Herodotus 4.113

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Herodotus 4.113

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4.113.3 ὁ δὲ νεηνίσκος, ἐπεὶ ἀπῆλθε, ἔλεξε ταῦτα πρὸς τοὺς λοιπούς· τῇ δὲ δευτεραίῃ ἦλθε ἐς τὸ χωρίον αὐτός τε οὗτος καὶ ἕτερον ἦγε, καὶ τὴν Ἀμαζόνα εὗρε δευτέρην αὐτὴν ὑπομένουσαν. οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ νεηνίσκοι ὡς ἐπύθοντο ταῦτα, καὶ αὐτοὶ ἐκτιλώσαντο τὰς λοιπὰς τῶν Ἀμαζόνων.

"The youth went away and told his comrades; and the next day he came himself with another to the place, where he found the Amazon and another with her awaiting them. When the rest of the young men learned of this, they had intercourse with the rest of the Amazons." (Perseus translation) (I think it would be better to translate ἐκτιλώσαντο "tamed", not "had intercourse".)

I have trouble understanding the construction I have underlined. What is the function of αὐτὴν? What is the subject, and the object, of ὑπομένουσαν?

About Amazons: Why did they have such a prominent place in Greek mythology? Where did the Greeks find them, or more precisely, their idea about Amazons? Now frankly I don't believe a lot in Amazons, scarcely more than I believe in Cyclopes or in Androphagoi, but I'm sure there's some sort of cultural scenario behind them (to use a term Stirling used some time ago). The Oxford commentary just lazily gives a list of references for differing points of view (which I didn't care to start looking into) and notes that the subject of a "residue of matriarchy" is moot. Now I think I don't really think the subject is moot, as I'm fairly convinced that theories that find remains of matriarchal societies here and there are all likely to be tosh, motivated for the most part by the sensitivies and, frankly, ideological debates of our own times. But would like to see an honest appreciation of Amazons, their meaning and their "origin".

I'll note that I do know the difference between matrilineal and matriarchal societies, the difference being among other things that the former have really existed and I suppose still exist, while the latter are the stuff of folk tales – ancient, modern, and academic.

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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ἀπόλλυται
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

Post by Timothée »

Yes, Jews in particular are matrilinear, the best explanation for this being that it is always certain who is the child's mother. It is pathetically trivial of me to say that fathers can often remain unknown—or at least it was so until DNA tests in modern times.

As to the legitimation of the existence of the Amazons, I suppose you asked a difficult question. I read the first chapter in Pauly—Wissowa s.v. Amazones, and to paraphrase it very tersely, this would seem to be the most difficult question in Greek mythology. They are amongst the oldest myths of the Greeks, says PW, and emphasises that they are located outside the Greek world, to make them particularly clearly barbaric.

Perchance the Amazons are an example of inverse or even perverse thinking, i.e. imagining how things should be in this meilleur des mondes possibles and then turning it upside down?

But surely there are newer monographs on this riveting subject?

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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δευτέρην αὐτὴν -- This is an idiom.

LSJ αὐτός I.1.6:
added to ordinal Numbers, e.g. πέμπτος αὐτός himself the fifth, i. e. himself with four others, Th.1.46, cf. 8.35, X.HG2.2.17, Apoc.17.11, etc.:—αὐτός always being the chief person.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... Dau)to%2Fs

LSJ δεύτερος II.2:
2. the second of two, δ. αὐτή herself with another, Hdt.4.113,
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... eu%2Fteros

LSJ τρίτος:
τρίτος αὐτός himself the third, i. e. with two others (v. “αὐτός” 1.6)
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... Dtri%2Ftos
I think it would be better to translate ἐκτιλώσαντο "tamed", not "had intercourse".
That's what LSJ might say, but I'm not sure it's right. It's clear that the boys did have intercourse with the Amazons. Rams are associated with male potency in many cultures. While κτιλοω might mean "tame" in some contexts, I suspect that here the association with "ram" rather than "tame" might underlie this instance.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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τὴν Ἀμαζόνα εὗρε δευτέρην αὐτὴν ὑπομένουσαν --

τὴν Ἀμαζόνα . . . δευτέρην αὐτὴν ὑπομένουσαν is simply the direct object of εὗρε. "He found the Amazon waiting [for him] with another [Amazon]."
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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He found the Amazon, herself a second-of-two (δευτέρην), awaiting him? Thus it is not an accusative absolute construction, but an appositional one?
More or less. I would say not appositional but predicative.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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δευτέρην αὐτὴν is simply an idiom. I don't see a contrast with οὗτος αὐτός: "He came himself and he brought another with him."

