CHAPTER TEN WHENCE THE SELLOI OF DODONA? ΣΕΛΛΟÍ / ‛ΕΛΛΟÍ Introduction At a major turning point in the plot of the Iliad (16.220–56) Achilles off ers a prayer to Zeus of Dodona that his comrade Patroclus achieve both success in battle and a safe return to the ships; as events unfold, Zeus leaves the prayer only half answered. It is a scene full of pathos, and Achilles’ prayer is appropriately formal and ritualistic, beginning with a somber invocation (16.233–35): Ζεῦ ἄνα ∆ωδωναῖε Πελασγικὲ τηλόθι ναίων ∆ωδώνης μεδέων δυσχειμέρου, ἀμφὶ δὲ Σελλοὶ σοὶ ναίουσ᾿ ὑποφῆται ἀνιπτόποδες χαμαιεῦναι As H.W. Parke observes in the introduction to his comparative study of the oracles of Zeus, this is the fi rst appearance of the oracle of Dodona in a Greek author, and the meanings of many of the words in Achilles’ prayer were as obscure and puzzling to the Greek readers of the Classical and Hellenistic periods as they are to modern readers.1 Ancient commentators raised questions about: ἄνα, ∆ωδωναῖε, Πελασγικέ, δυσχειμέρου, Σελλοί, ὑποφῆται, ἀνιπτόποδες, and χαμαιεῦναι. Th e modern disciplines of philology and anthropology have yielded some answers, but many questions remain, foremost those concerning the Σελλοί. Who are these strange dwellers of Dodona, who sleep on the ground with unwashed feet and serve as the interpreters of Zeus? Th ey seem like fossils from the hoary past. Ancient readers of the passage could not even agree on the proper form of their name. It is reported in various ancient sources that some early commentators on the Homeric text understood the collocation of words diff erently—as ἀμφὶ δὲ σ᾿ Ἑλλοί instead of ἀμφὶ δὲ Σελλοί: so, for example, the A and T scholia.2 And some modern editions and 1 H.W. Parke (1967) 1. 2 Th e A scholia on Il. 2.659, 16.234; T scholia on Il. 16.234; cf. Et. Magn. sub Σελλοί. 202 chapter ten commentaries have followed suit: Leaf ’s edition of the Iliad, for example, actually prints Ἑλλοί, and the recent Cambridge commentary assumes it in this passage.3 I believe that each form is correct in its own way: Homer meant Σελλοί, and that is what we should read in our texts of this passage, but the actual historic name of the tribe was Ἑλλοί, a very ancient name of which Homeric Ἑλλάς, Ἕλληνες, etc.—as well as non-Homeric Ἕλλην, Ἑλλοπίη, etc.—are cognate.4 During the oral period of epic transmission one of Homer’s bardic predecessors mis- heard a formulaic expression in which the name was embedded and metanalyzed Ἑλλοί as Σελλοί, whereaft er the word was passed down through the ages and took on a life of its own, not just in epic diction but also in myth and folktale, in historical and philosophical texts, as well as in other genres of literature. Internal Evidence Let us consider the internal evidence fi rst, before moving on to the external. Th e internal evidence is not decisive, but I believe that it favors Σελλοί as the reading in this Homeric passage. Perhaps some slight support for Ἑλλοί can be drawn from a distinction, fi rst recorded in 3 Leaf, Iliad on 16.234; Janko, Commentary on Il. 16.234. 4 So A. Lesky (1928) esp. 53–54, 115–129, who reconstructs an early cult at Dodona that conjoined in holy marriage (ἵερος γάμος) a sky-god associated with the double-axe and an earth-goddess associated with the tree, whose memories survive in the fi gures of Ἑλλός, the woodsman and mythical cult founder of Dodona, and Ἑλλώτις, an epi- thet of Athena in Corinth and of Europa in Crete. In support of the form Ἑλλοί in Il. 16.234 Lesky marshals a network of cognates associated in some way with Dodona: ancient Ἑλλάς, which Aristotle locates around Dodona, along with its inhabitants the Ἕλληνες and their eponymous ancestor Ἕλλην; Ἑλλοπίη, which Hesiod locates near Dodona, along with its presumed inhabitants the *Ἕλλοπες; and Ἑλλά, which Hesychius calls the temple of Zeus at Dodona. If one is willing to wander beyond Dodona, there are of course a number of other cognates: e.g., Ἑλλήσποντος, the strait between the Euxine and Aegean, and its eponymous heroine Ἕλλη, who fell in while riding on a fl ying ram with a golden eece;fl Ἑλλωτίa, a festival of Athena at Corinth; and of course a myriad of derivatives in Ἑλλην-, Ἑλληνο-, Ἑλλαν-, Ἑλλανο-, Ἑλλαδ-, as well as various other compounds like Πανέλληνες, Φιλέλλην, etc. Th e depth and breadth of these cognates render unlikely the view that Ἑλλοί is simply a modernization of an older Greek form Σελλοί (so, e.g., G. Restelli [1970ab]), which alone of all these cognates would have had to survive a sound shift that occurred in greatest antiquity. Th ey also stack up formidably against the attempts to fi nd cognates of Σελλοί in other Indo-European languages (Gothic saljan ‘to sacrifi ce’; Latin solum ‘earth’ [hence ἀνιπτόποδες and χαμαιεῦναι]—so GEW sub Σελλοί), and even more so against attempts to fi nd cognates in Semitic languages (NW Semiticš ’l ‘to ask or interrogate’—so M. Delcor [1972] 31–32)..