previous next

[289] ἤια. Schol. “παρὰ δὲ Ὁμήρῳ ἤια τὰ ἐφόδια οἰκείως ἀπὸ τοῦ ἰέναι εἴρηται”. Another Schol. quoting Od.5. 368“ἠίων θημῶνα τινάξῃ” suggests that its meaning of ‘chaff’ comes “ἀπὸ τοῦ κινεῖσθαι τῷ ἀνέμῳ”, and another ridiculous derivation is suggested “ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀίσσειν δύναμαι. οἱ γὰρ ἐσθίοντες καὶ πορεύεσθαι δύνανται”. We seem to get a clue to its meaning here, inasmuch as it stands parallel to “ἄλφιτα” in the next line, and so may = ‘provision of bread;’ flesh would be “ὄψα”, which word is accordingly conjoined with “σῖτον καὶ οἶνον” Od.3. 480.Hesych. and Suid. give a word “εἰαί, εἶοι ὀσπρίων καθάρματα”, which may possibly be referable to “ζειαί”. See Lobeck, El. 1. 100. The quantity of the word varies; generally as here “η_ι_α^”, the “ι” is long; in Od.4. 363; 12. 329 it stands as “η?ι^α^”, and at the close of a verse it becomes a dissyllable, Od.5. 266; 9. 212, see also Od.5. 368.

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 (4 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (4):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: