Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Glad to Be Back
Homer, Odyssey 13.353-354 (tr. A.T. Murray):
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Glad then was the much-enduring, goodly Odysseus,Arie Hoekstra on line 354:
rejoicing in his own land, and he kissed the earth, the giver of grain.
γήθησέν τ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔπειτα πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς,
χαίρων ᾗ γαίῃ, κύσε δὲ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν.
κύσε: as he did at v 463 (which has the same formula) and Agamemnon did on his return (Od. iv 522). Both ζείδωρος (probably from *ζεϝέδωρος) ἄρουρα and its complementary formula φυσίζοος αἶα (cf. Bechtel, Lexilogus, I48) are probably highly archaic. For ζειαί, Triticum monococcum (and/or bicoccum?), see S. West on iv 41; on the problem of ζ (as compared with γ in Sanskrit yáva- 'barley') see M. Leroy in Mélanges Chantraine, op. cit. (xiv 199 n.), 106-17. ἄρουρα, lit. 'arable land', already in Mycenaean, PY Eq 213 (Ventris-Chadwick, Documents, no. 154), cf. also Ruijgh, Élément, 111 and 122-3.Illustration by Jan Styka (1858-1925):
