βαίνω, βιβάζω, and prefixed forms
(Antiatt. β 21, Antiatt. β 22, Antiatt. κ 63)

D. General commentary

Three entries in the Antiatticist (A.1, A.2, A.3) deal with the verbs βαίνω (‘to go’) and βιβάζω (‘to make go’) and with the prefixed forms ἐκβαίνω (‘to go out’), καταβαίνω (‘to go down’), ἐκβιβάζω (‘to make go out’), and καταβιβάζω (‘to make go down’). The Antiatticist’s intention appears to be to discuss these forms’ different meanings – in particular, the possible sexual connotations of βαίνω and βιβάζω (A.1, A.2) in reference not only to animals but also to humans (a further entry devoted to βαίνω, i.e. Antiatt. β 30Antiatt. β 30, which mentions the metaphoric meaning ‘to scan [a poetic line]’, will not be dealt with here). In A.2, the reference to the sexual meaning of βαίνω is followed by an apparently unrelated debate concerning the correct use of some prefixed derivatives of βαίνω and βιβάζω: here, the Antiatticist refers to a prescription by some contemporaries of his, who – unlike him (cf. Valente 2015, 45–6) – favoured the prefixed forms of βαίνω (ἐκβῆσαι, καταβῆσαι) over the corresponding βιβάζω-derivatives. The same opposition is also found in Α.3, which concerns only καταβαίνω and καταβιβάζω. Both A.2 and A.3 are very concise and, in all likelihood, epitomised. However, based on an examination of the meaning and distribution of the s-aorist of ἐκβαίνω, καταβαίνω, ἐκβιβάζω, and καταβιβάζω in literary texts (see below), it seems reasonable to argue that the Antiatticist’s aim in the second part of A.2 and in A.3 is to discuss which of these verbs should be employed to convey the factitive meaning ‘I made go out’/‘I made go down’. In that which follows, I shall begin by discussing the Antiatticist’s stance on the problem of the sexual meaning of βαίνω and βιβάζω; I shall then devote the second part of the commentary to investigating the debate concerning the prefixed derivatives of these two verbs.

The IE root pair *g^u̯em- (zero grade *g^u̯m̥-)/*g^u̯eh2- (‘I go’) generates various presents in Ancient Greek – namely, βαίνω (from zero-grade *g^u̯m̥- and suffix -i̯é/ó-), βάσκω (from zero-grade *g^u̯m̥- and suffix -sk̑e/o-), βίβημι/βιβάω (from *g^u̯eh2-, with reduplication), βιβάσκω (from *g^u̯eh2-, with reduplication and suffix -sk̑e/o-; on this type of presents, see Willi 2018, 485–8; Jiménez Delgado, García Zamora 2023, 10–2), and βιβάζω (from *g^u̯h̥2- with reduplication and suffix -(ά)ζω, a morpheme originating from dental/velar stems plus the verbal suffix -i̯e/o- – e.g., δικάζω from *dik-ad/g-i̯e/o- – and later extended to other stems); see EDG 192; LIV 205; Willi 2018, 301; 486; Jiménez Delgado, García Zamora 2023, 6–10. The distribution of these present stems (which are often prefixed, e.g., ἀναβιβάζω, διαβιβάσκω, ἐπιβάσκω etc.) varies with respect to both their antiquity and the frequency with which they are attested. On the semantic level, βαίνω, βάσκω, and βίβημι/βιβάω have the intransitive meaning ‘I go’, while βιβάζω (like, for the most part, βιβάσκω – on which, see Jiménez Delgado, García Zamora 2023) has a clear factitive meaning (‘I make go’, ‘I cause to go’, see e.g. LSJ s.v.; on the factitive meaning of verbs in -άζω and -ίζω, see Debrunner 1917, 120–7; Schmoll 1955, 79–114; Greppin 1997).

