Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-17T00:16:58.514Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Stesichorus: The ‘Sack of Troy’ and ‘The Wooden Horse’ (P. Oxy. 2619 and 2803)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Denys Page
Denys Page
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A. Frr. 1+47

col. i

The poem represented in P. Oxy. 2619 is self-evidently the work of Stesichorus, presumably his Iliou Persis. From the fragments as originally published not a single complete line or sentence could be reconstructed; the style and structure were, as Mr Lobel said, ‘quite unrecognisable’. There was really nothing to be done; it was a great disappointment.

To this gloomy picture Mr Barrett, with extraordinary ingenuity and skill, succeeded in restoring two quite substantial patches of bright and clear colour. He joined fr. 47 to the second column of fr. 1, and frr. 30 and 31 to fr. 15(b), in each place creating an intelligible context for seven consecutive lines. The texts of these two pieces as restored by Barrett read, with only slight modifications, as shown on pp. 47 and 50.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 19 , 1973 , pp. 47 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 48 note 1 Published in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik IV (1969), 135 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 48 note 2 I am under a heavy obligation to Mr Barrett, who has allowed me to take advantage of unpublished material from his large correspondence with me on this text. Professor E. G. Turner very kindly made it possible for me to study at leisure the originals of P. Oxy. 2619 and 2803.

page 51 note 1 First in West, M. L., Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik IV (1969), 135Google Scholar. The pattern was amended by R. Führer, ibid. (1970), II, with the approval of West (ibid. VII (1971), 262) except on a couple of points (the following scheme follows West on these).

page 52 note 1 Uncertain whether ending –– (period) or – (in synaphea).

page 52 note 2 I have not included the marks for ‘bridges’ or for ends of words, lines, and periods. Internal period-end is demonstrable at the end of epod. 3 (Fr. I ii 7–8); synaphea between str. 7–8 (Fr. I i 22–3 and epod. 6–7 (I ii 10–11), perhaps also epod. 2–3 (I i 7–8, unlikely to end a period).

page 52 note 3 These and subsequent figures are derived from 75 samples for each item taken from Pindar and Bacchylides; Mr Barrett supplied me with some of them, and I added others as need arose.

page 53 note 1 Indeed I have found it necessary to argue throughout as if the alleged metrical pattern could be taken for granted; although, for the reasons given above, I think it very unlikely to be correct.

page 56 note 1 18 , if these words go together.

page 58 note 1 Führer appears to give as a line-beginning; impossible, for the first line would then have to be complete in about four syllables ( is the end of its line).

page 58 note 2 I have reached this conclusion with regret. I have no longer any interest in the alternative triad form suggested in PCPS 1969, and was at first strongly attracted to Dr West's alternative, not least for the following reason:

If the vacant spaces at the top and bottom of Fr. 1 are margins, and did not contain short lines, a strophe will begin at I ii 15. Now the very short line 15 (b) 12 looks like the end of a stanza (though the appearance may be deceptive; cf. the very short fifth line within the strophe in the Geryoneïs, – – ∥); if it is the end of strophe or antistrophe, I ii 15–22 and 15(b) 5–12 should be in correspondence – and so indeed they are, so far as they go. Unfortunately that is not very far, and fortuitous coincidence cannot be ruled out. The very different triad form proposed in PCPS also, as it happens, results in strophe-beginning at I ii 15, but there the correspondence with 15 (b) is shown to be fortuitous by evidence elsewhere within the column.

page 59 note 1 The supplement in 9 is not tenable. For the second π, the text has the top of an upright with no cross-bar to right or left. Barrett observes that the first upright of π sometimes rises above the level of the cross-bar, but enough of the top of the upright is preserved here to exclude this possibility.

page 60 note 1 I personally have no doubt that ]νη is written in the papyrus; the ν appears to me plainly ν not a possible λι.

page 62 note 1 I subtract from the arguments that which is based on the alleged odd-looking shape of the upper ‘antisigma’. The Plate is misleading. Both ‘antisigmas’ are the same size and shape. The odd appearance in the Plate is caused by a break in the papyrus-surface, which has removed the base of the upper ‘antisigma’ except its extreme lower left-hand tip.

page 63 note 1 2619. 16. 6 is no help; see p. 56 above.

page 65 note 1 I add a note on a difficulty observed by Barrett in the interpretation of the line in the proposed combination of 2619. 18 and 2803. 11.

As Barrett says, it is inconceivable that Stesichorus dismissed this event, the emergence from the Wooden Horse, in a single line. Moreover, if, as Barrett believes, the combined fragments represent lines 113–30 of the poem, it is much too early in the poem for the Greeks to emerge from the horse. Barrett therefore suggests an unreal negative, , ‘the Greeks would never have leapt out, (if Poseidon had not done something or other)’. The objection to this is that is then plainly out of context; you would only describe them as , without qualification, when they did emerge; is phrasing that would suit emergence, not non-emergence. The difficulty here is very great, and is a further objection to the combination of the two fragments.