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ΓΛΑΥΚΩΠΙΣ 'ΑΘΗΝΗ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

E. Watson-Williams
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Extract

Athene is mentioned in the Iliad nearly 200 times and almost as often in the Odyssey. On ninety-two occasions Homer calls her γλαυκ⋯πις. How should we translate this constantly recurring epithet? Neither Chapman nor Pope claims to provide a literal translation. Often they are content with ‘Athenian Maid’ or ‘Minerva’: but when they do attempt to render γλαυκ⋯πις they offer ‘Blue-eyed Goddess’, ‘Blue-eyed Maid’, &c. Cowper prefers ‘Pallas cerulean-eyed’, and Lord Derby ‘blue-eyed Pallas’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , February 1954 , pp. 36 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1954

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References

page 36 note 1 Large Roman figures refer to Iliad, small to Odyssey.

page 36 note 2 Thirty-seven times in the Iliad and fifty-five in the Odyssey. For references see Seber, , Index Homericas (Oxford, 1780).Google Scholar

page 36 note 3 The Whole Workes of Homer (London, 1616).

page 36 note 4 The Iliad of Homer (London, 1715–1720).

page 36 note 5 The Odyssey of Homer (London, 1791).

page 36 note 6 The Iliad of Homer (London, 1864); but blue eyes belong to Amphitrite, , xii. 60Google Scholar; cf. Cicero, , de Natura Deorum I. xxx. 83Google Scholar, ‘caesios oculos Minervae, coeruleos Neptuni’. Diodorus Siculus, however (I. xii. 8), gives Athene blue eyes.

page 36 note 7 Liddell, and Scott, , Greek-English Lexicon, 5th ed. (Oxford, 1864)Google Scholar. This edition gives arguments for the change from ‘grey’ (eyes) to ‘glaring’: the 9th ed. (1940), retains similar conclusions.

page 36 note 8 Lang, A. et al. , Iliad of Homer (London, 1882).Google Scholar

page 36 note 9 Homer, E. V. Rieu, Odyssey and Iliad (Harmondsworth; Penguin, 1946, 1950).Google Scholar

page 36 note 10 Lucas, F. L., Greek Poetry for Everyman (London, 1951).Google Scholar

page 36 note 11 E.g. ðσσε φαεινώ, ‘shining eyes’, XIII. 3, 7, 435; XVII. 679; XXI. 415; ⋯λίκωψ, ‘bright-eyed’, i. 98, xvii, 274; μαρμαιροντα, ‘sparkling eyes’, iii. 397: Schmitz, L. (Smith's Biograph. and Mythol. Diet. (London, 1844), p. 397)Google Scholar ingeniously avoids the issue with ‘keen-sighted’.

page 37 note 1 Bewick, 's British Birds (Newcastle, 1797), p. 53.Google Scholar

page 37 note 2 Liddell and Scott, 9th ed., cite the comedian Epicharmos for this (? burlesque) derivation: also Aristotle, , Hist. Animal. 488a26Google Scholar, where I cannot find it.

page 37 note 3 See p. 36, nn. 8, 9, 10.

page 37 note 4 This seems to be the meaning of γλαυκιόων (xx. 172)—the maddened lion ‘charges blindly’. Hesiod quotes this passage, Scutum 430.

page 37 note 5 Lucretius, , De Renan Natura iv. 1161Google Scholar: and see p. 36, n. 6 above.

page 38 note 1 Oxf. Class. Diet. (Oxford, 1949), p. 113.

page 38 note 2 Kitto, H. D. F., The Greeks (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1951), p. 51.Google Scholar

page 39 note 1 And see X. 154; also αἰθόμενος, ‘blazing’ (fire), VIII. 563; στεροπή, ‘flashing lightning’, xi. 66, 184.

page 39 note 2 Except when helping Diomedes, , v. 793, 825, 853Google Scholar; but not 856, etc.

page 40 note 1 These two lines have been stigmatized as post-Homeric: but they are identical with XXII. 183–4.