Abstract

Are not the editors rather too easy-going, when they admit on the authority of Hephaestion these spondaic endings? In the second passage nothing is easier than to invert the order of ⋯λλ⋯ντας and τ⋯κωνας, reading oὔτ' ⋯λλ⋯ντας πoιηησóμεθ' oὔτε τ⋯κωνας, for oὔτε … oὔτε seem also required. Cratinus is not quite so easily corrected, but one may perhaps suppose that he really wrote something like ⋯ να⋯ς ⋯μ⋯ν ὡς πειθαρχ μ⋯λλoν τoῖς πηδαλ⋯oισι. If it were not for the poetical character of line I, we should doubt whether we ought not to write ἵ να for ὡς, but it may be right, though obviously the first and second lines have no immediate connexion. The spondaic ending is made even less probable than it would otherwise be by the fact of the fifth and sixth feet also being spondees.