ATTESTATION
The month name Ἀγαγύλιος is attested in Thessaly and Achaia Phthiotis.Footnote 1 Recently, excavations at a Thessalian temple of Apollo in Pythion, at the foot of Olympus, have brought to light numerous ex-votos dedicated to Apollo, Poseidon and to an Artemis whose epiclesis is Agagylaia.Footnote 2 Neither the month name nor the epiclesis, which is certainly to be connected with the month name, has yet received an explanation.Footnote 3
THE COLLOCATION [DRIVE] [WOOD]
The conveyance of wood in Homer is usually expressed by a syntagm containing the verb ἄγω ‘to drive’ – and not ϕέρω ‘to carry’:
But in the morning arouse the people, king of men Agamemnon, to bring wood. (Il. 23.49-50)
But lord Agamemnon sent forth mules and men from all sides from out the huts to fetch wood, and a man of valour watched over them, good Meriones, escort of kindly Idomeneus. And they went forth bearing in their hands axes for the cutting of wood and well-woven ropes, and before them went the mules. (Il. 23.110-15)
The collocation ‘drive wood’ may have sounded strange to the scholiast, for he takes ἀξέμεν ὕλην to mean κόπτειν ὕλην, ‘to cut wood’, confusing ἄγω with ἄγνυμι.Footnote 4 In any case, the last passage makes it explicit that the conveyance is done by mules either pulling carts or bearing the weight on their backs.
… far is it to fetch wood from the mountain. (Il. 24.662-3)
For nine days they brought in measureless amount of wood.Footnote 5 (Il. 24.784)
When they had gone ashore, they went along a smooth road by which wagons used to bring wood down to the city from the high mountains. (Od. 10.103-4)
Here it is openly stated that the wood is conveyed by wagons (ἄμαξαι), and that might be the reason for using the verb ἄγω in the syntagm. Should the wood be carried not by draught animals but on one's arms, the verb φέρω would be more suitable, for example:
… he bore a mighty weight of dry wood to serve him at supper time, and flung it down with a crash inside the cave.Footnote 6 (Od. 9.233-5)
A similar distinction might hold for the conveyance of dead bodies in Homer. In Iliad 7, the huge amount of corpses is carried on carts: νέκυάς τ’ ἀγέμεν, 418; ὀτρύνοντο νέκυς τ’ ἀγέμεν, 420 (cf. ἀμαξάων ἐπάειραν ‘lifted them [ = the bodies] upon the wagons’, 426). When just one dead body is at issue, which must be borne by his companions, φέρω is used. Upon seeing the corpse of Patroclus lying on the battlefield, Ajax addresses Menelaus as follows (Il. 17.717–18): ἀλλὰ σὺ μὲν καὶ Μηριόνης ὑποδύντε μάλ’ ὦκα | νεκρὸν ἀείραντες φέρετ’ ἐκ πόνου, ‘but you and Meriones stoop with all speed beneath the body, and raise him up, and bear him forth from the toil of war’. And so they do as they were told (735 and 746): οἵ γ’ ἐμμεμαῶτε νέκυν φέρον, ‘then both bore in haste the corpse’. Hector's body, on the other hand, should be conveyed by a wagon pulled by mules back to Ilion. So Achilles concedes at length (Il. 24.139): ὃς ἄποινα φέροι καὶ νεκρὸν ἄγοιτο, ‘he who brings ransom, let him bear away the dead’. Zeus’ instructions to Iris leave no room for doubt (Il. 24.149-51 and 24.178–80): κῆρύξ τίς οἱ ἕποιτο γεραίτερος, ὅς κ’ ἰθύνοι | ἡμιόνους καὶ ἄμαξαν ἐΰτροχον, ἠδὲ καὶ αὖτις | νεκρὸν ἄγοι προτὶ ἄστυ, ‘a herald may attend him, an elder man, to guide the mules and the light-running wagon, and to convey the dead back to the city’.
