One more (last !!!!) time...
After some more digging, the data seems to point to the suggestion of D.
Lembo, namely that what's missing is TOUTOU not XRONOU/KAIROU; and TOUTOU,
it seems to me, would more likely be Neut than Masc. Here's what I found...
Smyth makes the following observations:
"Herodotus has ES hO, hEWS hOU, ES hOU _until_..." Para 2383C.N.
"Demonstrative adverbs in the principal clause often correspond to the
relative conjunctions, as... hEWS...TEWS (MEXRI TOUTOU)..." Para 2384.
Demosthenes writes (De Corona, para 48 [18,48; Loeb Demonsthenes vol II, p.
48]):
MEXRI TOUTOU LASQENHS FILOS WNOMAZETO, hEWS PROUDWKEN OLUNQON...
He repeats the same phrase two more times.
Solon writes (Book i: Elegies 13,35 [Loeb Greek Elegies and Iambus I, p.
128]; though I think this is less applicable because of the obvious
antecedant of TOUTOU.):
hH DHN H TAUTHN DOCAN hEKASTOS EXEI [35] PRIN TI PAQEIN: TOTE D' AUTIK'
ODURETAI ACRI DE TOUTOU XASKONTES KOUFAIS ELPISI TERPOMEQA...
What think ye, mates ?????
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I've been bumped off the list and have missed digest 389 and 390, until
Carl W. Conrad kindly forwarded me his copy. So I am reading just now what
Dale M. Wheeler wrote in reply. Let me add, then, some minor comments.
It is *not* true that "the evidence is at best ambiguous". I'd say it is
very clear. When we examine "hEWS hOU", we can be sure that it derives not
from "hEWS TOU XRONOU (KAIROU) hWi" but from "hEWS TOUTOU (EKEINOU) hWi".
We only need to look at a common phrase like "MEXRI TOUTOU (TOUDE)" (Hdt.
II 99.1; Thuc. I 71.4; etc.). The only ambiguity of "TOUTOU" is the
morphological one. In theory it could equally be either the genitive of
"TOUTO" or the genitive of "OUTOS". But the two so called options are not
equal at all. *Nobody* could seriously imagine here "TOUTOU" as masculine.
It cannot but be neuter. *Logically* it is tantamount to "TOUTOU TOU XRONOU
(KAIROU)". *Literally* it is the genitive of "TOUTO". There is no possibile
ellipsis of "TOU XRONOU (KAIROU)". Why are the two options not evenly
matched? Because in normal Greek usage "TOUTOU" can be meant as a masculine
only when it is clearly referred to a man (or male animal) or anaphorically
to something expressed by a masc. noun. Otherwise it is, as a rule, the
genitive of "TOUTO". One cannot understand the rich plasticity and the
multiform usage of the neuter in Greek if we only look at English. The
usage of "THIS" is not near as wide as the usage of "TOUTO" in Greek.
Greetings
D. Lembo
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Domenico LEMBO Universita' di Napoli
lembodo@ds.cised.unina.it
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