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A new reading in Diogenes of Oinoanda fr. 69
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In fr. 69 Smith, the Epicurean Diogenes of Oinoanda, like Lucretius 4.353–63, explains why a square tower viewed from the distance appears to be round. The explanation is that εἲδωλα, filmy atomic images, emanating from the tower, are forced out of shape by the air through which they pass on their way to our eyes. Diogenes’ account is fragmentarily preserved on a stone which I discovered in 1970. The stone bears the right half of one fourteen-line column and the left half of a second one. I first published the text in 1971. When, twenty years later, I came to deal with it again, in preparing an edition of all the known fragments, I was able, thanks in no small measure to the discussions and suggestions of other scholars, whose names can be seen in my apparatus criticus, to print a text which represents a considerable advance on that of the editio princeps. However, with so much of what Diogenes wrote missing, there has remained scope for further progress, and in this note I correct an error—an error present not only in my text, but also on the stone itself.
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References
1 ‘New fragments of Diogenes of Oenoanda’, AJA 75 (1971), 371–3.
2 Diogenes of Oinoanda: The Epicurean Inscription (Napoli, 1993).
3 For photographs of fr. 69, see AJA 75 (1971), pl. 84 fig. 8, and Smith, M. F., The Philosophical Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda (Wien, 1996), pl. 33Google Scholar fig. 100.
4 AJA 75 (1971), 372. εὖ ὂρα was adopted by Hoffman, G. N., Diogenes of Oenoanda: A Commentary (Diss., Minnesota, 1976), 104Google Scholar, Barigazzi, A., ‘Sui nuovi frammenti di Diogene d'Enoanda’, Prometheus 3 (1977), 14Google Scholar, and Casanova, A., I frammenti di Diogene d'Enoanda (Firenze, 1984), 307.Google Scholar ὁρâ was first suggested by Millot, C., Étude de I'inscription du mur de Diogène d'Oenoanda (Diss., Lille, 1972), 151.Google Scholar
5 For a statement of Diogenes’ normal practice concerning hiatus and for a list of exceptions, seen. 2, 112.
6 A list of uncorrected errors by Diogenes’ stone-cutters is given by me (n. 2), 106–7. Add now κτῆσθαι for κεκτῆσθαι in inventory number YF 189 1. 10. At the time of writing YF 189, which was found in November 1997, is unpublished.