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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
This paper will discuss the behaviour of 
and 
in the Homeric poems. These words are allotted a variety of different ‘meanings’ by the lexicographers. For example, LSJ s.v. 
I. pray, II. vow, III. profess loudly, boast, vaunt; s.v. 
I. prayer, II. boast, vaunt, or object of boasting, glory; s.v. 
I. thing prayed for, object of prayer, II. boast, vaunt. I shall, of course, discuss the whole range of these words; but I begin with some observations on ‘prayer’.
It may appear at first sight that ‘prayer’ is a simple word, with only one conceivable ‘meaning’, which must have that ‘meaning’ in any language. We might suggest that ‘request addressed to a god’ is an adequate representation of that ‘meaning’, and that when we have rendered (say) 
by ‘pray’ in what appear to us to be appropriate contexts we have conveyed the full sense of the original.
page 21 note 1 Aeschylus' gods can certainly hear from a great distance, Supp. 100 ff.,Google ScholarEum. 292 ff., 397 f. However, it seems to be necessary to make the point even in the fifth century.Google Scholar
page 21 note 2 For arguments in support of these sweeping statements, see Adkins, , Merit and Responsibility, Chapter III;Google Scholar‘Honour and Punishment in the Homeric Poems’, B.I.C.S. vii (1960), pp. 3 ff.;Google Scholar‘Friendship and Self-Sufficiency in Homer and Aristotle’, C.Q., N.s. xiii (1963), 30 ff.Google Scholar
page 22 note 1 This last is a theodicy; cf. Merit and Responsibility, 24 f.Google Scholar
page 23 note 1 Not ‘dear’, ‘beloved’; cf. ‘Friendship and Self-sufficiency in Homer and Aristotle’, C.Q. N.S. xiii (1963), 30 ff.Google Scholar
page 23 note 2 Note the occurrence of 
again, in what lexicographers treat as quite a different sense, just two lines after 
in the usage they translate by ‘pray’.
page 25 note 1 Zeus' protection of suppliants does not imply a concern for the well-being of mankind in general, and can be regarded as a function or aspect of his 
Once he has accepted suppliants under his protection, it would be 
for him not to defend them successfully, just as the human 
protects accepted suppliants against potential enemies, for it would be 
to fail in protecting anyone admitted as a member, permanent or transient, of one's own 
(It is against the human 
himself that the suppliant particularly needs Zeus' protection, for it would not be 
for the 
to harm the suppliant.) The need for a belief in a god of suppliants is evident: the society possesses no readily transportable wealth, so that anyone who travels far, particularly by land, needs the hospitality of others; it has no belief in human rights as such, only in rights derived from membership of a particular group, so that the unaccepted suppliant has no rights at all in the society into which he has come; and news travelled slowly, and a man on a journey could easily vanish without trace. Neither Zeus nor the human 
need entertain any friendly emotion towards the suppliant: what is needed is protective action (cf. ‘Friendship and Self-Sufficiency in Homer and Aristotle’, C.Q. N.S. xiii [1963], 30 ff.).Google Scholar
