previous next

[239] εἰρόμεναι παῖδας, sc. ‘asking about their sons,’ the so-called schema Homericum; so 10.416, 24.390. What the exact meaning of ἔται is we cannot say. The word occasionally occurs in later Greek in the sense townsman; e.g. in the treaty between Argos and Sparta, Thuk.v. 79 “τοῖς δὲ ἔταις καττὰ πάτρια δικάζεσθαι”, and in the well-known Elean inscr., Collitz 1149. 9 “αἴτε ϝέτας αἴτε τελέστα <ς> αἴτε δᾶμος”, in this case opposed to official as in Aisch. Supp. 247.This well enough suits all cases in H., where, however, the connotation is rather fellow-townsman: 7.295 “ἔτας καὶ ἑταίρους,” 9.464 “ἔται καὶ ἀνεψιοί,” 16.456 (= 674) “κασίγνητοί τε ἔται τε” (and so Od. 15.273), Od. 4.16 “γείτονες ἠδὲ ἔται”, and see Od. 4.3 with M. and R.'s note. Etymologically the word is evidently akin to “ἑταῖρος”.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (10 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (10):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: