Blood-Letting in Polynices' List of Heroes: O. C., 1319-21

8/13/2019 Blood-Letting in Polynices' List of Heroes: O. C., 1319-21

1/5

Blood-Letting in Polynices' List of Heroes: O. C., 1319-21

Author(s): Adrian GratwickReviewed work(s):Source: The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Dec., 1965), pp. 243-246Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/706589.Accessed: 26/04/2012 07:00

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Cambridge University Pressand The Classical Associationare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

and extend access to The Classical Review.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=classicalhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/706589?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/706589?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=classicalhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup


2/5

THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 243We can scarcely resist the inference that the person whose name is etymo-logized in this fashion by the chorus was in fact Hades. Since the cap of in-visibility bore his name, it is not surprisingthat the chorus' first guess at the

identity of the invisible personshould be that he is Hades. True, Hades madeonly rare appearances in the upper world; but we must remember that henot only raped his niece at Enna but fought his nephew at Pylos (Homer,II. v. 395 f.; Pindar, Ol. 9. 33). Still, in the tetrameters that follow the lyricstrophe the statement is corrected; pv otv bears its common sense of 'immovero', and the speakeris saying, 'No, it is not Hades, it is Hermes.'ChristChurch, xford HUGH LLOYD-JONES

BLOOD-LETTING IN POLYNICES'LIST OF HEROES: O.C., 1319-21

POLYNICES'ong speech to Oedipus, O.C. I284-I345, has been accused ofgarrulity;' but it contains at least one line that Sophocles did not write.O.C. 1319-21 :KTO~ &dHap6EVOOrraiobS pK ~opvvTaL

ETrWvV/LoS rj 7TpoOTOEv31t7r7T77 po"pIppS AOXEVdEtS TSffAtroacVrqS YdovoS.Xpdvc...?'7aAdv7r) om. '.I. Aox~EW,which is never used by Aeschylus,occurs only here in Sophocles.

Euripides has it six times, but always in contexts where the mere fact of birthis less important than its difficulty and 'travail':Ion 948 rl1 AoxEEL'; ' /dYW7oOXOlSdSE;Ion1596 [~AdoAAwv]...vouovhoxEdEL'. (Which implies that a birthwhich isAvouo, s unusual )El. 1129 atdr''AdXEvovI was my own midwife'.lv ' &taoros~ ere means 'among the dead,in Hades'; the use of earo'w and its com-pounds to mean 'destroy'probably originatedin this way.With nOECa' cavpdv compare Eum. 359,where in a similar context the Erinyes say

KpaTEpov 6OO' dpoLwo,ILavpOvLEV t' atLaros veov,and also Hesiod, Op. 323

ead r LLve1iavpoDaOe~ol.dtLavpdvs an epithet ofan ELSWAovt Hom. Od.iv. 804; compare Sappho fr. 55, 3-4 L.-P.:

... aAA'd dravdsKaYA4Sa Sos'ju#OLdaCTI7Ls ITES' duavpwv VEKVOw EK7EoITOmaLL(va.

In this passage of Sappho dcavis KadvVA4tba &'juu is a kind of oxymoron, andduavpwv, as in the Aeschylean passages pre-viously cited, has more force if it means'obscure' than if it means 'weak'. Just so atCho. 157 KA',, C


3/5

244 THE CLASSICAL REVIEWIn these passages, the subject is the midwife, the object is the mother; theverb means 'to be midwife for', 'to deliver'. In the passive we should expectthe mother to be the subject of the verb and the midwife or midwifing agentto be expressed by the dative. So indeed we find:

Bacch. 3 7E/LEAP7oXEvOtea'dacrparLqdopwivpt.Tro. 603 (tEK.) VrV dhoSOCK'TpovPa,. (21v8p.)Kat E/tLv3C6tov vO'goxEv60Iv.The context is one of misery and Andromache, daughter of Eetion king of theCilicians,' is not saying 'the house where I was born' but 'the house whereI was delivered' (of my son Astyanax).2The only passage in Euripides where the child born, not the mother, issubject of the passive verb is Ion 455 A1odvav.. TL-iVLoxEvO6EV.Athene'sAoXEL'iara were unusual anyway;3 but that the word does not simply mean'born' is shown by the dative of agent;4 it means 'brought to birth (by theobstetric art of Prometheus)'.In all these passages there is a midwifing agent expressed or implied as thesubject of the verb in the active, or by the dative of agent in the passive; andthere is a notion of pain inherent in the contexts where the verb occurs.This leaves hoXEvELs in the O.C. passage unparalleled in Attic tragedy, forit has to mean simply 'born' with a genitive of origin tTr7pdS. There is noEnglish word to correspond exactly to Attic AoxE1dW,ut if I may invent one'to midwife' and 'be midwifed' would cover the Euripidean examples. Thereis no emphasis on the obstetric side of the birth at O.C. 1321; all that is wantedis a word meaning 'generated'-why not TEKvwOets, he exact metrical equiva-lent of AOXEvO~l?2. This linguistic oddity coincides with other evidence which casts doubtsupon the authenticity of 1321. Dain's Bud6 apparatus reports for the first timethat the q-tradition omits the words XpOv< trpo~7psAoxEVOEvS7TaroS AvaA.aX7)S .His P-symbol represents the reading of the hyparchetype of the Roman familyshown by Turyn to have equal authority with the Laurentian for establishingthe reading of the archetype. Turyn says nothing at this point; and Dain'ssymbol does not tell us on what manuscript evidence he bases his note. Thesymbol here, as elsewhere in Dain's apparatus, is ambiguous, for it takes onthe misleading appearance of a parchment-and-ink manuscript as real as theLaurentian, which it is not. No other apparatus of which I am aware recordsthe omission of these words at all, let alone their omission by half the maintradition. Dain should have been more explicit.

