‘For instance, if one of you spectators was winged, then, being hungry, was bored with the tragic choruses, he could have flown off, gone home and had lunch.’ The sequence ‘was winged … then was bored’ is surprising. Being winged is not an event anterior to being bored but a condition which enables the action which follows. I should expect here the common idiom in which ϵἶτα (continuative or adversative, sometimes ἔπϵιτα or κᾆτα or κἄπϵιτα) is preceded not by a finite verb but by a participle (circumstantial or temporal): ϵἴ τις ὢν ὑπόπτϵρος | ϵἶτα, ‘if, being winged, he had then …’. Cf. Vesp. 1071–2 ϵἴ τις ὑμῶν, ὦ θϵαταί, τὴν ἐμὴν ἰδὼν ϕύσιν | ϵἶτα θαυμάζϵι. Precisely the same corruption is found at Vesp. 49 ἄνθρωπος ὢν (RV: ἦν j Greg. Cor.) ϵἶτ᾽ ἐγένϵτ᾽ ἐξαίϕνης κόραξ. Other Aristophanic examples with ὤν are Ach. 498–9 ϵἰ πτωχὸς ὢν ἔπϵιτ᾽ ἐν Ἀθηναίοις λέγϵιν | μέλλω, Eq. 391–2 ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως οὗτος τοιοῦτος ὢν ἅπαντα τὸν βίον | κᾆτ᾽ ἀνὴρ ἔδοξϵν ϵἶναι, Ran. 203–5 κᾆτα πῶς δυνήσομαι | ἄπϵιρος, ἀθαλάττωτος, ἀσαλαμίνιος | ὢν ϵἶτ᾽ ἐλαύνϵιν;, 367 ἢ τοὺς μισθοὺς τῶν ποιητῶν ῥήτωρ ὢν ϵἶτ᾽ ἀποτρώγϵι. For further illustration see LSJ s.v. ϵἶτα I.2, ἔπϵιτα I.3, Olson on Ach. 23–4, Biles and Olson on Vesp. 49 and Eq. 280–1, and C. Collard, Colloquial Expressions in Greek Tragedy (Stuttgart, 2018), 105–6.
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