L’anastrophe verbale en grec archaïque. Entre syntaxe et poétique

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Among the most salient features of Homeric poetic language, the separability of preverbs (so-called tmesis) and the reversibility of prepositions (so-called anastrophe) are particularly well documented.

The aim of this paper is to investigate a third, lesser-known type, which may be formally described either as reverse tmesis or as verbal anastrophe — e.g. φεύγων ὑπὸ νηλεὲς ἦμαρ (“escaping from the merciless day”, F 57).

From an accentual point of view, such constructions with [verb + postverb] are regularly parallel to nominal anastrophe ([noun + postposition]).
However, both from a syntactic and a semantic perspective, the nature of the postposed verbal particle is ambiguous: it may be interpreted either as a true postverb, corresponding to a preverbal counterpart, or as an independent adverb freely added to the verbal form.

It can be shown that, originally, the adverbial interpretation is probably the correct one; yet the type was subsequently reanalyzed as verbal anastrophe and used as a poetic device within the Homeric tradition.