Stephen Hughes wrote:Well I suppose that I should repeat my self correction that belongs with this material.
Stephen Hughes wrote:Stephen Hughes wrote:Allow me to make it a little more accessible...
- κῆν᾽ - this is the reason I said I would make this text a little more accessible. From a distant memory, I would say that it is a form of ἐκεῖνος, but instinct set in place by past mistakes tells me that is Attic only, and sensibility tells me it should be a particle of affirmation. In short, I need help on this word.
Well I've had a chance to look in the dictionary now. My memory was right that it was
a dialectical form of ἐκεῖνος, but a bit hazy about which form for which dialect.
Now let me say that the (understood) φᾶμι "I say" (a verb of speaking) is constructed with two accusatives κῆνο "that thing" and κάλλιστον "the best thing" and an infinitive of the verb to be.
κῆνο being neuter is another reason - besides that Sappho's poetry usually expresses the love culture between women - to conclude that ὄττω is neuter not masculine.
Since we're in the process of writing scholia in the margins of a text, let me add a couple more notes:
--κάλλιστον: I've always understood the adjective here in Sappho's text more literally, "most beautiful"; that's the reason I used the word κόσμος, itself a word that I think is at root aesthetic, in the sense of "pleasing arrangement of elements envisioned" -- a starry sky (galaxy = "Milky Way" = "universe"), troops arrayed in full array, a fleet of ships in formation, or, as Sappho puts it -- more or less -- in Fragment 16, "the shadow of your smile as you walk by" (so to speak).
--κῆν᾽ ὄττω τις ἔραται: Yes, κῆνο is neuter, and although Sappho may have been a Lesbian in both the literal and the extended sense, the neuter pronoun might very well refer to a man or a woman; the neuter noun ἐρώτιον/Ἐρώτιον (proper name) is not uncommon in Greek for "darling/Darling".
To clarify the note on κάλλιστον, here's what she says:
Sappho 16, 4th and 5th stanzas wrote:κἄμε νῦν Ἀνακτορίας ὀνέμναι-
σ’ οὐ παρεοίσας
τᾶς κε βολλοίμαν ἔρατόν τε βᾶμα
κἀμάρυχμα λάμπρον ἴδην προσώπω
ἢ τὰ Λύδων ἄρματα κἀν ὄπλοισι
πεσδομάχεντας.
Roughly: "It's put me in mind of Anactoria who's not here (with me); it's her lovely way of walking and her sparkling glance that I'd rather catch a glimpse of than the chariots of the Lydians and foot soldiers in full armor" -- which completes the thought of the opening line: some people really do prefer looking at troops maneuvering on the battlefield; not so Sappho.
--ὀνέμναισ’ = ἀνέμνησε(ν)
--παρεοίσας = παρούσης
--τᾶς = ἐκείνης
--κε βολλοίμαν = βουλοίμην ἄν
--βᾶμα = βῆμα
--ἀμάρυχμα = ἀμάρυγμα
--ἴδην = ἰδεῖν
--προσώπω = προσώπου
--πεσδομάχεντας = πεζομαχοῦντας (Lesbian Aeolic πεσδομάχημμι = Attic πεζομαχέομαι)