Thursday, March 28, 2024

 

Diagnostic Conjectures

Hugh Lloyd-Jones, "Paul Maas," Blood for the Ghosts: Classical Influences in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 215-218 (at 217-218):
Maas held strongly that it was better to make a wrong conjecture than to ignore a difficulty; he strongly upheld the value of the 'diagnostic conjecture' and the usefulness of the crux; and he was the sworn enemy of the lazy acquiescence in the anomalous or the excessive caution which many scholars dignify with the name of judgment.... His principles were exemplified in numerous conjectures and supplements whose average quality was very high indeed. At times his vigorous logic could carry him too far; but even the suggestions to which this applies had usually the value of drawing attention to a difficulty or of provoking curiosity as to why the author should have departed from his usual norm.

 

No Good Came of Their Lamenting

Homer, Odyssey 10.566-568 (tr. A.T. Murray):
So I spoke, and their spirit was broken within them,
and sitting down right where they were, they wept and tore their hair.
But no good came of their lamenting.

ὣς ἐφάμην, τοῖσιν δὲ κατεκλάσθη φίλον ἦτορ,
ἑζόμενοι δὲ κατ᾽ αὖθι γόων τίλλοντό τε χαίτας·
ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γάρ τις πρῆξις ἐγίγνετο μυρομένοισιν.

 

A Gentleman's Books

Austin Dobson (1840-1921), "A Gentleman of the Old School," Collected Poems, 9th ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd, 1914), pp. 9-13 (at 11-12):
We read—alas, how much we read!
The jumbled strifes of creed and creed
With endless controversies feed
                Our groaning tables;
His books—and they sufficed him—were
Cotton's "Montaigne," "The Grave" of Blair,
A "Walton"—much the worse for wear—
                And "Æsop's Fables."

One more,—"The Bible." Not that he
Had searched its page as deep as we;
No sophistries could make him see
                Its slender credit;
It may be that he could not count
The sires and sons to Jesse's fount,—
He liked the "Sermon on the Mount,"—
                And more, he read it.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

 

A Misplaced Critical Note

Sophocles, Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus. Edited and Translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994 = Loeb Classical Library, 20), p. 345 (Oedipus Tyrannus):
221 αὐτὸ lGγρp: αὐτός rpat
post hunc v. lacunam statuit Groeneboom; ex. gr. <πόλεως ἐπισπᾶν θανασίμους φόνου δίκας> supplere possis
The note about the lacuna is misplaced—it belongs after line 227. The mistake persists in the Digital Loeb Classical Library.

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Symposium

Red-figure krater by Euphronios, now in Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek 8935 (click once or twice to enlarge):
The letters ΟΠΟΛΛΟΝΣΕΓΕΚΑΙΜΑΚΑΙ (retrograde) come out of the mouth of the figure on the far right, whose name is Ekphantides.

See Emily Vermeule, "Fragments of a Symposion by Euphronios," Antike Kunst 8.1 (1965) 34-39 (at 38-39):
Sir John Beazley, who prefers the poem-fragment as a skolion, suggests filling in the first verse along these lines:
ὤπολλον σέ τε καὶ μάκαιραν αἰτῶ
with a mention of Artemis and Leto in the second verse22. There are, of course, various possibilities to play with; one might also consider
ὤπολλον σέ γε καὶ μάκαιραν ἁγνάν
Λάτω τὰν δίτοκον κάσιν τε χρύσαν
using scraps of Anakreon which have no context; or, for a glyconic hymn,
ὤπολλον σέ τε καὶ μάκαι-
ραν κάσιν πότνι' Ἄρτεμι.
22 Beazley ARV2 1619. Professor D.L. Page is quite sure that no line with this beginning is preserved in the literary tradition; see his Poetae Melici Graeci (1962) 622. The line does read ΓE, not TE.

 

Think Thoughts of Home

Homer, Odyssey 10.472-474 (tr. Peter Green):
Are you out of your mind? High time to think of your homeland
if it's truly your destiny to be saved and to return
to your high-roofed house and to your own native country.

