Abstract

A problem in the text of Pindar, the interpretation of λαρετον, O. 2. 87, seems to be vanishing, swept away by a remarkable consensus of recent criticism, a consensus the more remarkable in that it accepts a false solution to a genuine difficulty. This article has two purposes, the first and more important of which is to argue that the currently prevailing answer is manifestly wrong, the second to offer evidence in support of a different approach. Simply read γαρυτων, recent critics maintain, and all problems disappear. Since -ο- and -ω- were not yet distinguished in the orthography of Pindar's day, γαρυτων is as correct as the unanimous γαρύτον of the MSS, testimonia, and scholia. By this simple change, the argument proceeds, the troublesome dual of the MSS is purged and with it the ‘historicist hare’, as one critic has recently called it, which less enlightened Pindarists chased for so long. If there is no dual, there is no need to speculate as to the identity of the ‘pair’ likened to κρακς and contrasted with the ‘divine bird of Zeus’, the man who is wise φυ. We need no longer suppose that the μαθντς are Simonides and Bacchylides – the traditional answer – or any other specific rivals. Unfortunately for this view, there is no evidence to justify taking γαρυτων as a plural, which is of course precisely what critics have been doing. It is – if anything – a third dual imperative , and every bit as much a dual as the γαρύτον of the MSS. Mr Stoneman is not alone in his ready dismissal of the ‘historicist hare’. Here is the view of Professor Lloyd-Jones: ‘… the lightest possible alteration converts the dual to a plural imperative, so that the number two vanishes’. A year before, Professor C. A. P. Ruck had chided the scholiasts for ‘reading out of Pindar's ΓΑΡΥΕΤΟΝ the dual…rather than the plural’. Bowra had declared that γαρυτων ‘would be the plural of the imperative’. The belief is widespread and persistent; those who wish a full conspectus of earlier views on the matter may consult the massive compilation made by Dr J. van Leeuwen in 1964. Not all critics and editors have endorsed the change from the traditional reading. While it has been in the successive Teubner editions since Schröder adopted it in 1900, neither Turyn nor Bowra accepted it. But among those who have argued for γαρυτων, only one has expressed any doubt that it is a plural, and that one is Theodor Bergk, who first proposed it. Indeed Bergk expressed no doubt about its being a dual