Iliad 5.059-061

The collocation of tektonos huion (τέκτονος υἱόν) ‘son of the joiner [tektōn]’ at I.05.059 with Harmonideō (Ἁρμονίδεω) ‘son of Harmōn’ at I.05.059 indicates three generations of ‘joiners’, in that Phereklos is a son of a joiner who is in turn a son of a joiner. The grandfather Harmōn has a name that can be reconstructed as a noun *ar-s-mōn, derived from the verb ar-ar-iskein ‘fit together, join together’. And the grandson Phereklos is said at I.05.061 to have ‘built-as-a-carpenter’, tektainesthai (τεκτήνατο), the ships sailed by Paris=Alexandros for the abduction of Helen. This verb tektainein is derived from the noun tektōn ‘carpenter, joiner’, which is in turn derived from the verb-root *tek(s)-. No longer attested in Greek, this verb-root *tek(s)- survives in Latin as texō, which can refer to the craft of woodworking, not only the craft of weaving. On verbal art as woodwork, see HC 2§282n.