δαιμόνι᾽, ἤδη νῦν μιμνήσκεο πατρίδος αἴης,
εἴ τοι θέσφατόν ἐστι σαωθῆναι καὶ ἱκέσθαι
οἶκον ἐς ὑψόροφον καὶ σὴν ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν.
W.B. Stanford ad loc.:
δαιμόνιος is used of a person who is doing something so abnormal or incomprehensible as to suggest supernatural influence: sometimes almost 'Are you mad?'
I don't have access to Elisabeth Brunius-Nilsson, Δαιμόνιε: An Inquiry into a Mode of Apostrophe in Old Greek Literature (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1955). See also H. Paul Brown, "A Pragmatic and Sociolinguistic Account of δαιµόνιε in Early Greek Epic," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 51 (2011) 498–528.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

 

The Power of Wine

Aristophanes, Knights 90-96 (tr. Benjamin Bickley Rogers):
And dare you rail at wine's inventiveness?
I tell you nothing has such go as wine.
Why, look you now; 'tis when men drink, they thrive,
Grow wealthy, speed their business, win their suits,
Make themselves happy, benefit their friends.
Go, fetch me out a stoup of wine, and let me
Moisten my wits, and utter something bright.

οἶνον σὺ τολμᾷς εἰς ἐπίνοιαν λοιδορεῖν;        90
οἴνου γὰρ εὕροις ἄν τι πρακτικώτερον;
ὁρᾷς, ὅταν πίνωσιν ἄνθρωποι τότε
πλουτοῦσι διαπράττουσι νικῶσιν δίκας
εὐδαιμονοῦσιν ὠφελοῦσι τοὺς φίλους.
ἀλλ᾽ ἐξένεγκέ μοι ταχέως οἴνου χοᾶ,        95
τὸν νοῦν ἵν᾽ ἄρδω καὶ λέγω τι δεξιόν.


90 ἐπίνοιαν codd.: ἀπόνοιαν Sylburg
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Abstract versus Concrete

Kenneth Dover, ed., Plato, Symposium (1982; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. viii:
His distinctive values, attitudes, assumptions, cravings and passions are not mine, and for that reason I do not find his philosophical arguments even marginally persuasive. Much that is written about him is marked, in my view, by an uncritical enthusiasm for the abstract and immutable, as if such an enthusiasm always and necessarily afforded better access to the truth about man, nature and divinity than is afforded by a love of the particular, material and perishable. One consequence of this is that Plato is sometimes welcomed as an ally by people who would not like what they found if they attended less selectively and more precisely to what he actually says. Another consequence is that the Platonic Socrates is taken, in all seriousness, as if he were a man with a genuinely open and enquiring mind, and the quality of other Greek intellectuals, some of whom are best known to us through Plato's portrayal of them, is underrated.

Monday, March 25, 2024

 

The Study of Nature

Vergil, Georgics 2.475-486 (tr. L.P. Wilkinson):
As for me, above all else I would that the sweet Muses
whose devotee I am, smitten with a great desire,
should accept me and show me the stars of the sky in their courses,
the various eclipses of the sun and the travails of the moon,
whence come earthquakes, what force makes the seas swell high
to break their barriers and subside to their level again,
why winter's suns make such haste to dip beneath the Ocean,
or what it is that delays the lingering nights.
But if some sluggishness of wit denies me access to this sphere of nature,
may the countryside and the streams that water its valleys be my delight,
let me love the rivers and woods, careless of fame ...

me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,        475
quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore,
accipiant caelique vias et sidera monstrent,
defectus solis varios lunaeque labores;
unde tremor terris, qua vi maria alta tumescant
obicibus ruptis rursusque in se ipsa residant,        480
quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
sin has ne possim naturae accedere partis
frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis,
rura rnihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes,        485
flurnina amem silvasque inglorius...

