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Relative Chronology and the Language of Epic A RELATIVE CHRONOLOGY AND THE LANGUAGE OF EPIC A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Brandtly Neal Jones January 2008 © 2008 Brandtly Neal Jones RELATIVE CHRONOLOGY AND THE LANGUAGE OF EPIC Brandtly Neal Jones, Ph. D. Cornell University 2008 The songs of the early Greek epos do not survive with reliable dates attached. The texts provide few references to events outside the songs themselves with which to establish a chronology, and thus much study has centered on the language of the songs. This study takes as its starting point the well-known and influential work of Richard Janko on this topic, especially as presented in his Homer, Hesiod, and the hymns: Diachronic development in epic diction, which seeks to establish relative dates for the songs of the epos through statistical analysis of certain linguistic features found therein. Though Janko's methodology is flawed, it does highlight the principal aspects of the question of the epic language and chronology. This thesis first establishes the problematic relationship between the oral tradition and our textual representatives of that tradition, as well as the consequences of that relationship for the question of chronology. The existence of an Aeolic phase of epic diction is next refuted, with important results for chronology. Finally, the evidence of the Homeric digamma reveals the "paradox of archaism." The epic language can be shown to work in such a way that many apparent archaisms depend crucially on innovative forms for their creation. This phenomenon is recognized for the first time as a special kind of innovatory language, one which undermines the possibility for simple, linear development of the epic language on which Janko and others have relied. While this finding does not yield dates of the songs of the early Greek epos, it nevertheless provides a more accurate picture of the nature of the epic language. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Brandtly Neal Jones received his B.A. in Latin and Ancient Greek in 1998 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He was then a summer fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. He began his graduate work in Classics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, before beginning his Ph.D. at Cornell University. He was awarded his M.A. in 2006. iii For my wife. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the support of the Department of Classics at Cornell University. Through the department's generous assistance I have been able to present portions of my research at the American Philological Association's annual meetings in 2006 and 2007 and at an international conference in Oslo, Norway, where I received invaluable feedback on my work. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgments v Table of Contents vi List of Figures viii List of Tables ix Part I: RELATIVE CHRONOLOGY WITHIN (AN) ORAL TRADITION Chapter I Section 1: The Greek epos 1 Section 2: The Problem of (Relative) Chronology within the epos 9 Chapter II Section 1: Background for Janko’s method 18 Section 2: The Common Scale 23 Section 3: The extension of the Common Scale 26 Section 4: The definition of archaism 30 Chapter III Section 1: Chronology versus geography 42 Chapter IV Section 1: A case study of the o- and a-stem accusative plurals 48 Chapter V: Conclusions 59 Part II: AN AEOLIC PHASE OF EPIC DICTION? Chapter VI Section 1: The mixed dialect of epic 61 Section 2: Alternative explanations for the mixed dialect 63 Section 3: Evidence for a gap in a continuous Ionic tradition 69 Section 4: Janko's treatment of the ā-stem genitives 71 Section 5: Evidence for the full development of QM in epic language 79 Section 6: Further evidence against an Aeolic Phase 80 Section 7: An alternative explanation for the distribution of QM 84 Section 8: Formulaic concerns regarding QM 86 Section 9: Archaism of metrical shape versus phonology 91 Section 10: Typological parallels- the –εσσι dative 93 Section 11: Typological parallels- the –οιο genitive 94 vi Section 12: Conclusions 103 Part III: THE PARADOX OF ARCHAISM Chapter VII Section 1: The paradox of archaism 105 Section 2: The distribution of observance and neglect of digamma 109 Section 3: Spondees created by position with digamma 114 Section 4: Correlation of the inner metric of the hexameter and preservation of digamma 120 Section 5: The illusion of archaism at line segment junctures 123 Section 6: ἰδέ and the Paradox of Archaism 133 Appendix I. The counting of digamma 140 II. Hesiod's digamma 146 Bibliography 154 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Individual songs ordered on the Common Scale 24 Figure 2: Individual Songs Clustered by Features 25 Figure 3: The phase/"stacked" model versus the "diffusion" model 65 Figure 4: Percent neglect of digamma sorted by line position 111 