Greek Language and Linguistics

In this paper I argue that the Orphic hymn to Zeus quoted in the Derveni papyrus, the Aristotelic De mundo, and by a series of later writers, was composed in a hybrid meter that combines Greek hexameters with the meter found in the poetry of Northern Syria and Mesopotamia. Using metrical analysis, I propose a new reconstruction of the hymn to Zeus. I contend that the earliest version of the hymn comply both with the standards of hexametrical and Semitic poetry, but that later versions sometimes display no familiarity with Semitic verse making.

Grammars of Classical Greek note that the potential optative can be accompanied by a negative, resulting in 'total negation' (Gildersleeve §442), i.e., the statement that it is not possible that something might happen (as opposed to the statement that it is possible that something might not happen), as in the following well-known dictum of Heraclitus,

(1) δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

which does not mean that there exists just a possibility that you might not step into that same river twice.

The word douleuma, which appears only three times in extant Greek literature, is defined as “slave” or “servitude” (LSJ), but this lexical meaning is not well-supported by the contexts in which the word appears. This paper will argue that douleuma in the three passages in which it appears does not signify a person’s status as a slave or the duty of a slave to perform service for its owner as is commonly understood.

Sophocles’ Electra, in trying to persuade Chrysothemis to join her cause, reminds her sister that their dead father “was arm-pitted” by Clytemnestra (ἐμασχαλίσθη El. 445). The term is rare and its meaning problematic; outside the scholiastic tradition the verb recurs only in A. Cho. (ἐμασχαλίσθη 439), likewise describing the treatment of Agamemnon’s corpse, and the corresponding noun occurs only in Sophocles’ lost Troilus (πλήρη μασχαλισμάτων 623 TrGF, cf. 528; adesp.

In this paper I argue that a verb attested in an inscription from Larissa, Thessaly, published in 2007, provides a valuable piece of evidence that clarifies the historical development of so-called ‘Aeolic’ inflection in Greek dialects.