476 percussus MPRrγ: perculsus M2ωγ1

 

Prayer to Pallas

Aristophanes, Knights 581-594 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):
Pallas, Guardian of the city,
Lady of the most sacred
of all lands, which excels
in war, in poetry
and in power:
come hither, bringing her
who in expeditions and battles
is our helper,
Victory, the companion of our choral songs,
who strives with us against our foes.
Come hither now and show thy face;
for on us must thou
at all costs bestow
victory, now if ever.

Ὦ πολιοῦχε Παλλάς, ὦ
τῆς ἱερωτάτης ἁπα-
σῶν πολέμῳ τε καὶ ποιη-
ταῖς δυνάμει θʼ ὑπερφερού-
σης μεδέουσα χώρας,        585
δεῦρʼ ἀφικοῦ λαβοῦσα τὴν
ἐν στρατιαῖς τε καὶ μάχαις
ἡμετέραν ξυνεργὸν
Νίκην, ἣ χορικῶν ἐστιν ἑταίρα
τοῖς τʼ ἐχθροῖσι μεθʼ ἡμῶν στασιάζει.        590
νῦν οὖν δεῦρο φάνηθι· δεῖ
γὰρ τοῖς ἀνδράσι τοῖσδε πά-
σῃ τέχνῃ πορίσαι σε νί-
κην, εἴπερ ποτέ, καὶ νῦν.


583 ποιηταῖς codd.: πολίταις Bentley: πόροισιν van Herwerden
589 χορικῶν codd.: Χαρίτων Wilamowitz
In line 592 Sommerstein's "us" is more literally "these men".

Robert Alexander Neil ad loc.:

Sunday, March 24, 2024

 

Nothing Better

Euripides, Orestes 1155-1156 (tr. Edward P. Coleridge):
Ah! there is nothing better than a trusty friend, neither wealth nor monarchy; a crowd of people is of no account in exchange for a noble friend.

φεῦ·
οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν κρεῖσσον ἢ φίλος σαφής,
οὐ πλοῦτος, οὐ τυραννίς· ἀλόγιστον δέ τι
τὸ πλῆθος ἀντάλλαγμα γενναίου φίλου.
M.L. West ad loc.
cf. HF 11125 with Bond's n., Soph. Phil. 672 f., Men. Dysc. 81 f. Denial of wealth and monarchy as the highest goods goes back to Archil. 19, cf. Sol. 24, 33, Eur. Med. 599 f., Hipp. 1013 ff., Ion 621-32, Phoen. 549 ff., etc.

 

Proof Against Enchantment

Homer, Odyssey 10.329 (Circe to Odysseus; tr. A.T. Murray):
Nay, but the mind in thy breast is one not to be beguiled.

σοὶ δέ τις ἐν στήθεσσιν ἀκήλητος νόος ἐστίν.
Alfred Heubeck ad loc.:
The line is modelled on Il. iii 63. Its authenticity has been disputed, both by Aristarchus and by modern critics, but there is no contradiction with 240, as often supposed. κηλέω is almost synonymous with θέλγω (cf. 213 n.; Odysseus' νόος remains ἀκήλητος in spite of the φάρμακα (318), unlike his companions', which Circe was able to bewitch (θέλγειν, κηλεῖν) but not destroy (it remains ἔμπεδος (240); cf. 235-42 n.).

 

Obscure Yet Intelligible

Augustine, Sermons 156.1 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 849; tr. Edmund Hill):
The depths of meaning in the word of God are there to excite our eagerness to study, not to prevent us from understanding. If everything was locked up in riddles, there would be no clue to the opening up of obscure passages. Again, if everything was hidden, there would be nothing for the soul to derive nourishment from, and so gain the strength which would enable it to knock at the closed doors.

Verbi Dei altitudo exercet studium, non denegat intellectum. Si enim omnia clausa essent, nihil esset unde revelarentur obscura. Rursus si omnia tecta essent, non esset unde alimentum perciperet anima, et haberet vires quibus posset ad clausa pulsare.

 

Form of Address

Gilbert Highet (1906-1978), Explorations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 9 (on Lord Acton):
It is touching to see him beginning his inaugural lecture, not with the conventional 'Gentlemen,' but with the more modest and friendly 'Fellow students.'

