ποταπός, ποδαπός
(Phryn. Ecl. 36)

D. General commentary

An entry in Phrynichus’ Eclogue (A.1) discusses the form ποταπός and firmly rejects its use as a variant of the interrogative adjective ποδαπός meaning ‘from where, of what country’ while admitting it as an alternative – albeit less preferable – to (ὁ)ποῖος ‘of which sort’. A more verbose version of the same prescription is found in Thomas Magister’s lexicon (B.3), which adds two examples from Libanius. The epitome of Thomas Magister transmitted in the Excerpta Guelferbytana (B.4) quotes Aristophanes’ Knights for the correct usage of ποδαπός, although the form does not in fact appear in that play (see F.1). Phrynichus may also be the source of Photius (B.2), who presents the same doctrine in a more concise format.

The recommended form with δ is indeed the older one: the interrogative ποδαπός belongs to a group of adjectives in -δαπός that express origin or provenance. The older members of this group, attested since the Iliad, are ἀλλοδαπός ‘from another land, foreign’ and τηλεδαπός ‘from far away, distant’, while παντοδαπός ‘of all sorts’ is first attested in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (402); ποδαπός itself is attested since Aeschylus (Supp. 234 = C.1; Ch. 575, 657; fr. 61) and, possibly, Herodotus; its correlative ὁποδαπός ‘of what country’ from Herodotus (5.13.1 = C.2; 7.218.2; 9.16.2, all with ποδαπ- as v.l.) and Pl. Phdr. 275b.3 onwards; ἡμεδαπός ‘of our land, native’ since Ar. Pax 220, while ὑμεδαπός ‘of your land’ is only mentioned by grammatical sources. Incidentally, the codd. of Herodotus have (ὁ)ποδαπός (sometimes with the varia lectio -ταπός), although, in Herodotus’ Ionic, the expected form would be *(ὁ)κοδαπός, with the treatment *kʷ > κ before /o/ (cf. ὁκότερος for ὁπότερος ‘which (of two)’). This peculiarity has been explained either as an Atticism or as the product of assimilation to the /p/ of the suffix (see Weber 1940, 272; Untersteiner 1949, 72–3; Rosén 1962, 54).

The origins of the suffixSuffixes -(δ)απός are obscure. The most widespread theory (see Behn 1991) links it to the LatinLatin suffix -inquus in the antonymic pair propinquus ‘near’, longinquus ‘far away, foreign’ (but see Matasović 2021), allowing for the reconstruction of a PIE suffix *-n̥kʷó-; in this case, the ‑δ- would derive from the resegmentation of ἀλλοδ-απός (based on the nom.-acc. neut. *ἄλλοδ, cf. Lat. aliud) as ἀλλο-δαπός. Given that only ἀλλοδαπός and τηλεδαπός are attested in Homer, it appears more likely that ποδαπός contains an already resegmented suffix -δαπός rather than the *-d of the neuter interrogative pronoun *kʷod (cf. Lat. quod).

After its first Aeschylean attestation (C.1), ποδαπός is a frequent occurrence in Attic literature. As is to be expected for an interrogative word, most occurrences derive from drama (Aesch. 4x; Soph. 3x; Eur. 6x; Cratin. fr. 60; Ar. 11x) and Platonic dialogue (4x), but the form is also attested in other prose authors, including Xenophon (An. 4.4.17) and Demosthenes (4x). ποδαπός continues to be common in Middle and New Comedy (Alex. 3x, see C.5, F.2; Amphis fr. 36.1; Diph. fr. 1.1; Men. 3x).

From a semantic perspective, the meaning ‘of what sort’ was surely understood in Attica by the 4th century BCE, since a passage in Alexis (fr. 94.1 = C.5) plays on both senses (the innovation may have first arisen in Ionic; see F.2). According to a scholium to Dionysius Thrax (B.5), this (incorrect) usage was already present in Sophocles (C.3), although the sense ‘from which land’ would fit the context of the fragment in which – in a scene inspired by Hom. Od. 11.127–8 – Odysseus, carrying an oar on his shoulders, arrives in an unknown land in which he is addressed by a stranger (see, however, Pearson 1917, 111, who felt that the scholiast’s interpretation cannot be excluded). At any rate, the innovative meaning ‘of what kind’ becomes increasingly common in the koine and is the norm in the New TestamentNew Testament (see Blass, Debrunner 1976, 247), and in later Christian authors, such as Romanus Melodus (6th century CE), who employs ποταπός (the spelling with τ, despite Phrynichus’ prescription in A.1, is not in itself connected with the change in meaning, as will be made clear below) as synonymous with τίς ‘who’, ποῖος ‘of what kind’, and πόσος ‘how great’ (see Coraclides 1968).

