A New Oracle in an Inscription

Extract

In JHS LXXIV (1954), 85–7, Mr. G. E. Bean publishes a mutilated inscription from Caunus (no. 21 of his collection) which contains the response of the Gryneian Apollo to an inquiry of the Caunians as to which god they must propitiate to obtain good harvests. Mr. Bean seems not to have noticed that the text of the oracle (which begins at 1. 12) consists of two hexameters; if he had, I do not think he would have thought a new sentence must begin with ἀρσρίσκετε or worried about the sense of δεσμοῑς. I suggest that τιμῶσιν agrees with ὔμμι and that ἀραρίσκετε is imperative. The word after δεσμοῑς will be an adjective agreeing with δεσμοῑς. I can think of no suitable one beginning with Λ, but Α is very like Λ and άλύτοισ will suit the sense; it is an epithet of δεσμοί at Od. 8. 275, Aesch. P. V. 155. At the end of the line I would supply an adjective agreeing with κλέος (e.g. ἀγήρων) an adverbial phrase (e.g. ἐς αἰέί) or perhaps a vocative (e.g. λαοί).