Abstract

The words I wish to delete in 48-9 spoil a ‘tricolon crescendo’ whose three members are clearly marked and whose verbs are perhaps deliberately varied in person and tense . The parataxis by means of hic is awkward, and the words seem to be a versified gloss. The Scholiast says : id est: to nobilis tantum et imperitus. nam de plebe, id est de humili familia, eloquentes exeunt, qui nobilium imperitorum causas defendunt; but that could be a paraphrase based on the text as it stands in our manuscripts