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The End of Euripides' Andromache*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Abstract
Diggle has followed Stevens in rejecting 1279–82. Stevens' objections to these lines were that they ‘should [sc. directly] follow a striking demonstration that birth is more important than wealth in marrying and giving in marriage', and that the lines do not form an apt comment on the fates of Peleus and Neoptolemos. The cogency of these objections will be examined presently; but first a counter-objection will be presented against the hypothesis of interpolation.
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References
1 Diggle, J., Euripidis fabulae: Tomus 1 (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar.
2 Stevens, P. T., Euripides: Andromache (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.
3 1283 I certainly spurious. It could make sense here only if it were taken to refer back to 1279–80 (1281–2 being regarded as a semi-parenthesis) and if the subject of πρξιαν were taken to be ‘men who follow this advice’; but that notion was expressed in the singular in 1280 (ཅστιςɛὐ βονλɛτβι), and if this were the meaning of 1283 it would have been far more intelligible with a singular verb (πρξɛιɛν). The line makes excellent sense, on the other hand, after the sentence that precedes it in Stobaios' citation from Antiope (Eur. fr. 215): πσι δ' γγγγω βροτοῖς | σθγῷν π' γϰτν ɛὐγɛιν ɛὐγɛν σπɛνρν τκν τཷα. The subject of πγγλλω βροτοῖς | Y03C3;θλῷν π' λϰων ɛὐγɛν α;πɛπɛιν τκνα. The subject of πρξιαν is then easily understood as ‘those whom I am addressing’ ( =πντɛς βροτμ), and the meaning of the whole passage will be in effect ‘If you take a wife from a good family, you will never be disappointed in your children’. Recent discussions of the line (Johansen, H. Friis, General Reflection in Tragic Rhesis [Copenhagen, 1959], p. 155 n. :4Google Scholar; Kambitsis, J., L' Antiope d' Euripide [Athens, 1972], pp. 14,97)Google Scholar take it as genuine in Andromache and not in An`tiope, but they offer no real evidence; Meridier, on Andr. 1283Google Scholar, to whom both refer, ignores the person and number of the verb. On the choral tailpiece 1284–8 see Barrett, on Hipp. 1462–1466Google Scholar (condemning) and Roberts, D. H., CQ 37 (1987), 51–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar (accepting). The question whether 1279–82 is a possible final sentence of a play (with or without a tailpiece to follow) will be discussed below.
4 In Hekabe we find what seems to be a variant of the same pattern: the first words of the chorus (98–9 ‘Eκ1F71;βη, πονδν τς δɛσπονας σκηνων προλιπο’); are echoed by its last (1293–5 ἴτɛ πρς λιμνας τɛ…τν δɛσποσνων πɛι:ρασμɛναι μϰθων); the adjective δɛσπσνας occurs nowhere else in the play (and only twice in other surviving Euripidean texts: IT 439, Phaethon 88 Diggle). The other extant Euripidean play assignable to this decade, Herakleidai, is generally held to be mutilated at the end.
5 The echo becomes closer if we read, with Stobaios, ξαπλοτονς in 1282: ζαπλονς for ζαπλονς in 1282: ζαπλονς is a Euripidean adjective (Alk. 498, IT 1111) attested in no other author till late Roman times, and it is a more vivid and evocative term than ξαπλξα03bf;ντξα03BF;ξα03C2;.
6 We can say nothing about his earlier works, since no complete play of his earlier than Medea has survived except the prosatyric Alkestis.
7 So the Euripidean MSS.; the variants in Stobaios and in the Vatopedi gnomology seem to be in part mere errors (originating from misdivision of δτα as in cod. M of Stobaios) and in part attempts to give the passage a declarative rather than interrogative form, as seemed more appropriate for a self-contained γνώμη. Stobaios' reading γαμɛν at the end of 1279 may, however, be more significant; I reproduce a remark by the CQ referee: ‘The word-order of 1279 [SC. as given by the Euripidean MSS.] is all but impossible – we expect something like κρɛὠν δτ' λκ τɛ γɛνναδων γαμɛων (otherwise the τɛ is misplaced).’
8 Referring to Denniston, J. D., The Greek Particles 2 (Oxford, 1954), pp. 272–3Google Scholar; cf. also ib. pp. 269, 311. The CQ referee has been very helpful in enabling me to appreciate more clearly the point which Stevens was making here.
9 Diggle posits two lacunae elsewhere in Andr., before 334 and before 365.
10 Actors' Interpolations in Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 1934), p. 66Google Scholar. Page rejected 1283 (partly on the mistaken ground that it is ‘ignored by σ’, when in fact there is a scholion on the line explaining that the understood subject is ο ξ ɛὐγɛνῷν γαμοντɛς) but was of course writing before 1279–82 had come under suspicion; his solution to the problem of the rhetorical question was to suppose that the inserted line 1283 had ‘replace[d] another closing sentence’.
11 764–5 are deleted by Reeve, M. D., GRBS 14 (1973), 147Google Scholar; but the typically Euripidean use of τ δɛ in the sense ‘what's the use of…?’ (see Stevens ad loc.) should not be denied to the poet.
12 Cf. also Aesch. Supp. 965 and, further afield, the end of the book of Jonah: ‘And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left hand, and also many beasts?’