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All of the following seem to be expressions in ancient Greek meaning "easy," as in "tic tac toe is an easy game:"

εὐπετής εὔπορος ῥᾳδιος εὐμαρής εὔκοπος

However, none of these seems to occur in Homer, unless I'm making a spelling mistake or missing the fact that there's some Homeric form that differs slightly from these. (I searched the Project Perseus lemmatization of Homer.)

How is this concept expressed in the Homeric dialect?

2 Answers 2

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Yep, it's a spelling thing. From LSJ:

ῥᾴδιος (ῥαιδ- correctly in early texts, PCair.Zen.367.20 (iii B.C.), etc., later ῥαδ-, Diog.Oen.10, etc.), α, ον: Ep. and Ion. ῥηΐδιος [ι^δ], η, ον, as always in Hom.; ῥῄδιος , η, ον, Thgn.574,577 (v. infr. B)

The other words are just compounds of εὖ, and I don't believe any of them are Homeric.

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    Thanks! Although Perseus lemmatizes the word as ῥᾴδιος, it looks like the forms that actually occur in Homer are ῥηΐδιον, ῥηΐδιόν, ῥηΐδι, ῥηΐτατ᾽, ῥηΐτεροι, and ῥηίστη. Cunliffe lists the word as ῥηΐδιος. That wasn't completely clear to me from the LSJ entry.
    – user3597
    Aug 13, 2021 at 17:45
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    And the reason, of course, is that the α is long and so regularly becomes η in Ionic even after ι, ε, or ρ, where it does not in Attic.
    – Cairnarvon
    Aug 13, 2021 at 18:56
  • @BenCrowell ῥηϊδίως is just the adverb form of ῥηΐδιος, which in turn derives from the adverb ῥᾶ, which is where you'll get Beekes' discussion.
    – cmw
    Nov 21, 2021 at 0:15
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As pointed out in the answer by cmw, there is a form ῥηΐδιος that is used in homer. Adverb ῥηϊδίως. Comparatives ῥήϊστος, ῥηΐτατος.

There are also qualitatively different, shorter adverbial forms ῥέα, ῥεῖα. Beekes discusses these under ῥᾶ and connects them to ῥῆα.

Example:

τῷ μὲν ἔπειτ’ ὀδύσαντο θεοὶ ῥεῖα ζώοντες, καί μιν τυφλὸν ἔθηκε Κρόνου πάϊς· - Iliad 6.138

With him the peaceful-living gods were afterwards enraged, and the son of Saturn rendered him blind. [Buckley]

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