unknown form or word

[Phil Tolstead]

Hi.

I am trying to understand the form of κρατεῖτα from this definition of βιαζεται by Hesychius:

βιαίως κρατεῖτα

- I think that κρατεῖτα could be from κρατεω but cannot see a parsing in that form. Any ideas?

[Stephen Hughes]

The gloss comes from footnote 91, pg 302 of Hesychii Alexandrini, Lexicon, edited by Moritz Schmidt (1867). (Also at Wikisource).

[Phil Tolstead]

Thanks Stephan, after a look at the pdf of the lexicon, I noticed that I had somehow not copied the final iota last year when copying from the wiki book. It is a normal form after all. Interesting - it seems that Hesychius uses 3rd person singular for his glosses. Problem solved

[Stephen Hughes]

... it seems that Hesychius uses 3rd person singular for his glosses.

To expand the context of your observation, let me say that LSJ don't grammatically regularise words that Hesychius copied (and glossed) from texts that passed in front of him (or his predecessors), but are not available to us now, as they do for other lemmata that we have extant textual evidence for. Examples of that are

βάβακοι, in Elis,
A.= τέττιγες; in Pontus, = βάτραχοι, Hsch.

βάβαλον: αἰδοῖον, Hsch.: also βάβαλον: κραύγασον (Lacon.), Id

To provide intellectual context or commentary for that, let me note that entries included in LSJ with only the authority of a dictionary such as Hesychius's are called "ghost-words" by those who would like to see their removal from future published dictionaries - they are words that no reader of the currently available Greek texts will ever consult while reading. Personally, I am in favour of their retention in larger reference works as a witness to the Greek language otherwise lost to us - both because there are so many Greek texts unread or unpublished in libraries and archives, and as a reminder that what we have is just a little of what once was.

Looking further at his dictionary, presumably, Hesychius looked at, quoted and glossed the LXX (or an important extract from it) too, with σαβέκ from

καὶ ἀναβλέψας Αβρααμ τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς αὐτοῦ εἶδεν καὶ ἰδοὺ κριὸς εἷς κατεχόμενος ἐν φυτῷ σαβεκ τῶν κεράτων καὶ ἐπορεύθη Αβρααμ καὶ ἔλαβεν τὸν κριὸν καὶ ἀνήνεγκεν αὐτὸν εἰς ὁλοκάρπωσιν ἀντὶ Ισαακ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ

among his entries <σαβέκ· "ἐν φυτῷ σαβέκ">. βάτος, Smidt pg. 1330 (last footnote), but not included in LSJ.

[Stephen Hughes]

Phil,
Specifically about your word

βιαζεται [rendered] by Hesychius [as] βιαίως κρατεῖτα[ι]

let me comment that while there is excitement to read what a native speaker from that general period made of the word, and there is some sense authority and integrity in seeing Hesychius's gloss, we do also need to consider polysemy - the range of meanings that the word could have. In other words, for the word βιάζεται in the text that he had in front of him, Hesychius (or somebody who wrote a word-list that he copied from) felt that the meaning was βιαίως κρατεῖται. What Hesychius dictionary doesn't do, is that it doesn't allow us to say that βιάζεται means βιαίως κρατεῖται in all circumstances.

Everytime someone uses a dictionary, they bring creativity and interpretation to the task. In a sense the dictionary user expands and augments the work of those who compiled the dictionary for their own personal and passing needs. LSJ and other large-scale collaborative and edited works give so much more in the way of range of meaning than Hesychius's single gloss does. Setting the gem in the structured context of the jewellery that LSJ has fashioned contextualises Hesychius a beautifies LSJ.

[Phil Tolstead]

Very interesting, Stephan. I have long appreciated your breadth of investigation into Greek. I've come to Hesychius fairly late in my research into βιαζεται. LSJ and BDAG do give more shades of meaning, but LSJ adds the English gloss 'violence' to many of its usage descriptions. Unquestionably biazetai is a military word. It is first attested in Homer and in Appian's histories alone I found a whopping 92 usages. In he military actions Appian(and others) describe there are variations about a basic theme of using force to take an objective. Or in Xenophon's case Clearchus trying to force his unhappy hoplites to fight against the Persian king. The passive sense is of someone else trying to use military force to take the subjects position or whatnot.(Thucydides especially). The Greeks being quite creative in metaphor this basic idea forceful subduing is expanded to apply to many items of ideas, will, health, law or music.

The English gloss of violence seems to carry a negative shade of meaning, usually with the idea of a gratuitous or inappropriate level of force. In the LXX it is used events as evil as rape or as positive as insisting on hospitality in the Middle Eastern hospitality culture.

Does βιαζεται have a derogatory or negative meaning in itself. Or would it be a true neutral where the context alone determines its positive or negative sense? Or shades in between?

Phil

[Stephen Hughes]

Does βιαζεται have a derogatory or negative meaning in itself. Or would it be a true neutral where the context alone determines its positive or negative sense? Or shades in between?

Here is another perspective you may wish to consider as you work with your word.

The suggestion from Modern Greek is that if you want to investigate the meanings of βιάζω and βιάζομαι, then there may in fact be three words that you can identify in your list of usages.

The first is both active and passive, and involves the forcing and being forced (the imposition of one person's will onto another person) that you are specifically asking about - either in a sexual way (rape) or in some other form of domination and subjugation circumstance.

The second is only active - in form and meaning - and means "put time pressure" on somebody (transitive usage), "to be urgent" (intransitive usage).

The third is passive in form, but active in meaning, and it means "hurry" (intransitive usage) to a place or to do something, or "to be in urgent need of something" (transitive usage - projecting one's sense of hurry onto something creates a need for it).