As already mentioned, in A.1 and A.2 the Antiatticist focuses on a special semantic nuance of βαίνω and βιβάζω – that is, their sexual meaning (for βαίνω with the accusative in the sense ‘to mount’, see e.g. Achae. fr. 28; Hdt. 1.192.3). In A.1 the lexicon equates βιβάζω to ὀχεύωὀχεύω (the equivalence may go back – if Erbse’s reconstruction (1950, 112) is correct – to Aelius Dionysius, see the apparatus of B.7). The verb ὀχεύω can have either the transitive meaning ‘to mount’ (said of the male animal, see e.g. Pl. R. 454e.1) or the factitive meaning ‘to make [two animals] breed’ (Arist. GA 748a19). Given the inherently factitive nature of βιβάζω (see above), it is easy to assume that this was the meaning intended by the Antiatticist (see Orth 2013, 85). However, given that, in the entry that immediately follows (A.2), the Antiatticist states that βαίνω may be used ὁμοίως ἐπὶ ταὐτοῦ (‘similarly in the same sense’), one may reasonably suppose that the meaning assigned to βιβάζω in A.1 is not the factitive ‘to make breed’ (which cοuld not equally be conveyed by βαίνω) but the transitive ‘to mount’. This idea could be reinforced by an entry in Photius (B.6) in which the passive βιβάζεται is equated to ὀχεύεται (‘(s)he is mounted’; cf. e.g. Arist. HA 540b ὀχεύεται δ’ ἡ μὲν θήλεια συγκαθιεῖσα καὶ διαβαίνουσα, ὁ δ’ ἄρρην ἐπαναβαίνων ὀχεύει, ‘the female [elephant] is mounted by lowering herself and spreading her legs apart, while the male mounts her by going over her’). Nevertheless, the meaning conveyed by βιβάζω in other lexica is certainly (or almost certainly) that of ‘to make breed’ (see B.1, B.2, B.4). Regardless of the verb’s specific meaning in A.1, at the end of the entry, the Antiatticist mentions a peculiar usage of βιβάζω by the comic playwright Alcaeus (C.1), an author frequently quoted in the lexicon (see, e.g., entries βασίλεια, βασίλισσα, κρεμῶ, κρεμάσω, ὀμοῦμαι, ὀμόσω, and κυνίδιον, κυνάριον). According to the lexicographer’s testimony, in the play Callisto (on which see Orth 2013, 78–80), Alcaeus used βιβάζω in a sexual sense specifically in relation to humans rather than animals. Consequently, the Antiatticist’s aim in A.1 appears to be that of opposing those (like Pollux, B.1; see also B.2) who proscribed this use of the verb and accepted it only in relation to animals (see Orth 2013, 85). Nevertheless, in all likelihood, Alcaeus’ use of βιβάζω for a person in a sexual context was not neutral but rather had a disparaging intentAbuse (terms of), as is the case when βαίνω (‘to mount’) is used to describe a clearly feral and degrading sexual behaviour on the part of a person (see Pl. Phdr. 250e.4–5) or a satyr (see Achae. fr. 28). Cf. also F.1.

In A.2 and A.3, the Antiatticist also deals with the aorists of βαίνω, βιβάζω, and their derivatives. βαίνω has two aorists (both from *g^u̯eh₂- and both attested from Homer onwards): a root aorist ἔβην, which is intransitive in meaning (‘I went’), and an s-aorist ἔβησα, which is factitive (‘I made go’; on factitive s-aorists in general, see Willi 2018, 438−40). From the 5th century BCE, however, βιβάζω also appears to have developed its own s-aorist: ἐβίβασα (‘I made go’), which is de facto semantically equivalent to ἔβησα.

To focus on the verbs discussed by the Antiatticist in A.2 and A.3, the aorists (i.e. the total sum of root-aorists and s-aorists) of ἐκβαίνω and καταβαίνω are overwhelmingly more widely attested than the corresponding forms of ἐκβιβάζω and καταβιβάζω in all literary texts dating between the 8th century BCE and the 3rd century CE. However, the forms that are securely identifiable as s-aorists of ἐκβαίνω and καταβαίνω constitute just a fraction of the total. For ἐκβαίνω, they amount to three occurrences in Homer (the participle ἐκβήσαντες in Od. 24.301 and two cases of the indicative in tmesis, in Il. 1.438 and 5.163–4) and one in Euripides (the ind. 3rd pers. sing. ἐξέβησε in Hel. 1616 = C.3). As regards καταβαίνω, the attestations consist of the ind. 3rd pers. sing. κατεβήσετο (7x in Homer, 1x in the Homeric hymns) and the imperative 2nd pers. sing. καταβήσεο in Hom. Il. 5.109 (both forms have the meaning ‘to descend’/‘to come down from’, with the factitive connotation being neutralised in the middle diathesis). The remaining occurrences are all of the ind. 3rd pers. plur. ἐξέβησαν and κατέβησαν, which could theoretically be identified as either s-aorists or root-aorists, given that the forms are homographs. Nevertheless, since the meaning of ἐξέβησαν and κατέβησαν in these occurrences is always intransitive, these should all be considered root-aorists and not s-aorists. Let us now turn to the s-aorists of ἐκβιβάζω and καταβιβάζω. For both verbs, the s-aorists occur with considerably greater frequency than the equivalent forms of the corresponding βαίνω-derivatives, but the attestations are almost exclusively in prose, while the s-aorist forms of ἐκβαίνω and καταβαίνω are found only in poetry (see above). The s-aorist of ἐκβιβάζω is found e.g. 3x in Thucydides, once in Herodotus, 3x in Aristophanes, 2x in Xenophon (see C.6), once in Plato, 18x in Diodorus Siculus, 2x in Plutarch, and 6x in Cassius Dio. The s-aorist of ἐκβιβάζω also appears to have occurred in Strattis (fr. 86 = C.2, cf. also F.1) according to the Antiatticist’s testimony (A.2; but, if one accepts Meineke’s integration in FCG vol. 2,2, 830, Strattis’ text may actually have had an aorist form of καταβιβάζω: see Orth 2009, 284–5; Fiorentini 2017, 268–9). The aorist of καταβιβάζω occurs less frequently than the aorist of ἐκβιβάζω in authors from the 5th–4th century BCE (see Thucydides, 2x, see C.5, Herodotus, 2x, and Xenophon, 2x) and is more frequently attested from the Hellenistic period onwards.

