José Luís García Ramón

The name of i-pe-me-de-ja, a female divinity of minor rank in the tablet PY Tn 316, defies interpretation: -me-de-ja may conceal /°mēdeia-/ (cfr. μήδεα ‘plans’) or /°medeia-/ (: °μέδεια), but i-pe- remains obscure. An identification of i-pe-me-de-ja with Ἰφιμέδεια (Od. XI 305 +) is untenable: i-pe- cannot match Ἰφι° /wīphi°/. Starting from A. Heubeck’s interpretation of i-pe° as /ip-e°/ (cfr. aor. ἰψα- ‘to press hard, afflict’: Hom. ἴψαο λαòν Ἀχαιῶν Il. I 454, ἴψεται υἷας Ἀχαιῶν, II 193 with gods as the agents), and on the strength of the evidence for the synonyms of ἰψα-, ἰψο/ε- (namely βλάπτο/ε-, φθείρο/ε-, θέλγο/ε-, τύπτο/ε-) and μήδεα in Homer and in the Ancient reflection on the Homeric passages where they occur, the present paper makes the case for an interpretation of i-pe-me-de-ja /Ipe-mēdeia-/ as ‘she who truncates plans (sc. of battle)’ (cfr. the formula /μάχης ἐπὶ μήδεα κείρει # ‘cuts across our plans of battle’ Hom.) or, less probably, as ‘she who troubles, beats the mind’ (cf. βλάψε φρένας Hom.+, παρακόπτει φρένας Eur. + et sim.), whence ‘she who makes mad’ (as divinized Ἄτη ‘bewilderment’ or Λύσσσα ‘madness’ do)...