Note that I changed my previous post slightly after you posted.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Thanks, Hylander! The construction is clear to me now.
MarkAntony198337 wrote:I did, don't worry; the "Excellent" still stands. That is what rather confuses me. If "δευτέρην αὐτὴν" be a strict and neutral idiom in this case, then what is the purpose of αὐτός? Would not οὗτος serve just as well without it?
δευτέρην αὐτὴν "herself the second" - the point of αὐτός being that the "second" is contrasted with an (implied) "first". The Amazon herself is now only the second of two.

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Hylander wrote:
I think it would be better to translate ἐκτιλώσαντο "tamed", not "had intercourse".
That's what LSJ might say, but I'm not sure it's right. It's clear that the boys did have intercourse with the Amazons. Rams are associated with male potency in many cultures. While κτιλοω might mean "tame" in some contexts, I suspect that here the association with "ram" rather than "tame" might underlie this instance.
I was a bit unclear. There's no question that they had intercourse; my point was that Herodotus elected to use a more unusual word than, say, ἐμίσγοντο. I thought that the idea is that the Amazons were fearsome, uncontrollable creatures, and the boys subjugated them. It would seem to me that if this meant that "the boys rammed the Amazons", even if weren't quite as vulgar as (I think) it is in English, it still seems a bit too graphical an image to be used by Herodotus.

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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MarkAntony198337 wrote:I agree with you, @Paul Derouda, but what I wonder in addition to what you say is, is what we have here as it were a strictly grammatical antithesis, οὗτος αὐτός necessarily answering to αὐτὴν δευτέρην as a matter of course in the Greek tongue, and being a standard component of Greek composition in this instance; or was putting in the αὐτός a voluntary stylistic choice on the part of Herodotus, in order purposely to bring out the contrast between the two events he describes?
Ah, sorry, I misunderstood you. (οὗτος) αὐτός is used in contrast with ἔτερον. "He came himself and brought someone else".

Oops: I accidentally first edited your post (hard to be a moderator...) instead of answering it.
Timothée wrote:Perchance the Amazons are an example of inverse or even perverse thinking, i.e. imagining how things should be in this meilleur des mondes possibles and then turning it upside down?
The Oxford commentary says something like this too (although with more moderate wordings), and it might be probably true.

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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I learned this idiom by stumbling over πέμπτος αὐτός when I read Thucydides.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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I looked at the beginning of this thread and had some trouble finding the problem with the syntax. Went away and looked it up in Cooper; no reference to it. Concluded that the accusative pronoun with the participle were simply part of the predicate of the main verb, came back and found a host of new posts and Hylnader had already settled the question.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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what is the purpose of αὐτός? Would not οὗτος serve just as well without it?
"He came himself and he brought along someone else."
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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On the Amazons, without getting too graphic, I wonder whether the idea of women warriors and women engaging in "manly" actitivies like hunting or athletics was somehow sexually titillating to Greek and Roman men, just as some men find pornography involving sex between women titillating today. I'm thinking in particular of stories such as Actaeon and Hypodameia and other stories involving women engaging in manly activities, especially when they aren't interested in men or are difficult of access. That doesn't seem to be true of the Amazons here, but I wonder whether some sort of fetishistic impulse like this kept the Amazon stories alive. That's purely speculative and unprovable, of course.

Edit: Atalanta, not Hypodameia.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Hylander: That doesn't sound implausible to me in the light of this passage or of the Amazonomachy friezes I saw in the British museum last December.

