A grammar of the Homeric dialect - Wilbourhall.org

330 PARTICLES.
others (II. 2. 397, Od. n. 18., 13. 101) the sense is general so that ore '
is
:
admissible in six only (II. 7. 335, 459., 8. 373, 475, Od. 2. 374., 4. 477). It
cannot be an accident that there are so many cases of oV dV where Homeric
usage requires the pure Subj., and no similar cases of ore KCV : but for that
very reason we cannot correct them by reading ore '. Meanwhile no better
solution has been proposed, and we must be content to note the 16 places as
in all probability corrupt or spurious.
It is one thing,, however, to find that &v has encroached upon
Key in Homer, and another thing to show that there are no uses
of ay which belong to the primitive Homeric language.
The restoration of Ke(y) is generally regarded as especially easy
in the combination OUK ay, for which ou Key can always be written
without affecting either sense or metre. The change, however,
is
open to objections which have not been sufficiently considered.
It will be found that OVK av occurs 61 times in the ordinary text
of Homer : while ou Key occurs 9 times, and ou KC 7 times. Now
of the forms Key and KC the first occurs in the Iliad 272 times, the
second 222 times. Hence, according to the general laws of
probability, ou Key and ou Ke may be expected to occur in the same
proportion and in the ordinary text this is the case But
:
(9 : 7).
if
every OUK oV were changed into ou Key, there would be 7
instances of ou Key against 7 of ou KC. This clearly could not be
accidental : hence it follows that OUK ay must be retained in all or
nearly all the passages where it now stands.* And if OUK ay is
right, we may infer that the other instances of oV with a negative
22 in number are equally unassailable.
Another group of instances in which ay is evidently primitive
consists of the dactylic combinations 05 irep &v, rf irep ay,
et irep ay.
Van Leeuwen would write os K &c.
7re/>, ;
but in Homer irep
usually comes immediately after the Relative or el,
and before Key
( 365)- Similarly ou8e yap ay (II. 24. 566) and Topa yap ay (Od.
2. 77) cannot be changed into ov8e Ke yap, rotypa K since the
-yap,
order ydp Key is invariable in Homer. In these uses, accordingly,
ay
may be defended by an argument which was inapplicable to
to Key.
OUK ay, viz. the impossibility of making the change
The same may be said of the forms in which ay occurs under
the ictus of the verse, preceded by a short monosyllable (w
as ),
II. I.
205 fjs VTipo7fXirj(ri, ra)(' &v 7rore OVJJLOV oAeVa-r?.
Od. 2. 76 et x.' iV 6 '- 5 7 e