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Aeschylus, Agamemnon 72–5
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In the first of his three magisterial articles on the Agamemnon H. L. Ahrens showed that all the evidence then available best fitted the conclusion that ⋯τ⋯ται derived from τ⋯νω and not from τ⋯ω. Subsequently Ed. Fraenkel in his own note on the word reviewed and supplemented the evidence gathered by Ahrens, and expressed the view that Ahrens' ‘discussion, details apart, is final’; and there seems to be widespread agreement that on the linguistic side at least Ahrens' argument cannot be refuted. If this means anything, it means that the sense of the word cannot be ‘unhonoured’ or ‘dishonoured’. Yet Denniston–Page in their commentary say that ‘”unhonoured” seems the only possible sense here’, and R. Fagles' recent translation, which generally rests on sound scholarship as well as poetic gifts, has ‘dishonored’. The principal reason for this persistent disagreement seems to be that the sense proposed by Ahrens for ⋯τ⋯ται has been thought to have rather less plausibility than the linguistic considerations that appear to lead to it.
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References
1 ‘Studien zum Agamemnon des Aeschylus. Erster Artikel’, Philologus, Supplbd. 1 (1860), 248–9Google Scholar.
2 See the remarks of Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘Agamemnonea’, HSCP 73 (1969), 97Google Scholar and those of J. Bollack, Agamemnon 1, premiere partie (Lille, n.d.), p. 84. One can also reasonably infer from the translations of H. Weir Smyth, P. Mazon, W. Headlam (both prose and verse), and L. MacNeice, that they all agree with Ahrens' derivation of ⋯τ⋯της from τ⋯νω. Even Denniston-Page do not challenge the plausibility of Ahrens' position on the linguistic side.
3 The Oresteia, trans. Fagles, Robert (New York, 1975), p. 94Google Scholar. R. Lattimore also gives ‘dishonored’ in a translation that has been widely used and justly admired as both accurate and poetic.
4 However, it should be noted that ‘unhonoured’ and ‘dishonoured’ are also open to objection on grounds of sense. It is hardly a cliché of Greek poetry that the old are inevitably without honour. If the Chorus here says it is unhonoured, it must be a positive complaint. But if it is that, it is most obscure why it should occur, as it were, isolated, at this point. Attempts to connect the notion of ‘dishonour’ with ὑπολειφθ⋯ντες, interpreted to mean ‘cast off’ (Lattimore, Fagles), fail because that is not likely to be the meaning of ὑπολειφθ⋯ντες. Schneidewin's, F. W. ‘without a share in the honour of the expedition’, ‘der Ehre des Zuges untheilhaftig’, in his commentary on the play (Berlin, 1856)Google Scholar, recognizes the difficulty and is perhaps the best effort in a lost cause.
5 So also Bollack, , op. cit., p. 51Google Scholar gives ‘insolvables’.
6 See LSJ9 s.v. 1.2.
7 Loc. cit.
8 (Utrecht, 1855). It is worth noting that the same syntactical configuration was also envisioned by Schneidewin in his explanation given in n. 4 above.
9 I am obliged to an anonymous reader for Classical Quarterly for calling my attention to this. The relevant section of the verse translation was first published posthumously (Cambridge, 1910). Admittedly Headlam had shown complete and unhesitating agreement with Ahrens earlier in a prose version (first published in 1904) and in a brief note which he himself had written and Pearson, A. C. incorporated into the posthumous Commentary on the Agamemnon (Cambridge, 1910)Google Scholar. (In fact the same note is repeated in the Headlam-Thomson Oresteia and neither Pearson nor Thomson appears to have noticed the discrepancy.) Nonetheless, it seems to me that the difference of interpretation reflected in the verse rendering may with as much likelihood be attributed to further insight as to the demands of metre.
10 Of course the sense of ⋯ρωγ⋯ς in 73 is amplified by the associations of 45–7: Aργε⋯ων χιλιονα⋯την…στρατι⋯τιν ⋯ρωγ⋯ν.
11 I prefer ‘could not make payment’ to Headlam's ‘defaulters’ because one who is in default still owes; the position with the Chorus is that they do not owe because they cannot pay.
12 Although one might expect the force of the passive of ὑπολε⋯πω to be ‘left behind’ – or even, with Lattimore and Fagles, ‘cast off’ – most of the instances cited in LSJ9 can be and some must be interpreted, rather surprisingly, in an active sense, ‘stay behind”. See, e.g., Hdt. 1.165. That sense seems perfectly appropriate here.