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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I would say δευτέρην αὐτὴν ὑπομένουσαν is predicative. That's why τὴν Ἀμαζόνα is before the verb and δευτέρην αὐτὴν ὑπομένουσαν is after the verb (though Greek word order doesn't always necessarily make such an obvious distinction, I believe). δευτέρην αὐτὴν is an idiom and shouldn't be split syntactically (though I think the word order might be reversible).
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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RE: Women toting weapons. Lot's of Israeli Girls with m16 variants. The most unsettling aspect of this image is Israel's adoption of the Stoner Weapon system that became the AR15, M16, Stoner SR25, etc. They tested that system back in 1960's and detrermined it was an unsuitable design for desert warfare. The design hasn't changed.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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The LSJ gives some examples:
2. the second of two, δ. αὐτή herself with another, Hdt.4.113, cf. AB89; ἑπτὰ δ. σοφοί a second seven sages, Euphro 1.12; εἷς καὶ δ. unus et alter, Hdn.Gr.2.934; “εἷς ἢ δ.” Jul.Or.6.190d; “ἕν τι . . ἢ δεύτερον” D.Chr.33.7; δ. καὶ τρίτος two or three, Plb.26.1.1.; neut. as Adv., ἅπαξ καὶ δεύτερον once or twice, Jul. ad Ath.278c.
I don't have an LSJ in front of me right now, so I have no idea what AB89 refers to.

From the others, I found the first one easily enough:

Οὗτοι μετ’ ἐκείνους τοὺς σοφιστὰς τοὺς πάλαι
γεγόνασιν ἡμῶν ἐπτὰ δεύτεροι σοφοί.
(Deipnosophistae IX 24)

And just typing out the other examples:

εἷς καὶ δεύτερος -- one and a second
εἷς ἤ δεύτερος -- one or a second
ἕν τι...ἤ δεύτορον -- some one...or a second
δεύτερος καὶ τρίτος two or three
ἅπαξ καὶ δεύτερον once or twice
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Hylander wrote:On the Amazons, without getting too graphic, I wonder whether the idea of women warriors and women engaging in "manly" actitivies like hunting or athletics was somehow sexually titillating to Greek and Roman men, just as some men find pornography involving sex between women titillating today. I'm thinking in particular of stories such as Actaeon and Hypodameia and other stories involving women engaging in manly activities, especially when they aren't interested in men or are difficult of access. That doesn't seem to be true of the Amazons here, but I wonder whether some sort of fetishistic impulse like this kept the Amazon stories alive. That's purely speculative and unprovable, of course.

Edit: Atalanta, not Hypodameia.
On a somewhat related note: I have the impression that respectable Greek women were veiled when they left their homes, and generally kept out of the public sphere as much as possible, at least the wealthier ones. In light of this, it's somewhat surprising that the Greek temples were decorated with statues of scantily clad women, portraying not only Amazons but even deities (but usually not, as far as I know, the really powerful and important ones like Athena, but rather the not-so-serious goddesses like Aphrodite). I don't know what to think about all this exactly, but certainly there's some sort of antithesis between the free and wild (sexually and otherwise) Amazons on the one hand, and the chaste upper class women and the unchaste and unfree courtesans on the other.

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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I have always thought that the Amazons was just another way for Ancient Greek elite men to figure "the other". As some have mentioned there are many oppositions Giants and Gods, Lapiths and Centaurs, Greeks and Persians.

BBC radio featured the Amazons in its long running series "in our time". Its available as a podcast here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rr7r7. The academics involved were Paul Cartledge
A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University Chiara Franceschini
Teaching Fellow at University College London and an Academic Assistant at the Warburg Institute Caroline Vout University Senior Lecturer in Classics and Fellow and Director of Studies at Christ's College, Cambridge. Melvyn Bragg I am sure asks "but come on they must have existed...." sigh.

There is a thesis here https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bits ... sequence=1 which has a bibliography which might be of interest although the author doesnt seem to mention Judith Butler which means, as afar as I am concerned its missed the point. It may have useful signposts though.

There is also this Perversions: Deviant Readings by Mandy Merck which you can read in preview on Amazon. It is not written by a classicist but it has a promising title.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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seneca2008 wrote:There is also this Perversions: Deviant Readings by Mandy Merck which you can read in preview on Amazon. It is not written by a classicist but it has a promising title.
From the introduction:

"Nevertheless, my first essay in what a friend now calls 'your killjoy criticism' did get published, but I doubt that it changed many minds. (After I offered its conclusions to the London Matriarchy Study Group, pointing out that Minoan frescoes of women being served by male attendants demonstrated little more in the way of women's rule than an ad for the local steakhouse, I was unceremoniously escorted from the room.)"

