pezetairoi

[jerby]

hi there,
this is just a minor question.
but why is pezetairoi spelled like pezHetairoi? if it was originally 1 word the H is mute, greeks didnt have an H. only spiritus lenis/asper.
so why is it there?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

hi there,
this is just a minor question.
but why is pezetairoi spelled like pezHetairoi? if it was originally 1 word the H is mute, greeks didnt have an H. only spiritus lenis/asper.
so why is it there?

That's a very good question jerby. The word itself comes from two separate ones of course, the word for "foot" (pez-) and that for "companions" (hetairoi). Combined, there is no rough breathing sign over the epsilon any longer, so someone looking at the word for the first time *should* transliterate it as "pezetairoi". If the first part of a compound word ends in a consonant that *can* be aspirated, then the aspirate will change it. So "kata+hetairoi" (just as a made-up example) would yield "Kathetairoi". This process is called "medial aspiration" or "interaspiration" by various people. But zeta cannot be aspirated, so we have a problem. "In such cases the aspirate does not generally appear in Attic inscriptions which otherwise indicate it, but it is occasionally found--e.g., euhorkon, parhedroi, prosheketo." They actually insert an "H" in there in the inscription. So we would be totally justified in choosing either one to be honest. I think we have just fallen back on the more common spelling there, though this would have been how it was pronounced (since we know the "hetairoi" had an aspirate at the front), so it may be considered as *more* correct to put it in there in our English transliteration, even though it isn't there in the Greek dictionary entry. Hope this helps a little!

Just don't ask why we have Rome and Rhodos!!

[jerby]

why do you have Rome and Rhodos?

great answer...i picked up pezetairoi for valerio Massimo manfredi..but still, that's very informative