ὤτοις
(Phryn. Ecl. 182)

D. General commentary

Phrynichus (A.1) and pseudo-Herodian (A.2) contest the opinion of unspecified grammarians who thought that the metaplasm ὤτοις was a legitimate form of the dative plural of οὖς in place of standard ὠσί(ν). In line with his general practice, Phrynichus does not provide any argumentation against this view, and probably only aims to indicate that the dative ὤτοις finds no confirmation whatsoever in canonical writers. Pseudo-Herodian spells out why any justification of ὤτοις based on analogy would be ill-founded: one cannot simply compare a noun from the thematic declension, like τὰ πλῆκτρα, with a third-declension noun like τὰ ὦτα. (On the grammatical doctrines against which Phrynichus and pseudo-Herodian polemicise, see further F.1.)

The few extant occurrences of ὤτοις in Ancient Greek appear in lower koine texts Koine such as the medical writers Soranus (C.1) and Oribasius (C.2), where they form part of an idiomatic expression indicating a type of bandage (see F.2). Rather than being medical jargon, ὤτοις is more likely a colloquialism used to nickname this type of bandage. As far as morphology is concerned, the creation of the metaplasm ὤτοις may have been favoured by analogy with the plural forms of the diminutive ὠτίον (‘ear’). This diminutive is well-documented in Post-classical Greek, where it generally appears in lower koine texts Koine (the Septuagint, the New Testament, imperial medical writers, early Christian writers, etc.). In most instances, ὠτίον has lost its original diminutive or hypochoristic function and adopts the same value as the positive (one may compare παιδίον ‘small child’ > ‘child’, as in Modern Greek παιδί). Thus, it overlaps in meaning with οὖς, ὠτός. In the plural, the presence of couplets such as ὦτα and ὠτία, ὤτων and ὠτίων, may have led to the creation of analogical ὤτοις in place of ὠσί, based on ὠτίοις.

The metaplasm ὤτοις is not isolated. A very similar example is the use of the dative φώτοις in place of the expected φωσί(ν) (C.4, C.5, C.6, C.7, C.8; this metaplasm is registered in LBG s.v. φῶς; on the origin of the declension φῶς, φῶτος as a τ-stem see Egli 1954, 60–1). In the case of φώτοις, we are in a different situation compared to the one we find with ὦτα and ὠτία: we have no evidence of a diminutive *φωτίον that may have worked as a model form for the creation of the metaplasm φώτοις. However, considering the evident similarities between the plural forms of the declension of ὦτα and φῶτα, the metaplasm ὤτοις may have been the model for the formation of φώτοις. The available evidence for φώτοις is also late. This form is attested only once in late antiquity, in John Philoponus’ commentary on the Aristotelian treatise De anima (C.4), a highly technical piece of writing that makes no attempt to use elevated language and therefore where such informal language does not look quite so surprising. However, it is not impossible that φώτοις too, like ὤτοις, may have existed already in Imperial Greek. The fact that these forms were limited to lower or technical Greek is a convincing justification for their rarity.

E. Byzantine and Modern Greek commentary

Most occurrences of the metaplasms ὤτοις and φώτοις date to Byzantine and early modern times. While ὤτοις is attested only once in a 1627 treatise on how to perform an exorcism (C.3), the Byzantine and early modern evidence for φώτοις is a little more substantial. These occurrences appear in hagiographical (C.5, C.6, C.8), legal (Tipukeitos 16.6.4–5 Dölger), and demotic texts (C.7), and they surface throughout the Byzantine millennium. The use of φώτοις is a feature of lower language. In some cases, it is in line with the profile of the texts in which it appears. The occurrence of φώτοις in Constantinus Hermoniacus’ Metaphrasis Iliadis (14th century CE) (C.7) is precious evidence of the persistence of this dative form in the vernacular language (on Constantinus Hermoniacus’ language, see also Legrand 1890, VII–IX). As far as the register is concerned, this appearance in a medieval Greek text can be compared with its use in the 11th-century CE Tipukeitos (16.6.4–5 Dölger), whose language, if seen from the point of view of classical Greek, contains innumerable oddities and deviances from the norm (see Ferrini, Mercati 1914, XXI). However, we must also point out that not all the authors and texts using ὤτοις have a generally low linguistic profile. The style of the homilies of Germanus I (7th/8th century CE), the patriarch of Constantinople, has recently been described as ‘an elevated koine koine embellished with an unusual choice of vocabulary and even occasional hapax legomena’ (Brubaker, Cunningham 2007, 243, with previous bibliography). The author of the 11th-century CE Vita Nicephori archiepiscopi Mileti (C.6) is described by Lemerle (1971, 243) as an educated man. Macarius Macres (14th/15th century CE) (C.8) is a man of letters, and in his Miracula et translationes sanctae Euphemiae, besides obvious scriptural allusions, he also quotes Pindar (10.3 Halkin) and classical proverbs (5.4–5 and 9.45–7 Halkin, on which see further Halkin 1965, 174 n. 4 and 180 n. 1). The fact that ὤτοις may occasionally represent a slip committed by more educated writers could then be evidence of its frequency in the colloquial language.

F. Commentary on individual texts and occurrences

(1)    Hdn. De locut. prav. AO 3.252.28–253.4 (A.2)

Pseudo-Herodian says that those who justify ὤτοις are misled by analogy. He then explains the differences between the declension of οὖς, ὠτός and that of πλῆκτρον, πλήκτρου. It seems somewhat puzzling, even by the standards of ancient grammarians, that analogy with a completely different form such as τὰ πλῆκτρα can be used to justify the metaplasm ὤτοις (for an attempt at a different explanation see D.). Thus, it is possible that by comparing an altogether different form such as τὰ πλῆκτρα, pseudo-Herodian is not referring to the actual doctrines that he condemns as faulty, but rather aiming only to point out that second- and third-declension nouns cannot simply borrow one another’s case endings. In terms of the doctrines challenged by Phrynichus (A.1) and pseudo-Herodian, then, they may have suggested defending ὤτοις based on analogy with the dative φώτοις. Not only are the similarities between these forms very apparent, but most importantly, Choeroboscus (B.1) discusses the declension of φῶς and οὖς side by side. Choeroboscus also explicitly comments on the correct form of the dative plural of these words and provides a rule to explain the dative forms φωσί and ὠσίν. This could be deemed implicit evidence of an earlier debate on these datives. Thus, it is reasonable that the grammarians criticised by Phrynichus and pseudo-Herodian thought that analogy between two nearly identical metaplasms such as ὤτοις and φώτοις could somehow justify one another.

(2)    Soran. Fasc. 7 (C.1), Orib. 48.27 (C.2)

The ‘bunny bandage with ears’ belongs to a typology of bandages together with the λαγωὸς ἐπίδεσμος (‘bunny bandage’, mentioned by Orib. 46.18.2, 46.26.2) and the λαγωὸς χωρὶς ὤτων (‘bunny bandage without ears’, mentioned by Orib. 48.26 and 48.43.1). A discussion of these bandages is provided by I. Bonati, Medicalia online, s.v. ὑδροκέφαλον at n. 31.