[163] ‘For you are not come of some old-world stock or stone.’ The phrase is evidently an echo from older poetry; and, as usually happens in such cases, the original application had been more or less forgotten. In Il.22. 126“οὔ πως ἔστιν ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ᾽ ἀπὸ πέτρης τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι” seems to mean ‘you cannot converse with him just as you like,’ in casual fashion; and so Hes. Theog.35“τίη μοι ταῦτα περὶ δρῦν ἢ περὶ πέτρην”; (=“περὶ τὰ τυχόντα”). A different turn is given to the phrase by Plato, Apol.34D “οὐδ᾽ ἐγὼ ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ᾽ ἀπὸ πέτρης πέφυκα, ἀλλ᾽ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων”. Similarly here it appears to be=“οὐ τοῦ τυχόντος εἶ γένους”, ‘you are not a terrae filius— a mere nobody in birth.’ The attempts to connect the phrase with myths of the origin of mankind are surely quite in the wrong direction.
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Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.
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