3. If Dain is right, the text of the Q-tradition is far superior, because thesyntax of L's version is tortuous and the thought is threadbare. /popdS is con-structed arn KOLVOOith itmvvYtoSand AoXEvO~Eln different ways and is awk-ward to fit into a translation. Jebb contrives to cover the inherent banalitywith 'named after that virgin of other days whose marriage in after-time gavehim birth, the trusty son of Atalanta'; but this does not disguise the silliness ofIliad vi. 395-7.

2 The attribution of the remark to An-dromache (Murray) is better than Seidler'sattribution to Hecuba: JAoXe60,v could notmean 'where I was born' in Hecuba's case(on her parentage see Pherecydes, cited by

Jacoby, Fr. d. Gr. Historiker i. 136); nor couldit mean 'where I was delivered of my chil-

dren' because of the aorist. Hecuba borenineteen of Priam's fifty sons, Iliad xxiv.495-7.SShe has no real mother: Hesiod, Theog.886-900oo; Pindar, Olymp. 7. 34 if.

4 Note that (painful) fire is the obstetricagent here and in the birth of Semele; ELvwvyvvaL~Lv at 3' d


4/5

THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 245the antithesis of IrpdaOEvnd Xpdvp or the tautological character of the whole.O'sversion by contrast is clear-but allusive.4. rardLs s very weak. The word means fidus, never verus:' so Ellendt,rightly.L.S.J. quote this line for the supposedmeaning 'factuallytrue'with twoother passages,neither of which is relevant.2Wunder'sinterpretation'de quodubitari non potest an Atalantae filius necne sit' is linguistically impossiblefor Sophocles; its only possible merit might be that it mightrefer to the con-troversyabout the parenthood of Parthenopaeus (see below). The word mustsimplybe a commendatoryepithet. I do not want to labour this point, but suchepithets are as uncharacteristicof Sophocles as they are typical of Euripides.3It is quite different from the particularizingepic adjectiveapplied to Amphi-araus at i 313, which contains a visual image :* &-?as is quite empty here.At v. 1395 Oedipus says TLUwOLUeL v)nLadXoLUL-butwhat could be more ironicin that context? Pindar, Nem. Io. 54 Ka i~LV OECLVWLaTbVA'OSWill not defendthe use here; what follows is the moral tale of Castorand Pollux which illus-trates divine 'lorL.5. Euripidesrefersto Parthenopaeusthree times, Suppl.888, Phoen.150 andI153; on each occasion he usesthe phrase 47aAcv-rjsydvos~s a line-end. Thereis no need to discusswhether the Phoenissaer the OedipusColoneuss the earlierplay or to investigate the controversyabout Parthenopaeus' paternitys to seethat a schoolmaster had in Euripides all the material he needed to gloss theallusive TypIpdkTEv tipLg-i ydvos, for which cf. Soph. El. 1231 4p7Ep~w...-V vdel c48,trav. He used a Euripidean verb wrongly,6 a peculiarly Euripideandescriptionof Parthenopaeus,and a commendatoryadjective in the Euripideanmanner, while introducing a false and stupid antithesis.6. In view of all this, I suggest that we are dealing with a variant presentin the archetype of Ll, which was indicated as spurious by a diacritic sign,or by its position in the margin, or by a scholion, and that while L took theline, 'l omitted it. At Soph. Ant.46 dSEhAoand some line-filling words havebeen added to explain the allusive and slightly colloquial 7-v yoiv iCdvVKarV abcv f the previous line; the scholiast says "Adlv~tds4rayv Thwdrv 1ro0v17-/a7L7w--v VEVOOEVLoaL"./p-pdSon I1322is parallel to this in position, quality,and motive. At Ajax 841-2 the allusive line-end rib- dAolaro,like O's c483iji-ydvos~ere, has been split up by an explanatoryinsertion7of which the scholiast' Just as in Latin verus never meansfidus. See Shackleton Bailey, Propertiana,onProp. ii. 29. 33.2 (a) Theopompus Comicus fr. 32 K naLodvTEKVOV s clearly a pun on the meaning ofTLards'drinkable' as the child addressed isa Thericlean cup.(b) LXX De. 28. 59 voaoL lTov7JpalKal7rTWal ('unmistakable', L.S.J.) is translatedin the Vulgate infirmitatesessumae tperpetuae.The equivalence ofperpetuae nd to'raL eemsto depend on a nuance of Hebrew idiom;I am not able to say what this is, but clearlymural does not simply mean 'true' in thiscontext.