Odysseus’ companions are given orders to bring back Elpenor's corpse, obviously without the aid of a cart (Od. 12.9-10): ἐγὼν ἑτάρους προΐην ἐς δώματα Κίρκης | οἰσέμεναι νεκρὸν Ἐλπήνορα τεθνηῶτα, ‘I sent forth my comrades to the house of Circe to fetch the body of the dead Elpenor’. The suitors as well, numerous though they may be, must be carried in the same way after the slaughter (Od. 22.437): ἄρχετε νῦν νέκυας φορέειν καὶ ἄνωχθε γυναῖκας, ‘begin now to bear forth the dead bodies and ask the women to help you’. Odysseus’ order is put into action without delay (Od. 22.448): νέκυας φόρεον κατατεθνηῶτας, ‘they bore forth the bodies of the dead’. But when it comes to the conveyance of the same bodies by ship, a different verb (ἄγω) is employed (Od. 24.419–20): τοὺς ( = the dead bodies) δ’ ἐξ ἀλλάων πολίων οἶκόνδε ἕκαστον | πέμπον ἄγειν ἁλιεῦσι θοῇσ’ ἐπὶ νηυσὶ τιθέντες, ‘and those from other cities they sent each to his own home, placing them on swift ships for seamen to convey them’. The following passage makes the contrast explicit: Ilias parva (PEG fr. 32.11) ἅ]μα καὶ νώτοισι νέκυν οἴσωμ̣[εν], ‘let us carry the corpse on our backs’.
Exceptions do exist, nevertheless. In the Iliadic episode of the ransom of Achilles’ body one reads (24.697): ἡμίονοι δὲ νέκυν φέρον (v.l. ἄγον!), ‘and the mules carried the dead’, although a few lines ahead the expected verb reappears (709): ἀγχοῦ δὲ ξύμβληντο πυλάων νεκρὸν ἄγοντι, ‘and close to the gates they met Priam, as he conveyed the dead’. Perhaps the use of φέρω in the first passage might be justified by the scene that immediately follows, where Cassandra marks from the heights of Pergamon Hector lying on a bier in the wagon and cries aloud, bringing to memory the frequent return of the now dead warrior to the citadel (704–6): ὄψεσθε Τρῶες καὶ Τρῳάδες Ἕκτορ’ ἰόντες, | εἴ ποτε καὶ ζώοντι μάχης ἐκνοστήσαντι | χαίρετ’, ‘Come, O men and women of Troy, and behold Hector, if ever, while he lived, you had joy of his coming back from battle’. It is as though the statement in line 697 (ἡμίονοι δὲ νέκυν φέρον) treats Hector's body as still alive, prefiguring the following Cassandra scene. This might be supported by the curious phrasing of a passage in Book 11, where both φέρω and ἄγω are used in reference to the conveyance by cart (lines 597–8): Νέστορα δ’ ἐκ πολέμοιο φέρον Νηλήϊαι ἵπποι | ἱδρῶσαι, ἦγον δὲ Μαχάονα ποιμένα λαῶν, ‘but the mares of Neleus, bathed in sweat, bore Nestor forth from the battle, and conveyed also Machaon, shepherd of the host’. It is not perfectly clear why two different verbs are employed to describe the same action, but the ancient commentator might not be too far off the mark when he says that Machaon is ‘conveyed’ (ἄγω) rather than ‘borne’ (φέρω), as is the case of Nestor, because he is severely wounded (schol. B καλῶς {δὲ} τὸ μὲν ἔφερον ἐπὶ Νέστορος, ἐπὶ δὲ Μαχάονος ἰδίᾳ τὸ ἦγον διὰ τὸ τῆς πληγῆς βαρύ). One might say that Machaon is rhetorically treated as a corpse already, in order to enhance the urgency of the situation.
Be that as it may, it might be possible to draw a phraseological distinction between the conveyance of corpses on wheels (or by ship) and the action of bearing them on one's arms or back: ἄγω is used in the first case, φέρω in the second—and the same seems to hold true for the transport of wood, both in Homer and later. In Ctesias, fr. 1b.451-4 (= FGrHist 688 F3c),Footnote 7 for instance, the amount of wood necessary for the relevant enterprise strongly suggests that the raw material is carried either by ship or by wagons: μετεπέμψατο δὲ καὶ ναυπηγοὺς ἔκ τε Φοινίκης καὶ Συρίας καὶ Κύπρου καὶ τῆς ἄλλης τῆς παραθαλαττίου χώρας, οἷς ἄφθονον ὕλην μεταγαγοῦσα διεκελεύσατο κατασκευάζειν ποτάμια πλοῖα διαιρετά, ‘they sent also shipbuilders from Phoenicia and Syria and Cyprus and from all the other countries beside the sea, whom they ordered, after the conveyance of plenty of wood, to build river ships which could be taken to pieces’. Carts are certainly implied in the following example (ps.-Demosthenes, contra Phaenippum 7.3): ἀπειπὼν καὶ κωλύσας τοὺς ὀνηλάτας μὴ ἐξάγειν τὴν ὕλην, ‘forbidding and preventing the donkeydrivers from conveying the wood’.Footnote 8 Aristophanes, on the other hand, mentions a ὑληφόρος slave who seems to be a woodgatherer working (and stealing) on foot: πολλῷ γάρ ἐσθ’ ἥδιον, ὦ Φάλης Φάλης, | κλέπτουσαν εὑρόνθ’ ὡρικὴν ὑληφόρον, | τὴν Στρυμοδώρου Θρᾷτταν ἐκ τοῦ φελλέως, | μέσην λαβόντ’, ἄραντα, καταβαλόντα καταγιγαρτίσαι (Ach. 271-4), ‘how much sweeter, oh Phales, oh Phales, is it to surprise Thratta, the pretty woodmaid, Strymodorus’ slave, stealing wood from Mount Phelleus, to catch her under the arms, to throw her on the ground and possess her’.
