View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ZENODO The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Elegies of Theognis E. Harrison The Classical Review / Volume 26 / Issue 02 / March 1912, pp 41 - 46 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00199482, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00199482 How to cite this article: E. Harrison (1912). The Elegies of Theognis. The Classical Review, 26, pp 41-46 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00199482 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 137.132.123.69 on 08 Nov 2015 The Review MARCH, 1912 ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS THE ELEGIES OF THEOGNIS. The Elegies of Theognis and other Elegies en TI cannot easily be got out of the included in the Theognidean Sylloge. A MSS., and is no better than ovSev en in revised text, based on a new collation sense. But fir) Brjv fi in 352, and 7T6\a? of the Mutinensis MS., with introduc- in 1258, are worth considering. The tion, commentary, and appendices. use of brackets is somewhat arbitrary, By T. HUDSON-WILLIAMS, M.A., as in 626 and 1194; and the poem 237- Professor of Greek in the University 54 is ruined thereby. To prefix an College of North Wales, Bangor. asterisk to one word only3 in some four- Pp. xv + 262. London : G. Bell and teen hundred lines is to give a wrong Sons, Ltd., 1910. notion of the trustworthiness of the text. Misjudgment of the character of the THE chief value of this book lies in its inferior MSS. is shown here and there, illustrative commentary and its new col- as in the acceptance of their superfluous lation of the Mutinensis, A. The colla- 8' in 83. They give just such another 8', tion is minute, it commands confidence,1 to patch up the grammar and to make a and it supplies a felt want. Special bad link with the preceding couplet, in attention is paid to the strange fact, 821, where 0% K' . aTi/jbd^coai should observed by Jordan, that some busy- be read.4 A more serious instance of body has made erasures and substitu- the same fault is in 213, where A's Qvfik tions in A since Bekker's time. The is superseded, without comment, by the other MSS., it seems, are quoted ac- vulgar Kvpve, which helps to disguise cording to old collations. the difference between 213-8 and 1071-4. The new evidence about A, though it On the other hand, the editor is wisely clears up a wilderness of error, does little proof against the loose variants of the towards the improvement of the text; testimonia ; and on the whole his choice and the editor's few conjectures do little of readings and other men's conjectures more. In 112 /ivrjfia 8e xot/tr' (for S' is fairly discreet. exov<r'), 'they pile up a memorial [of The commentary is defective in argu- thanks] to good deeds,' is an unlikely 2 and unhappy metaphor ; and in 235 ovB phorically concrete sense, the editor calls pv. Kal \apiv ' hendyadys as 1040': but the Platonic 1 Such doubts as have occurred to me are on trick of coupling metaphor and fact by a KW. small points: e.g., has A ^eiJSea or i^euSeo in strikes me as foreign to poetry; and no stretch 713? Other doubtful accents appear in the of ' hendiadys' can cover Sarpov xal KVVOS notes on 169, 897, 902, 908. The text has a ap^ofiAvov in 1040. misprint in 785. 3 OXAT/I in 1202, which has been satisfactorily 2 If we follow the MSS., /ivijiia in the sense emended. of livrifiri may perhaps be defended by com- 4 Equally superfluous is the 8' accepted from parison with yv&fui. Giving pvrjua a meta- Orelli in 937. NO. CCXXIV. VOL. XXVI. D THE CLASSICAL REVIEW ment and elucidation; some difficulties in the present book, something must be are missed altogether, others are only said: for partly solved.1 But it is very rich in ' A man is fettered by the foolishness quotations and references illustrating He took for wisdom and talked ten years points of diction, combinations of words, since.' and their metrical positions. In such a mass of matter some irrelevancies might It is to be understood that on many be pardoned, but I have noticed very points I find myself in cordial agreement few;2 and I might draw attention to with W.'s Introduction,6 though they many notes3 which say all that need will find little place in the following ever be said in defence of the text. But notes. the merits of this painstaking work The Testimonia.—The clouds of mis- cannot be represented by a sample: the interpretation on which Sitzler and his proof of the pudding is in the eating. like projected their Ur-Theognides are by now dispelled; though W., I think, I have dealt the more briefly with the still overworks the passage of Isocrates, strictly editorial parts of this book be- unduly narrowing the scope of the cause private duty calls me to the phrase rrjv SeoyviSos iro'vt\cnv. On the author's treatment of the Theognidean passages of Xenophon, Dio, Athenaeus, Cyril, Suidas, he is sound enough. The Question. Ten years ago I wrote a e book called Studies in Theognis ; and no passage of the Meno proves to him the sooner was it born, and beheld the rays existence early in the fourth century of of the sharp sun, than Mr. Hudson- a book of poems attributed to Theognis, Williams began to heap earth upon its ' and this,' he says, ' is perhaps all that body. He gives it on the whole a fairly it does prove.' So far, good. Christian burial, so perhaps I ought not The 'Alien' Poems.—Failing ancient to insist too loudly that the book is still evidence for alien authorship, W. is alive. I certainly do not mean to defend chary of ascriptions, though he reports its character against all aspersions; but, a guess here and there in his notes. on the other hand, I am not at present But he follows the scholars who ascribe inclined to pluck up all its wild oats, or 467-96, 667-82, and 1345-50, to Euenus to make its peace with the Higher of Paros. He acknowledges (p. 34) that Criticism against the day when Hercu- 'the mere fact that Th. 472 was read laneum shall give up its dead. Yet among the poems of Euenus does not since my name, and divers compendia in itself entitle him to the whole elegy of it,4 often appear, and are often latent, in which it occurs'; but he thinks that 'several other considerations point in 1 E.g. 127, 287-8, 309-12, 513, 669, 806, 884, 1219, 1247. 428 : the 'parallel' between a 3 E.g., the poems are not arranged by catch- living man heaping together a bed of leaves and words ; they contain many complete poems, of a dead man piling earth over his own corpse— one couplet or more; they are not a school- a difficult feat—is not ' exact.' 843: a good book or a Cotnmersbuch; the pastime of label- counsellor would advise a man to leave a ling pieces with the names of Callinus, Chilon, drinking-bout, not ' when he sees things upside and the like, is full of risk; metrical and lin- down,' but rather earlier, n 33-4 : KtrraTrav- guistic tests have failed. aoptv is of course aor. subj., not fut. ind. 6 He discusses anew the question iv irolois 2 On 3 : some of the examples of the form (wea-iv; and the answer is iv roir eXeyetW o5 ' first, last, midst' are not to the point, and it is X£y« K.T.X., and thinks that the question may not the fact that ' there is no special reference refer not to metre but to matter. Then why to Ptolemy in the middle' of Theocr. 17: Pt. does the answer bring in a term of metre ? Or, comes next to Zeus in the prelude and the again, he thinks that iv IT. ?«•. may mean no epilogue, and he is the theme and substance of more than ' Where ? Then what does iv T. eX. the middle of the poem.—A note on the relation add to o5? In order to make the question between 239 and Iliad x. 217 is badly wanted.— relevant, he makes the answer irrelevant. The On 903 and 905 (p. 260): avak&xra in Plato Rep. interpretation of oklyov perafias which he follows 591E is verb, not noun (the error is perhaps may be right, but he does not commend it by borrowed from Stephanus-Dindorf or Ast); and asking, ' Would Socrates at one and the same the note on Karibciv wants further thought. moment refer to the poem as showing " a slight 3 See, e.g., 4, 11, 115, 175. change of standpoint " and " a direct self-con- 4 Which encourage me to shorten ' Professor tradiction " ? How many words to a moment ? Hudson-Williams ' to ' W.1 Forty or fifty words intervene. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 43 the same direction.' They are scarcely This poem has suffered from its popu- a quorum. All three poems are ad- larity and has been changed to suit dressed to Simonides: but no Simonides the problem it discusses.' In the com- to whom the Parian poet should have mentary we read,' a popular revision of addressed them is known.