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Homeric Hymn to Hermes 296: τλήμονα γαστρὸς ἔριθον

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Joshua T. Katz
Joshua T. Katz*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Among the many parodic elements in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes is the day-old baby's fart-omen. As is well-known, sneezing was considered prophetic in the ancient world, and the humour of the scene comes from the immediately preceding fart and the fact that Hermes’ bodily emissions are deliberate (σɉυ… øρασσάμευoζ ‘contriving’). Apollo has, in fact, gone in search of his baby brother on the basis of a standard bird-omen (note 2131 ‖ oìωυɂυ and 215 ‖༐σσυμέυωζ, echoed exactly in the later passage) and confronted with Hermes’ signs, he recognizes that the crepitation is just as much an omen as the sneeze, witness the plural τoúτoιζ oìωυoîσι a few lines later (303). We may compare a passage in Aristophanes’ Knights (638—42) where the Sausage-seller reports that he took courage before speaking to the Council from a good omen: a man farted to the right, ༐κ δπξιâζ ᾤπέπαρδε (639). Aristophanes’ formulation suggests to me that the composer of the hymn may be intentionally setting up a play on words (or even the possibility for a slip of the tongue or mishearing): the only difference between the verbal form ༐πέπταδε ‘sneezed’ (aorist to ༐πι-πτάρυuμαι, -πταíρω and its near-homophone ༐πέπαρδε ‘farted’ (aorist to ༐πι-πρδoμαι) is the (cross-linguistically trivial) reversal of the liquid and the dental stop.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , May 1999 , pp. 315 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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References

* I am grateful to Dr S. J. Heyworth and the anonymous referee for helpful comments.

1 The standard collection of the Greek and Roman evidence remains Pease, A. S., CPh 6 (1911), 429–43.Google Scholar See also Wimmel, W., Hermes 99 (1971), 156–63Google Scholar (= Collectanea: Augusteertum und späte Republik, ed. K., Kubusch [Stuttgart, 1987], pp. 264–71).Google Scholar

2 For a good, if dated, overview of the issues and questions that have most occupied scholars, see Allen, T. W. and Sikes, E. E. (edd.), The Homeric Hymns (London, 1904), p. 168 Google Scholar, at 295–303—better, remarkably, than Allen, T. W., Halliday, W R., and Sikes, E. E. (edd.), The Homeric Hymns (Oxford, 1936 2), pp. 320–1Google Scholar, at 295.

3 There is some confusion in the literature over whether the breaking of wind is otherwise attested as an oìωυóζ. It is; however, presumably for reasons of taboo, the concept is never developed as well as it is here, in a comic context. It is unclear to me why it is bluntly stated in Allen, Halliday and Sikes (n. 2), 320 that farting is ‘not elsewhere in Greek an omen’ (in the ‘Addenda’ [p. 449] the editors write that according to an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, farts are ảπoτρoπαí [P.Oxy. 3.413, Col. 1 (not 3, as they have it)]) when Allen and Sikes's earlier edition (see n. 2) points, properly, to Ar. Eq. 639, on which see immediately below in the text. (Allen and Sikes also note that the passage is a ‘parody of a favourable omen from Zeus ὑΨιβρεμέτηζ’. On the well-known relationship between βρoυτή ‘thunder’ and πoρδή ‘fart’ in Aristophanes' Clouds, with discussion of the Armenian word for ‘thunder’, orotowmn, cognate with the latter, see de Lamberterie, C., Mythe et langue en Arménie: la geste de Vahagn [Diss. Paris, 1981], pp. 155–6.Google Scholar) For a connection between Hermes’ fart and later Greek abdominal prophecy (with reference to ༐γγαστριμάυτειζ or ༐γγαστρíμuθoι ‘ventriloquists (?)’ and comments on the portrayal of Eurycles in Ar. Vesp. 1019 and Apollo's prediction from his mother's womb [γαστέρι] in Callim. Hymn 4.189–90), see Pelliccia, H., Mind, Body, and Speech in Homer and Pindar (Göttingen, 1995), pp. 72–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Furthermore, L., Radermacher (ed.), Der homerische Hermeshymnus (Vienna, 1931 [SAWW 213/1]), p. 130 Google Scholar points out that a scholiast to Ar. Vesp. 1177 ⋯λoûσ’ ༐πέρδψτo ‘(Lamia) farted when she was caught’ writes, τoûτo δ­ ༐υ μúθω λέγεται, and he notes that ‘[w]ir besitzen solch einen μûθoζ tatsächlich noch in einer mittelaiterlichen Erzählung’ in which a wolf interprets his own fart as a prophecy.

