previous next

[3] πλωτῇ (from “πλώω”, a form of “πλέω”) was variously interpreted by the older commentators. Aristarchus explained it by “φορητῇ οἷον περιφερομένῃ” Schol. H. M., or “περιφορήτῃ: οἰκειότερον γάρ φησι μὴ ἐρριζῶσθαι τῶν ἀνέμων νῆσον”. This sense of ‘floating’ is by far the simplest and the most picturesque; and we may compare the words of Pindar about Delos (‘erratica Delos’ Ov. Met.6. 333), “ἦν γὰρ τὸ πάροιθε φορητὰ κυμάτεσσιν παντοδαπῶν τ᾽ ἀνέμων ῥιπαῖσιν” (Frag. 58). The words of Herodotus also, in describing the island of Chemmis in the lake near the city of Buto, leave no doubt about the meaning commonly assigned to “πλωτός”. He says, “λέγεται ὑπ᾽ Αἰγυπτίων εἶναι αὕτη ἡ νῆσος πλωτή: αὐτὸς μὲν ἔγωγε οὔτε πλέουσαν οὔτε κινηθεῖσαν ἴδον, τέθηπα δὲ ἀκούων εἰ νῆσος ἀληθέως ἐστὶ πλωτή”. The scepticism that Herodotus ex presses about the fact serves to bring out more strongly the unmistakable sense of “πλωτός”, which is in regular use in later Greek as an epithet of fish and other aquatic creatures. Of course it seems to increase the wonder that so solid an isle, with its sheer cliff and brazen wall, should be afloat on the waters, and Crates therefore seeks to escape this difficulty by taking “πλωτή” to mean ‘accessible to ships,’ “ἡ προσπλεομένη ὑπ᾽ ἀνθρώπων”, and to this interpretation Nitzsch inclines, considering the word as nearly equivalent to “ἀγχιβαθής” Hom. Od.5. 413.Similar interpretations are quoted by Schol. T., as e.g. “ἐν πλωτοῖς οὖσαν τόποις”, or “προσορμιστὴν ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἀμιχθαλόεσσαν”. But such a description of island, instead of being accessible to ships, would be harbourless and dangerous. May not the whole story of the floating island with its precipitous sides be a poetical reproduction of the story of some Phoenician sailors, who had voyaged far enough to the north to fall in with an iceberg? The sheer face of ice and the glittering summit seem to be perfectly described by the words χάλκεον τεῖχος and λισσὴ ἀναδέδρομε πέτρη.

Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.

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 (2 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: