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A SPEAR ‘LIKE A BALL’: A NOTE ON SOPHOCLES, FR. 781

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2018

Bob Corthals
Bob Corthals*
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen
*
bobcorthals@gmail.com
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Extract

Etymologicum Magnum s.v. ἔγχος (313, 3):

ὁ δὲ Σοφοκλῆς τὴν σφαῖραν ἔγχος κέκληκεν, οἶον ‘τὸ δ’ ἔγχος ἐν ποσὶ κυλίνδεται’.

Sophocles has called a ball egkhos (‘spear’), as in ‘and the egkhos rolls to (someone's) feet’.

The quoted fragment is generally assigned to Sophocles' Nausicaa (or Plyntriai). This suggestion dates back to nineteenth-century scholarship, is found in the editions of Pearson and Radt, and has been accepted by LSJ (s.v. ἔγχος II. ‘of Nausicaa's ball’). Certainly, the Nausicaa will have included a version of the famous scene in which the Phaeacian princess and her maidens enjoy a game of ball. Pearson thought it probable that the words are part of Odysseus' speech at the court of Alcinous (cf. Od. 7.290), in which he would have recalled Nausicaa's misdirected cast (cf. 6.115). The feet, on this view, are Odysseus' own. According to Welcker, Odysseus calls the ball an ἔγχος, ‘because it reached him like a missile’. This is awkward: an ἔγχος is properly a thrusting spear and, at any rate, the quality of being thrown does not enter into the immediate image, as the fragment's object is said to reach someone's feet rolling.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , May 2018 , pp. 326 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

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References

1 Schneider, G.C.W., Sophokles Tragödien, Vol. 8: Bruchstücke (Weimar, 1827), 135Google Scholar; Bergk, T., Commentatio de fragmentis Sophoclis (Leipzig, 1833), 22Google Scholar; Ellendt, F., Lexicon Sophocleum, Vol. 1 (Königsberg, 1835), 471Google Scholar; Welcker, F.G., Die griechischen Tragödien mit Rücksicht auf den epischen Cyclus, Vol. 1 (Bonn, 1839), 230Google Scholar; Pearson, A.C., The Fragments of Sophocles, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1917), 29–30Google Scholar (on fr. 781); Radt, S.L., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Vol. 4: Sophocles (Göttingen, 1999 2), 537CrossRefGoogle Scholar (on fr. 781). The fragment does not meet the criteria for inclusion in Lloyd-Jones, H., Sophocles: Fragments (Cambridge, MA, 2003 2)Google Scholar.

2 Sophocles himself is famously claimed to have performed the role of Nausicaa and received great credit for his skill with the ball: Ath. 1.20f, Eust. Od. 1553, 64 (cf. Eust. Il. 381, 10).

3 Welcker (n. 1), 230: ‘weil er wie ein Geschoß ihn erreichte’.

4 It is true that, in tragedy especially, the meaning of ἔγχος is sometimes extended: it may denote simply ‘weapon’ (e.g. Soph. OT 170), ‘sword’ (e.g. Soph. Aj. 287) or even ‘arrows’ (Eur. HF 1098, ἔγχη); in Soph. fr. 535, it qualifies Hecate's ‘holy fire’, i.e. her torch. These are intriguing cases, and I aim to devote another study to some of them. Suffice it to say, for present purposes, that the idea of ἔγχος as referring to ‘ball’ is by no means an obvious further extension. Searches for closer parallels in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae have yielded no results.

5 Janko, R., The Iliad: A Commentary, Vol. 4: Books 13–16 (Cambridge, 1994), 112Google Scholar (on 13.526–30), further referencing 11.147, 13.579, 14.411, 16.117–18, 16.794.

6 On the weapon, see Frazer, R.M., ‘Ajax's weapon in Iliad 15.674–16.123’, CPh 78 (1983), 127–30Google Scholar.

7 For discussion of the play, see Pearson, A.C., The Fragments of Sophocles, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1917), 8–15Google Scholar; Haslam, M.W., ‘P.Oxy. 3151’, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 44 (1976), 1–23Google Scholar; Sutton, D.F., The Lost Sophocles (Lanham, MD, 1984), 7–9Google Scholar; Lloyd-Jones (n. 1), 12–17; Fitzpatrick, D.G., ‘Sophocles' Aias Lokros’, in Sommerstein, A.H. (ed.), Shards from Kolonos: Studies in Sophoclean Fragments (Bari, 2003), 243–59Google Scholar.

8 On the line's reconstruction, see Haslam, M.W., ‘Sophocles, Αἴας Λοκρός: P.Oxy. XLIV 3151’, ZPE 22 (1976), 34Google Scholar; Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘P.Oxy. 3151, fr. 2 (Sophocles, Aiax Locrus)’, ZPE 22 (1976), 40Google Scholar.

9 This likelihood stems not just from the fact that Cassandra was the victim of Ajax's crime. She is also the most plausible addressee of fr. 15, which references a character's prophetic powers: τί σοι ὁ Ἀπόλλων κεκιθάρικεν; Cf. Welcker (n. 1), 165; Sutton (n. 7), 8; Fitzpatrick (n. 7), 10. But one cannot rule out Calchas either. The ancient ascription of this fragment to Aeschylus’ Aias Lokros is generally taken as a mistake for Sophocles' play with the same title, as Aeschylus did not write one. Cf. Pearson (n. 7), 13.

10 This interpretation of the play's finale corresponds to the suggestions of Fitzpatrick (n. 7), 255–6. Differently, Pearson (n. 7), 10 suggested that a messenger related Ajax's death, but we lack both an obvious location and obvious addressees for such a speech. So correctly Lloyd-Jones (n. 1), 14–15, who himself favours a deus ex machina appearance from Athena. This view too is improbable: the goddess' searching comments in fr. 10c fit the heart of the play better, and it is not apparent why the Greeks would have ignored a future warning coming straight from Athena (or from Calchas, for that matter). Neither Pearson nor Lloyd-Jones entertained the option of a conclusion involving Cassandra. Kiso, A., The Lost Sophocles (New York, 1984), 11Google Scholar notes the plausibility of a prophecy of Ajax's death, but does not consider the question of who delivered the prophecy.