Abstract

This is the reading of the manuscripts with the punctuation given it in the Delphin, Loeb, and Teubner editions. But the future does not give the sense required. Adrastus is gazing with horror at the two young men who have arrived on his doorstep, realizing that they are the lion and the boar of Apollo's oracle . The whole force of the blow lies in the fact that they have actually arrived. The Delphin editor solves the problem by saying that adfore means adesse, the Loeb by translating ‘that they had come’. Gruter suggested ac fore, and Garrod accepted this, putting a comma after ductos. But I do not see how this helps. I suggest that the reading of the manuscripts is correct, provided that we take adfore with quos … ediderat; i.e. put a comma after ductos and supply esse. The presence of three verbs, adfore, portendi, and ediderat, may seem a little clumsy, but each has its point; and the future is now natural, depending upon portendi: ‘he realized that the clear will of heaven had brought to his house the sons-in-law of whom Apollo had announced that their future arrival was destined by fate.’