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Limed Reeds in Theocritus, Aristophanes, and Propertius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Both the meaning of and the identity of the
are in some doubt here. Gow's view that ‘Lacon thinks of labourers and cicadas vying with one another in the heat’ and that
means ‘provoke to further exertions, put him on his mettle’ agrees in general with the scholiast
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References
1 For the sense of inciting to song or dance cf. also Eur, . Bacch. 148Google Scholar Ar. Nub. 312
where schol. has
Also the awakening of the nightingale in Ar. Av. 207 ff. where
(used of song in Ran. 370) is used, as
in schol. Theoc.
1 The Anthology is full of epigrams about this pursuit—cf., in addition to those cited, 6. 109, 296; 9. 337 (imitated by Prop. 3. 13. 43–46); 10. ii; Opp, . Hal. 1. 32;Google Scholar Bion 10. 5, etc. In Theoc. 5 itself, Comatas promises to catch a dove for his girl (96–97), although the method of capture is not specified.
3 A poem of Theaetetus in A.P. (10. 16.4) describes harvesters being lulled by cicadas—
1 ‘Sed ridiculum est cicadas calamo, i.e. sagitta, venari. scribendum videtur
2 The parallelism of expression between Eur, . (Hipp. 208–38)Google Scholar and Prop, may be due to reminiscence of the motifs, if not imitation: ipse ego uenabor , sacra Dianae suscipere
incipiam captare feras
pinu
the pine tree is sacred to Artemis-Diana, and symbolic of chastity), audaces ipse monere (?–see n. 7 below) canes
comminus ire sues
stricto figere calamo
Ovid's Epistle of Phaedra (Her. 4. 41 ff.) should also be compared.Google ScholarPubMed
3 Butler formerly interpreted ‘with arrow drawn on the string’.
4 To die Greek passages referring to jointed rods given by Enk add Bion loc. cit., A.P. 10. 11Google ScholarPubMed (Satyrus), Aes. 176 Hausrath. The first two antedate ‘the first recorded mention of the jointed rod’ discussed by Radcliffe, , Fishing from the Earliest Times, pp. 147–51.Google Scholar
5 So Foster, , C.P. ii (1907), 213–14, although ‘grasp’ is perhaps not quite accurate.Google Scholar
6 For military vocabulary used of hunting animals, Mr. D. A. West reminds me that Horace calls hunting Romana militia (Sat. 2. 2. 11;Google ScholarPubMed cf. Ep. 1. 18. 49). Cf. also Gratius, Cyn. passim, e.g. 515 Martem.
7 To which one might add mouere if it be read in line 20. In spite of Housman's dictum (J.Ph. xxi [1893], 130)Google Scholarmovet venator feras; monet canes, and the passages cited by Enk where hortari is used, monere seems to me a rather odd word to use of dogs.
1 Cf. Aen. 5. 516, and Propertius himself (2. 9. 39).Google Scholar
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