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AN EMENDATION IN APOLLONIUS SOPHISTA'S LEXICON HOMERICUM*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2017

Chiara Meccariello
Chiara Meccariello*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
*
[email protected]
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Extract

The beginning of the second entry of Apollonius Sophista's Lexicon Homericum reads as follows in the codex Coislinianus gr. 345, the only direct witness to this section (1, 14–15 Bekker):

ἀάατος· ὁ ἀβλαβὴς καὶ εὐχερὴς καὶ δι’ οὗ ἄνευ ἄτης. ἐνίοτε δὲ τὸν ἐπιβλαβῆ καὶ δυσχερῆ …

ἀάατος: ‘harmless’ and ‘easy’, and δι’ οὗ ‘without ἄτη’. But sometimes ‘hurtful’ and ‘difficult’ …

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 332 - 335
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

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Footnotes

*

This paper stems from ongoing work on a new edition of Apollonius Sophista's Lexicon Homericum, which I am preparing with James Brusuelas and Dirk Obbink on the basis of preliminary work conducted by Michael Haslam. I would like to thank James Brusuelas, Daniela Colomo and Fausto Montana for reading and commenting upon an earlier draft of this article, and the anonymous referee for helpful suggestions.

References

1 The text, here and elsewhere, is quoted according to the latest complete edition available, that of Bekker, I., Apollonii Sophistae Lexicon Homericum (Berlin, 1833)Google Scholar. On the magmatic textual transmission of the Lexicon, the state of the text in the Coislinianus, and the papyrological evidence, see Haslam, M.W., ‘The Homer Lexicon of Apollonius Sophista: I. composition and constituents’, CPh 89 (1994), 1–45 Google Scholar and Id., ‘The Homer Lexicon of Apollonius Sophista: II. identity and transmission’, CPh 89 (1994), 107–19Google Scholar.

2 The remaining part of the entry quotes Od. 21.91 to exemplify the second pair of interpretamenta (τὸν ἐπιβλαβῆ καὶ δυσχερῆ); it then mentions again the meaning ἀβλαβῆ, quoting Od. 22.5. The repetition may seem unwanted, but cf. the entry ἀθέσφατον (13, 5), where πολύν is the first interpretamentum (exemplified by Il. 3.4), and in the second part of the entry ἀντὶ τοῦ πολλαί occurs again to explain ἀθέσφατοι in the further example quoted (Od. 20.211). Moreover, it is probably no coincidence that the entry ἀάατος consists of three groups of definitions (ὁ ἀβλαβὴς καὶ εὐχερής, τὸν ἐπιβλαβῆ καὶ δυσχερῆ, and ἀβλαβῆ), as the adjective occurs precisely three times in the Homeric poems, namely Od. 21.91 and 22.5 (the two passages quoted in our entry as preserved in the Coislinianus) and Il. 14.271. The latter line might well have been quoted, originally, to illustrate the first definition: for the loss of exemplificative quotations in the Coislinianus, see Haslam (n. 1 [1994] [I]), 2 and 29 n. 86, and Id. (n. 1 [1994] [II]), 111 and 117. Note that the adjective is also attested once in Apollonius Rhodius (2.77), and one additional occurrence in the Argonautica is documented by Schol. L Ap. Rhod. 1.801–3a, in a reportedly alternative version of 1.803.

3 Gaspard, J.B. d'Ansse de Villoison, Lexicon Graecum Iliadis et Odysseae (Paris, 1773), 5Google Scholar. Tolle, H., Apollonii Sophistae Lexicon Graecum Iliadis et Odysseae (Leiden, 1788)Google Scholar also prints the paradosis. For other minor textual problems in the last part of the entry, see Tolle (this note), 3 n. 2.

4 As it is clear from this example, when δι’ οὗ σημαίνει is used the implied subject is Homer: see also 25, 6–8 ὅταν δὲ λέγῃ ‘ἄμπυκα κεκρύφαλόν τε’ κόσμον τινὰ ἔοικε περὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν σημαίνειν.

5 Cf. also Hesychius s.v. ε4828 and π2580.

6 It is accepted by Steinike in his re-edition of the entries from alpha to delta: K. Steinicke, Apollonii Sophistae Lexicon Homericum (diss., Gottingen, 1957).

