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Monday, December 02, 2019

Asyndetic Privative Adjectives on a Curse Tablet?

D.R. Jordan, "Defixiones from a Well Near the Southwest Corner of the Athenian Agora," Hesperia 54.3 (July-September, 1985) 205-255 (at p. 216, lines 15-16):
                                                                    Ἔστω κωφός,]
ἄλαλο[ς, ἄ]νους, ἀκέραιος, µήτε παλαίω[ν µηδενί.]


[....]

                                                                  Let him be deaf,
dumb, mindless, harmless, and not fighting against anyone.
At the end of line 15, I wonder if ἀνήκοος could be supplied instead of κωφός. Also, translating speechless instead of dumb would emphasize the privative nature of ἄλαλος.



Oops, now I see that κωφός appears in similar phrases on other curse tablets from the same collection, so I withdraw my suggestion about ἀνήκοος.