About the extent of the trouble and the suitability of the remedies that have been advanced, there have been some differences of opinion; everyone, however, has recognized that there is something amiss in the lines 984–6. At the very least few would deny these difficulties: ξυνεμβ⋯λοιс is suspect. ψαμμ⋯αс must be regarded as seriously corrupt. χρ⋯νοс … παρ⋯βηсεν must be emended as a whole so that either the indispensable constituents of two complete clauses appear or ⋯πε⋯ disappears. ψαμμ⋯αс ⋯κ⋯τα παρ⋯ (...) and εὔχομαι δ᾽ ⋯ξ ⋯μ⋯с must be brought into metrical correspondence. (shrink)

n the first of his three magisterial articles on the Agamemnon H. L. Ahrens showed that all the evidence then available best fitted the conclusion that τται derived from τνω and not from τω. Subsequently Ed. Fraenkel in his own note on the word reviewed and supplemented the evidence gathered by Ahrens, and expressed the view that Ahrens' ‘discussion, details apart, is final’; and there seems to be widespread agreement that on the linguistic side at least Ahrens' argument cannot be (...) refuted. If this means anything, it means that the sense of the word cannot be ‘unhonoured’ or ‘dishonoured’. Yet Denniston–Page in their commentary say that ‘”unhonoured” seems the only possible sense here’, and R. Fagles' recent translation, which generally rests on sound scholarship as well as poetic gifts, has ‘dishonored’. The principal reason for this persistent disagreement seems to be that the sense proposed by Ahrens for τται has been thought to have rather less plausibility than the linguistic considerations that appear to lead to it. (shrink)