Delicious, isn't it? :) Unfortunately, the book's chapter on Amazons can't be previewed. If the target group of the book are people who attend things like "the London Matriachy Study Group", it's no surprise the writer finds her ideas controversial. I wonder if they're that controversial for the rest of us. While I think we all should get acquainted with people and ideas we initially don't agree with, I just don't have the patience for things that are patently absurd. This book certainly doesn't seem to fit into that category, though guess it would be bad policy to elect to read something just because it's likely I'm going to agree with its contents... Have you actually read it, Seneca? Was it worth it? And by the way, I do sympathize, to a certain point, with feminist, LBGT movements – but amicus Plato! Sometimes I wonder what's the need for feminist or queer scholarship when we have sociology, anthropology etc.

Who is this Judith Butler person? I quickly checked the Wikipedia article, but is there something particularly relevant she's said pertaining to Amazons?

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Have you actually read it, Seneca?
No. I was searching for suitable books on Amazons and came across this, I think on google books, and saw that it had a bibliography. I discovered that the dominance of Amazon on the web makes searches about Amazons even harder. There is a further discourse of power here I think.
Sometimes I wonder what's the need for feminist or queer scholarship when we have sociology, anthropology etc.
I think this shows the urgent need for both. :D
Who is this Judith Butler person?
As she is one of the most famous theorists of gender and particularly gender performance I would have thought that the PhD thesis would have used her work in part as a theoretical basis. But as it takes a narratological approach perhaps he was not interested in that aspect.

I did meet someone at a conference a few years ago who was researching Amazons but all that I remember is he seemed to have an obsession with casting "Angelina Jolie" (of whom I had never heard) as Hippolyta or Penthesilea leading a host of Amazons against the Greeks. He was I seem to remember researching the Indica by Arrian. Its all pretty hazy.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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Paul Derouda wrote:
Delicious, isn't it? :) Unfortunately, the book's chapter on Amazons can't be previewed. If the target group of the book are people who attend things like "the London Matriachy Study Group", it's no surprise the writer finds her ideas controversial. I wonder if they're that controversial for the rest of us. While I think we all should get acquainted with people and ideas we initially don't agree with, I just don't have the patience for things that are patently absurd. This book certainly doesn't seem to fit into that category, though guess it would be bad policy to elect to read something just because it's likely I'm going to agree with its contents... Have you actually read it, Seneca? Was it worth it? And by the way, I do sympathize, to a certain point, with feminist, LBGT movements – but amicus Plato! Sometimes I wonder what's the need for feminist or queer scholarship when we have sociology, anthropology etc.
There are a couple of pages in the preview on the Amazons:
Their successes literally remove them from female comparison, rendering them either masculine or divine. Nothing of real oppression of their sex is challenged by these mythic heroines, it is merely transcended.
I am not sure if we should take Mandy Merck's heretical pose at face value. Groups calling themselves things like Matriachy Study Group are far out on a limb even among feminists. But books putting a orthodox point of view don't sell so it is normal to put on a pose of heresy.

It's a bit like how ever book of the Fall of the Roman Empire that claims the Empire, well, fell pose as courageous iconoclasts against the post modernist-modernist-what-fall orthodoxy.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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I am not sure if we should take Mandy Merck's heretical pose at face value.
I dont think we should take any text at face value, but not for the cynical reasons which you posit.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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seneca2008 wrote:
I am not sure if we should take Mandy Merck's heretical pose at face value.
I dont think we should take any text at face value, but not for the cynical reasons which you posit.
You may be right that I am being too cynical especially as I am basing my judgment on what I could read on Amazons from the preview rather than the book as a whole. However, Paul seemed to see Merck as criticizing feminist views on the Amazons (unless I have misread him). To me she seems rather a fairly mainstream feminist criticizing an extreme faction of feminism. I might add, that her view of the Amazons, isn't so different from the one you expressed earlier in the thread even if she might express herself differently.
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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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daivid, you appear to be taking seneca's posts at face value. He'd teach you not to do that. :wink:

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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- How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
- One, and that's nothing to laugh about!

No seriously, I suppose it's better to get back to Greek before things really get out hand, no...? :shock: :D

The thesis looks like it might have some insights, unfortunately it's so long that I'll see if I ever manage to read even a part of that, beside the fact that theses are not in general written in a way to encourage reading them...

Actually I found I could read a couple of pages of Merck on Amazons, and lost interest.

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Re: Herodotus 4.113

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I suppose it's better to get back to Greek
Always sound advice. Some things are best taken at face value. :D
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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