Two Notes on the Text of Aristophanes

Extract

So Hall and Geldart's text and critical note. The latter needs a correction and an addition: R gives (so, too, Σ^R, which has ; γ is found only in B and the Aldine edition, R and V omit it.

What is the object of Van Leeuwen says ‘mente suppl.xwhich seems to me inconsequent if not nonsensical. Starkie, printing a dash after the word, notes ‘as the sentence is interrupted by Philocleon, it is impossible to know what was meant to be the object of this verb’. This does not seem very satisfactory. Rogers apparently takes the verb as used absolutely and translates ‘you'll strike by and by’. Coulon, not unnaturally dissatisfied with these explanations, reads and translates ‘tu vas te faire lapider’, adding a note ‘on jetait des pierres aux fous; cf. Otseaux 524’. Starkie also mentions this possibility and attributes its origin to the scholiast—wrongly, for the gloss shows that the scholiast did not take as meaning ‘will be pelted as a madman’. In any case all this is very far-fetched. And there is a further point: the strange future active, is found elsewhere only at line 222 of this same play and nowhere else in Greek. It is therefore rash to postulate an entirely unparalleled middle form of this, and that, too, in a passive sense. Had he intended this meaning Aristophanes would surely have written.