Saturday, March 23, 2024

 

A Useful German Word

Clive James (1939-2019), "Marcel Reich-Ranicki," Cultural Amnesia (2007; rpt. London: Picador, 2012), pp. 591-599 (at 597):
In a culture where the sublime has always seductively beckoned, his has been a useful corrective emphasis: a shift of direction towards talking turkey and away from Mumpitz, that useful German word for exalted twaddle.

 

Watermelon

Edward Kennard Rand (1871-1945), In Quest of Virgil's Birthplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), pp. 20-22, with notes on p. 157:
Moreover, we find a fruit market. A strange gleam comes into Pietro's eye as he steers towards a certain vender. Watermelons, yes, American watermelons! Not quite American, since they are not oblong, but round as a ball. The taste is identical, and most grateful after the journey of the day. The reader may not make them out in the view of the market here given, but if any doubt their existence, I can obtain a written certificate from Pietro. Watermelon is his favorite fruit. He knows when he wants it, which is always, and when and where he has had it.

As we crunch the cool and crimson liquidity, a sudden revelation occurs to me. Pietro's joy is not exceeded by my own. For I can correct all the commentators in the interpretation of a line of Virgil. In the preface to his description of that marvellous garden kept by an old man of Corycia on the banks of the Galaesus, the poet speaks of the cucumis that
                          Winding through the grass
Grows to a belly —22
the comfortable τέλος of that vegetable's activity. Following some interpreters, I had always translated cucumis by 'cucumber.' Others call it 'gourd.' Much better is Benoist, who declares, "Ce mot désigne ici toutes plantes du même genre, de melon aussi bien que la courge." But this definition is too inclusive. Who will deny that the word means specifically 'watermelon'?23 The truth came to me when Pietro gave us the Italian for 'watermelon,' namely cocomero. 'Cucumber' in Italian is cetriolo, quite a different affair. The watermelon is a native of Africa.23 The learned Naudin remarks that the culture of the melon in Asia is probably as ancient as that of all other alimentary vegetables and that the Greeks and the Romans were doubtless familiar with it, though some forms may have been described as cucumbers.25 Rather, let us say, cucumis in ancient as in modern Italy has never meant anything but watermelon, while in the Dark and Middle Ages, when the luscious fruit, like so many Pagan luxuries, probably disappeared, the barbarians of the North ludicrously misapplied the original name to an ignominious vegetable. The modern Italian for 'cucumber' doubtless comes from a vulgar Latin word, a degrading diminutive, citriolum, to which Classical authors like Cicero and Virgil did not condescend. The truth has been hidden all these years because no Northern editor of Virgil has ever visited the land of the poet's birth in the month when watermelons are ripe. But now a great light shines on an obscurity, a pleasant line of Virgil has acquired the dignity of epic, and American small boys, particularly those of African origin, like the watermelon itself, can now read the Georgics with some sympathy, knowing that their author, when very young, may well have put arms about the best of fruits, abstracted from his father's, or a neighbor's, garden, and have retired for a luscious revel under the shelter of a spreading beech. All this I endeavored to make clear to Pietro, now at work on his third slice, and was gratified to hear him mumble, "Si, Signore, senza dubbio."

22(21). Georgics, IV, 121:
                                           tortusque per herbam
cresceret in ventrem cucumis.
23 (21). If tortus refers to the shape of the melon, it may be the cocomero serpentino as Tenore supposes. See Conington on the passage (after Keightley). I agree, however, with those, like Conington, who understand tortus to describe the vine's meandering through the grass.

24 (21). See L.H. Bailey, Cyclopaedia of American Horticulture, New York, VI, (1906) 1967.

25 (21). Quoted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), XVIII, 98. The most recent discussion is that of R. Billiard, in L'Agriculture dans l'Antiquité d'après les Gêorgiques de Virgile (Paris, Boccard, 1928), p. 477. He inclines to believe, on grounds that appear to me inconclusive, that the melon came to Italy somewhat after Virgil's time.
There is no mention of Rand's interpretation in R.A.B. Mynors' commentary on Georgics. I don't see Vergil cited in the Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. cucumis, a strange omission. See Charles Anthon, Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850), p. 408:
The melon is meant here, not the cucumber.

