Laudator Temporis Acti

Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.81-84 (tr. William H. Race):

Great risk does not take hold of a cowardly man. But since men must die, why would anyone sit in darkness and coddle a nameless old age to no use, deprived of all noble deeds?

ὁ μέγας δὲ κίν-
δυνος ἄναλκιν οὐ φῶτα λαμβάνει·
θανεῖν δ᾽ οἷσιν ἀνάγκα, τί κέ τις ἀνώνυμον
γῆρας ἐν σκότῳ καθήμενος ἕψοι μάταν,
ἁπάντων καλῶν ἄμμορος;

W.J. Verdenius ad loc.: Ge. = Douglas E. Gerber, Pindar's Olympian One: A Commentary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).

Homer, Odyssey 7.40-41 (tr. A.T. Murray, rev. George E. Dimock):

...for Athene, the dread goddess, did not allow it...

                                          ... οὐ γὰρ Ἀθήνη
εἴα ἐυπλόκαμος, δεινὴ θεός...

In Dimock's revision, Athena's epithet ἐυπλόκαμος ("with lovely hair, fair-tressed" in the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, "of the beautiful plaited hair" in the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos) isn't translated. Here is Murray's original translation, before Dimock's revision:

.. for fair-tressed Athene, the dread goddess, would not suffer it...

It sometimes feels like revisions introduce as much error as they remove.

I see that Emily Wilson translates ἐυπλόκαμος as "pigtailed" here. At 5.126 she translates the same adjective, applied to Demeter, as "with cornrows in her hair." Both choices seem grotesque to me.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 6.33 (on ascetics of Nisibis; tr. Daniel Caner):

When they first began such philosophy they were called boskoi [grazers] because they had no homes, ate neither bread nor meat and drank no wine, but dwelt constantly in the mountains, continually praising God with prayers and hymns according to the law of the Church. At the usual meal hours they would each take a sickle and wander in the mountains, feeding off wild plants as if they were grazing.

τούτους δὲ καὶ βοσκοὺς ἀπεκάλουν, ἔναγχος τῆς τοιαύτης φιλοσοφίας ἄρξαντας. ὀνομάζουσι δὲ ὧδε αὐτοὺς, καθότι οὔτε οἰκήματα ἔχουσιν, οὔτε ἄρτον οὔτε ὄψον ἐσθίουσιν, οὔτε οἶνον πίνουσιν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὄρεσι διατρίβοντες, ἀεὶ τὸν Θεὸν εὐλογοῦσιν ἐν εὐχαῖς καὶ ὕμνοις κατὰ θεσμὸν τῆς ἐκκλησίας. τροφῆς δὲ ἡνίκα γένηται καιρὸς, καθάπερ νεμόμενοι, ἅρπην ἔχων ἕκαστος, ἀνὰ τὸ ὄρος περιϊόντες, τὰς βοτάνας σιτίζονται.

E.J. Kenney (1924-2019), The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 150:

Among the aims which Wilamowitz prescribed for the critic of Greek tragedy were these two: to learn as much Greek as Hermann and Elmsley, and to feel as much pleasure in eradicating a superfluous conjecture as in making a necessary one.¹ How many entrenched conjectures still await expulsion from our texts?<sup>2

1</sup>Einleitung 254.

² Cf. Shackleton Bailey, Philol. 108 (1964) 106.

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931), Einleitung in die griechische Tragödie (Berlin: Weidmann, 1907), p. 253:

was die philologie im ganzen in dem halben jahrhundert zugelernt hat. das erste und vornehmste ist also, dass wir wieder so viel griechisch lernen, wie Hermann und Elmsley konnten. aber wenn wir uns das können anzueignen versuchen, dürfen wir uns nicht damit begnügen, es als kunst zu üben, sondern müssen uns dessen was wir wissen und können selbst bewusst werden und es für andere zur darstellung bringen. wir müssen selber verstehen und anderen erklären. das erste erfordert, dass wir vorab das besser wissen wollen ablegen, unser urteil der überlieferung willig ergeben, und, wenn wir anstossen, zunächst nicht ihr sondern uns mistrauen. wir sollen das verständnis herausheben, nicht hineintragen. das gilt von dem einzelnen worte, das gilt in tausendfältiger variation von dem individuellen dichterischen gedanken und seinem ausdrucke im einzelnen verse, im einzelnen chorlied, im ganzen drama.

