With barytone accent [it is] a disjunctive conjunction. [So in e.g.] "or to split the hollow wood."[1] But with perispomenon accent [as a conjunction] expressing doubt it is pronounced with a circumflex accent.[2] [So in e.g.] "whether fighting".[3] [Note also] "or not."[4]
*)he/: baruto/nws diazeuktiko\s su/ndesmos. h)e\ diatmh=cai koi=lon do/ru. perispwme/nws de\ a)porhmatiko\s perispa=tai. h)= maxeou/menon. h)e\ kai\ ou)ki/.
Same material in
Photius (
Lexicon eta64), similar elsewhere (e.g.
Hesychius, Apollonius'
Homeric Lexicon, Herodian the grammarian, scholion A on
Homer,
Iliad 1.190). "Barytone accent" means an accent earlier than the last syllable.
[1]
Homer,
Odyssey 8.507 (on the Trojan horse: web address 1), with the manuscripts' reading rather than
Aristarchus'
diaplh=cai.
[2] Adler notes that Portus omitted
perispa=tai as redundant. The perispomenon form is the monosyllable
h)=.
[3] "Whether fighting" is an abridged version of
Homer,
Odyssey 11.403, "whether [= or] fighting about a town and women" (web address 2)
[4] A formulaic Homeric line-ending (8 instances, inc.
Iliad 2.399); cf.
omicron 896).
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