In addition to dialectal forms, the Homeric texts contain forms that are simply artificial. This does not mean unmotivated. All novel creations have a basis in either the poet’s natural language or the Kunstsprache itself. Since all forms must be understood, epic concoctions had to have the appearance of being dialectal variants.
As noted in §8.8, inflecting formulas can motivate artificial forms (cf. Witte 1912a, 1913d; Meister 1921). Most famous is acc. sg. εὐρὺν πόντον ‘wide sea’, replaced by εὐρέα πόντον which could occupy the 4th or 5th foot, like dat. εὐρέϊ πόντωι (cf. GH i. 97). The basis is the stem εὐρέ- and the consonant-stem acc. sg. -α, as in νῆα / νέα ‘ship’ (*nāw-m̥). Witte concluded that Homer is not even a mixture of dialects but an artificial poetic language and that only long use by generations of poets could have given the artificial epic language its flexible, utile form (cf. GH i. 94‒112).
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From the way the bard learns the trade, analogous to second-language acqui- sition, Homer and his predecessors generated new poetic forms by such means as a productive suffix on an archaic or dialectal word, or an old or dialectal ending on a contemporary form, e.g. Ionic νη- ‘ship’ plus Aeolic dat. pl. -εσσι yielding artificial νήεσσι ‘on ships’.
Analogical creations abound. Consider the fourth-foot creations τιθήμενον ‘putting’ (10.34), τιθήμεναι ‘(to) let lie’ (23.83, 247), after τίθημι ‘I put’ (Schulze 1892: 16). Hundreds of infinitives are analogical. For ‘to be’ Homer uses Ionic εἶναι (over 140x), Lesbian ἔμμεναι (85x), artificial ἔμεναι (22x), ἔμμεν (5x, antevo- calic, fifth foot), and ἔμεν (11x). For ‘copulate’, μιγῆναι is always line-final (9.133 [= 19.176], 14.386, xi.306, xx.12) and the long-form μιγήμεναι occurs only in the fourth foot (6.161, 165, 13.286, 15.409, 21.469). For πολεμιζέμεναι (9.337) ‘to wage war’ see §11.5 (end).
Once the thematic infinitive contracted to -ειν, metrical -εhεν (Myc.) required a fourth / fifth foot substitute — artificial -έμεν (108 examples in La Roche 1869: 90‒93), e.g. ἐχέμεν for ἔχειν ‘to have’, with -μεν from the athematic verb (Meister 1921: 13 ff.; GH i. 490 ff.; Wathelet 1970: 322 f.), as in E. Thessalian and Boeotian (Blümel 1982: 210 ff.), e.g. Thess. κρεννέμεν (§19.1(1)). On the model contracted fut. inf. βαλεῖν : uncontracted βαλέειν (< *gʷal-eh-ehen) = aor. inf. βαλεῖν (< gʷal-
ehen) : x, the output was βαλέειν ‘throw’. This explains why Homer has 102 aorist
infinitives in έειν but no present infinitives like *φερέειν, only φέρειν, φερέμεν ‘bear’ (Nikolaev 2010a, 2011b, 2012).
Contracted forms like nom. pl. ἐπαρτεῖς ‘ready-equipped’ were different from -ειν because they admitted analogical segmentation after acc. pl. ἐπαρτέας etc. (§15.7.3), hence nom. pl. ἐπαρτέες (viii.151), a classic artificial form (Witte 1913b: 225 etc.; Meister 1921: 179; Miller 1982: 140 f.).
The epithets of Apollo exhibit several metrically conditioned variants, e.g. ἑκάεργος ‘free-acting’, ἑκηβόλος (always ends the fourth foot: Solmsen 1901: 26 f.), ἑκατηβόλος, ἑκατηβελέτᾱο (1.75; Shield 100; Hymn to Delian Apollo 157) ‘free-shooting, smiting at will’. The ancients associated ἑκα/η- with ἑκάς ‘far’, hence ‘smiting from afar’ (defended by some commentators). The initial /w/ (§19.4 ff.) suggests ἑκών ‘willing’ (DELG 327 ff.; EDG 395‒398): *wek-ont- is remade from *wek-at- (< *weḱ-n̥t- LIV 672 f.), which can underlie both ἑκάεργος (*weka(t)-werg-o-) and (ϝ)εκατ-ᾱ-βόλος, in which the /ā/ is perhaps analogical to that in (ϝ)εκᾱ-βόλος. Risch compares βαθυρρεέτᾱο (21.195) beside βαθύρροος ‘deep-flowing’ etc. (WHS 32, 220), which lack the /ā/. Since Doric and lyric also attest ἑκατᾱβόλος, that is deeply entrenched and may reflect an older *wekat-a- from *wekat- remodeled after *wek-a-, both with compound lengthening. Roots in the e-grade normally take -ής (e.g. -τερπής ‘pleasing’, -τρεφής ‘nourished’) rather than -έτης (Meissner 2006: 192 f.), but ὑψιβρεμέτης ‘thundering on high’
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and especially νεφεληγερέτα ‘cloud-gathering’ (Jones 2012: 57 f.) provide fitting models for the late (Shipp 1972: 227) and artificial ἑκατηβελέτᾱο.