7 Cf. also Synagoge lex. chres. cod. B s.v. α1: ἀάατον· ἀναμάρτητον, ἀβλαβές, ἁγνόν, ἄπονον, ἀπαθές, ἄνευ ἄτης.

8 On ἰδίως in scholia, see for example Meijering, R., Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia (Groningen, 1987), 226–30Google Scholar and Nünlist, R., The Ancient Critic at Work (Cambridge, 2009), 260CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with further bibliography. For the sense required in Apollonius, see in particular Rutherford, W.G., A Chapter in the History of Annotation, being Scholia Aristophanica, vol. 3 (London, 1905), 189–90Google Scholar, who shows that this meaning is attested in the scholia on Aristophanes’ plays and shared with κυρίως; cf. Meijering (this note), 229.

9 Comanus fr. 7a Dyck. Apollonius Sophista quotes the grammarian several times; in one of the verbatim quotations, Comanus refers to the proper usage of a word with the adverb κυρίως (Ap. Soph. 47, 2 = Comanus fr. 6 Dyck).

10 On the modern debate regarding the etymology of ἀάατος, see in particular the entry in the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, Band 1 A (Göttingen, 1979), 2–3, as well as Moorhouse, A.C., ‘ἈΑΑΤΟΣ and some other negative compounds’, CQ 11 (1961), 10–17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Olcott, M., ‘The Getty Homer fragment’, in Studia Varia from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu, 1993), 1.93–8Google Scholar, at 94 with nn. 15–17; Id., ‘ΑAAΤΟΣ at Odyssey 22.5: Greek and Indo-European oaths’, Word 44 (1993), 77–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and most recently Krieter-Spiro, M., Homers Ilias. Band X, Vierzehnter Gesang, Faszikel 2: Kommentar (Berlin and Boston, 2015), 130Google Scholar. Traces of the ancient debate can be read, among others, in Eustathius, who suggests double privative α (ἀ + ἀ + ἄτη) and thus the sense βλαβερὸς ἤτοι ἀτηρός: see ad Od. 21.91 (vol. 2.251) and ad Il. 14.271 (vol. 3.639). In both passages, however, he also refers to an alternative explanation, in which only one prothetic alpha is considered, and both the second and the third alpha are traced to the root ἄτη on the grounds of the spelling ἀάτη/ἀάσαι. Although in this case, according to Eustathius, the value of the alpha is intensive, not privative, the interpretation ἀ + ἀάτη is itself sufficient to obtain the sense ἄνευ ἄτης. Eustathius does indeed consider the latter meaning in his commentary ad Od. 22.5 (vol. 2.269), where ἀάατος is explained as δίχα βλάβης and Odysseus’ words οὗτος μὲν δὴ ἄεθλος ἀάατος ἐκτετέλεσται are paraphrased as οὐ πολυβλαβής, ὦ μνηστῆρες, ἐμοὶ ὁ παρὼν ἄεθλος, ὡς ὑμεῖς ἐλέγετε, ἀλλὰ ἐστερημένος ἄτης καί, ὡς εἰπεῖν, ἀβλαβής. However, it is unclear whether Eustathius here presupposes the etymology from ἀ + ἀάτη, as implied in the expressions δίχα βλάβης and ἐστερημένος ἄτης and in the gloss ἀβλαβής, or from ἀ privative + ἀ intensive + ἄτη, as the litotes οὐ πολυβλαβής could perhaps suggest.

11 One may also compare the explanations introduced by the phrase κατὰ στέρησιν found, for example, s.v. ἀβάκησαν (2, 16: the etymology is explicitly traced to Apion), ἀτρεκέως (46, 28), ἀταλόν (46, 2), ἄμνιον (25, 26), ἀμενήνωσεν (27, 3), ἀνήκεστον (35, 9), ἀπάλαμνος (37, 22).

12 See Villoison (n. 3), Tab. V, with reference to actual abbreviations used in the Coislinianus. Cf. also Metzger, B.M., Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography (New York, 1981), 30Google Scholar. Note that in the Coislinianus the transmitted δι’ οὗ is written in full (and with diacritics), save for the very common Byzantine ligature ȣ for ου.

13 It must be noted, at any rate, that the manuscript has the abbreviated form of καί at this point.