4 Pease (n. 1), 440 writes, ‘The idea of corroborative favorable sneezing is most exactly expressed in Greek by the compound ༐πιπταíρω; compare the use of exactly the same form ༐πέπταρε for Telemachus’ confirmatory omen to Penelope in Od. 17.545 (cf. also 541 ᾤπταρευ).

5 The verb (found, not surprisingly, principally in Aristophanes), is invariably given as ảπo-oέρδoμαι (the scholia to Eq. 639 include such explanations as ảπέπαρδε πὕτωζ τ͂ πoρδwήυ ảøεîυαι ’ŭττικoí), and the manuscripts of the Knights all have ảπέπαρδε. However, V. Coulon in his Budé edition of the play (Paris, 1967 [rev. edn]) accepts Halbertsma's emendation to ༐πέπαρδε (see T. Halbertsma, Specimen literarium continens priorem partem prosopographiae Aristophaneae [Leiden, 1855], p. 114), as also do J., Van Leeuwen (ed.), Aristophanis Equites (Leiden, 1900)Google Scholar and Sommerstein, A. H. (ed.), Knights (Warminster, 1981).Google Scholar I am inclined to agree, on the grounds that it makes the passage more amusing. While no dictionary (including the 1996 LSJ Revised Supplement) provides an entry for a compound of this verb with ༐πι and there can be no doubt that the usual preverb, certainly in Athens and probably also elsewhere, was in fact ảπo-, I believe that the composer of the hymn and Aristophanes, for both of whom the usual verb for a ‘kledonic’ sneeze was ༐πι-πταíρω, knew that it was possible to play on the connection between sneezing and farting precisely by using the resonant preverb also for the latter, compare van Leeuwen (118), Sommerstein (178), and especially Neil, R. A. (ed.), The Knights of Aristophanes (Cambridge, 1901), p. 95 Google Scholar (the last of whom prints ảπέπαρδε however).

6 Shelmerdine, S. C., The Homeric Hymns (Newburyport, MA, 1995), p. 111 Google Scholar writes, ‘Hermes here noisily passes gas, although it is impossible to tell which end of his anatomy emits the omen’. She is in principle correct that the wording does not exclude interpreting it as a burp, but the otherwise unquestioned view of scholars that it is a fart seems to me more likely, especially given my comments above on the potential play between the verb ༐πέπταρε and the fart (as though ༐πέπαρδε).

7 See Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New York, 1991), p. 198.Google Scholar

8 Note also Plato's description of the lungs as ⋯ τŵυ πυεuμάτωυ τŵ σώματι ταμíι ταμíαζ (77. 84d).

9 On the inner-Greek development of the meanings of τλήμωυ and related words, see Wilson, J. R., AJPh 92 (1971), 292–300.Google Scholar

10 Thus, Evelyn-White, H. G. in his Loeb edition, Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Cambridge, MA, 1914), p. 385.Google Scholar

11 Thus, Wilson (n. 9), 293.

12 Note also the gloss on τλήμoυα γαστρɂζ ᾤριθoυ that fills out the second half of the verse: ảτάσθαλoυ ảγγελιώτηυ ‘a presumptuous (vel sim.) messenger’.

13 See especially Svenbro, J., La parole et le marbre: aux origines de la poétique grecque (Lund, 1976), pp. 50–9Google Scholar, as well as Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, 1979), p. 261 Google Scholar n. 4 and Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca, 1990), pp. 44–5 and 274–5 (based on earlier articles).

14 Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad (Ithaca, 1987), p. 174; compare the entire discussion on 157–87 (177 n. 14 has a convenient summary of the Homeric verbs whose subject can be either γαστήρ or θuμóζ). It remains unclear whether the Greeks had a real concept of what one might call the ‘speaking stomach’; see Pelliccia (n. 3), 54–7. On ‘gastromancy’ and ventriloquism, see n. 3 above.

15 See TAPhA 116 (1986), 49–63.

16 See also Clay, J. Strauss, The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton, 1989), p. 111 Google Scholar n. 54, with reference to P. Pucci.

17 See Kyparissis, N. and Peek, W., MDAI(A) 57 (1932), 142–3.Google Scholar The transcription and translation are theirs.

