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‘DAY WATCH’ OR BAYWATCH? A NOTE ON ΗΜΕΡΟΣΚΟΠΟΣ (AR. LYS. 849)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2021
Abstract
This article argues that ἡμεροσκόπος at Lys. 849 constitutes a pun based on iotacism, a well-known feature of female speech in fifth-century Athens aptly illustrated by Socrates in Plato's Cratylus. By describing herself as ἡμεροσκόπος ‘day watch’ pronounced as ἱμεροσκόπος ‘lust watch’, Lysistrata perverts the military term associated with the occupation-plot to a sexually charged word associated with the strike-plot. Its use would be very appropriate in a scene in which the φαλληφόρια of the men (not just Cinesias’ but later on also the Spartan herald's and the Spartan and Athenian delegates’) become the subject of a φαλλοσκοπία by the women (not just Lysistrata but later on also the chorus of women) and perforce also by the onlooking audience. Additional contemporary evidence from orthographic mistakes made by schoolboys suggests that Athenian elite women of the late fifth century were the avant-garde of socially prestigious innovations such as iotacism, which would definitively catch on with the male population in the fourth century and change the face of Greek phonology forever.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
The author would like to thank the anonymous referee and the editor of CQ for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.
References
1 The terms ‘occupation-plot’ and ‘strike-plot’ are taken from J. Henderson, Aristophanes Lysistrata (Oxford, 1987), xvi–xvii; cf. A.H. Sommerstein, Aristophanes Lysistrata (Warminster, 19982), 3–4.
2 Greek quotations are taken from the Loeb edition of Henderson, J., Aristophanes: Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria (Cambridge, MA, 2000)Google Scholar and the Oxford Classical Texts edition of Wilson, N.G., Aristophanis fabulae, vol. 2 (Oxford, 2007)Google Scholar; all translations are my own.
3 Henderson (n. 1), 175; cf. Sommerstein (n. 1), 200.
4 Henderson (n. 2), 381.
5 Henderson (n. 1), 178.
6 Threatte, L., The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions. I: Phonology (Berlin, 1980), 165Google Scholar.
7 Cf. Henderson (n. 1), 193; Sommerstein (n. 1), 210. Leeuwen, J. van, Aristophanis Lysistrata (Leiden, 1903), 148Google Scholar sees a similar wordplay in ὀπῆς ~ ὀπίαν at Vesp. 352–3 (cf. LSJ s.v. ὀπίας; A.H. Sommerstein, Aristophanes Wasps [Warminster, 1973], 178), but the pun cannot depend on the possible confusion of [ε:] and [i:], as the <ι> of ὀπίαν is short.
8 Teodorsson, S.T., The Phonemic System of the Attic Dialect, 400–340 b.c. (Lund, 1974), 287Google Scholar.
9 Threatte (n. 6), 165–6.
10 Teodorsson (n. 8), 287–8.
11 Duhoux, Y., ‘Le vocalisme des inscriptions attiques: une question de méthodes’, Verbum 10 (1987), 179–97Google Scholar, at 186.
12 Willi, A., The Languages of Aristophanes: Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek (Oxford, 2002), 160–2Google Scholar.
13 Willi (n. 12), 162; pace A.H. Sommerstein, ‘The language of Athenian women’, in F. De Martino and A.H. Sommerstein (edd.), Lo spettacolo delle voci (Bari, 1995), 61–85.
14 Clackson, J., Language and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 2014), 128–9Google Scholar; Janse, M., ‘The sociolinguistic study of ancient Greek and Latin’, Arctos 54 (2020), 333–55Google Scholar, at 343–4.
15 Duhoux (n. 11), 189–91; cf. Teodorsson (n. 8), 277 n. 272.
16 Threatte (n. 6), 165.
17 Duhoux (n. 11), 190.
18 Teodorsson (n. 8), 277 n. 272.
19 Duhoux (n. 11), 195.
20 Teodorsson (n. 8), 264; cf. 277.
21 Teodorsson (n. 8), 264 nn. 254–5.
22 Teodorsson (n. 8), 277.
23 Duhoux (n. 11), 192.
24 Duhoux (n. 11), 195.
25 The only other example, however, of a pun based on iotacism is the word ἀσκητικός (1083), which I have already discussed. This agrees with Socrates’ observation that iotacism was characteristic of women and old people, but not with Willi's conclusion (n. 12) that women were the avant-garde of socially prestigious innovations. Unless, of course, ἀσκητικός was uttered by the women's leader and not by the men's leader, as the two semi-choruses are united into a single chorus at this point, but this seems highly unlikely.
26 Rejecting, as he does, the alternative etymology (Pl. Cra. 418d4–6): νῦν δέ γε τετραγῳδημένον οὐδ’ ἂν κατανοήσαις ὅ τι βούλεται ἡ “ἡμέρα”. καίτοι τινὲς οἴονται, ὡς δὴ ἡ ἡμέρα ἥμερα ποιεῖ, διὰ ταῦτα ὠνομάσθαι αὐτὴν οὕτως ‘but now, of course, it is all dressed up and you wouldn't know what ἡμέρα wants to convey. And yet some think that since the day makes things gentle (ἥμερα), it was called that way because of that.’ This alternative etymology was, for other reasons, entertained at Pl. Ti. 45b4–6.
27 Cf. Sommerstein (n. 13), 61–85; Willi (n. 12), 157–97; Duhoux, Y., ‘Langage de femmes et d'hommes en grec ancient: l'exemple de Lysistrata’, in Penney, J.H.W. (ed.), Indo-European Perspectives: Studies in Honour of Anna Morpurgo Davies (Oxford, 2004), 131–45Google Scholar; Fögen, T., ‘Female speech’, in Bakker, E.J. (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language (Chichester, 2010), 311–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Meluzzi, ‘“You” and “me” in Ancient Greek: the case of three “female” comedies’, in W. Sowa and S. Schaffner (edd.), Greek and Latin from an Indo-European Perspective 3 (GLIEP 3): Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Comenius University Bratislava, July 8th–10th 2010 (Munich, 2012), 81–100; Meluzzi, C., ‘Variabilità sociolinguistica e pragmatica nelle commedie femminili di Aristofane’, in Grandi, N., Nissim, M., Tamburini, F., Vayra, M. (edd.), La nozione di classico in linguistica (Rome, 2014), 167–76Google Scholar; Meluzzi, C., ‘Gli allocutivi nella “Lisistrata”: proposta di analisi pragmatica’, in Marchese, M.P. and Nocentini, A. (edd.), Il lessico nella teoria e nella storia linguistica (Rome, 2014), 235–40Google Scholar.
28 To quote just one other example of a pun on a military term perverted into a sexually charged word or, rather, name: Ὀρσίλοχος (725), a nom parlant which I have explained elsewhere as meaning ‘exciter of (female) troops’ rather than ‘inciter of troops’: Janse, M., ‘εἰς Ὀρσιλόχου (Ar. Lys. 725)’, Mnemosyne 64 (2011), 629–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Henderson (n. 1) 167.