A Contrastive Study of the Co-occurrence of the Augmented, Unaugmented and Iterative forms in -σκ- in Iliad 24

Abstract

This article investigates the co-occurrence of iterative forms in -σκ-, unaugmented and augmented verb forms in Iliad 24. I first give an in-depth overview of the scholarship on the origin ( § 2) and meaning ( § 3) of the suffix. Second, I describe how I determine my corpus of metrically secure forms ( § 4). As the transmission of the text is not always secure, I restrict myself to those forms where the presence or absence of the augment is guaranteed by the metre. Third, I discuss in great length the previous scholarship on the origin and meaning of the augment ( § 5), focusing particularly on the theories by Lazzeroni and Willi, before proceeding to the actual analysis of the passages in Book 24 where iterative forms, unaugmented and augmented forms co-occur, including the forms ἔσκε and ἦ(ε)ν. I argue ( § 6 and § 7) that (a) the iterative suffix marks repeated actions and is different from the unaugmented forms without suffix, (b) that the forms with suffix can be used to contrast the repeated actions of one (group of) protagonist(s) with that of the other(s), (c) the augmented forms convey emphasis and highlighting and (d) the unaugmented forms describe the background and scene setting or appear in negated sentences that refer to past actions that never occurred and can never happen anymore in the future. At the end I also mention the exceptions to the rules. 1