The origin of the variant ποταπός is unclear (note that none of the other adjectives in -δαπός has a variant in -ταπός): it might have arisen either from the assimilation of /d/ to the voiceless quality of the two neighbouring /p/ sounds (see Blanc 2003 for comparable examples of assimilatory devoicing in Greek) or under the influence of other interrogative adjectives, such as πότε ‘when’ and πότερος ‘which one’. It should be noted that although both the formal variant with τ and the meaning ‘of what kind’ are innovations, they are arguably unrelated to one another. In fact, spellings with τ – already attested for later Attic authors, such as Alexis (see F.2) and Menander (Asp. 241) – become common in the koine for both meanings of the word (Arnott 1996, 248), and they are the norm in Roman-period papyriPapyri (a search on the website papyri.info returns 15 occurrences in the period from 10 BCE to 625 CE), in which the spelling with δ is virtually unattested. Nevertheless, the two innovations may ultimately have been associated with one another in the purists’ eyes, given that both constituted deviations from the classical norm. This may be why Phrynichus (A.1), rather than rejecting them wholesale, associated the innovative form with the innovative meaning, creating an arguably artificial distinction that is not borne out by the textual attestations. Therefore, it is not necessary to assume, as Lobeck (1820, 56–8) did, that the second part of the entry (restricting the admissibility of ποταπός) is interpolated, as it would then be incompatible with the first (condemning ποταπός). The proper usage of ποδαπός vis-à-vis ποῖος was already discussed by Apollonius Dyscolus in a passage of the Syntax (B.1), whose argument is not always easy to follow but makes clear nonetheless that Apollonius regarded the innovative usage of ποδαπός as marginal if not outright incorrect (see Lallot 1997 vol. 2, 28).

In support of the variant ποδαπός, Phrynichus references an ancient etymologicalEtymology explanation – preserved more clearly in Photius (B.2), and Thomas Magister (B.3) – that traced the word to the expression (ἀπὸ/ἐκ) ποίου δαπέδου ‘from which soil (i.e. land)’. The same explanation is found for the other adjectives in -δαπός in several erudite sources (cf. e.g. Apoll. Lex. 152.14; Hsch. α 3143, τ 757; Σ η 73 [= Phot. η 144, Su. η 288.3–5]; Et.Gen. B α 507 [= EM 68.2–3, Et.Sym. α 606]; Eust. in Od. 1.114.5; schol. Aesch. Th. 375d [AbHa]) and is apparently still considered possible by Beekes (see EDG s.v. δάπεδον). Another ancient etymology, rejected in Ep.Hom. τ 59, similarly explained τηλεδαπός as a compoundCompounds of ἔδαφος ‘bottom, soil’. Both explanations must already have been current in the time of Apollonius Dyscolus, who refuted them in a chapter of his treatise On Pronouns (GG 2,1.31.13–32.21), in which he argued that the forms in -δαπός are derivatives and not compounds, referencing a fuller treatment in his now-lost On Compounds (cf. also the extensive discussion in Apoll.Dysc. Synt. 2.161–70 = GG 2,2.254.5–266.3, and see Lallot 1997 vol. 2, 152–6; Brandenburg 2005, 589–90). Notably, the grammarians’ attempts to analyse the adjectives in -δαπός as compounds produced an adverb δάποςδάπος ‘far’ (cf. EM 756.45) and an s-stem neuter noun δάπος ‘land, soil’ in Orac.Sib. 5.93: ἥξει γὰρ Πέρσης ἐπὶ σὸν δάπος ὥστε χάλαζα, ‘for there will come a Persian upon your soil like hail’.

While one might expect Atticising authors to scrupulously avoid the forms in τ, the latter do occasionally occur in their texts alongside those forms in δ, a fact that Schmid (Atticismus vol. 4, 684) regarded as a concession to the post-classical language. The distribution in Lucian (see Schmid, Atticismus vol. 1, 372) is interesting: whereas in the Lives for Sale he uses ποδαπός thrice in its classical meaning, his only use of ποταπός (Paras. 22 = C.7) is associated with the innovative meaning. This distribution, if not attributable to the hazards of textual transmission, would suggest that Lucian followed the same rule that Phrynichus does – that is, reserving the innovative spelling for the innovative meaning. Meanwhile, the formal oscillation in Philostratus (VA 3.16 ποταποί, 7.18 ποδαπός; see Schmid, Atticismus vol. 4, 371) is not associated with a change in meaning, while in Ael. NA 9.8, cod. V reads ποδαπαί against ποταπαί of the other codd. (see Schmid, Atticismus vol. 3, 253). To the extent that the textual tradition can be trusted, then, the mixture of forms in Atticising writers suggests that by the 2nd century CE, the innovative variant may have been too widespread to avoid it entirely. This is confirmed by the success of ποταπός in Medieval and Modern Greek (see E.).

