Tuesday, July 18, 2023
Filling a Lacuna
Sophocles, Antigone. The Women of Trachis. Philoctetes. Oedipus at Colonus. Edited and Translated by Hugh-Lloyd Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994 = Loeb Classical Library, 21), pp. 18-19 (Antigone 164-169, Creon speaking):
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ὑμᾶς δ᾿ ἐγὼ πομποῖσιν ἐκ πάντων δίχαIt would be helpful to see the Greek for the supplement in angle brackets. But to see it you have to consult the critical apparatus from the Oxford Classical Text edition of Sophocles by Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Nigel Wilson (1990), p. 190:
ἔστειλ᾿ ἱκέσθαι, τοῦτο μὲν τὰ Λαΐου 165
σέβοντας εἰδὼς εὖ θρόνων ἀεὶ κράτη,
τοῦτ᾿ αὖθις, ἡνίκ᾿ Οἰδίπους ὤρθου πόλιν,
* * * * *
κἀπεὶ διώλετ᾿, ἀμφὶ τοὺς κείνων ἔτι
παῖδας μένοντας ἐμπέδοις φρονήμασιν.
167 post hunc versum lacunam statuit Dindorf
And I have summoned you out of all the people by emissaries, knowing well first that you have always reverenced the power of the throne of Laius, and second that when Oedipus guided the city <with my sister as his wife, you always served them faithfully,> and when he perished, you persisted in loyalty towards their children.
167 post hunc v. lacunam statuit Dindorf: <τούτῳ βεβαίους ὄντας αὖ παραστάτας> Wecklein; possis etiam <ἔχων γυναῖκα τὴν ἐμὴν ὁμόϲπορον, | ὑπηρετοῦνταϲ πιϲτὰ καὶ τούτοιϲ ἀεί,) ut κείνων aliquid significetSee also their Sophoclea: Studies on the Text of Sophocles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990; rpt. 2011), p. 122:
167. Gerhard Müller did well to revive Dindorf's diagnosis of a lacuna following this line, for ἀμφὶ ... φρονήμασιν can refer to the time following the ruin of Oedipus, but not to Oedipus' reign. Dawe, STS iii. 103 remarks that κείνων, which as the text is transmitted has to mean 'Laius and Oedipus', heightens the suspicion. It is not easy to fit a mention of Jocasta into a single line after 167, and it may be that more than one line is missing; ex. gr., we suggest <ἔχων γυναῖκα τὴν ἐμὴν ὁμόϲπορον, | ὑπηρετοῦνταϲ πιϲτὰ καὶ τούτοιϲ ἀεί,>.