In sum, evidence for the factitive s-aorist of ἐκβαίνω and καταβαίνω is overall very scarce and limited to poetry (and almost completely absent in 5th-century authors, with the exception of C.3). On the contrary, the s-aorists of ἐκβιβάζω and καταβιβάζω are more frequently attested also (crucially for this analysis) in classical authors, such as Thucydides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato (see above). Overall, the spread of βιβάζω-derivatives in the aorist stem is easily explainable in systematic terms: given that, in the s-aorist, both βαίνω and βιβάζω (and their derivatives) have a factitive meaning (and are thus synonyms), βιβάζω and its derivatives became more widespread by virtue of the fact that they were more transparent and less ambiguous than their counterparts.

It is surprising, therefore, that the unnamed scholars mentioned by the Antiatticist (A.2) rejected these forms (which are well attested in 5th–4th-century authors) and favoured the s-aorist of ἐκβαίνω and καταβαίνω instead (for which the single 5th-century occurrence is in Euripides, whose status as a linguistic model among the Atticist is often questioned; see also Orth 2009, 285). The interpretation of these data may benefit from broadening the analysis to the attestations of the s-aorists of other prefixed derivatives of βαίνω. Indeed, most occurrences of the s-aorists of ἀναβαίνω, ἀποβαίνω, εἰσβαίνω, ἐμβαίνω, and ἐπιβαίνω are found in Homer (more than twenty cases in total), followed by Euripides (6x) and Herodotus (5x). In other words, we may confidently assert that all s-aorists of βαίνω-derivatives share more or less the same distribution as that which has been observed above for ἐκβαίνω and καταβαίνω, i.e. with the Homeric poems being the texts in which they occur more often. This suggests that the scholars criticised by the Antiatticist in A.2 – who likely opposed the considerably more common βιβάζω-derivatives while favouring the rarer βαίνω-derivatives – relied on Homer’s authority. That the Atticistic preference for the prefixed forms of βαίνω was not limited to ἐκβαίνω and καταβαίνω is demonstrated by an entry from the expanded Synagoge (B.5), which refers to the occurrence of factitive ἀνέβησε in Herodotus (C.4). As far as the Antiatticist’s defense of βιβάζω-derivatives (A.2, A.3) is concerned, it is remarkable that the lexicographer adduced a passage from Strattis (an author mentioned only twice more in the lexicon, i.e. Antiatt. α 152Antiatt. α 152 and Antiatt. μ 38Antiatt. μ 38) to show a usage that occurs also in authors whom he quotes far more frequently, such as Aristophanes (Av. 660–3; see Fiorentini 2017, 268–9), Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. In fact, it is plausible that the text of A.2 has been epitomisedEpitome and was originally more complex (see also F.1).

E. Byzantine and Modern Greek commentary

The sexual meaning of βαίνω and βιβάζω is not attested after the Byzantine erudite sources that deal with the early occurrences of this semantic nuance of the two verbs (see section B). Both βαίνω and βιβάζω survive into Medieval Greek (see Kriaras, LME s.vv.), but for βιβάζω, the latest attestations date to the 18th–19th century (see e.g., Nicodemus Hagiorita, Scholia in concilia localia 4.16.38), while βαίνω is retained in Modern Greek in the sense ‘to go forward’, ‘to evolve’ (see LKN s.v.).

The s-aorists of βαίνω-derivatives are almost entirely absent in late antique and Byzantine literature, with very few exceptions (e.g., [Chrys.] Petr.El. MPG 50.734.48; Anonymi historia imperatorum 2.686), some of which exhibit an intentional reuse of Homeric diction (see Apoll. Met.Ps. 2.143.15, Nonn. Par.Ev.Io. 21.61, and the Homeric occurrences mentioned in D.). In low- and middle-register texts from the 9th century CE onwards, one may observe a new aorist form of βαίνω and its prefixed derivatives, formed with the ending -ηκα, by analogy with κ-aorists such as ἔθηκα (from τίθημι, ‘to set’) and perfects such as εὕρηκα (from εὑρίσκω, ‘to find’); see CGMEMG vol. 3, 1344–5; 1373. As far as the aorists of ἐκβιβάζω and καταβιβάζω are concerned, they are, instead, well attested throughout the late antique and Byzantine periods and up until the 19th century (see e.g. Dositheus II Patriarcha, Δωδεκάβιβλος Δοσιθέου Γʹ–Δʹ 3.196.6; Neophytus Hagiotaphita, Υπόμνημα περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἱερουσαλὴμ διαφόρων χριστιανικῶν ἐθνῶν 2.421.29). Modern Greek retains καταβιβάζω (in the form κατεβάζω, aor. κατέβασα) in the sense of ‘to bring [something] down’, ‘to move [something] at a lower level’ (see LKN s.v.).

