Poetics. Aristotle. ed. Henry James Pye. London. 1792.
The Poetic of Aristotle (Henry James Pye, revised 1792) (OCR draft) (English) (Henry James Pye's revised 1792 English translation, corrected against the 1788 first edition, aligned to the Kassel reference edition, and supplied with a selective apparatus of substantive 1788 readings.)
Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.
21.
mvp-aristotle-comment-787
αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν ὀνομάτων κτέ.
Up to this point names have been viewed in reference to their origin, sense, or form. Apart from these aspects, however, they may also be classified according to their gender, and distinguished as masculine, feminine, and neuter. This classification of names according to gender will be seen to be founded on the terminations of the nominatives in Attic. The primary distinction between masculine and feminine terminations seems to have been generalized from the names of objects in which there is a visible distinction of sex, and more especially from the names of men and women (comp.
Aristoph.
Nub. 682
). Thus nouns ending in the consonants Ν, Ρ, Σ, Ψ, Ξ are regarded as normally masculine, because names like
Δίων,
Νέστωρ,
Πάρις,
Πέλοψ,
Κόραξ, are names of males; those ending in the vowels Η, Ω, and Α (long or short) are normally feminine, because
Ἑλένη,
Κλειώ,
Ἥρα,
Μοῦσα are names of females. The names of sexless things (the neuters, as we call them)
Aristotle terms
τὰ μεταξύ, because as a class these words occupy an ambiguous position, their final letters being sometimes those of the masculines and sometimes those of the feminines. Thus
δένδρον,
ἦτορ,
τεῖχος, as ending in the consonants Ν, Ρ, Σ, have what
Aristotle regards as masculine terminations; whereas
κάρα,
τέρμα, etc., have feminine ones; the other neuters also,
μέλι,
γόνυ, etc., as ending in vowels, show a certain affinity with the feminines. This seems to be the rationale of the present scheme of genders; and it is in essentials the same as that of the grammarians, though theirs no doubt is both fuller and more systematic, and leaves fewer facts to be treated as anomalies or exceptions (comp.
Dionysius Thrax p. 15 Uhlig).
Aristotle's classification is based on that of
Protagoras, who distinguished nouns into masculine, feminine, and
σκεύη (
Rhet. 3. 5, 1407b 7
Πρωταγόρας τὰ γένη τῶν ὀνομάτων διήρει, ἄρρενα καὶ θήλεα καὶ σκεύη) — the last of the three terms meaning with him not 'things' but 'names of things', as it does also in
Aristotle, in
Soph. el. 14, 173b 39
καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν θηλέων ὀνομάτων ὡσαύτως, καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν λεγομένων μὲν σκευῶν ἐχόντων δὲ θηλείας ἢ ἄρρενος κλῆσιν. In
Soph. el. 14, 173b 19
we are told that
Protagoras said it was a solecism to make
μῆνις and
πήληξ feminine, evidently because he thought and E to be normally masculine terminations, just as
Aristotle does.
Aristophanes,
Nub. 658, ridicules this new
ὀρθοέπεια of
Protagoras in the matter of gender.
Stilpo is said to have disputed the propriety of speaking of Athene as a
θεός:
μὴ γὰρ εἶναι αὐτὴν θεὸν ἀλλὰ θεάν· θεοὺς δὲ εἶναι τοὺς ἄρρενας (
Diog. Laert. 2. 116
).
24.
mvp-aristotle-comment-508
21.21
24. Il y a encore une autre difference entre les noms, les uns font masculins, & les autres feminins, & les autres neutres.]
1
191.
mvp-aristotle-comment-191
NOTE 191. P. 110.
21.21
NOUNS ARE DIVIDED, &C.In passages where great corruption and little importance meet, a commentator may be reasonably indulged in silence, or brevity. What all this has to do in the midst of an analysis of poetical language, as distinguished from that of
prose, I confess myself totally unable to see.
The defects of the passage have been fully pointed out by almost all the annotators. See
Mr. Winstanley's note, p. 300, ed. Ox. 1780
. — But we have lately been told, that all the commentators have entirely mistaken the sense of the passage, and supposed it, without reason, to be imperfect, merely because they did not see, that Aristotle here speaks, not as a Grammarian, but as a Philosopher, and is considering, not the conventional gender of verbal inflection, but the real gender of the things signified. Thus, it is admitted, indeed, that all words ending in
ν and
ρ, are not masculine; yet, if we examine the nature of the things denoted by words of those terminations, we shall find, it seems, that they are masculine, though the words themselves are regarded as feminine.
1
Let us try, then.
Μητηρ, for example, ends in
ρ. Did Aristotle's philosophy lead him to consider a mother as of the masculine gender?
12.
mvp-aristotle-comment-158
Ritter, cap. 21 § 12
αὐτῶν δὲ τῶν ὀνομάτων - καὶ Ν καὶ Σ:quae hinc usque ad finem capitis leguntur, ab Aristotele scribi potuisse nego: ille enim non canones grammaticos voluit perscribere sed ex rebus grammaticis nonnisi eligere quae ad illustrandam dictionem poeticam pertinerent. sed haec de genere nominum disputatio et ab illo consilio utique aliena est et absurdo ludi magistro digna. ipsa quae docentur gravibus vitiis laborant. nimirum nomina in Net Pet ∑ desinentia mascula esse audimus, quamquam permulta et neutrius et feminini generis esse constat, ut
ὀστέον,
φρέαρ πέρας,
νῆσος et sexcenta alia. paulo post sibi ipse non constat scribens
τὰ δὲ μεταξὺ (neutrius generis nomina)
εἰς ταῦτα καὶ Σ. vulgaris et ineptus grammaticus agnoscitur etiam in illis
ὥστε ἴσα συμβαίνει 'πλήθει εἰς ὅσα τὰ ἄρρενα καὶ τὰ θήλεα.
εἰς δὲ τὸ Ιτρία μόνον,
μέλι κόμμι πέπερι: doctius Athenaeus II. p. 66 F:
τοῦτο δὲ ἡμᾶς τηρῆσαι δεῖ,
ὅτι οὐδέτερον ὄνομα οὐδέν ἐστι παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν εἰς Ι λῆγον,
εἰ μὴ μόνον τὸ μέλι.
τὸ γὰρ πέπερι καὶ κόμμι καὶ κοῖφι ξενικά.