The noun ξύλα can also substitute for ὕλη, both meaning ‘wood’: Homer, Il. 24.778 ἄξετε νῦν Τρῶες ξύλα ἄστυ δέ, ‘now, Trojans, convey the wood to town’; ps.-Demosthenes, contra Timotheum 36.7 ἐμπορίας ἕνεκα ἀγαγ εῖν τὰ ξύλα, ‘to convey wood for trade purposes’ (cf. also 37.6-7 and 39.2-3 τὸ ναῦλον ὑπὲρ τῶν ξύλων ὧν ἤγαγεν ὁ Φιλώνδας, ‘the fare paid for the wood which Philondas had conveyed’).Footnote 9 The conveyance here is clearly done by cart or ship, while ξυλοφορ έω and ξυλοφ όρος are said rather of a slave or a mule.Footnote 10
In Homer the syntagm [drive] [wood] is employed either with a mixed aorist or with an imperfect, but the reduplicated aorist is not absent elsewhere, as shown in the examples by Ctesias, ps.-Demosthenes and Hesychius underlined above.
INTERPRETATION
Ἀγαγύλιος, it is suggested here, is an ‘Ableitungskompositum’ derived from the phrase ἀγαγεῖν ὕλην ‘drive wood’, whereby it is implied that the conveyance of the material is done by carts or wagons (or else by ship).Footnote 11 It is a verbal compound of the φερέοικος type, which may be compared, from a semantic point of view, with another Greek month name, Κροκαγόριος ‘month in which saffron is gathered’ (κρόκος + ἀγείρω). As noted by Trümpy,Footnote 12 the attested compounds in °αγόρος belong semantically to ἀγορεύω ‘to speak’ and represent a younger type. One might venture that the unique reduplicated stem of Ἀγαγ-ύλιος reflects a possible archaism retained in city and month names: the Boeotian town Alalcomenae is an example, from which Athena's epithets Ἀλαλκομενηίς (Homer, Il. 4.8, 5.908) and ἈλαλκομένηFootnote 13 probably derive.Footnote 14 And there is of course the month name Ἀλαλκομένιος, attested only in Boeotia.
In fact, the verb ἀλαλκεῖν ‘ward off’ may be viewed as a possible parallel to ἀγαγεῖν, both going back to a pre-aspectual, iterative-resultative formation, as suggested by Bendahman.Footnote 15 The basic meaning of the root, according to her, would be ‘to strike in defence’, which through repeated action brings as a result the new situation (and meaning) of ‘successfully warding off (enemies)’ or ‘protecting (friends)’. One may tentatively assume for Ἀγαγύλιος a similar meaning, i.e. ‘to drive wood (repeatedly)’ → ‘to have wood successfully stored’. This would not be unfitting for a month name corresponding to the Athenian months Βοηδρομιών ( = September/October) / Μαιμακτηριών (November/December),Footnote 16 that is, to autumn, a season during which one naturally gathers (and stores) a fair amount of wood for the coming winter months. The reduplicated aorist stem seems to be justified as a formal mark to make explicit the result attained through an action iteratively performed. As for the unreduplicated stem, which appears as first member of compounds such as ἀγήνωρ, Ἀγέ-λᾱος, ἀγε-λείη, this specificity would be lacking. Artemis’ Thessalian epiclesis would then be derived from the month name. The goddess’ connection with the wild (cf. her epithet Ἀγροτέρα), or at least with extramural and liminal places (cf. her epithets Λιμνᾶτις, Λιμναία), might have facilitated the adoption of such an epithet.Footnote 17