Metrically inconvenient forms admitted secondary affixation. For πολέμιος ‘relating to battle; warlike’, the epic form is πολεμήϊος, e.g. πολεμήϊα ἔργα ## ‘acts of war’ (2.338, 5.428, etc.); cf. Ἀρήϊα (6.340+) ‘id.’ (Ἄρης ‘Ares’), etc., which became productive in Ionic (cf. WHS 127 f.). On ξῡνήϊα see §10.2. For πτολιπόρθος (16x) ‘city-sacking’ (more usually πτολίπορθος DELG 886, 926; EDG 1219), the extended form πτολιπόρθιος is employed in the fourth foot, e.g. Ὀδυσσῆα πτολιπόρθιον ‘Odysseus, sacker of cities’ (ix.504, 530). Haug and Welo (2001: 134) claim the -ιο- formation replaces an older trochaic form in the fourth foot.
The bizarre ἀέθλιον (14x) for ἄεθλον ‘prize’ occurs exclusively in the fourth foot. Haug and Welo (2001: 134) suggest dactylization of a trochee. Many dactylic forms were created for the position before the adonic close (cf. §8.7; Witte 1915: 484 f.; 1972: 88 ff.; Meister 1921: 12‒22; GH i. 223; Shipp 1972: 66; Hackstein 2010: 411).
Meister (1921: 19) cites eleven verbs used in the middle in the fourth foot, and Hackstein (1997/8) shows that intransitive perfect active participles of the form ⏑ ⏑ – – (e.g. βεβαρηώς* ‘oppressed (by weight)’) were replaced by the middle form (e.g. βεβαρημένος ⏑ ⏑ | – ⏑ ⏑) in the fourth or fifth foot.
A list of substitutions for metrically inconvenient forms is collected in Hack- stein (2010: 409 ff.). For instance, a cretic word like ἀγρίην ‘wild’ (acc. sg. f.) is adapted as ἄγριον (acc. sg. c.), although in this case preservation of an archaism is possible. A double trochee like μοχθέοντα ‘suffering’ (acc. sg. m.) is adapted as μοχθίζοντα (1x 2.723), a clear innovation because old -ίζω derivatives were denominal (§22.6).
Many artificial forms result from diectasis, or metrical ‘stretching’ of a con- tracted form (Wackernagel 1916: 66 ff.; GH i. 75‒83; Wyatt 1994: 137‒140; Wachter 2012: 71 f.). After contraction of *ἐ(ϝ)ῑκοσι το εἴκοσι ‘twenty’, a form was needed to fit the original scansion, and distended ἐείκοσι was created. Beside uncon- tracted ὁράω ‘I see’, etc., contractions in the natural language led to forms like ὁρῶ, ὁραῖς, ὁρῶντα, etc., that did not fit the same metrical slots, and artificial ὁρόω, ὁράᾱις, ὁρόωντα entered the poetic tradition. In the language of the poet, φάος ‘light’ (older *φάϝος DELG 1168 f.) contracted to φῶς, from which distended φόως facilitated an antevocalic iamb (e.g. 15.741).
New variants could be created by applying or failing to apply more recent rules of the contemporary spoken language, such as quantitative metathesis (§§7.8, 15.7.4). All metrically efficacious means were employed to propagate an artificial poetic language, as argued by Parry (1932: esp. pp. 17 ff. = 1971: 337 ff.).
The novel forms could not be too divergent because they had to be under- stood. For this reason, the artificial forms had to be conceptually plausible alter-
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nants produced by the same processes that yield dialectal variants. As a seafaring people, the ancient Greeks were accustomed to hearing different dialects, and not being linguists, they had no way to evaluate whether a form was artificial or regional. Perceptually, since the stories were about events in the distant past, a tale ‘remembered’ and handed down by the Muses was just assumed to be in the language of their ancestors who fought at Troy, whether that was the case or not.