Studies in Greek epic diction, metre and language: the augment use in The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (HH 5)

This article analyses the use and absence of the augment in The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (HH 5). This is done in two steps: I start by establishing my corpus and then perform the actual analysis. In order to obtain a corpus of reliable forms, I first check if the transmitted forms are supported by the metre: in doing so, I use metrical bridges, caesurae and (possible or forbidden) elisions and word ends. Then I proceed to the forms that are not guaranteed by the metre or where several variants have been transmitted. I determine their value by an “internal comparison and reconstruction”, i.e. comparing the metrically insecure verb forms to the secure forms of the same paradigm and by comparing the forms of the words preceding the insecure forms to other contexts. Once I have thus obtained a corpus of reliable forms, I start the analysis. This is done in two steps: first, a corpus of forms with a metrically secure presence or absence of the augment is established by using metrical bridges and caesurae; second, after determining that corpus of forms, I proceed to analyse the use and absence of the augment, based on previous scholarship. The article intends to show that the function of the augment is determined by an interaction of different metrical, morphological, syntactic and semantic factors, and confirms the augment as focus marker or emphasising tool for recent and new information. It then applies the findings to the passage in which Aphrodite walks through the mountains and meets Ankhises. At the end, it discusses the prooimion and argue that there is no need to catalogue Aphrodite’s aorists in that passage as Hymnic or omnitemporal.