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Notes on the text of Theocritus1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Alan Griffiths
Affiliation:
University of College, London

Extract

The sense of line 34 is obvious: ‘une prairie était à leur disposition’, Legrand; all editors print this text, and assume this meaning. But Gow is worried about the Greek: is common enough of tracts or places, but usually of their geographical position, which is not here in point. The verb seems rather to be selected to indicate a store or deposit &’—but the vox propria for ‘to be at someone's disposal as a store’ is , and P. Oxy. 694 in fact reads here. We should restore , which accounts for both readings.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

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References

page 103 note 2 P3 Gow, Pa Gallavotti; a note on the physical make-up of the MS. appears on pp. xlixf. of Gow's introduction to his Theocritus. A further fragment of the papyrus—the missing top corner of fol. 7—has been identified by E. G. Turner and published vol. 3 of the Antinoopolis Papyri (no. 207).

page 103 note 3 Two Theocritus Papyri, edd. Hunt, A.S. and Johnson, J., Egypt Exploration Society, London, 1930Google Scholar. A first transcript was made by Johnson; this was completed and revised by Hunt, who was also responsible for the commentary. The first editor able to make use of the papyrus was Legrand, who added an appendix discussing its readings to the second edition of his Budé Bucoliques grecs.

page 103 note 4 ‘Zur Textkritik Theokrits’, Nachr. d. Ak. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen 1949, Phil.-hist. K.I., 231 f. (= Kl. Schr. 533 f.).

page 103 note 5 See too 15. 16, where the paraphrase in the margin supports Wilamowitz's ảγοράσδειυ (imperative) against the text of the papyrus itself, and 26. 27 where, whatever the text once offered, a marginal note gives the correct sense.

page 104 note 1 Theocritus Bion Moschus 3 (1856), 294.

page 104 note 2 Similarly F.P. Fritz, in his recent Tusculum-Ausgabe, and Rumpel, Lexicon Theocriteum s.v. κλύμευος.

page 104 note 3 Hermann's explanation of Aeschinas' bitterness, ‘quod pulchellum et mollem adulescentulum sibi praefert Cynisca’ sounds reasonable; but this distinction between ‘manly’and ‘tender boyish’ beauty was less sharply felt by the Greeks. Aeschinas has grounds for angry jealousy, but not contempt.

page 104 note 4 The word is exiled to a footnote Legrand's discussion of Theocritus' vocabulary (Étude sur Théocrite, 262 n. 3): ‘κλύμευος, qu'Homére n'a pas employé, a cependant une allure épique’. Antimachus does seem to have used ảγακλύμευος as an adjective (fr. 66. 2 W), but there it is associated with a proper name.

page 104 note 5 A fragment of the end of Euphorion's account of the story (Pack2, 371) was published by Vitelli and Norsa in Ann. Pisa ser. 2, vol. 4 (1935), and re-edited by Bartoletti as PSI xiv (1957), no. 1390, fr. G.

page 105 note 1 For the resistance-motif elsewhere in Parthenius, compare stories no. 5 (incest), 16, 17 (incest), and 29.

page 105 note 2 Myth. Lex. 1. 837 f., s.v. Harpalyke: ‘Der Verlauf der Liebesleidenschaften, des υόσημα, muss durch verschiedene Stadien hindurch ausführlich und mit raffinierter Kunst entwickelt sein.’

page 105 note 3 Hermesianax fr. 7. 41–6 P. Wyss ad loc. attributes fr. 85 to the ecphrasis of Teumessos from Book 1 of the Thebaid; certainly it unlikely to come from the Antimachean version of the Clymenus story that I tentavotively hypothesize: it already assumes the existence and connotation of the plant.

page 106 note 1 For the concentration in this poem especially of Theocritus' naturally gnomic and proverbial style, see Heimgartner, E., Die Eigenart Theokrits in seinem Sprichwort, Diss. Freiburg (1940), 189 f.Google Scholar

page 106 note 2 e.g. Παλαμήδειος βούλεμα (λόγος); øωυή. It is a pity that Wackernagel, in his otherwise exhaustive article ‘Genitiv und Adjektiv’ (Kl. Schr. ii. 1346–73), chose deliberately to omit discussion of ‘die Fälle, wo das Adjektiv qualitativ “nach Art des Betreffenden” bedeutet’ (p. 1362)—precisely the case I am concerned with here. ‘Es wäre erwünscht’, he remarks, ‘einmal eine voile, alles umfassende Zusammenstellung zu erhalten’, but such a work has not yet to my knowledge appeared.

