Classical Philology Notes

October 19th

– The shape of the Homer’s Language is Ionic Greek which was in a wide use even in
Afghanistan and India after the conquests of Alexander the Great
– In Ionic Latin every long A became long E
– *Attic reversal* Found in Herodotus’ works
– Terpander the poet’ immigration was influential.

October 25th

– In Homer’s speeches there is more liberty philologically speaking.

– Alexandrians made several critical editions of Homer which is the reason why we can
analyse them today. Also the active philologists in Ancient Greek. But in analysing the texts
mostly philologists try to get back to the original text.
– There’s this thing called “Correptio Attica” in which the syllablesiation changes from
“short/short” to “short/long” ; which is a normal scenario in Attic.
– Iliad is older than the odyssey conceived from analysing the texts.
– “Manos” “Kalos” “Xsenos” (Written in Greek alphabet on the white board). A resonant and
a consonant combo is not stable. They are important example of using a specific kind of
spelling and syllablisation that you didn’t specifically understand.
– To some scholars Homer is considered as a “Paydeya” (Greek Alphabet).
– Homer had a considerable impact on the geek identity.
– Homer, particularly the Iliad became so important of a text to analyse.
– Dialogues are mostly attic based; Normal attic forms are also found in many tragedies.
(Ionic Epic forms)
– Comedy uses commonly, weren’t like tragedies.

October 26th

– The Homeric language is artificial and composed. And all the poetic languages in Greek

November 2nd

– *Homer is a result of multiple composition*

– Analysing 2nd (Thematic declension)
 – One of the most peculiar suffixes in “O” in thematic vowels
A thematic vowel is affected by a phenomenon called apophony. -In linguistics, apophony (also
known as ablaut, (vowel) gradation, (vowel) mutation, alternation, internal modification, stem
modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, internal inflection etc.) is
any alternation within a word that indicates grammatical information (often inflectional).-

– languages used have (European and I do European ) 8-11 declensions but languages tend
to simplify over time
– The two words “ippoisi” (i+pi+pi+o+i+sigma+i) and “ippois” are completely different
words.
Ippoisi is a locative form (Dative)
The word “ippois” is an instrumental case.
In HOmeric texts the usual form is ioisi (o+i+sigma+i)
– in Classical Greek the way that an action is seen is the matter. Present is in a long term
way, so if we say someone dies it means that the person is in the process of dying.
– Language is not a processed system, it can be influenced by the forms
– Apophony also has affected the presence of accents

November 8th

– The destruction of the city Troy actually happened, the same with Tibs (?), though they are
mythical, they are historical.
In Iliad for instance people eat meat or there is no fishing which is not happened in that date,
consuming meat was for an earlier period; in the whole Iliad there is only one reference of fishing,
there are metaphors about fishing though.

– there is a crucial formula for understanding Homeric texts: what is left of the essential idea
(?)
The formula is usually repeated. It’s about syllables(?) . What did I just wrote?
The reason is for poet to have some already prepared parts so that he can manage focusing on
other ideas better. For example a long/short/short is used to refer to only something.
For example in the text “the sun is shining” but the essential idea is that the day has started.
The beginning of the day has been in the poem 22 times for instance.
– in the very begging the epic poems were oral. Oral components play an important role (the
oral performance)
It’s not that writing wasn’t very disposal. Writing means there is a concealed idea in the text. The
oral one was more efficient apparently
 – one of the matters of Homeric questions is that how affected is the texts by the culture
back then. Cause Homer kinda was one of the firsts to start writing history; there was
mostly oral traditions and stuff.
– The epic cycle: it refers to a number of poems which all of them creat a specific events.
It’s a structure which presents a sequence of events.
The events of Iliad actually show a really short period of time, roughly a month, only couple of
days
But The Odyssey events happened in a ten year period.