The meaning of Homeric εὔχομαι through its formulas

Chapter 4. εὔχομαι in a legal context

Σ 497 λαοὶ δ’ εἰν ἀγορῇ ἔσαν ἀθρόοι· ἔνθα δὲ νεῖκος
          ὠρώρει, δύο δ’ ἄνδρες ἐνείκεον εἵνεκα ποινῆς
          ἀνδρὸς ἀποφθιμένου· ὃ μὲν εὔχετο πάντ’ ἀποδοῦναι
500     δήμῳ πιφαύσκων, ὃ δ’ ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι·
          ἄμφω δ’ ἱέσθην ἐπὶ ἴστορι πεῖραρ ἑλέσθαι.
          λαοὶ δ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπήπυον ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοί·
          κήρυκες δ’ ἄρα λαὸν ἐρήτυον· οἱ δὲ γέροντες
          εἵατ’ ἐπὶ ξεστοῖσι λίθοις ἱερῷ ἐνὶ κύκλῳ,
505     σκῆπτρα δὲ κηρύκων ἐν χέρσ’ ἔχον ἠεροφώνων·
          τοῖσιν ἔπειτ’ ἤϊσσον, ἀμοιβηδὶς δὲ δίκαζον.
          κεῖτο δ’ ἄρ’ ἐν μέσσοισι δύω χρυσοῖο τάλαντα,
          τῷ δόμεν ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰθύντατα εἴποι.

These lines from the description of Achilles’ shield contain the only example (l. 499) of εὔχομαι in Homer which does not fall into the categories already discussed. It merits special treatment because its context—which is not sacral, not secular, but legal—is unique in the Homeric corpus. Special treatment of legal usages is customary for Indo-European languages because their legal traditions are extremely old. Consequently a word that participates in them may acquire or retain meanings that are not predictable from other usages. [1] As a corollary, the often-made assumption that sacral usages are primary and that legal usages are dependent upon them is not a dependable methodological tool. It is more productive and rigorous to begin by assuming that sacral and legal language developed in parallel rather than in sequence.

Ideal method, then, presupposes separate treatment of legal usages. But in this case there is only one legal usage, a fact which makes the discussion of εὔχομαι’s meaning in it especially difficult. There are no phraseological parallels to Σ 499 within the Homeric texts to support an analysis of this passage. The resultant mass of scholarship on this line offers several different opinions based on the etymology of εὔχομαι and searching internal analysis {100|101} of Σ 499’s grammar and context. As an example, here is a sketch of Benveniste’s view. [2] First he analyzes other attestations of εὔχομαι and its cognates in Latin and Indo-Iranian in such a way as to show that the sacral notion ‘s’engager à’ or ‘faire voeu’ is a historically primary meaning of the root. Then he translates Σ 499–500 ‘l’un s’engage à tout payer, l’autre refuse de rien recevoir,’ a version which, he claims, has more dramatic significance than the orthodox ‘l’un prétend avoir tout payé, l’autre nie avoir rien reçu. [3] If his translation is correct, the violent quarrel in the passage concerns a dynamic issue, the lex talionis itself, whether the murder should be avenged or fined. But if the orthodox version stands, the quarrel centers on the drier question of whether or not the fine was actually paid. Benveniste then musters grammatical arguments in his favor as well as aesthetic ones. ἀναίνομαι, he says, never means ‘deny’ in Homer, and εὔχομαι never refers to the past or a completed act, only to an actual or future one. Moreover, the orthodox translation stretches aorist infinitives (ἀποδοῦναι, ἐλέσθαι) to mean ‘to have paid’, ‘to have received’, while his own does not.

But on the whole these lines are best considered a crux which cannot be convincingly resolved on the basis of such methods and evidence. New evidence does, in fact, exist, but it has been overlooked. Analysis of the following Linear Β tablet from Pylos can raise the discussion of Σ 499–500 to a more objective level:

e – ri – ta i – je – re – ja e – ke
e – u – ke – to – qe e – to – ni – jo e – ke – e
te – ο da – mo – de – mi pa – si ko – to – na – ο
ke – ke – me – na – ο ο – na – to e – ke – e

Transliteration: Ε – ri – ta ἱερεια ἐχει εὐχετοι – qe e-to-ni-jo ἐχεεν θεωι, δᾱμος δε μιν φᾱσι κτοιναων ke-ke-μεναων o-na-to ἐχεεν.

PY Ep 704, 11. 5–6; Palmer, MGT, # 95, ρ. 211; Inscriptiones Pyliae (C. Gallavotti-Α. Sacconi, Rome, 1961), p. 56.


