I - Localization of Rare Late Features from Chantraine's Grammaire Homérique (Tome I – Phonétique et Morphologie)

Summary

(i)Faults of transcription from the early alphabet

‘Les exemples les plus clairs sont ceux qui supposent la confusion entre ε, о d'une part, et les fausses diphtongues ει, ου d'autre part.' The examples listed seem, however, to be genetically of different types.

(a) It is a mere possibility that ὁμοστιχάει is due to faulty transmission for ὁμοῦ στιχάει. The abnormal compound may be original. The verb is already abnormal as only here active in form (but so late epic) and only here without διέκτασις: contrast εστιχόωντο (p. 37): О 635 simile.

(b) Κρείσσων, μείζων, ἕννυσθαι are ‘Atticisms of the tradition’, and usual in Homer. It is curious that the exceptional Ψ 135 καταείνυον or καταείνυσαν is in a ‘late’ book, as if in some way it escaped the Atticizing process because of its lateness.

(c) Καιροσέων, from a rare technical term καῖρός which is not otherwise represented before late Greek, mostly in the lexicographers, was apparently not understood by the scribes and left much as it was. The two abnormal contractions in καιρουσσέων mark the form as late: η 107 (gardens of Alcinous).

(d) η 163 εΐσον for εσσον has a parallel in Hdt. ὑπείσας for ὑπέσας, and is therefore a matter for general textual criticism rather than an example of μεταχαρακτηρισμός.

(e) Άνηρείψαντο for ἀνηρέψαντο from the obsolete ερέπτω, which has close cognates in other languages, in all probability is due to confusion with έρείπω, despite the difference in meaning.