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The Meaning of Corinna's Ϝεροῑα

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Dee Lesser Clayman
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Extract

In the opening verses of P.Oxy. 2370 (= 655 PMG) Corinna declares that she is about to sing lovely to the white-robed ladies of Tanagra. These lines come from the same poem or collection of poems cited by Hephaestion (Encb. 16.3 p.56 Cons.) and Antoninus Liberalis (25) as which must be a corruption of the original at the hands of a copyist who read the unfamiliar as .

The meaning of eluded the first editor, E. Lobel, who describes it as ‘etymologically mysterious’, and has not been investigated by others, yet one does not have to look very far to find it. or better, the singular can be understood as a formation of the same type as and ) In their verbal forms, the stems of these nouns change to e-grade giving from and from .3 If the analogy is correct, we would expect that would be formed from and a verb from

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1978

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References

1 Many examples of confusions between and can be found in Hesychius who says, for example, that is the equivalent of (Cretan ) (Boeotian ); etc..

2 Lobel, E., (ed.) The Oxyrhynchus Papyri pt. 23 (London, 1956), p.63. D. L. Page (655 PMG) says ‘non intellegitur’.Google Scholar

3 Frisk, H., Griechisches etymologisches Worterbuch ii (Heidelberg, 1973), 559–60 and 650–2.Google Scholar

4 Frisk i. 470. The of is ‘visible’ in ll. 1.204, 233, and elsewhere,

5 Frisk i. 467. The digamma of is inferred from forms like .ev and .

6 Chantraine, P., Grammaire homerique (Paris, 1942), p.341 n. 2.Google Scholar

7 A Hellenistic date for Corinna was first suggested by Lobel, E., ‘Corinna’, Hermes 65 (1930), 356–65.Google Scholar

8 The traditional date for Corinna is based on ancient testimonia linking her with Pindar and Myrtis. See Page, D. L., Corinna (London, 1953), pp. 6584. The question of her date has generated lively controversy.Google Scholar

9 The noun as ‘narrative’ appears in Hdt. 7.96; Arist. Rh. 1360a37 and Po. 1451b3.