Eur. Phoen. 283 Otalrov K rELVO pdPOS,etc.Sofor aopvaaoi~s bLdpew: only the firsthero has an adjective at all; the other

heroes are qualified by their genealogiesalone.s Was Parthenopaeus the son of the ArgiveTalaus, or of the ArcadianAtalante?Thetraces of this controversy are summarized byMasquerayat Phoen. i53, to which add 'in O.C. I320, EvLol aaLvo0 7TvA47aAdv7r7J

'ap8EvoGraLov a7paTEvaaL, cLAA~h rv TaAaoi,Ov VLOL Lda rd R KaAacv TpoaayopEvovat,KdOaTrEp 4pLo-rapxos &TEyETdrT, Ka IL OK 9,ovyypatdcwv

8i 'EKaTaosodMt a0o0. It shouldbe noted that this learned note does notthrowlight on the questionor date of inter-polationin 1321,becauseit could apply toeither text.6 Did he, like Seidler, misunderstandEur. Tro.603?7 Which contains an unsophoclean word4~ATaoE like AoxEv8dEsn O.C. 1321.


5/5

246 THE CLASSICAL REVIEWad loc. says what could with equal justice be said of O.C. 1321: "?rara vOOEvodoaacrLv15rofihqle~v~ 'TrpOS Ua9~1rqvEav TWYv AEYOtLEaVWVBalliolCollege,Oxford ADRIAN GRATWICK

My thanksaredue to ProfessorH. Lloyd-Jones f ChristChurchandMr.J. G. Griffith fJesusCollegefor useful criticismof thisnote.

nalo rwoncrr)SIN Hermathenaxx (1952), 3 f. Mr. G. W. Bond published from a papyrus ofthe third century B.c. in the library of Trinity College, Dublin (inv. no. 193 a)a fragment of an epigram dealing with Archilochus and the daughters ofLycambes. I reproduce his text, adding in some places breathings, accents,and word divisions. Col. i

].13EworaOE'vovs]7Trpd fli-qv AaAE'uaas]EL& O&SLTa

5 ]vs Al~os~roAln~s] . /La/LE'p'lc4flwL]1#aILEaUaELPpa

](LKaly777

Col. ii

Kal AE&PiounC....['TEPLcT~bPOL...[

5 oV~s3 il)OJLE[aAA'?j pI[v?is' EIV[:

To ?rTpa7TFKOaCtL[

Bond's treatment of the poem is exemplary, and W. Peek (Philologus xcix[1954/51, 46 f.) could find little of substance to add to his remarks. The viewof these two scholars that the epigram was probably composed not long beforethis manuscript was written seems to me virtually certain. Self-defence againstslander put into the mouth of the dead is a known theme of the Hellenisticepigram that purports to be sepulchral (see, for example, the epigrams onPhilaenis at A.P. vii. 345 and 450); and Archilochus and his fortunes arefavourite subjects of the epigrammatists of this period (see A. von Blumenthal,Die Schi'tzungdes Archilochusm Altertume Stuttgart, I922], 20-24).My business is with 1. 5 of the first column. Bond suggests that the sense mayhave been, 'A fellow-citizen had the heart of a stone; he hurled immeasurableinsults against us...', etc. It seems to me probable, and Bond, who has givenme valuable help with this note, agrees, that in a poem concerning natives ofParos Al~os-roAAr1Tprobably meant 'Parian marble'. In that case, the sensewill probably have been, not 'A fellow-citizen had the heart of a stone', butrather 'Now we lie buried beneath our country's stone'.The use of a noun denoting a class of person in apposition to another noundenoting a wider class of person which subsumes the first is common fromHomer's time on; see Schwyzer, GriechischeGrammatik i. 614; id., Sur Ap-position(Abh. der Berliner Akad., I945/6, Ph.-Hist. K1. 3), p. 5; Wackernagel,

6 'prima littera j vel p': Bond t' diErp' Bond:]v' tLEp' Peek7 8ELpasex SELva correctum

Documents

Blood-Letting in Polynices' List of Heroes: O. C., 1319-21