Wednesday, June 06, 2018
The Degraded State of the World
Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria 702 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):
With Porson's conjecture, a somewhat more literal translation would be:
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The whole world is full of impudence and brass.Text and translation from Aristophanes, Birds. Lysistrata. Women at the Thesmophoria. Edited and Translated by Jeffrey Henderson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000 = Loeb Classical Library, 159), pp. 544-545 (the same in the Digital Loeb Classical Library). Henderson appears to have translated a different text from the one he prints. In the Greek, he has adopted ἔργα (the reading of the Ravenna manuscript), but he has translated Porson's conjecture μεστὰ. The conjecture isn't noted in the critical apparatus. It should be, and the translation should match the text. See the commentary of Colin Austin and S. Douglas Olson ad loc.:
ὡς ἅπαντ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐστὶ τόλμης ἔργα κἀναισχυντίας.
With Porson's conjecture, a somewhat more literal translation would be:
How everything is full of impudence and shamelessness!
