εἰσπορεύομαι, ἐκπορεύομαι, εἰσέρχομαι, ἐξέρχομαι
(Antiatt. ε 4)

D. General commentary

In A.1, the Antiatticist equates the prefixed forms εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι with εἰσέρχομαι (‘to go into’) and ἐξέρχομαι (‘to go out of’). This entry was probably a response to an Atticist prescription (for which there is no clear evidence) against derivatives of πορεύομαι and in favour of the corresponding forms of ἔρχομαι (which are in fact by far the most widely attested in 5th- and 4th-century BCE Attic Greek, see below). The Antiatticist’s defence of εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι was probably based on a locus classicus which is no longer extant (see below).

From the o-grade of the ΙΕ root *per- (‘to go across’; cf. LIV 472) come the noun πόρος (‘ford’, but also simply ‘passage’ or ‘pathway’; cf. LSJ s.v.) and the causative verb πορεύω (‘to make go across’, thus ‘to carry over’, ‘to bring across’). In the middle-passive, πορεύομαι has the meaning ‘to cross’, ‘to go over’, and more generally ‘to go’, ‘to walk’ (see LSJ s.v.), and is therefore a synonymSynonyms of ἔρχομαι. While πορεύω has a full regular paradigm, ἔρχομαι relies on the root *h₁léu̯d^h-/h₁lud^h- for the future, aorist, and perfect stems (see fut. ἐλεύσομαι, aor. ἦλθον, pf. ἐλήλυθα, plpf. ἐληλύθειν; LIV* 248–9; for ἐλυθ- > ἐλθ- in the aorist, see Szemerényi 1964, 3–29; Rix 1992, 18; Willi 2018, 344 n. 82). Therefore, in what follows, all the quantitative comparisons between the attestations of ἔρχομαι, πορεύομαι, and their prefixed derivatives will regard only the present and imperfect forms, because the competition between the two verbs concerns only the presentPresent system (in other words, the future, aorist, perfect, and pluperfect of πορεύομαι and its derivatives will be excluded from the analysis, since for these tenses ἔρχομαι relies on a different root, i.e. ἐλευθ-/ἐλ(υ)θ-).

The earliest attestations of the middle-passive πορεύομαι in the sense of ‘to go’ are in poetry (see Pi. fr. 75.7–8; [Aesch.] PV 569). In the 5th century BCE, the verb is very common in both prose and poetry – see e.g. Thucydides (47x), Herodotus (73x), Sophocles (13x), Euripides (24x) – and is actually more common than the corresponding forms from the present stem of ἔρχομαι (approximately 670 occurrences against 470). Thus, at first glance, the Atticists’ aversion to the derivatives of πορεύομαι may seem unjustified. However, a different picture emerges when we look at the attestations of the prefixed verbs on which the Antiatticist focuses in A.1.

The earliest attestation of ἐκπορεύομαι is found in Critias (C.1; later occurrences are in prose, see e.g. Xenophon, 4x, Aeneas Tacticus, 5x, Aristotle, 4x), while εἰσπορεύομαι first occurs in Xenophon (C.2; see later Aeneas Tacticus, 5x, Aristotle, 1x). Compared to the attestations of the corresponding prefixed derivatives of ἔρχομαι, εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι appear to be far less frequent in 5th- and 4th-century BCE literature (εἰσπορεύομαι, 7x vs. εἰσέρχομαι, 114x; ἐκπορεύομαι, 27x vs. ἐξέρχομαι, 177x). However, the relative distribution of these verbs changes in the Hellenistic period, when εἰσέρχομαι and ἐξέρχομαι seem to decline, with ἐκπορεύομαι being slightly more frequent than the corresponding ἔρχομαι derivative (εἰσπορεύομαι, 8x vs. εἰσέρχομαι, 44x; ἐκπορεύομαι, 28x vs. ἐξέρχομαι, 24x). This trend is much more evident in the Septuagint, where εἰσέρχομαι and ἐξέρχομαι are almost absent (3 attestations each), while εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι are pervasive (165x and 166x respectively); on the contrary, the suppletive forms from ἐλευθ-/ἐλ(υ)θ- are extremely frequent, so much so that one can assume that in the early koine ‘the true present belonging to ἐξῆλθον, ἐξελήλυθα, etc., is not ἐξέρχομαι, but ἐκπορεύομαι […] and similarly in the other cases’ (McKenzie 1918, 58; cf. LSJ s.v. ἔρχομαι; Lee 1983, 86–8; 91–2). Since the Septuagint can be considered a testimony to ‘the ordinary, everyday written Greek’ of the Hellenistic period (Horrocks 2010, 106), it is safe to say that εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι had virtually replaced the corresponding forms of εἰσέρχομαι and ἐξέρχομαι in the koine of the time (a similar development can be observed in the case of ἀπέρχομαι, ‘I depart’, which is replaced with ἀποτρέχω in the present tense system, while the other tenses continue to be formed on the root ἐλευθ-/ἐλ(υ)θ-; cf. Lee 1983, 127–8). Between the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century CE, however, ἔρχομαι derivatives seem to regain popularity. More specifically, in the 1st century BCE, εἰσέρχομαι and ἐξέρχομαι occur more frequently in all kinds of texts, regardless of their linguistic and stylistic level: for instance, ἐξέρχομαι is found both in Philo of Alexandria (15x) and Strabo (3x) on the one hand, and in the apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve (5x) on the other. The same holds true for εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι, which appear (though in much smaller numbers than the corresponding ἔρχομαι derivatives) both in Atticising authors (such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus) and in koine Greek texts (e.g., the apocryphal Book of Enoch). The situation changes in the 1st century CE, when the attestations of εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι are mostly limited to Christian texts (primarily the New Testament), while εἰσέρχομαι and ἐξέρχομαι are prevalent in both religious and pagan works. Similarly, in the 2nd century CE, εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι occur 33x and 112x respectively, with the majority of attestations coming from Origen (and the remaining cases being scattered in hagiographic, apologetic, or ecclesiastical texts), while εἰσέρχομαι and ἐξέρχομαι are found throughout the literature, without distinctions of linguistic or stylistic level.

