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Pindar's Ravens (Olymp. 2. 87)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. M. Kirkwood
G. M. Kirkwood
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

A problem in the text of Pindar, the interpretation of λαρ⋯ετον, O. 2. 87, seems to be vanishing, swept away by a remarkable consensus of recent criticism, a consensus the more remarkable in that it accepts a false solution to a genuine difficulty. This article has two purposes, the first and more important of which is to argue that the currently prevailing answer is manifestly wrong, the second to offer evidence in support of a different approach.

Simply read γαρυ⋯των, recent critics maintain, and all problems disappear. Since -ο- and -ω- were not yet distinguished in the orthography of Pindar's day, γαρυ⋯των is as correct as the unanimous γαρύɛτον of the MSS, testimonia, and scholia. By this simple change, the argument proceeds, the troublesome dual of the MSS is purged and with it the ‘historicist hare’, as one critic has recently called it, which less enlightened Pindarists chased for so long. If there is no dual, there is no need to speculate as to the identity of the ‘pair’ likened to κ⋯ρακɛς and contrasted with the ‘divine bird of Zeus’, the man who is wise φυᾷ. We need no longer suppose that the μαθ⋯ντɛς are Simonides and Bacchylides – the traditional answer – or any other specific rivals.

Unfortunately for this view, there is no evidence to justify taking γαρυ⋯των as a plural, which is of course precisely what critics have been doing. It is – if anything – a third dual imperative (an extremely rare form), and every bit as much a dual as the γαρύɛτον of the MSS.

Mr Stoneman is not alone in his ready dismissal of the ‘historicist hare’. Here is the view of Professor Lloyd-Jones: ‘… the lightest possible alteration converts the dual to a plural imperative, so that the number two vanishes’. A year before, Professor C. A. P. Ruck had chided the scholiasts for ‘reading out of Pindar's ΓΑΡΥΕΤΟΝ the dual…rather than the plural’. Bowra had declared that γαρυ⋯των ‘would be the plural of the imperative’. The belief is widespread and persistent; those who wish a full conspectus of earlier views on the matter may consult the massive compilation made by Dr J. van Leeuwen in 1964.

Not all critics and editors have endorsed the change from the traditional reading. While it has been in the successive Teubner editions since Schröder adopted it in 1900, neither Turyn nor Bowra accepted it. But among those who have argued for γαρυ⋯των, only one has expressed any doubt that it is a plural, and that one is Theodor Bergk, who first proposed it. Indeed Bergk expressed no doubt about its being a dual.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , December 1981 , pp. 240 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1981

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References

1 Stoneman, Richard, CQ n.s. 26 (1976), 190CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 JHS 93 (1973), 127Google Scholar.

3 Hermes 100 (1972), 167Google Scholar.

4 Greek Lyric Poetry 2 (Oxford, 1961), p. 361Google Scholar. Bowra did not, however, accept the reading in his OCT Pindar.

5 Pindarus' Tweede Olympische Ode (Assen, 1964)Google Scholar. The discussion of the passage occupies Deel i, pp. 232–52.

6 By the time of his Pindar (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar Bowra had begun to have doubts about the form, expressed on p. 122.

7 In addition to the general improbability of the form ⋯νεστακ⋯των, it is surely unthinkable that the thematic vowel -ο- rather than -ε- would precede -τ-. On the third plural imperative in Archimedes see Ahrens, H. L., De Graecae Linguae Dialectis 2. 296Google Scholar.

8 Kühner-Blass 2. 49–51, Schwyzer 1. 801–2. Schwyzer specifically rules out such a form: ‘ɸερ⋯των u. ä. fehlen’. So also Buck, C. D., The Greek Dialects (Chicago, 1955), p. 114Google Scholar. After acknowledging 3rd pl. ἔστων ‘in Ionic only’, Buck adds: ‘A corresponding thematic ɸερ⋯των is unknown’.

9 Bergk's mention of the comment by a grammarian in Cramer's Anecdota Graeca refers to an entry in the 'Ομήρου ⋯πιμερισμο⋯, Cramer i, p. 398, in which κομε⋯των is declared a plural, short for κομε⋯τωσαν, on the grounds that οὐδ⋯ποτɛ δυïκῷ τρ⋯του προσώπου ⋯χρήσατο ῞Ομηρος. Since the grammarian then proceeds to explain that ἔστων Iliad 1. 338, is short for ἔστωσαν, Bergk's unflattering description is justified. van Leeuwen, J., Enchiridion Dictionis Epicae (Leyden, 1918), p. 234Google Scholar, accepts this explanation, but Bergk is manifestly right in dismissing it and most modern grammars implicitly agree with him. Schröder, in his apparatus, mentions a letter from J. Wackernagel supporting the interpretation of γαρ⋯ετον as a plural, comparing the Lesbian termination -ντον. So far as I know Wackernagel did not pursue this thought beyond his letter to Schröder. Some nineteenth-century grammarians decided, with very little evidence, that dual forms could be used as plurals (so Krüger, K. W., Griechische Sprachlehre 2. 63. 3 A2Google Scholar) and some Pindarists followed their lead. Thus Mezger, , Pindars Siegeslieder, p. 166Google Scholar, argues, with a reference to Krüger, that here Pindar uses the dual form for metre only and with a plural sense. This is a mere evasion of the issue.

10 See preceding note for discussion.

11 Sitzungsberichte der Preuss. Akad. 1901, p. 1302.

12 There have been exceptions. Jebb, in a footnote on p. 17 of his edition of Bacchylides (Cambridge, 1905), has an admirably direct and authoritative note dismissing Schröder's interpretation; Farnell, , Critical Commentary (London, 1932), p. 22Google Scholar, warns against it; and Van Leeuwen, on p. 244 of the book cited in note 5, rules it out.

13 The following comments expand on suggestions made in Van Leeuwen's discussion, op. cit., especially pp. 243 and 251–2. I am indebted to Mrs Icky Hohendahl and Professor Gordon Messing for help in reading Dutch. I am grateful also to the anonymous reader for CQ for valuable criticism.

14 The story of the conjugal fidelity of κορ⋯ναι (Aelian 3. 8) which is cited by Van Leeuwen, is essentially different, since it emphasizes that a widowed κορώνη stays single.