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PINDAR, OLYMPIAN 2.100

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2023

Nicholas Lane
Nicholas Lane*
Affiliation:
Ealing, London
*
njglane@yahoo.com
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Abstract

This note questions the transmitted word order at Pind. Ol. 2.100 and proposes a transposition to remove short open vowel at verse end.

Keywords

Greek literaturePindarmetretextual criticism
Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , May 2023 , pp. 457 - 458
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

ἐπεὶ ψάμμοϲ ἀριθμὸν περιπέφευγεν,
καὶ κεῖνοϲ ὅϲα χάρματ᾽ ἄλλοιϲ ἔθηκεν,
τίϲ ἂν φράϲαι δύναιτο;Footnote 1                  100

for grains of sand escape counting, and all the joys which that man has wrought for others, who could declare them?Footnote 2

Ol. 2.100 ends with δύναιτο̆, a short open vowel at verse end (‘SVE’). However, ‘[SVE] is avoided by Pindar in a way which it is not by … other poets’,Footnote 3 and none of Pindar's other forty-one epinicians closes with SVE.Footnote 4 Barrett identified this as one of four instances of SVE in verse endings shaped … ⏕ ⏑ – –.Footnote 5 The others are Μοῖϲᾰ (Nem. 6.28), τραφέντᾰ and τυχοῖϲᾰ (Isthm. 8.16 and 8.36). They do not occur at stanza end, and two appear where text and colometry are insecure.Footnote 6 One may accept SVE at the end of Ol. 2.100 as a metrical anomaly, but the last epode of Olympian 2 is very corrupt and line 100 may be too. SVE could be eliminated simply by reversing the ordo verborum and writing τίϲ ἂν δύναιτο φράϲϲαι; Transposition of adjacent words and singling of double consonants are both common kinds of scribal error.Footnote 7 The form φράϲϲαι is Pindaric since he uses double sigma forms of -ζω verbs freely where it is metrically convenient to do so.Footnote 8 The proposed transposition has the incidental benefit of giving the same word order, with the infinitive following δύναμαι, as similar rhetorical questions.Footnote 9

Footnotes

I am grateful to Professor James Diggle and to CQ's reader for helpful comments.

References

1 Pind. Ol. 2.98–100. This is the text printed in modern editions including those in the Budé, OCT, Teubner and Loeb series.

2 Transl. Race, W.H., Pindar: Olympian Odes. Pythian Odes (Cambridge, MA and London, 1997), 75Google Scholar.

3 Barrett, W.S., Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism (Oxford, 2007), 174CrossRefGoogle Scholar. West, M.L., Greek Metre (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar, 61 notes that observation of Pindar's avoidance of SVE goes back to F. Vogt, De metris Pindari quaestiones tres (Diss., Strasbourg, 1880).

4 I exclude the spurious Olympian 5 and the fragmentary Isthmian 9. Bacchyl. 1 ends with SVE, but he is markedly more tolerant of SVE; according to West (n. 3), based on figures communicated to him by Barrett, in Pindar's epinicians SVE occurs ‘once in twenty [sc. verses] where the period ends in – ⏑ – ‖, and with other rhythms once in 120’.

5 (n. 3), 184.

6 On the difficulties presented by Nem. 6 s6–s7 (6.28 = s6), see Itsumi, K., Pindar Metre: The ‘Other Half’ (Oxford, 2009), 111–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; at Isthm. 8.16 the manuscripts have τραφέντ᾽, and τραφέντα is a conjecture by Erasmus Schmid.

7 Young, D., ‘Some types of scribal error in manuscripts of Pindar’, GRBS 6 (1965), 247–73Google Scholar, at 255–6, 265 = Calder, W.M. and Stern, J. (edd.), Pindaros und Bakchylides (Darmstadt, 1970), 96–126Google Scholar, at 106, 116.

8 For this verb, see φράϲϲατε (Pyth. 4.117); for other -άζω verbs, see ὄπαϲϲαι (Isthm. 8.39), ἀνέχαϲϲαν (Nem. 10.69), δαμάϲϲαιϲ (Ol. 9.92), δάμαϲϲαϲ (Pyth. 8.80), ἐδάμαϲϲε (Pyth. 2.8), πέλαϲϲεν (Pyth. 4.227) and ὄπαϲϲεν (Isthm. 7.38). Young (n. 7) identifies instances where some manuscripts have single for double sigma at Pyth. 4.7, 5.71 and Nem. 5.54; one may add Ol. 9.8, Pyth. 4.227, Nem. 10.69 and Isthm. 8.39. CQ's reader observes that one can easily imagine how φράϲϲαι was corrupted to φράϲαι and the infinitive then transposed before δύναιτο, either on purpose (to mend the metre) or by accident.

9 Isoc. Paneg. 114.3 τίϲ ἂν δύναιτο διεξελθεῖν;, Dem. 36.44.11 τίϲ ἂν δύναιτο ἐφικέϲθαι;, Anaxil. fr. 22.2 PCG τίϲ ἂν δύναιτο … φράϲαι;, Philo 2.176.1 τίϲ ἂν δύναιτο … ἐμφῦϲαι;, Lib. Or. 24.39.5 τίϲ ἂν δύναιτο διελθεῖν;, Ep. 1321.2.1 τίϲ ἂν δύναιτο ϲιγᾶν κτλ.;. The sole exception prior to the fifth century a.d. is at Ath. Deipn. 1.18c–d ὥϲτ᾽ “οὐδ᾽ ἂν κολυμβᾶν εἰϲ κολυμβήθραν μύρου” [Alexis, fr. 301 PCG] ἀρκεῖϲθαί τίϲ ἂν δύναιτο, φηϲὶν Ἄλεξιϲ, but W.G. Arnott, Alexis: The Fragments. A Commentary (Cambridge, 1996), 793 considers that the words after μύρου imply that the citer has ‘either unmetrically transposed the last four words of the fr<agment> … or so paraphrased or garbled his source that reconstitution of Alexis’ original text is impossible’.