1. The Problem Homeric Greek nēpios, at first glance, does not present obvious semantic problems. LSJ [1] give as a first meaning “infant, child,” citing νήπιον, οὔ πω εἰδόθ’ ὁμοιΐου πολέμοιο [2] nēpios, who knew nothing yet of the joining of battle [3] IX 440 [4]… Read more
2. ΗΠΙΟΣ The word ēpios, used in Homer of persons, feelings, and medicines, is glossed by LSJ as “gentle…kind…soothing…assuaging.” This interpretation is supported by its association with the word aganos (“gentle”) in the phrase: μή τις ἔτι πρόφρων ἀγανὸς καὶ ἤπιος ἔστωσκηπτοῦχος βασιλεύς No longer now let one who is a sceptred king be eagerto be gentle and ēpios ii 230–231… Read more
3. Children Nēpia Tekna In the last chapter, I tried to show that while the idea of fatherhood is a frequent contextual associate of ēpios, the basic meaning of this word is something like “connecting.” Thus it implies a social relationship between the ēpios person and someone else. And, indeed, whenever the word ēpios describes a person in the Iliad or Odyssey, that person is… Read more
4. Adults In Chapter Three, I proposed that the word nēpios expresses the very limitations that can be overcome, in certain symbolic frameworks, through initiation rituals—namely, childhood, ignorance, and what Eliade calls “the profane condition.” The subject of that chapter was children; in the Homeric language (or world view) children, as a class, are nēpios. All who are nēpios are not children, however. This chapter discusses… Read more
Conclusion My object in this study has been to explore the meaning of the word nēpios within the Homeric poems. The possibility of an etymological connection between nēpios and ēpios led me to consider the contexts of ēpios also. At the least, these two words are thematically parallel—not only in that to be ēpios is to be “like a father” and to be nēpios is to… Read more
Bibliography Beekes, R.S.P. 1969. The Development of th e Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Greek. The Hague. Benveniste, E. 1969. Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes (2 vols.). Paris. Boisacq, E. 1950. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (4th ed.). Paris. Chantraine, P. 1974. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots (vol. 3). Paris. Read more
Foreword Cedric H. Whitman When Milman Parry died in 1935, his great demonstration that the Homeric poems were the culminating product of a long, highly developed oral tradition had already raised many questions to which scholars today are still trying to discover answers. Perhaps the most formidable question was: if oral poetry is composed by illiterate bards out of inherited metrical formulas, how can the Iliad… Read more
Acknowledgments This monograph, to put it simply, would not have been written without the precedent of Calvert Watkins’s work on Indo-European metrics. His field is linguistics, a discipline which I especially admire for the elegant precision that it can bring to literary studies. For my own approach to Hellenic literature and pre-literature, I have learned from him a τέχνη that has always been an invaluable aid. … Read more
4. The Village of Avdemi: A Case Study in Wanton Women? [1] … cicadas acerrimi cantus esse et mulieres libidinis avidissimas virosque in coitum pigerrimos scripsere. … “they [sc. Hesiod and Alcaeus] have written that the cicada’s songs are sharpest and women are most lustful and men most sluggish in sexual relations.” Pliny Natural history 22.86… Read more
5. Enter the Cicada The list of creatures which populate demotic lore is considerable: we have already remarked the partridge and the swallow—just to mention two common birds. The cicada, also, is a striking creature which evokes multiple themes in Greek tradition. In fact, its piercing, persistent cry not only informs the popular memory of the harvest but is a flash signal for such related themes as… Read more
