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SOPHOCLES’ BALL (FR. 781)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2019

Konstantine Panegyres
Konstantine Panegyres*
Affiliation:
The University of Melbourne
*
konpanegyres@gmail.com
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Extract

In the interpretation of fragments the omission or neglect of even the most minute detail can lead a scholar to false conclusions or to ill-founded speculations. How careful one must be to draw out every possibility and nuance from every little piece of textual evidence can be seen in the following case. This is the text of Soph. fr. 781 (ed. Radt) as quoted by a late lexicographer (Etym. Magn. s.v. ἔγχος [313.3–4]):

ὁ δὲ Σοφοκλῆς τὴν σφαῖραν ἔγχος κέκληκεν, οἷον “τὸ δ’ ἔγχος ἐν ποσὶ κυλίνδεται”.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 523 - 527
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019

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Footnotes

I am most grateful to CQ’s reader for very helpful comments. This article was written with the support of the A.O. Capell Scholarship and the Harbison-Higinbotham Research Scholarship, both of which are generously funded by the University of Melbourne.

References

1 See Pearson, A.C., The Fragments of Sophocles, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1917), 29–30Google Scholar: ‘The fragment is generally assigned to the Nausicaa, on the suggestion of Schneider and Bergk. The situation may be that of ζ 115, as described by Odysseus to Alcinous in η 290’; Radt, S.L., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 4. Sophocles (Göttingen, 19992), 537Google Scholar. For earlier scholarship, see Valckenaer, L.C., Diatribe in Euripidis perditorum dramatum reliquias (Leiden, 1767), 167Google Scholar; Schneider, G.C.W., Sophokles Tragödien, vol. 8. Bruchstücke (Weimar, 1827), 135Google Scholar; Bergk, T., Commentatio de fragmentis Sophoclis (Leipzig, 1833), 22Google Scholar; Ellendt, F., Lexicon Sophocleum, vol. 1 (Königsberg, 1835), 471Google Scholar; Welcker, F.G., Die griechischen Tragödien mit Rücksicht auf den epischen Cyclus, vol. 1 (Bonn, 1839), 230Google Scholar; Gaisford, T., Etymologicum Magnum (Oxford, 1848), col. 898Google Scholar: ‘Sumptus fortasse versus ex f. Nausicaa. Vid. Homer. Od. ζ 115.’

2 Corthals, B., ‘A spear “like a ball”: a note on Sophocles, fr. 781’, CQ 68 (2018), 326–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For a later parallel, cf. Them. Sophistes 284b7–8 τοὺς δὲ ὀϊστοὺς ὁρῶ πίπτοντας οὐκ οἶδα ὅθεν καὶ ἐν ποσὶ κυλινδομένους.

4 Paduano, G., Tragedie e frammenti di Sofocle, vol. 2 (Torino, 1982), 1015Google Scholar.

5 Pearson (n. 1), 29.

6 Sutton, D.F., The Lost Sophocles (Lanham, MD, 1984), 161Google Scholar.

7 Young, G., The Dramas of Sophocles Rendered in English Verse, Dramatic and Lyric (London, 1906), 358Google Scholar.

8 Welcker (n. 1), 230.

9 Harris, H.A., Sport in Greece and Rome (Ithaca, 1972), 81–2Google Scholar; Holoka, J.P., ‘Iliad 13.202–5: ΑΙΑΣ ΣΦΑΙΡΙΣΤΗΣ’, AJPh 102 (1981), 351–2Google Scholar. Similarly, Anacreon describes Eros hitting the poet with a ball in another apparent example of dodgeball (PMG fr. 358).

10 Naples Museum H 3218; cf. Lamari, A., Reperforming Greek Tragedy. Theater, Politics, and Cultural Mobility in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries b.c. (Berlin and Boston, 2017), 152–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Trieste, Museo Civico S. 437; cf. Lamari (n. 10), 152.

12 Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.680; cf. Taplin, O., Pots & Plays. Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-Painting of the Fourth Century b.c. (Los Angeles, 2007), 229–30Google Scholar.

13 Cleveland Museum of Art 88.41; cf. Taplin (n. 12), 237–8.

14 On corruption in fr. 782 Radt, ἔγχος ἱέμενον, see Pearson (n. 1), 30.

15 Janko, R., The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume IV: Books 13–16 (Cambridge, 1994), 112 (on 13.526–30)Google Scholar.