Resumen de Homeric Formulas and their Antiquity: A Constructional Study of ἀνδροτῆτα καὶ ἥβην
The article presented here employs the new tools of constructional analysis in or-der to evaluate the antiquity of the famous Homeric expression λιποῦσ’ ἀνδροτῆτα καὶ ἥβην ‘leaving behind manliness and youth’ (Il. 16.858, 22.363), which is usual-ly regarded as a deep archaism preserved within the poetic diction, possibly go-ing back to pre-Mycenaean times. As these new tools suggest that the expression belongs to a recent layer in the poetic technique, and is unlikely to preserve cen-turies-old linguistic features, this paper explores a scenario of how the aberrant form ἀνδροτῆτα (along with its irregular scansion) might have been created with-in the ancient written tradition of the text, and it proposes a likely emendation, which is supported by several philological and linguistic considerations.