Figure 5: Manner of observation of digamma in Homer 113 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Distribution of Categories of "Formulaic" Language 33 Table 2: Corrected Classification of “Formulaic” Language 36 Table 3: Secure heavy o- and a-stem accusative plurals 52 Table 4: Common Scale results with ambiguous examples excluded 75 Table 5: Distribution of masculine ā-stem genitive singulars 75 Table 6: Distribution of ā-stem genitive plurals 76 Table 7: Distribution of masculine ā-stem genitive singulars (corrected) 76 Table 8: Distribution of ā-stem genitive plurals in Hesiod 78 Table 9: Distribution of non-οιο o-stem genitive singulars 100 Table 10: Distribution of non-οιο o-stem genitives excluding ambiguous examples 101 Table 11: Percent neglect of digamma sorted by line position 110 Table 12: Manner of observance of digamma in Homer 113 Table 13: Percent neglect of digamma in Hesiod 151 ix PART I: RELATIVE CHRONOLOGY WITHIN (AN) ORAL TRADITION Chapter 1 Section 1: The Greek epos The songs of the early Greek hexameter tradition do not survive to us with reliable dates attached. We know they are old because our sources in antiquity tell us they are old.1 More importantly, the language the tradition preserves is very old, centuries older than any extant example of the epic corpus. There is strong reason to believe that a poetic tradition in hexameters stretches back into the Bronze Age. The use of tmesis,2 or the separation of preverbs from their verbs, an inherited feature of Proto‑Indo‑European common in the Vedic hymns, persists in the epic tradition, but was likely already obsolete in Mycenaean.3 The status of syllabic /r/ also points to a very 1 e.g. Herodotus Histories II. 53.2: Ἡσίοδον γὰρ καὶ Ὅμηρον ἡλικίην τετρακοσίοισι ἔτεσι δοκέω μευ πρεσβυτέρους γενέσθαι καὶ οὐ πλέοσι. Such biographical detail, including Homer’s birthplace in Smyrna, liFe in Chios, death on Ios, parentage by the river Meles and the nymph Kretheis (giving him the original name Melesigenes), is unreliable and Fantastic; the question oF the date(s) For Homer and Hesiod occupied the historian Hellanicus, according to Harpocration, in the FiFth century. (cF. Kirk (1985) p.2; (1962) pp. 285fF.) Ruijgh (1995) Finds the evidence From Herodotus, among other evidence, somewhat compelling in arguing For a 9th c. date For Homer. 2 Horrocks PCPS 26 (1980) 1‑11 Space and Time in Homer. 3 Dag Haug (Symposium oF Relative Chronology in early Greek Poetry, Oslo, Norway, June 2006; acts Forthcoming) has recently argued that while the practice oF tmesis was likely moribund in Mycenaean, the evidence is not overwhelming. Tmesis only occurs with transitive compound verbs, oF which there are only Five extant examples in Linear B (none oF which shows separation oF the preverb); other compound verbs are intransitive and do not show tmesis in Linear B. Certainly, the pedestrian nature oF the Linear B inventory inscriptions are not immediately comparable to the poetry oF the Vedas or Homer, and so we cannot be assured that tmesis was not a living component oF Mycenaean speech, at least in some registers. The practice in Homer already reFlects a poetic practice which has expanded beyond the historical practice to become a tool oF metrical utility. Examples oF apparent 1 early stage of the tradition, though not necessarily an “Achaean” phase, contra Ruijgh, et al.4 Other lexical items seem to correspond to finds from Mycenaean sites: “Several dactylic formulae prove archaeologically the Mycenaean contribution to the tradition; φάσγανον/ξίφος ἀργυρόηλον, ἀσπίδος ἀμφιβρότης, and σάκος ἠΰτε πύργον all reflect early Mycenaean weaponry...”5 Formulae in accord with archaeological finds “show that phrases containing two successive dactyls are as old as the objects themselves.”6 A certain amount of restraint is necessary in claiming certain continuity from Mycenae simply on the basis of archaic language. Nonetheless, the likelihood of heroic poetry in the Bronze Age sung in hexameters, or what was to become hexameters, is high.7 The songs of Homer, Hesiod and the hymns, though, are obviously not pristine products of the Bronze Age. The tradition developed into the Archaic tmesis, thereFore, result in part From the early origins oF epic singing, but the practice has overFlowed its banks to produce radical examples oF tmesis in Hellenistic times which have no origin in colloquial practice. The direction oF this development, thereFore, disqualiFies it as a criterion For asserting diachronic development. cF. Horrocks (1980). 4 The Famous ἀνδροτητα scans with two initial shorts, possibly recovering */anrtāta/. “The argument over whether Forms speciFic to the Mycenaean dialect persist in Homer (the ‘Achaean’ stratum) continues: in Favour see Householder and Nagy Greek 62‑6, and Ruijgh Linear B 148fF.; contrast Peters in FestschriFt Risch 303‑19.” Janko (1992) p.
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