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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
This equation was set up by Mr. Allen in the Classical Review XV. 8–9 (1901), and remained, as far as I know, for over twenty years without effect. I thought, therefore, when writing my External Evidence for Interpolation in Homer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925) that the article had provided its own corrective and needed no criticism. About the same time, however, Mr. Allen in his Homer: The Origins and the Transmission (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 2352, reiterated his opinion; and later still Mr. Sheppard, ib. XLI. 127–9 (1927), shows that he has been impressed by it. Under these circumstances, and because a good deal depends upon the interpretation of the word, a brief discussion now seems desirable.
page 101 note 1 Drerup, , Hom. Poet. I. 3271Google Scholar, did, to be sure speak incidentally of Aristarchus' athetesis of B 558; but that was probably a slip. In this connexion I should like to correct an oversight of my own: p. 46 a misquotation of Drerup. For ‘great Alexandrian’ ‘ancient critics’ should, have been written; Mr. Allen gives 366 as the number of lines athetized by Aristarchus.
page 101 note 2 A says: ‘Sorry, but I can't go as I promised. This, that or the other has happened.’ B reports: ‘A has begged off from going with us.’ Nobody misunderstands the situation.
page 102 note 1 If ζ 149 causes us to check, it is because the scholiast feels τ ἃπτεσθαι τνγοντων as a ceremony incumbent upon a suppliant, while we do not immediately appreciate that feeling.
page 102 note 2 Or, as frequently, because it is the source of an interpolation, and so can confirm the athetesis in another way. This is here irrelevant.
page 102 note 3 I avoid ‘deprecate’ partly because in regard to it there seems to be a difference of usage between British and American English. For me, and for some others at least in this country, it suggests an action quite mild and almost apologetic, far from the ‘earnest diapproval’ of the dictionaries. Besides, to translate παραιτεȋσθαι by ‘earnestly disapprove’ is too much of the style of translation for which Lewis and Short furnish the classic example: bibere ‘to arrive at the region of the river.’
page 103 note 1 To assume without warrant a verbatim quotation of Aristarchus would alter no more than the form of the argument. For an editor to say ‘the line that is written by some people’ clearly carries the implication ‘but not by me.’.
page 103 note 2 They use the text of Aristarchus and assume that their readers had a text with the same lines; the papyri show that the assumption was warranted. When they deal occasionally with other lines it is more agreeable to say ‘which others add.’ The note of Didymus on Φ 73 is rather exceptional ‘which is not in the editions of Aristarchus’; probably he found that it was already in the copies used by some of hisreaders.
page 103 note 3 I cannot agree with Mr. Allen that the use of so common a word as τις suffices to show that we are dealing with the ‘language of athetesis.’
page 104 note 1 Mr. Sheppard seems to believe that I am the first to think the line was not in the text of Aristarchus. That is an injustice to Ludwich, Wilamowitz, Cauer, Bethe, van Leeuwen, and no doubt to others; the most I could claim would be an effort to strengthen their conclusion.
page 104 note 2 Quotations are a separate problem. If Dio of Prusa (lv. 15) did not have the verse, he was probably quoting at second hand; cf. Class. Phil. XXII. 99–100 (1927)Google Scholar, where Oldfather catches Epictetus at that trick.
page 104 note 3 Mr. Allen's list is reprinted from Class. Rev. XV. 2441. In one list we are told that Ω 556–7 are omitted, in the other that Ω 556 (the misprint 536 may be corrected) is omitted; in both it is said that Aristarchus athetized Ω 556. In reality Aristarchus athetized Ω 556–7, and what the MSS. do cannot be determined. The intervening Oxford text adds to our perplexity by reporting no omissions here nor at I 694 nor at Ψ 810.
page 105 note 1 In half of these it is entered by a second hand, but that shows merely how the line was then spreading. Mr. Allen's method of dealing with such evidence is not clear to me.
page 105 note 2 The evidence is frequently indirect, but reasonably satisfactory. MrAllen, , Class. Rev. XV. 9 and 244Google Scholar, will recognize but three ‘omissions’ in Aristarchus’ text, viz. E 808, II 613, Φ 73. The first two must be set aside: II 613 because it was read in his second edition; E 808 because the evidence is conflicting, while the MSS. show it to behave like any athetized line.
page 105 note 3 The papyri supply the answer and confirm the conclusion I am about to draw. Mr. Allen regards their evidence as casual, and it has usually been so treated. We should look upon them, on the contrary, as samples of a text the lines of which varied so little, that it is possible to predict what lines will, and what will not, be found in any vulgate papyrus. My predictions were first made in 1916 (Amer. Journ. Phil. XXXVII. 21) and seem (cf. Ext. Ev. 255–6) to have stood the testing of ten years satisfactorily.
page 105 note 4 Only let us not ascribe to Hesiod (cf. Mr. Allen, ib. 2353) the infelicity of making Ajax moor his ships ἵν' '03B1;θηναίων ἵσταντο Φάλαγγες. In its original setting (if there was one earlier than the anecdote) the line need have referred neither to ships nor to Ajax. It could, for instance have described the action of one of the sons of Theseus in the rescue of his grandmother.