No adequate equivalents have been found for some of the real-estate terminology in this tablet, but the general picture is clear enough for our purposes. {102|103} There is a dispute between a priestess and the δᾱμος qua public official about the kind of ownership she has of a piece of land. E-ri-ta, the priestess, has and εὐχετοι [
12] to have e-to-ni-jo (land) in the god’s name, while (δε) the δᾱμος φᾱσι that she (μιν) has o-na-to (opposite of e-to-ni-jo land) from the κτοιναι (lots) ke-ke-μεναι. The latter seem to be ‘public lands’ as opposed to κτοιναι ki-ti-μεναι ‘privately owned lands’. [13]

One scholar of εὔχομαι has introduced this tablet into the discussion of Σ 499. He claims that its attestation of εὔχομαι has sacral connotations because its subject is a priestess. [14] Such an interpretation is by no means obligatory. Furthermore, it obscures the real significance the tablet does have. For it is the only other example in the Greek language of εὔχομαι in a legal context. Moreover, we are in a position to deduce the meaning of εὔχομαι in this passage on formal grounds, without resorting to grammatical rules of thumb or etymology. The sentence in Linear Β poses a contrast between the priestess who εὐχετοι and the δᾱμος which φᾱσι about the exact type of land-tenure involved. This combination of εὔχομαι and φημί is familiar from our study of secular εὔχομαι in Homer (see above, pp. 76ff.), where the two words are frequently (10 + times) joined as marked and unmarked words for saying, typically, ‘I, a hero, εὔχομαι about my γένος which is such-and-such, while another φησι about his …’ This is demonstrably the relationship between εὐχετοι and φᾱσι in the tablet. An earlier version [15] of it is preserved which is transcribed as follows:

i – je – re – ja e – ke – qe e – u – ke – to – qe e-to-ni-jo e – ke – e te – ο
ko – to – no – ο – ko – de ko – to – na – ο ke – ke – me – na – ο o-na-to e – ke – e

Transliteration: ἱερεια ἐχει – qe εὐχετοι – qe e – to – ni – jo ἐχεεν θεωι, κτοινοοχος δε κτοιναων ke – ke – μεναων o-na-to ἐχεεν.

Translation: A priestess is to have and states she has e-to-ni-jo in the god’s name, while the land official [says] she has o-na-to from the public lands.

PY Eb 297 (Palmer, MGT, p. 211)


In this version the verb of saying is literally omitted from the second clause. One could hardly conceive of a clearer sign that φᾱσι in the other version is an unmarked equivalent of εὐχετοι. {103|104}

As summaries of legal disputes, these passages are stylistically and phraseologically comparable. Each consists of two curt clauses connected by δέ whose subjects are the parties to the dispute. In both the form of εὔχομαι appears in the first clause. It belongs to the stressed or marked member of the pair. More strikingly, the word δῆμος/δᾱμος occurs in both passages. Lejeune [18] has defined δᾱμος in Linear Β as “une personalité juridique collective”, which is not an inadequate description of its reference in Σ 500. In this connection it is notable that δαμος occurs in a 6th century Elean inscription (Cauer-Schwyzer D. G. E. 413.8) fixed with the Mycenaean land-tenure term τελεστα. [19] Σ 499–500 is perhaps another instance of the occurrence of this word in an archaic context appropriate to Linear B. Finally, there is the word πιφαύσκων in Σ 500. A variant πιφάσκων {104|105} (cognate of φημί) is attested for it here and every other time the word occurs in Greek epic, although the received text is always πιφαύσκ-. The unanimous confusion of these two words, which are confined to Epic and Aeschylus, is not a simple transcriptional error. It is based on a formal and semantic confusion of πιφάσκω and πιφαύσκω which is of demonstrable antiquity. Etymologically, πιφαύσκ-ω/-ομαι is an archaic derived present of the root attested in φάος ‘light’. The verb should mean ‘show, reveal’, and in fact it does in several Homeric examples:

ψ 202 οὕτω τοι τόδε σῆμα πιφαύσκομαι …
          ‘in this way I reveal this sign to you …’

HApoll 444 ἔνθ’ ἀρ’ ὅ γε φλόγα δαῖε πιφαυσκόμενος τὰ ἅ κῆλα
                ‘then he caught fire, revealing those shafts of his’

Φ 333 ἀλλ’ ἐπάμυνε τάχιστα, πιφαύσκεο δὲ φλόγα πολλήν
          ‘now defend us very quickly, and show forth much fire’

Μ 280 νιφέμεν, ἀνθρώποισι πιφαυσκόμενος τὰ ἃ κῆλα
          ‘to snow, revealing those shafts of his [Zeus’] to men’

If we reconsider the contextual, stylistic, and verbal parallelism of these two attestations of εὔχομαι, a solution to the problem of its meaning in Σ 499 imposes itself. As in the Linear Β tablets, εὔχομαι in the Homeric passage is simply the functionally marked word for ‘say’.

