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The Gyges fragment: a new Possibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Hugh Lloyd-Jones
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Extract

It is now nearly two and a half years since Mr Lobel published the fragment which he has called ‘as surprising as any recovered from the soil of Egypt’. Since then a considerable literature has grown up around the fragment. Mr Lobel with caution and Professor Page with more conviction have attributed the fragment to early Attic tragedy. But the other scholars who have written on the subject have with striking unanimity assigned it to the tragedy of the Hellenistic age, some of them with what seems to me a surprising self-assurance.

Arguments from the nature of the subject-matter seem to give little help in reaching a decision. If one party can adduce the Persae of Aeschylus and the Phoenissae and the Capture of Miletus of Phrynichus, the other can retort with the Themistocles of Mausolus and the Cassandreis of Lycophron. Leaving subject-matter aside, three main types of evidence have been brought forward, that of the style, that of the language and that of the metre. Any inference about the date based solely on the style must rest on foundations that are at least partially subjective.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 2 , 1953, pp. 36 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1953

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References

page 36 note 1 Proceedings of the British Academy, XXXV, 1950, 1 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 36 note 2 Page, D. L., C. Qu. XLIV, 1950, 125f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A New Chapter in the History of Greek Tragedy, Cambridge, 1951Google Scholar; Latte, K., Eranos XLVIII, 1950, 136f.Google Scholar; Maas, P., Gnomon xx, 1950, 142f.Google Scholar; Lucas, D. W., The Greek Tragic Poets, London, 1950, 229f.Google Scholar; Lesky, A., Anz.f. d. Altertumswiss. III, 1950, 216f.Google Scholar; G(alianos), M. F., Estudios Classicos I, 1950, 119Google Scholar; Kakridis, J. Th., XII, 1951, 14f.Google Scholar; Martin, V., Mus. Helv. IX, 1952, 1f.Google Scholar; Gigante, M.,La Parola del Passato, fasc. XXII, 1952, 5fGoogle Scholar. Kamerbeek, J. C., Mnemosyne (4th ser.), v, 108f.Google Scholar; Cantarella, R., Dioniso xv, n.s. n. 1–4, 1952, 3fGoogle Scholar.

page 36 note 3 Loc. cit. 5; cf. Page, , A New Chapter, 24–5Google Scholar.

page 37 note 1 See loc. cit. 21ff.

page 37 note 2 281, 25 Consbr.

page 37 note 3 Cf. Wilamowitz, , Einleitung in die Griechische Tragoedie ( = Euripides, Herakles 1, 1889), 136Google Scholar: ‘die Alexandra ist keine tragoedie, sondern ein iambos.’

page 37 note 4 Abh. der Bayr. Akad. der Wiss. (Philos.-Philolog. Kl.), XVII, 1884, 66f.Google Scholar; cf. Dettmer, H., de arte metrica Archilochi quaestiones, Diss. Hildesheim, 1900, 101fGoogle Scholar.

page 37 note 5 Loc. cit. 42. In Archilochus and Semonides the only final monosyllable is in the doubtful passage at Arch. fr. 34D: (μοι Cobet.) In the 1474 trimeters of the Alexandra, there are five cases: 253 , 448 , 724 ,, 769 . Omitting the corrupt line at Moschion fr. 6, 13, there are three other instances among the remains of Alexandrian tragedy: Lycophron fr. 3, 2–3 , [Python] fr. 1, 10 ; Moschion fr. 6, 6-7 .

page 37 note 6 Loc. cit. 24.

page 38 note 1 Ach. Tat. 1, 8 (quoted by Lobel, loc. cit. 3).

page 38 note 2 D. H., de comp. verb. 18, p. 13Google Scholar Us.-Rad. Mr H. T. Deas drew my attention to this point.

page 38 note 3 Cf. Cantarella, op. cit. 11.

page 38 note 4 See Page, loc. cit. 22–5.

page 38 note 5 Loc. cit. 5.

page 38 note 6 Loc. cit. 3.

page 38 note 7 Wilamowitz, , Griechische Verskunst, 289Google Scholar; Knox, A. D., Philologus LXXXI, 1925, 250Google Scholar; Maas, P., Metrik, Nachträge (1927), 9Google Scholar; cf. Nachträge (1929), 36.

page 38 note 8 Fr. 5 may not be a relevant example, since and occur in Homer. But note fr. 7, 79 . Professor Maas's remedy for the two apparent instances at P. Lond. B.M. 1568C (on p. 69 of Diehl, anth. lyr. I3 fasc. III) is perhaps a little sweeping.

page 39 note 1 Juba, apud Rufinum, , de metris Terenti, Gram. Lat. VI, 563, p. 386KGoogle Scholar. The first quotation is from Herodotus 1, 12, 2 and the second from Archilochus fr. 22 D ( = 25 B).

page 39 note 2 Not so Crusius, O. in R.-E. II, p. 489Google Scholar (s.v. Archilochos).

page 39 note 3 Gram. Lat. VI, 94, 6K.

page 39 note 4 In R.-E. IX, p. 2396Google Scholar (s.v. Iuba 3); cf. Hense, in R.-E. VIII, p. 36Google Scholar (s.v. Heliodorus) and in R.M. vol. LVI, p. 107Google Scholar.

page 39 note 5 Cf. von Blumenthal, A., Die Schätzung des Archilochos im Altertum, Stuttgart, 1922, 29Google Scholar: ‘vor allem aber haben die alexandrinischen Metriker, wie wir an den Brechungen der alten Gelehrsamkeit bei Hephaistion und Marius Victorinus ersehen, den Archilochos als den ältesten ihnen bekannten lyrischen Dichter in den Mittelpunkt ihrer Forschung gestellt’: cf. ibid. n. 64. There are also ‘fragments of the ancient learning’ in Heliodorus; cf. Hense s.v. in R.-E., quoted above.

page 40 note 1 1, 12, 2.

page 40 note 2 A.J.P. II, 1902, 277Google Scholar, with footnote: cf. Crusius, loc. cit. and Lasserre, F., Les épodes d'Archiloque, Paris, 1950, 219Google Scholar.

page 40 note 3 Homerische Untersuchungen, 315.

page 40 note 4 See Paap, A. H. R. E., De reliquiis Herodoti in papyris et membranis Aegyptiis servatis (Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava, vol. IV), Leiden, 1948, 91–2Google Scholar.

page 40 note 5 See Wackernagel, J., Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Homer, 100Google Scholar; Wilamowitz, , Die Ilias und Homer, 508Google Scholar; Chantraine, P., Grammaire Homérique, I, 72Google Scholar.

page 41 note 1 At fr. 7, 70 Diehl prints ὅστις τοιούτοις θυμὸν ἀγλαῖƷεται. But the MSS. of Stobaeus and Aelian which preserve the fragment have τοιοῦτον: Ahrens read τοιοῦτον θεσμὸν, Jacobs τοιοῦτον ῥυθμὸν. At ibid. 74, Diehl prints εἷσιν δι᾿ ἄστεος πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις γέλως. But Arsenius quotes the passage with the reading άστοῖσιν, which is no doubt correct: ἀνθρώποις was probably inserted to remove what may have seemed an awkwardness after ἄστεος. (I owe these observations to Professor Page.)

page 41 note 2 Ar. Rhet. 1418 b 28.

page 41 note 3 Fr. 147 B. For other examples of heroic legends in Archilochus, cf. frs. 150 and 190 in Bergk.

page 42 note 1 I am greatly indebted to the following scholars for their help with this paper: Professor A. J. Beattie, Mr K. J. Dover, Mr G. S. Kirk, Professor D. L. Page and Mr C. H. Roberts.