D.R. Shackleton Bailey's article is "Recensuit et Emendavit ...," Philologus 108 (1964) 102-118 (in German).

Labels: typographical and other errors

Aristophanes, fragment 382 Kassel and Austin (tr. Jeffrey Henderson, with his note):

(a) δορίαλλος or δόριλλος in Ar. (quote) is used of the female genitals, to insult the tragedian Dorillus.⁹⁵

(b) δορύαλλος: the female genitals . . . referring to the tragedian Doryllus:

         the women fence off their pussy shelleys

⁹⁵ Or possibly Dorilaos; punning in any case on περίαλλος (loins).

(a) Etymologicum Genuinum AB

δορίαλλος· λέγεται καὶ δόριλλος. Ἀριστοφάνης· αἱ—φράγνυνται. ἔστι δὲ τὸ γυναικεῖον αἰδοῖον, ἐφ᾿ ὕβρει τραγῳδοποιοῦ Δορίλλου.

(b) Hesychius δ 2230

δορύαλλος· τὸ τῶν γυναικῶν μόριον . . . ἐφ᾿ ὕβρει τοῦ τραγῳδοποιοῦ Δορύλλου·

        αἱ <δὲ> γυναῖκες τὸν δορίαλλον φράγυνυνται

Because of the shape (triangular, like an upside down delta) of his beard?

Poetae Comici Fragmenta, Vol. III 2: Aristophanes, Testimonia et Fragmenta, edd. R. Kassel and C. Austin (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), p. 211: See Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 147-148 and 203, for proper names as slang for sex organs.

See also Paul Maas, "δορίαλλος. Aristophanes Λήμυιαι fr. 367 Kock," Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 58.1/2 (1930) 127-128.

Excerpt from an email from a friend:

Many twenty-first century librarians are nothing but crypto-misobiblists, never happier than when they're maliciously culling their stock and stamping WITHDRAWN on whatever is of proven quality and worth, which is then quietly consigned to the dumpster or the charity shop. Well-stocked shelves are anathema to this race of poisonous elves.

Related post: A Misobiblist.

Homer, Odyssey 4.62-64 (Menelaus to Telemachus and Pisistratus; tr. A.T. Murray, trv. George E. Dimock):

For in you two the line of your sires is not lost, but you are of the race of men that are sceptered kings, fostered by Zeus; for no commoner could beget such sons as you.

... οὐ γὰρ σφῷν γε γένος ἀπόλωλε τοκήων,
ἀλλ᾿ ἀνδρῶν γένος ἐστὲ διοτρεφέων βασιλήων
σκηπτούχων, ἐπεὶ οὔ κε κακοὶ τοιούσδε τέκοιεν.

62–64 ath. Zenodotus, Aristophanes Byzantius, Aristarchus

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931), Der Glaube der Hellenen, Bd. I (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1931), p. 9 (my translation):

As I declared when I first dealt with a god, one must believe in him in order to understand him; Frickenhaus on Greek soil felt much the same way, and with pleasure I quote his words: "One cannot be a historian of religion without reproducing the belief in the old gods in one's heart."

Wie ich, als ich zuerst von einem Gotte handelte, ausgesprochen habe, man müsse an ihn glauben, um ihn zu verstehen, hat ganz ähnlich Frickenhaus auf hellenischem Boden empfunden, und ich setze gern seine Worte her „man kann nicht Religionshistoriker sein, ohne den Glauben an die alten Götter in seinem Herzen nachzuschaffen“.

The source of the quotation seems to be Ludolf Malten, "August Frickenhaus," Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde 46 (1926) 1-29 (at 5).

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II, § 4, "On Priests" (tr. Walter Kaufmann):

He whom they call Redeemer has put them in fetters: in fetters of false values and delusive words. Would that someone would yet redeem them from their Redeemer!

Der, welchen sie Erlöser nennen, schlug sie in Banden: — In Banden falscher Werthe und Wahn-Worte! Ach dass Einer sie noch von ihrem Erlöser erlöste!

E.J. Kenney (1924-2019), The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 76 (he = Erasmus):

For Revelations he was dependent on a single copy borrowed from Reuchlin, which lacked the last six verses...

For Revelations read Revelation, a common mistake.

Labels: typographical and other errors