Perhaps this is the place to make yet another suggestion about the legal situation on the shield of Achilles. If our interpretation of εὔχομαι in Σ 499 is correct, the legal conflict is not only dramatic but also thematically relevant to Achilles and explicable in terms of internal evidence from Homer. “One man was saying he paid [the ποινή for murder] in full, the [105|106] other [the victim’s kinsman] was refusing to take anything”. The issue is not whether the fine was actually paid. Nor is it an historic conflict about the commutation of the lex talionis. In dispute is whether the kinsman specifically must take the compensation offered him. Conflict on exactly this issue is implicit in another discussion of ποινή in the Iliad. In Iliad I Ajax is making a final plea to Achilles that he accept the compensation offered him and return to battle. He calls him σχέτλιος and νηλής, and he accuses him of disregarding the real friendship the ambassadors have for him. Then he continues:

I 632 … καὶ μέν τίς τε κασιγνήτοιο φονῆος
          ποινὴν ἢ οὗ παιδὸς ἐδέξατο τεθνηῶτος·
          καί ῥ’ ὃ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ πόλλ’ ἀποτίσας,
          τοῦ δέ τ’ ἐρητύεται κραδίη καὶ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ
          ποινὴν δεξαμένῳ· σοὶ δ’ ἄληκτόν τε κακόν τε
          θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι θεοὶ θέσαν εἵνεκα κούρης
          οἴης·


The ποινή does not magically relieve its receiver of grief at the loss of his slain brother or son. Nonetheless he takes it, and it is Ajax’s whole point that he takes this social substitute for physical vengeance even against his will. So the question on Achilles’ divinely wrought shield is whether the murdered man’s kinsman has the right actually to refuse the murderer’s offer of ποινή in the same way as Achilles himself refused the embassy’s ἄποινα (so-called at I 120). [
21] And we can be certain that the Achilles-figure on the shield will take absolutely nothing. His use of the word μηδὲν in the phrase ὁ δ’ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι is in fact an epic obscenity, this being the only attestation in the whole Homeric corpus of what must be considered an un-epic word. [22] So hotly contested is the issue which those old men embossed in gold are still trying to decide. [106|107]

Footnotes

[ back ] 1. For an example, see C. Watkins 1970: pp. 321 ff. or the discussion of Lat. iūs ‘right’, Ved. Skt. yoḥ ‘purification; prosperity’, Av. yaoš ‘id.’ in Benveniste 1969: t. 2, pp. 111–22.

[ back ] 2. Benveniste 1969: t. 2, pp. 233-243.

[ back ] 3. Benveniste ibid.: p. 241.

[ back ] 4. Corlu 1966: pp. 331–6.

[ back ] 5. Benveniste’s translation of these verbs as presents is incorrect. (He also allows ‘souhaiter’ as an archaic meaning of the root.)

[ back ] 6. He cites Θ 254, Φ 501, λ 261:

          Θ 254 εὔξατο Τυδεΐδαο πάρος σχέμεν ὠκέας ἵππους

          Φ 501 εὔξεσθαι ἐμέ νικῆσαι κρατερῆφι βίηφι

          λ 261 ἣ δὴ καὶ Διὸς εὔχετ’ ἐν ἀγκοίνῃσιν ἰαῦσαι

All of these infinitives after secular εὔχομαι have past reference and must be translated ‘to have held’, ‘to have conquered’, ‘to have spent the night’.

[ back ] 7. Here Corlu refers to Chantraine 1963: p. 331. For another aspect of μηδέν, see below, p. 106.

[ back ] 8. K. Latte 1931, p. 129, n. 1; Wackernagel 1950: p. 175; E. Fraenkel 1950 ad Aesch. Ag. 1653; Bonner and Smith 1930: pp. 31ff; Calhoun 1944: p. 76.

[ back ] 9. Citron 1965: pp. 83–84.

[ back ] 10. Chantraine 1963: p. 355, n. 1, offers this translation: ‘l’un promettait de tout payer, mais l’autre ne voulait rien accepter,’ and on p. 355 ‘l’autre refusait de rien recevoir.’

[ back ] 11. ἄποινα is object of δέχεσθαι (A 20), of δέχθαι (A 23, 377, H. Aphr. 140), ἀπεδέξατ’ (A 95), δέξασθαι (A 111–12), δέξαι (Ζ 46, A 131), κ. τ. λ. ποινήν is object of δεξαμένου (I 636), ἐδέξατο (I 633), δέξεται (Ρ 207–8).

[ back ] 12. For the ending –τοι, see Palmer 1963: p. 51.

[ back ] 13. On the meaning of these terms, see Palmer 1963: pp. 186-9.

[ back ] 14. Citron 1965: p. 84. Perpillou 1972 has anticipated my assessment of the significance of this evidence if not its interpretation.

[ back ] 15. Palmer 1963: pp. 189-90 lays out the reasons for assuming that Py Eb 297 is an earlier version of PY Ep 704, 5-6, (the historical relationship between the two is not essential to my argument).

[ back ] 16. Benveniste 1969: t. 2, p. 240, p. 237.

[ back ] 17. Its functional appropriateness is not in question. This is what all interpreters since Ventris and Chadwick have taken it to mean.

[ back ] 18. Lejeune 1960: p. 139. See also Lejeune 1965: p. 12, “une entité administrative douée, notamment, de la personnalité juridique”.

[ back ] 19. Palmer 1963: p. 191.

[ back ] 20. Indo-Europeanists even suggest that the roots of πιφάσκω and φημί (*bheə-) and of πιφαύσκω (*bhau-) are cognate. See Frisk 1960-1972 s.v.

[ back ] 21. For association of ποινή and ἄποινα in Homeric diction, see above, n. 11, and Ajax’s simile just quoted above.

[ back ] 22. pace Risch 1972: p. 191, who considers its occurrence here a token of linguistic lateness.