_Strep._ It means such lines as the diviners sing.
_Soc._ So it does in Attic, but Homer uses it for ῥήματα, words; indeed we also sometimes.
_Strep._ Yes, yes, I do know it. All is right.
_Soc._ I think you do: well, and ὂψ means a voice, φωνὴ.
_Strep._ How you learned men like to puzzle us! I often have heard ὀπι, ὄπα in the Tragedies, but never quite understood it. What a pity they do not say φωνὴ when they mean φωνή.
_Soc._ We have at last made one step. Now what is μέροψ? μέροπες ἄνθρωποι.
_Strep._ Μείρω, I divide, ὄπα, φωνὴν, voice; ‘voice-dividing’: what _can_ that mean?
_Soc._ You have heard a wild dog howl, and a tame dog bark: tell me how they differ.
_Strep._ The wild dog gives a long long _oo-oo_, which changes like a trumpet if you push your hand up and down it; and the tame dog says _bow, wow, wow_, like two or three panpipes blown one after another.
_Soc._ Exactly; you see the tame dog is humanized: he _divides his voice_ into syllables, as men do. ‘Voice-dividing’ means ‘speaking in syllables’.
_Soc._ Well then, you understand; ‘Voice-dividing’ means _articulating_.
Mr Arnold will see in the Scholiast on Iliad 1, 250, precisely this order of analysis for μέροπες. It seems to me to give not a traditional but a grammatical explanation. Be that as it may, it indicates that a Greek had to pass through _exactly the same process_ in order to expound μέροπες, as an Englishman to get sense out of ‘voice-dividing’. The word is twice used by Æschylus, who affects Homeric words, and once by Euripides (Iph. T.) in the connection πολέσιν μερόπων, where the very unusual Ionism πολέσιν shows in how Homeric a region is the poet’s fancy. No other word ending in οψ except μέροψ can be confidently assigned to the root ὂψ, a voice. Ἦνοψ in Homer (itself of most uncertain sense and derivation) is generally referred to the other ὄψ. The sense of ἔλλοψ again[52] is very uncertain. Every way therefore μέροψ is ‘odd’ and obscure. The phrase ‘articulating’ is utterly prosaic and inadmissible. _Vocal_ is rather too Latinized for my style, and besides, is apt to mean _melodious_. The phrase ‘voice-dividing’ is indeed easier to us than μέροπες can have been to the Athenians, because we all know what _voice_ means, but they had to be taught scholastically what ὄπα meant; nor would easily guess that ὂψ in μέροψ had a sense, differing from ὂψ in (ἀ)στέροψ οἶνοψ, αἶθοψ, αἶθίοψ, νῶροψ (ἦνοψ), χάροψ. Finally, since μέροπες is only found in the plural, it remains an open question, whether it does not mean ‘speaking various languages’. Mr Arnold will find that Stephanus and Scapula treat it as doubtful, though Liddell and Scott do not name the second interpretation. I desired to leave in the English all the uncertainty of the Greek: but my critic is unencumbered with such cares.