whee!
i have found my new favorite type of greek genitive, courtesy of m.l. west. it is in hesiod, theogony 5-6.
καί τε λοεσσάμεναι τέρενα χρόα Περμησσοῖο (5)
ἠ’ Ἵππου κρήνης ἠ’ Ὀλμειοῦ ζαθέοιο
you know what that's called? prof. west tells us: the 'genitive of water in (from)which one washes'. two further examples he cites are il.5.6 and 6.508.
UPDATE: by the way, i'm having a hard time getting the greek font to work. oops.
1 comment:
The Greek looks fine here. Just make sure the browser you're using is set to UTF-8 character encoding and uses a Unicode font as its default.
When I read that line and looked over some examples of the verb with similar genitives I assumed ellipsis of ὕδασι or something similar (instrumental dative). I think the verb implies cleaning with water as opposed to cleaning with anything else.
cf. Odyssey 6.216: λοῦσθαι ποταμοῖο ῥοῇσι
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