Friday, March 26, 2021

 

The Death of Scamandrius

Homer, Iliad 5.49-58 (tr. Peter Green):
Skamandrios, Strophios's son, well trained in the chase,
Meneläos, son of Atreus, took down with his sharpened spear,        50
fine hunter though he was, one whom Artemis herself
taught to shoot all wild things that the mountain woodlands nourish.
Yet of no avail to him now was Artemis the archer,
nor the skilled bowmanship in which he once excelled,
but Atreus's son Meneläos, that famous spearman,        55
plunged, as he fled before him, a spear into his back
between the shoulder blades, drove it through to his chest.
He slumped down face first, and his armor rattled upon him.

υἱὸν δὲ Στροφίοιο Σκαμάνδριον αἵμονα θήρης
Ἀτρεΐδης Μενέλαος ἕλ᾽ ἔγχεϊ ὀξυόεντι        50
ἐσθλὸν θηρητῆρα· δίδαξε γὰρ Ἄρτεμις αὐτὴ
βάλλειν ἄγρια πάντα, τά τε τρέφει οὔρεσιν ὕλη·
ἀλλ᾽ οὔ οἱ τότε γε χραῖσμ᾽ Ἄρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα,
οὐδὲ ἑκηβολίαι ᾗσιν τὸ πρίν γε κέκαστο·
ἀλλά μιν Ἀτρεΐδης δουρικλειτὸς Μενέλαος        55
πρόσθεν ἕθεν φεύγοντα μετάφρενον οὔτασε δουρὶ
ὤμων μεσσηγύς, διὰ δὲ στήθεσφιν ἔλασσεν,
ἤριπε δὲ πρηνής, ἀράβησε δὲ τεύχε᾽ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ.
Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. αἵμων , ονος, ὁ:
dub. sens., perh. eager, Σκαμάνδριον αἵμονα θήρης Il. 5.49; expl. by Gramm. as = δαίμων, for δαήμων, skilful, cf. EM 251.13. II. (αἷμα) bloody, E. Hec. 90, dub. l. in A. Supp. 847 (lyr.).
Robert Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Vol. I (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 39:
Bechtel = Friedrich Bechtel, Die Griechischen Dialekte, Bd. I (Berlin: Weidmann, 1921), p. 203, and Weiss = Michael Weiss, "Erotica: On the Prehistory of Greek Desire," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98 (1998) 31-61 (at 53-56).



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