Julia Sturm, "Grain, riches, and edible wealth in Greek and Indo-European"

Julia Sturm

Uppsala University

Grain, riches, and edible wealth in Greek and Indo-European

Abstract: This talk takes as its point of departure the Greek words ἄφενος ‘riches, wealth’ (Hom.+) and ὄμπ(ν)η ‘food, grain’ (Call.+). Both of these have been connected by linguists at one point or another to (i.a.) the Vedic Sanskrit ápnas- ‘wealth’, although a connection between ἄφενος and ápnas- is now generally rejected. A host of proposals for ἄφενος in particular have been put forward (most notably Balles 1997, who derives it from a compound meaning “a valuable animal not to be sacrificed” and Willi 2004, who argues that it should mean something more like “something which flows abundantly”), but none have gained broad acceptance.
A related and crucial question is what “wealth” consisted of in archaic Greece. I will
explore what it means for something or someone to be “rich” in Homer, investigating in
particular those passages which utilize descriptors of wealth which are related to the discussion
of food. In this talk, which stems from my current larger project investigating the Indo-European
food-related lexicon, I will argue that the concept of “edible wealth” is crucial to the
understanding of both of these Greek terms, as well as related terms in other early-attested Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit. Ultimately, via a linguistic and philological discussion, I
will claim that food metaphor is central to understanding the conception of wealth and riches in
Homer.

References
Balles, Irene. 1997. Griechisch ἄφ(ε)νος “Reichtum”. Historische Sprachforschung 110. 215-
232.
Willi, Andreas. 2004. Flowing riches: Greek ἄφενος and Indo-European streams. In JHW
Penney, ed. Indo-European perspectives. Oxford. 323-340.

Gemeinsame Veranstaltung mit dem Institut für Klassische Philologie, Mittel- und Neulatein der Universität Wien.