In inscriptions (with very few exceptions) the distribution is bipartite: εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι are attested almost exclusively in the Hellenistic period, while εἰσέρχομαι and ἐξέρχομαι are mostly found in inscriptions from the 1st century CE onwards. The papyrological evidence is less clear: while the vast majority of the attestations of εἰσέρχομαι and ἐξέρχομαι are from the 1st century CE or later – with only a handful of occurrences (2 out of 39 for εἰσέρχομαι, 2 out of 88 for ἐξέρχομαι) dating from the Hellenistic or late Hellenistic period – in the case of εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι the distribution is less uneven (6 out of 18 occurrences of εἰσπορεύομαι are later than the 1st century CE and, remarkably, 10 occurrences out of 15 occurrences of ἐκπορεύομαι are from the imperial period or later). Still, the quantitative data coming from literary and documentary texts, along with the Antiatticist’s stance in favour of εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι (A.1), suggest that Atticist grammarians probably promoted the use of ἔρχομαι derivatives – which were in fact the standard in 5th–4th century Attic Greek (see above) – although there is no clear textual evidence for such a prescription in extant erudite texts.

The structure of A.1 suggests that the Antiatticist’s aim was to show that εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι were not recent forms, but were also used by classical authors. Therefore, it is likely that the entry originally featured a literary quotation, which was later lost through epitomisationEpitome (see Valente 2015, 44–5): for instance, Xenophon – an author frequently quoted in the lexicon (16x) – used both εἰσπορεύομαι and ἐκπορεύομαι (see C.2 and above) and may have been the authority mentioned by the lexicographer.

Photius’ lemma (B.1) is the only other lexicographical entry that, at first glance, seems to offer a parallel to the Antiatticist. Indeed, Theodoridis (1998, 37) refers to the Antiatticist’s entry in the apparatus of B.1 and, conversely, Valente (2015, 153) mentions Photius as a parallel to A.1. However, since B.1 equates the passive aorist participle of εἰσπορεύομαι (i.e. εἰσπορευθείς) with the active aorist participle from the root (εἰσ)ελευθ-/(εἰσ)ελ(υ)θ- (i.e. εἰσελθών), and given that A.1 is instead concerned with the competition between ἔρχομαι derivatives and πορεύομαι derivatives in the present tense system, it is likely that Photius’ entry B.1 has nothing to do with the Antiatticist (and with the Atticist prescription which the lexicographer probably rejected in A.1). On the contrary, B.1 should be interpreted as an exegetical gloss explaining the rare passive aorist of εἰσπορεύομαι as semantically equivalent to the active aorist εἰσῆλθον (‘I entered’). Before Photius, the passive aorist of εἰσπορεύομαι (always in the sense of ‘to enter’) occurs 6 times in Polybius, once in the Septuagint (De. 1.8.2), once in the oldest version of the Alexander romance (3rd century CE; Historia Alexandri Magni 3.32.8), and once each in Hippolytus’ commentary on the Book of Daniel (3rd century CE; Hippol. Dan. 1.25.2) and Ephraem’s work on Julian the Ascetic (4th century CE; Ephr.Syr. De Iuliano asceta 126.7). Of these passages, the one from the Deuteronomium is the most likely to have been the locus behind Photius’ entry.

E. Byzantine and Modern Greek commentary

The Atticists’ preference for ἔρχομαι derivatives is partly reflected in literary texts from the 3th–5th centuries CE: while εἰσέρχομαι is clearly more common than εἰσπορεύομαι (over 1100 occurrences against ca. 270), ἐξέρχομαι appears to be less widespread than ἐκπορεύομαι (approximately 850x vs. 930x). In 6th–8th-century texts, however, both πορεύομαι derivatives are much rarer than the corresponding forms of ἔρχομαι. Instead, from the 9th century onwards, while εἰσπορεύομαι continues to decline, ἐκπορεύομαι begins to occur more and more frequently, especially in religious texts, since, notably, ἐκπορεύομαι is the verb that describes the relationship between the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (πιστεύομεν […] εἰς τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον, τὸ κύριον καὶ τὸ ζῳοποιόν, τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, ‘we believe […] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father’) and was thus at the centre of the debate between the different concepts of the Trinity in the Western and Eastern Churches. Probably because of its relevance to the religious debate, the verb ἐκπορεύομαι (unlike εἰσπορεύομαι) was eventually retained in Modern Greek, with the meaning ‘to derive’, ‘to spring from’, ‘to come from’ (see LKN s.v.). As regards ἔρχομαι derivatives, Modern Greek has both εισέρχομαι (‘to enter’, also in the sense of ‘to become a member’ of an organisation, see LKN s.v.) and εξέρχομαι (‘to exit’, ‘to go out’), which are formal alternatives to more neutral verbs such as μπαίνω (‘to go in’) and βγαίνω (‘to go out’).

F. Commentary on individual texts and occurrences

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