F. Commentary on individual texts and occurrences

(1)    Antiatt. β 21 (A.1), Antiatt. β 22 (A.2)

These two entries in the Antiatticist are closely related to the point that they may be considered as a single lexicographical item regarding βαίνω, βιβάζω, and their prefixed forms (the two entries are, in fact, edited as one in Bekker 1814, 85). Indeed, the phrase βαίνειν· ὁμοίως ἐπὶ ταὐτοῦ (‘βαίνειν: Similarly [used] for the same thing’) tightly links the section concerning the sexual meaning of βιβάζω (A.1) to the following lexicographical material regarding βαίνω (A.2), with the last part of A.2 on the prefixed forms of βαίνω and βιβάζω being a sort of appendix, connected to what precedes only through the ‘horizontal’ criterion of common derivation.

As far as Meineke’s correction of the transmitted ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους in ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπου is concerned (A.1), one may observe that the accusative plural could also be acceptable, in the more general sense of ‘[Alcaeus used βιβάζω] in reference to humans’. At the same time, however, the singular ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπου (‘in relation to a person’) appears to point more directly towards a specific scene in which the verb may have been employed to abuseAbuse (terms of) an individual by describing his sexual behaviour using a markedly degrading term (not unlike the verb βαίνω e.g. in Pl. Phdr. 250e.4–5, see D.).

Regarding A.2, the entry’s second part has been variously emended by modern scholars (see the critical apparatus). In particular, the last three words following Strattis’ name – i.e. οὐκ ἐκβιβάσαι λέγει – have been consistently expunged by all editors (both of the Antiatticist – see Bekker 1814, 85; Valente 2015, 129 – and of Strattis’ fragments – see e.g. Meineke, FCG vol. 2,2, 791; Kock, CAF vol. 1, 732; Kassel, Austin, PCG vol. 7, 659). However, one may compare A.2 with two other entries in the Antiatticist that conform to the same structure – i.e. a linguistic prescription is referred to by the lexicographer with (οὐ) φασι δεῖν λέγειν/λέγεσθαι and is accompanied by literary references refuting the norm, with the author’s name followed by the verb λέγει:

• Antiatt. κ 31Antiatt. κ 31: κυρίαν· οὔ φασι δεῖν λέγειν, ἀλλὰ κεκτημένην· τὸν δὲ κεκτημένον μὴ λέγεσθαι ἐπὶ τοῦ δεσπότου. <***> Σατύρ{ικ}οις ‘κεκτημένον’ λέγει, Φιλήμων ‘κυρίαν’ (‘κυρία (‘mistress’): They state that you should not say [thus], but κεκτημένη (‘owner’), but [they also state] that κεκτημένος is not used for the master. <…> in the Satyri (Phryn.Com. fr. 50) uses κεκτημένον, [and] Philemon [uses] κυρία);
• Antiatt. κ 32Antiatt. κ 32: κομψόν· ἐπὶ τοῦ κομψευομένου φασὶ δεῖν λέγεσθαι καὶ τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν ἀσθενούντων λέγοντας, ὅτι κομψότερον διάκεινται, μέμφονται· ἀλλὰ Πλάτων Πολιτείας †δʹ† κομψοὺς οὐ τοὺς κεκομψευμένους λέγει, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἀμείνονας (‘κομψός (‘refined’): They state that it should be said in relation to the smart person (κομψευόμενος) and they blame those who say, in reference to ill people, that they are κομψότερον (‘in better health’). But Plato in the Republic (3.405d.4; 3.408b.6) calls κομψοί not the smart ones, but those who are better’).

The comparison between A.2 and Antiatt. κ 31 and Antiatt. κ 32 suggests that the final portion of text expunged by modern scholars may actually conceal a wording such as Στράττις <δὲ> {οὐκ} ἐκβιβάσαι λέγει or <ἀλλὰ> Στράττις {οὐκ} ἐκβιβάσαι λέγει (‘but Strattis uses ἐκβιβάσαι’), with which the Antiatticist could have rejected the anonymous scholars’ prescription of ἐκβῆσαι and καταβῆσαι (see also Kaibel in PCG vol. 7, 659: ‘i.e. tamen dicit Strattis ἐκβιβάσαι’).