Apollonios de Rhodes et le vocabulaire homérique : les verbes en -ιάω et les verbes en -άω à vocalisme ō

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that Apollonius Rhodius’ vocabulary relies heavily, although not solely, on Homeric material. How he uses the words he borrows from Homer, however, has not been studied yet. This article will discuss the way Apollonius uses Homeric verbs belonging to two verbal classes, namely verbs in -ιάω and verbs in -άω verbs with radical -ō-. Both of those verbal classes might have been perceived as characteristic features of the ancient epic. Although verbs in -ιάω are well-attested throughout Greek texts and although the suffix is still productive in Hellenistic Greek, this suffix, in particular in forms with diectasis, is of great metrical convenience for a composition in dactylic hexameters, hence the development of artificial forms both in Homer and Apollonius. Those forms with diectasis were probably perceived as characteristic of the ancient epos. Verbs in -άω with radical -ō-, on the contrary, belong to a very small verbal class: those verbs barely occur outside poetic texts and very few new formations of this kind appear in post-Homeric Greek, which also makes them a distinctive feature of the epic language. Both of those verbal classes are well-documented in Apollonius’ epic. This article will study Apollonius’ use of Homeric verbs belonging to those two classes and compare it with Homeric language, pointing out both similarities and discrepancies between the two texts, taking into account morphology, syntax and semantics.

Keywords

• derivation
• verbal morphology
• epic language
• suffix
• hellenistic greek
• hellenistic poetic language