Boris Maslov

Redefining Constructio Praegnans: On the Variation between Allative and Locative Expressions in Ancient Greek

In traditional Ancient Greek grammar, the term constructio praegnans refers to an apparent syntactic anomaly whereby the idea of motion is missing from either the verb or the prepositional phrase: a verb that does not express motion is combined with a directional prepositional phrase (e.g., ‘slaughter into a container’) or a motion verb combines with a static prepositional phrase describing a goal of motion (e.g., ‘throw in the fire’). This study explores such usages in the period from Archaic to Classical Greek and argues against treating constructio praegnans as a unitary phenomenon. The seemingly aberrant combinations of the verb’s meaning and the type of prepositional phrase are shown to be motivated by four independent factors: 1) lexical (some individual non-motion verbs select for a directional argument); 2) aspectual (static encoding of endpoints is allowed with perfect participles); 3) the encoding of results with change of state verbs; and 4) the archaic use of static prepositional phrases in directional contexts (the goal argument of a motion verb is described by a static prepositional phrase). The four types of “pregnant” use are paralleled by different phenomena in other languages. Based on statistical analysis, they are also argued to undergo different kinds of diachronic development. Some of these developments, nevertheless, fall into a more general pattern: Ancient Greek gradually moves toward a more consistent use of specialized directional expressions to mark goals of motion, conforming increasingly to the “satellite-framed” type of motion encoding.

From (Theogonic) Mythos to (Poetic) Logos: Reading Pindar’s Genealogical Metaphors after Freidenberg

AbstractThis paper analyzes the use of kinship categories to refer to personified (hypostasized) concepts in Ancient Greek literature, with particular emphasis on Pindar. This device serves to include an abstract concept within a genealogy that is dominated by divinities or quasi-religious entities. Comparing the use of this device in Hesiod, Plato, and Pindar, I suggest that, before the emergence of properly analytic categories within the philosophical discourse, genealogical metaphor served as the most important means of concept formation available to Ancient Greeks. In particular, Pindar’s use of genealogical metaphors points to a productive encounter between image and concept. In this context, I review the neglected work of the Soviet Classicist Olga Freidenberg, who put forward a theory of poetic metaphor as a transitional phenomenon between mythological image and philosophical concept, and discuss the differences between the method of historical poetics employed by Freidenberg and the idealist paradigm that informs the better known work by Hermann Frankel, Bruno Snell, and Wilhelm Nestle on the shift from “mythos” to “logos” in early Greek thought and literature.

The real life of the genre of prooimion

T he word προοίμιον, which in Classical and post-Classical Greek was used as a rhetorical term for the highly stylized opening portion of a text, was borrowed into latin as prooemium (and then eventually into english as proem) in the meaning approximating native latin exordium (“opening of a text”). Yet, however familiar this word may appear today, its derivational provenance, as well as its meaning in the Archaic period, are uncertain. Most modern discussions start from Thucydides’ designation of the text we know as the Homeric Hymn to Apollo as προοίμιον Ἀπόλλωνος (“prooimion of Apollo,” 3.104.4–5) and the assertion in Plato’s Phaedo that Socrates before his death authored τὸ eἰς τὸν Ἀπόλλω προοίμιον (“the prooimion to Apollo,” 60d). 1 As we will see, the import of this Platonic passage is, in fact, ambivalent; the authority of Thucydides 3.104.4–5, nonetheless, was sufficient to conjure up a consensus that regards all Homeric Hymns as prooimia, that is, “something that preceded the singing of a heroic οἴμη.” 2

The Genealogy of the Muses: An Internal Reconstruction of Archaic Greek Metapoetics

Abstract: This article puts forward a novel approach to the history of poetic forms in Archaic Greece. By investigating the evolution of the “diegetic frames” involving the figure of the Muse(s), it seeks to trace mutual influences between different genres (Homeric epic, catalogue poetry, the Homeric Hymns, early choral lyric) and, in the case of the Iliad and Hesiod’s Theogony, to identify distinct strata in the composition of one text. This genealogical analysis of the invocation of the Muses demonstrates that choral lyric had a significant impact on the evolving forms of hexameter poetry.

The dialect basis of choral lyric and the history of poetic languages in Archaic Greece

According to a widely accepted view, the dialect used in Archaic Greek choral lyric is predominantly Doric and is strictly correlated with this genre. This article reconsiders the linguistic data as well as earlier attempts to dispute this scholarly consensus (which included interventions by Antoine Meillet, Carlo Pavese, and Natan Grinbaum), and puts forward an alternative theory of the nature and the origins of the distinctive idiom used in choral lyric. It argues that choral lyric preserves an ancient poetic language which predates the Homeric epic and in most likelihood arose in the (Proto-)Aeolic realm. This account, on the one hand, makes it possible to correlate the history of cult-embedded lyric with the history of narrative epic, which is generally held to include an Aeolic phase. On the other hand, it explains the progressive Ionization of the language of choral lyric by the rise of the Ionic poetic language during the 6th-5th c. BCE.