpus comprises 100 forms (80 optatives and 20 indicatives), but in each example I also address the other modal indicatives and optatives in the passages, which adds another 50 forms to the corpus. In this part (part 1) I address the optative. First, I provide an overview of the research on the optative in Homeric Greek, discuss the different suggestions for the co-existence of the optative and indicative in these uncertain and/or unreal contexts, explanations which can be summarized into two categories, those assuming that the indicative replaced the optative and those arguing that both moods were original, but had different meanings. Then I explain why this corpus was chosen, prior to the analysis that focuses on two elements, namely the temporal reference (does the mood refer to the past or not) and the degree of possibility (is the action described likely, possible, remotely possible or unlikely/impossible

An Analysis of the Modal Particle in Iliad 24, Part 1: Etymology and Formal Analysis

In this article, I discuss the use and absence of the modal particle (MP) ἄν and κεν in Iliad 24. In part 1 I first discuss the etymology of the two modal particles in Greek, give an overview of the previous explanations for their use and absence and discuss these theories critically, and then determine the corpus of forms where the particles did and did not occur

Ancient Greek and the category of verbal periphrasis

This paper discusses which constructions in Ancient Greek consisting of a finite verb and a participle belong to the category of „verbal periphrasis‟. By applying various criteria of periphrasticity to a corpus of examples, I show that only a limited number of constructions can be considered fully periphrastic. I consider these constructions to be the central members of a prototypically organized category

Remarks on the type faxo/faxim

Il saggio analizza la struttura morfologica del tipo arcaico faxo/faxim; tale struttura viene inquadrata sulla base dell'evoluzione della morfologia verbale latina tra categorie Indo-europee e categorie del latino romano, e viene giustificata sulla base della consistenza testuale dei testi, prevalentemente prescrittivi, che compongono il corpus pi\uf9 antico delle attestazion

The Difference Between the Optative and the “Modal” Indicative in Homeric Greek: Four Case Studies – Part 2: The Indicative and the εἰ Μή-Clauses

In epic Greek both the optative and the indicative (the so-called “modal indicative”) can be used in contexts where the degree of realization is uncertain or even impossible, while in Attic Greek only the indicative is used. In these two articles I discuss whether there is a difference between the optative and the modal indicative in these contexts and/or if it can be determined which was the original mood. As there are about 1500 optatives and 250 modal indicatives in Homer, it is not possible to discuss them all and, therefore, I focus on the passages in which aorist forms of γιγνώσκω, βάλλω and of ἴδον appear, and those conditional constructions in the Odyssey in which the postposed conditional clause is introduced by εἰ μή with either a “modal” indicative or optative. The corpus comprises 100 forms (80 optatives and 20 indicatives), but in each example I also address the other modal indicatives and optatives in the passages, which adds another 50 forms to the corpus. In this part (part 2) I address the modal indicatives, and discuss the postposed conditional clauses introduced by εἰ μή in the Odyssey, both in the indicative and the optative. Subsequently I analyze several instances in which the interpretation depends on the viewpoint of the hearer and the speakers, as what is possible for a speaker might be impossible for the hearer and vice versa. When comparing the data relating to the optative and the indicative, and especially that of the postposed conditional clauses introduced by εἰ μή, it can be noted that the indicative has more frequently an exclusively past reference and that it is more often genuinely unreal than 302 FILIP DE DECKER the optative, which often combines the notion of the possible, remotely possible and unreal. In my opinion this clearly indicates that the indicative eventually prevailed and replaced the optative because of the past reference

Epistemic modality, particles and the potential optative in Classical Greek

This paper challenges the commonly held view that the Classical Greek potential optative has a subjective epistemic semantics, the result of a conceptual confusion of subjectivity and epistemic modality inherited from our standard grammars. I propose that this view becomes less convincing when the optative’s unique interaction with the subjective particles ἦ and ἄρα is incorporated into the analysis. Rather, the potential optative has a non-subjective epistemic semantics presenting an epistemic judgment as interpersonally accessible to the conversational participants. Frequencies of combination with ἦ and ἄρα, linguistic tests for subjectivity on the potential optative, and contrastive contextual analyses corroborate this view