page 106 note 3 Anyone hesitant to attribute to Theocritus an otherwise unrecorded proverbial expression should bear in mind that the ειος noun phrase is particularly suited to ad hoc ‘one-off’ coinages; and that (for example) the adage about ‘washing bricks’ at 16. 62 occurs elsewhere in Greek only in the paroemiographers (who no doubt have it from T.).

page 106 note 4 Cf. Legrand, loc. cit., on its ‘allure épique’.

page 106 note 5 Just as 2. 61 was partly manufactured from 3. 33, and at 15. 99 was glossed from 6. 15 with .

page 107 note 1 Line 50 in the same poem, where the native Egyptians are crisply summed up by Praxinoa in three parallel barbed phrases, is quite different.

page 107 note 2 Xen. Cyn. 5. 29 δρόμου ‘like it at running’ provides a presimicarious parallel to the scholiast's interpretation; but the overwhelming popularity of the expression Iroi/ioj irpos (see below) seems to me decisive.

page 107 note 3 e.g. Luc. As. 39 ή γυνή ( ….

page 107 note 4 Cols. 1007 f., s.v. . Frequently , a context significantly similar to this Theocritus passage.

page 107 note 5 Corruption, easy enough given the familiarity of the expression , may have been helped by the superficial simlarity of ảλλάλοις όμάλος in line 50 to here.

page 107 note 6 More so than in the cases which Gow cites in justification; Opp. H. 4. 605 f. would make a better defence.

page 108 note 1 øρίοοειν used absolutely (as at Nic. Ther. 167, 293) behaves differently, meaning ‘rear up’; but wherever a dative is used with the verb, that dative is øολίδι/ιεοοιν.

page 108 note 2 Cf. Et. Mag. s.v. (.

page 108 note 3 RE 2. Reihe, vol. 2. i, cols. 531 ff., s.v. Schlange.

page 108 note 4 Nic. Ther. loc. cit., Philumenus 30. As Giangrande notes (Eranos lxviii [1970]Google Scholar, 89), ‘every respectable draco is bearded’.

page 108 note 5 Gossen-Stier (RE loc. cit.) is pained to find that ‘selbst ein so sachlich schreibender Mann’ as Philumenus held this view.

page 108 note 6 Pollux’s Onomasticon was of course chiefly intended to list Atticisms; but he could not resist including a great many lexicographical oddities from the pan-Hellenic poetic tradition, from authors as un-Attic as Homer, Hesiod, the Lesbians, Antimachus (fr. 108 W), Aratus, Callimachus (frr. 80. 5, 191. 2, 177. 33), and Nicander; indeed it seems to have been for just this reason that he was tO attacked by his rival, the purist Phrynichus (Bethe, RE 10. i, cols. 778 f.). So we should not be surprised to find ύπόσπειρα lurking in this quarter.

page 108 note 7 For other glosses in Theocritus (ảκιρά, , etc.) see Legrand, Etude, 255 ff.

page 108 note 8 At Nic. Ther. 444 the drakon's beard is yellow; but where we are in any case dealing with a mythological appendage, we may chiefly allow poets to choose its colour for themselves.

page 108 note 9 Cf, e.g., Nonn. D. 35. 55, Dion. Per. 443, Nic. Ther. 221 (all quoted above), Theoc. 7. 9, Ap. Rhod. 3. 928, Moschus, Europa, 57.

page 109 note 1 The sub-type (e.g. Antim. fr. 2 W) is the best-known example of this sort of asyndetic scene-setting; see Austin on Aen. 2. 21, Norden on Aen. 6. 42 ff.

page 109 note 2 Gow's note on 15. 82 (to which he refers us) can cite only ‘wandering’ as a meaning of words in διυ- which does not have a clearly circular implication; and in that case the idea is presumably of aimless wandering, where the vagrant is likely to trace broad arcs or even to cross his own tracks.

page 109 note 3 Theocritus may have had a mental picture of Ajax’s correctly envisaged it as semi-cylindrical, it would not only take two babies in tandem very comfortably, but would rock from side to side in the desired manner perfectly.

page 109 note 4 Plato also uses σεισμός to describe the motion.