Laudator Temporis Acti

Athenaeus 2.35d, tr. S. Douglas Olson, Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters, Books I-III.106e (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006 = Loeb Classical Library, 204), p. 203:

The tragic poet Chaeremon (TrGF 71 F 15) claims that wine provides those who consume it with

laughter, wisdom, a quick wit, sound judgment.

Greek text with note from Olson, p. 202:

Χαιρήμων δὲ ὁ τραγῳδὸς παρασκευάζειν φησὶ τὸν οἶνον τοῖς χρωμένοις

γέλωτα, σοφίαν, εὐμαθίαν⁴, εὐβουλίαν.

⁴ εὐμαθίαν Wagner: ἀμαθίαν CE

The note has it backwards. In reality, the manuscripts of Athenaeus read εὐμαθίαν, and ἀμαθίαν is the conjecture, made by Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner in Fragmenta Euripidis (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1846), p. 130:

Sed intolerabilis est anapaestus in quarto pede, qui facile removeri potest, si pro εὐμαθίαν scribitur ἀμαθίαν. Nam corruptela etiam sententiae inesse videtur: Chaeremo haud dubie dicere voluit (cf. fgm. sequ.), aliam esse in aliis hominibus vini efficacitatem; itaque primum risum, deinde ejus contrarium sapientiam commemoravit. Postea vero duo verba sequuntur, quae fere eandem vim habent, quorum alterum igitur, si recte Chaeremonis mentem perspeximus, emendandum est.

August Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1856), p. 611 (apparently independently):

εὐμαθίαν libri, ἀμαθίαν scripsi.

In his second edition (1889), p. 787, Nauck gave credit to Wagner for the conjecture.

The mistake persists in the Digital Loeb Classical Library. Perhaps it arose from Bruno Snell and Richard Kannicht, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Vol. I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), p. 222, who say "εὐμαθίαν: Wagner."

If Wagner's conjecture is adopted, the meaning of the fragment (tr. M.J. Cropp) is:

laughter, wisdom, foolishness, good counsel.

Labels: typographical and other errors