Saturday, June 22, 2019

 

The Tongue

Euripides, Hippolytus 395-397 (tr. David Kovacs):
For the tongue is not to be trusted: it knows well how to admonish the thoughts of others but gets from itself a great deal of trouble.

γλώσσῃ γὰρ οὐδὲν πιστόν, ἣ θυραῖα μὲν
φρονήματ᾿ ἀνδρῶν νουθετεῖν ἐπίσταται,
αὐτὴ δ᾿ ὑφ᾿ αὑτῆς πλεῖστα κέκτηται κακά.
Liddell-Scott-Jones (s.v. θυραῖος, sense I.3) translates θυραῖα here as "of strangers," but Kovacs prefers sense I.4: "of others."

W.S. Barrett ad loc.:
θυραῖοϲ is a synonym of ἀλλότριοϲ (as οἰκεῖοϲ is of ἴδιοϲ: 1166), 'belonging to somone else', so that θυραῖα φρονήματα ἀνδρῶν = ἄλλων ἀνδρῶν φρονήματα, the mental processes of persons other than oneself.



<< Home
Newer›  ‹Older

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?