Monday, August 13, 2007
Euripidea
Aeneas to Dido, after she has asked him to describe the fall of Troy (Vergil, Aeneid 2.3):
Newer› ‹Older
O queen, you order me to experience again an unspeakable grief.The commentaries on my bookshelf (T.E. Page's school edition, R.G. Austin's commentary on book 2) don't mention two parallels in Euripides' Helen (tr. E.P. Coleridge). The first is at line 143:
Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem.
But enough of such talk! I do not need to grieve twice.The second is at lines 765-771:
ἅλις δὲ μύθων: οὐ διπλᾶ χρῄζω στένειν.
Truly you have asked a great deal all at once. Why should I tell you about our losses in the Aegean, and Nauplios' beacons on Euboia, and my visits to Crete and the cities of Libya, and the mountain-peaks of Perseus? For I would not satisfy you with the tale, and by telling you these evils I would suffer still, as I did when I experienced them; and so my grief would be doubled.Also from Euripides here are two examples of asyndetic, privative adjectives not yet in my collection:
ἦ πόλλ' ἀνήρου μ' ἑνὶ λόγῳ μιᾷ θ' ὁδῷ.
τί σοι λέγοιμ' ἂν τὰς ἐν Αἰγαίῳ φθορὰς
τὰ Ναυπλίου τ' Εὐβοικὰ πυρπολήματα
Κρήτην τε Λιβύης θ' ἃς ἐπεστράφην πόλεις,
σκοπιάς τε Περσέως; οὐ γὰρ ἐμπλήσαιμί σ'
μύθων, λέγων τ' ἄν σοι κάκ' ἀλγοίην ἔτι,
πάσχων τ' ἔκαμνον: δὶς δὲ λυπηθεῖμεν ἄν.
- Helen 1148: faithless, lawless, godless (ἄπιστος ἄδικος ἄθεος, cf. Euripides, Andromache 491 and Gorgias, Palamedes 36)
- Phoenician Women 1634: unmourned, unburied (ἄκλαυτον ἄταφον, cf. Homer, Iliad 22.386 and Odyssey 11.72)