18 From an etymological point of view, θūμóζ comes from Proto-Indo-European *dhuH[2?]-mó ‘smoke’ (pace Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque: histoire desmots [Paris, 1968–80]Google Scholar, s.v.), the preform also of Latin fūmus, with the original meaning preserved in Greek in the verb θuμι¬ω ‘burn so as to produce smoke’; see most recently Meier-Brügger, M., MH 46 (1989), 243–6.Google Scholar As for ΨūΧས, it and the verb from which it is derived, ΨūΧω ‘breathe, blow’, are probably to be connected with Skt. bh¬strā- ‘leather bag; bellows’ and various Rigvedic compounds with psu-, such as á-psu- ‘without spirit (of life)’, all of which would go back to a putative Proto-Indo-European root *bhes- ‘blow’ (see Mayrhofer, M., Etymologisches Worterbuch des Altindoarischen [Heidelberg, 1986- ]Google Scholar, s.vv. psu-, [BHAS], and bh¬astrā-, with references). For detailed discussion of the Greek usage, see now LfrgE s.v. θūμóζ (R. van Bennekom†, redegit S. R. van der Mije), to whose references add the following useful works from the last two decades: Claus, D. B., Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of ΨuΧή before Plato (New Haven, 1981), esp. pp. 37–42 Google Scholar; Caswell, C. P., A Study of thumos in Early Greek Epic (Leiden, 1990)Google Scholar; Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (n. 13), ch. 4; Pelliccia (see n. 3); and Chadwick, J., Lexicographica Graeca: Contributions to the Lexicography of Ancient Greek (Oxford, 1996), pp. 143–50Google Scholar and 311–20.

19 Words that are etymologically linked with τλήμωυ can also be associated with θuμóζ and ΨuΧή in epic, lyric, and tragedy: witness forms of the verb τλ¬ω* in τετληóτι θuμŵ ‖ (formulaic) and II. 1.228 ‖ τέτληκαζ θuμŵ, etc. (see the list in Caswell [n. 18], 69); the compound adjective τλήθuμoζ (used of Odysseus in Anth. Pal. 9.472.1 and found twice [in the Doric form τλāθuμoζ] in Pindar, Nem. 2.15 and frag. 234.4 Maehler); and forms of the adjective τ¬λαζ in Eur. Med 1056–7 and Or. 466. It should, however, be pointed out that other words in the same general semantic field as θuμóζ and ΨυΧή, but without any overtones of breathing, are also sometimes associated with τλήμωυ, τ¬λαζ, etc., witness, e.g., Theognis 196 ἥ τ’ ảυδρóζ τλήμoυα θῆκε υóoυ and Democr. B125 τ¬λαιυα øρήυ.

20 Prof. Brent Vine (UCLA) points out to me that Trimalchio, in the course of lecturing his guests on the evils inherent in holding back intestinal gas, states, Credite mihi, anathymiasis in cerebrum it et in toto corpore fluctum facit (Petron. 47.6). This is the only attestation in Latin literature (though note Theodorus Priscianus, Euporiston 2.42–3) of the Greek word ảυαθυμíασσιζ ‘rising exhalation of vapours velsim.’, found in Aristotle, Heraclitus, Galen, ands others. As Smith, M. S. (ed.), Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis (Oxford, 1975), p. 128 Google Scholar notes, Galen, De usu partium 11.14 speaks specifically of ‘an exhalation from the humours being drawn up towards the head’. It is possible, though far from certain, that the Petronian usage reflects a latent capability of Greek θuμ-, perhaps in either jocular or technical language.

21 See Henderson (n. 7), 197, with further examples of comic phrases with the root στρε/oø and γαστʂρ.

22 The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), p. 250.

23 See, further, also K. McCone, έriu 36 (1985), 169–71, who suggests that Old Irish broimm ‘fart’ is the exact cognate of the important Sanskrit religious term brάhman-, normally translated as ‘formulation’: ‘an IE *bhrέegh-mn meaning something like “emission (of air)” will yield Sanskrit brahmā “pious effusion or utterance, prayer, spirit” (then the masc. agentive brahmt “priest”) with no phonetic and very little semantic difficulty, assuming an oral specialization of meaning in the far East rather than the anal one just documented for the far West’ (170). McCone briefly considers θuμóζ, πυεûμα, and animus, -a in this regard, but his best would-be semantic parallel for connecting broimm and brάhman- is the supposed etymological link between Latin spiritus and the Old Norse verb fisa ‘fart’, which is, however, erroneous (see in particular Forssman, B., MSS 29 [1971], 47–70 Google Scholar, esp. 56–60, with notes on 69). All in all, McCone's idea is probably more clever than correct: the prehistory of brάhman- remains elusive, and broimm may belong rather with English break and Latin frangere, as many have long assumed (compare the conspectus of words for ‘fart’ in Buck, C. D., A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages: A Contribution to the History of Ideas [Chicago, 1949], pp. 272–3).Google Scholar