Friday, March 22, 2024

 

God-Forsaken

Homer, Odyssey 10.72-75 (Aeolus to Odysseus; tr. A.T. Murray):
Begone from our island with speed, thou vilest of all that live.
In no wise may I help or send upon his way
that man who is hated of the blessed gods.
Begone, for thou comest hither as one hated of the immortals.

ἔρρ᾽ ἐκ νήσου θᾶσσον, ἐλέγχιστε ζωόντων·
οὐ γάρ μοι θέμις ἐστὶ κομιζέμεν οὐδ᾽ ἀποπέμπειν
ἄνδρα τόν, ὅς κε θεοῖσιν ἀπέχθηται μακάρεσσιν·
ἔρρε, ἐπεὶ ἄρα θεοῖσιν ἀπεχθόμενος τόδ᾽ ἱκάνεις.
In line 75 Murray prints ἄρα θεοῖσιν but translates the variant ἀθανάτοισιν, a rare slip. The mistake persists in George E. Dimock's revision of Murray.



According to Google, George E. Dimock died in Pindale, Myanmar (click once or twice to enlarge):
Actually he died in Pinedale, Wyoming.

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A Greek Word of Uncertain Meaning

R.D. Dawe on Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 177 (LSJ definitions in square brackets added by me):
ἀμαιμάκετος is a Homeric word, of uncertain meaning, used again at Oed. Col. 127. It has been linked with words as diverse as αἷμα [blood], μάχη [battle], μῆκος [length] and μαιμάω [be very eager, quiver with eagerness], and when used of the Chimaera or her πῦρ [fire] was glossed by φοβερός [fearful], χαλεπός [difficult], ἀκαταπόνητος [inexhaustible] and ἀπροσπέλαστον [unapproachable]. Chantraine calls it 'terme poétique traditionnel et expressif dont le sens originel est ignoré de ceux qui l'utilisent'.
Cambridge Greek Lexicon:
ἀμαιμάκετος η ov (also ος ov) ep.adj. [pop.etym.: intensv.prfx., μαιμάω; also privatv.prfx., μάχομαι] (of the Chimaira, Nemean lion, Erinyes) app. formidable, awesome, irresistible Il. S. Theoc.; (of Poseidon’s trident, a spear) Pi. AR.; (of fire) Hes. S.; (of the sea) Hes. Pi.; (of the motion of the Clashing Rocks) Pi.; (of a goddess's might) Pi.; (of strife) B.; (of a ship's mast) perh. mighty or solid Od.
Franco Montanari, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek:
ἀμαιμάκετος -η -οv [see μαιμάω?] irresistible, invincible IL. 6.179 (Chimera) PIND. P. 1.14 (sea) SOPH. O.T. 177 (fire), O.C. 127 (Furies) etc.; νεΐκος ἀ. persistent strife BACCHYL. Epin. 11.641 || strong, firm: ἱστόν ἀμαιμάκετον νηός the solid mast of the ship OD. 14.311.
Liddell-Scott-Jones:
ἀμαιμάκετος , η, ον, also ος, ον Hes.Sc.207:— irresistible, old Ep. word, also in Lyr. and Trag. (lyr.); of Chimaera, Il.6.179, 16.329; of fire vomited by her, Hes.Th.319; of fire generally, S.OT177; θάλασσα, πόντος, Hes.Sc.207, Pi.P.1.14; of ship's mast, proof against any strain, Od.14.311; of the trident, Pi.I.8(7).37; ἀ. μένος, κινηθμός, P.3.33, 4.208; νεῖκος stubborn, B.10.64; of the Furies, S.OC127; ἀ. βυθοῖς in unfathomable depths, IG3.900. [Usu. derived fr. ἀ- intens., μαιμάω, i.e. furious; but apptly. connected with ἄμαχος by Poets.]
Hans Christian Albertz in Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos:
Diccionario Griego–Español:

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