Laudator Temporis Acti

Herodotus 7.148.3 (the Delphic Oracle to representatives from Argos; tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt):

Loathed by your neighbours, dear to the immortal gods,
Hold your javelin within and sit upon your guard.
Guard the head well, and the head will save the body.

ἐχθρὲ περικτιόνεσσι, φίλ᾽ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν,
εἴσω τὸν προβόλαιον ἔχων πεφυλαγμένος ἧσο
καὶ κεφαλὴν πεφύλαξο· κάρη δὲ τὸ σῶμα σαώσει.

Heinrich Stein ad loc. (my translation):

For κεφαλή (head) refers to the ruling class, the full citizens, but σῶμα (body) to the remaining mass of the population.

Denn κεφαλή geht auf die regierende Gemeinde, die Vollbürger, σῶμα aber auf die übrige Masse der Bevölkerung.

The oracle is number 92 in H.W. Parke and D.E.W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, Vol. II: The Oracular Responses (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956), p. 40, who cite "Chalcidius (Baehrens F.P.R. Fr. 18). Vicinis offensa, deo carissima plebes, | armorum cohibe munimina; corporis omne | discrimen sola capitis tutabitur umbra."

N.G. Wilson, Herodotea: Studies on the Text of Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 140:

H. Diels, Sibyllinische Blätter (Berlin, 1890), 60 n. 2, considered that in l. 3 of the oracle 'ein geschulter Dichter' would certainly have written δέ τε, and probably that was the wording of the oracle. But he thought it 'misslich' to emend. However, it is so easy and obvious that one should not declare it to be beyond the capacity of a less than expert poet, and I think his view verges on the perverse. Maas proposed the emendation, admittedly with a query.

Wilson adopted Maas' emendation in his Oxford Classical Text edition, vol. II, p. 653. On δέ τε see J.D. Denniston, The Greek Particles, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), pp. 532-533.