Laudator Temporis Acti

C.O. Brink, English Classical Scholarship: Historical Reflections on Bentley, Porson, and Housman (1986; rpt. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. Ltd, 2010), p. 47 (on Richard Bentley's Epistola ad Joannem Millium):

He then turns to Thespis and (after emending a line of Sophocles in the same source) explains the meaning of an alleged fragment from Thespis, a few anapaests cited by the Christian writer Clement of Alexandria in his Miscellanies, Stromateis. The anapaests contain three apparently nonsensical words which had been regarded by Clement and others as in some way liturgic and magical. The words are knaxzbi, chthyptes, and phlegmo (or -os), κναξζβί, κθύπτης [sic, read χθύπτης], and φλεγμώ (-ός Clem.). Bentley explains them as anagrams, used for representing the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet. He finds the fourth word of the set in Clement, i.e. drops, δρόψ (δρώψ Clem.). This adds up, as do two other sets of similar non-words in Clement. He brilliantly confirms this explanation from an Oxford MS, again unpublished, of Porphyry, the Neoplatonist, entitled 'An explanation of κναξζβί, κθύπτης [sic, read χθύπτης], φλεγμώ and δρόψ', where a suitably symbolic interpretation of these seemingly hieratic words is given.

Eric Thomson confirms my guess that the pangram-destroying κθύπτης is an error which crept into the 2010 reprint of Brink's book. The original 1986 edition has the correct χθύπτης.

See also Bentley's Dissertations Upon the Epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, Socrates, and Upon the Fables of Aesop, ed. Wilhelm Wagner (Berlin: S. Calvary and Co., 1874), pp. 267-268, and now:

• R. Merkelbach, "Weisse [κναξζβι]-Milch (Zu Thespis 1 F 4 Snell)," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 61 (1985) 293-296
• Christopher K. Callanan, "A Rediscovered Text of Porphyry on Mystic Formulae," Classical Quarterly 45.1 (1995) 215-230
• Julia Lougovaya, "A Perfect Pangram: A Reconsideration of the Evidence," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017) 162-190

M.J. Cropp, Minor Greek Tragedians: Fragments from the Tragedies with Selected Testimonia. Edited with Introductions, Translations and Notes, Vol. I: The Fifth Century (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), pp. 10-11, 17:

ἴδε σοὶ σπένδω κναξζβι λευκὸν,
ἀπὸ θηλαµόνων θλίψας κνακῶν·
ἴδε σοὶ χθυπτην τυρὸν µίξας
ἐρυθρῷ µελιτῷ, κατὰ τῶν σῶν, Πὰν
δικέρως, τίθεµαι βωµῶν ἁγίων.        5
ἴδε σοὶ Βροµίου αἴθοπα φλεγµὸν
λείβω ...

See, I make you a libation of white knaxzbi that I have pressed from tawny nanny-goats. See, I have mixed for you chthuptês-cheese with red-brown honey and set it down, two-horned Pan, on your holy altar. See, I pour for you Bromios's fiery phlegmos ...

Metre: anapaests. A chorus (of satyrs?) makes an offering of milk, cheese mixed with honey, and wine to the goat-god Pan. The verses include three of the four words in the nonsense-verse κναξζβι χθυπτης φλεγµο δρωψ, which includes all twenty-four letters of the Ionic Greek alphabet once each and was probably used as a teaching device in Greek schools (δρωψ probably appeared soon after v. 6). Evidently the fragment is a whimsical literary invention attaching meanings to these words, rather than a serious piece of archaic poetry. The words attracted serious explanations and interpretations in antiquity which are exemplified in Clement's discussion of this and two similar nonsense-verses as examples of symbolic expression. He also reports that the verses κναξζβι etc. and βεδυ ζαψ χθωµ πληκτρον σφιγξ were said to have been composed by the legendary seer Branchus as a spell against a plague afflicting the people of Miletus, a story twice mentioned by Callimachus (frs 194.28-31 and 229.2-4 Pfeiffer) and perhaps earlier by Hipponax (fr. 105.6 IEG). »» Merkelbach 1985 (cf. Bentley 1691, 47-49).

Labels: typographical and other errors