E. Byzantine and Modern Greek commentary

The innovative form ποταπός, despite the Atticists’ reservations, prevailed in Post-classical Greek. In the Medieval period, the usual spelling in vernacular texts is ποταπός (also accented πόταπος, ποτάπος: this accentAccent retraction is likely due to the exclamatory meaning ‘how big/great’, cf. τόσος, τοιοῦτος, τέτοιος), whereas ποδαπός is very rare (see CGMEMG vol. 2, 1020–3). As an interrogative adjective/pronoun, ποταπός can mean ‘from where, from what country’, ‘of what kind’, ‘how big, how great’, but it can also function as an adjective meaning ‘insignificant’, ‘inadequate’, ‘of bad quality’, ‘worthless’, ‘contemptible’ (see Kriaras, LME s.v.). Standard Modern Greek ποταπός preserves the latter meaning (see LKN s.v.); for the dialectal forms, which partly preserve the meaning ‘of what kind’, see Andriotis (1974 s.v.). Notably, some Northern dialects have the adjectives/pronouns πόταβους ‘of what kind’ and κανγκαπόταβους ‘none’, replacing the inherited ending with the suffix -αβους, which is of probable Slavic origin and is typically used to form adjectives that refer to negative qualities (see Papadamou 2017, 580). The form ποταποῖος ‘of what kind’ – a blend of ποταπός and ποῖος – first appears in the 15th century.

F. Commentary on individual texts and occurrences

(1)    Excerpta Guelferbytana (E) in Ritschl (1832, 289 n. 14) (B.4)

The epitomised entry in the Excerpta Guelferbytana (cod. Guelf. 20 Gud. graec. 34v, cf. Ritschl 1832, LVIII–LX) cites Aristophanes’ Knights as an example of the correct usage of (ὁ)ποδαπός. However, no form of the adjective occurs in the play. Since, as mentioned above (D.), ποδαπός does indeed occur frequently in Aristophanes, it is possible that the explication originally referred to some other Aristophanic passage (e.g. Pax 186 = C.4 or V. 185, or even a now lost play), and that the excerptor mistook the subsequent explication for the actual quote (see Ritschl 1832, LXI; Kassel, Austin, PCG vol. 3,2, 433; Pellegrino 2015, 496; Bagordo 2018, 198–200). It is less likely that the quotation is merely a grammarian’s exemplum fictum, as suggested by Lorenzoni (2017, 452 n. 43). In any case, the question that followed – σὺ δ’ ἐκ ποίου τελεῖς τοῦ δαπέδου – is surely not the Aristophanic locus classicus, but a sample sentence intended to illustrate the alleged etymology of ποδαπός from ἐκ ποίου δαπέδου, as Bagordo correctly observed (2018, 199).

(2)    Alex. fr. 94 (C.5)

This fragment from Alexis’ Thebans (on which, see Arnott 1996, 247–9), transmitted by Ath. 4.159d, contains a joke that plays on the two potential meanings of ποδαπός: the conservative ‘from what country’, which is intended by the question, and the innovative ‘of what sort’, which is presupposed by the answer. The same joke occurs in an anecdote related by Chrysipp. fr. 17.2 and quoted by Athenaeus immediately before Alexis’ fragment: πυνθανομένου δέ τινος αὐτοῦ, ποδαπός ἐστιν, ἀποκρίνασθαι, ὅτι πλούσιος (‘and when someone asked him where he was from, he answered ‘rich’’), as well as in Plaut. Capt. 277–8: HEG. quo de genere natust illic Philocrates? PHILOC. Polyplusio (HEG. ‘what family does Philocrates here belong to?’ PHILOC. ‘The Very Rich’), possibly based on a Greek original that, however, may not necessarily be identified with Alexis’ play. Given that the exchange in Chrysippus’ anecdote takes place between an Athenian and a visiting Ionian, Rutherford (1881, 130) concluded that the innovative meaning originated in Ionia, which is possible, although it should be noted that the extant IonicIonic sources offer no direct support for this hypothesis. Arnott (1996, 248) accepted Rutherford’s conclusion, adding that ‘the second use need not yet have been naturalised into colloquial Attic’ for the joke to be understood. Alexis himself uses the word in its older Attic meaning in two other fragments (177.3, 232.3), also transmitted by Athenaeus, albeit with the spelling ποταπ-, interestingly enough. The conservative Attic meaning may be defended in some earlier passages in which the innovative meaning may sometimes be detected (cf. LSJ s.v.), such as Soph. fr. 453 (C.3), Ar. Pax 186 (C.4), Av. 906, and D. 25.40 (possibly spurious).