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TWO NEW FRAGMENTS OF ANAXANDRIDES IN HESYCHIUS?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2018

Alexander Dale
Alexander Dale*
Affiliation:
Concordia University, Montreal
*
alexander.dale@keble.oxon.org
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Extract

We can first note the obvious, that both glosses are sexual in nature: τὸ βιάζεσθαι γυναῖκας, ‘to rape women’; in τὸ παιδὶ συνεῖναι we obviously have the euphemistic use of συνεῖναι, ‘to have sex with a child’. Hesychius’ entries have the appearance of straightforward dialect glosses, yet Ambraciot never elicited much attention in ancient dialectology and glossography. Furthermore, as ancient glossography consisted mainly in culling unusual vocabulary from literary texts, we can legitimately ask what sources might have been available to Hellenistic scholars for Ambraciot.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , May 2018 , pp. 69 - 78
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

Hesychius preserves the following two unique lemmas, both rare instances of attributions to Ambraciot in the ancient glossographical tradition:

β 224 Latte βαρδῆν· τὸ βιάζεσθαι γυναῖκας. Ἀμπρακιῶται

δ 156 Latte δαλιοχεῖν· τὸ παιδὶ συνεῖναι. Ἀμπρακιῶται. τινὲς δὲ τὸ μοιχεύειν

We can first note the obvious, that both glosses are sexual in nature: τὸ βιάζεσθαι γυναῖκας, ‘to rape women’; in τὸ παιδὶ συνεῖναι we obviously have the euphemistic use of συνεῖναι, ‘to have sex with a child’.Footnote 1 Hesychius’ entries have the appearance of straightforward dialect glosses, yet Ambraciot never elicited much attention in ancient dialectology and glossography. Furthermore, as ancient glossography consisted mainly in culling unusual vocabulary from literary texts,Footnote 2 we can legitimately ask what sources might have been available to Hellenistic scholars for Ambraciot.Footnote 3

Ambracia was a Corinthian colony on the north shore of the gulf of Ambracia on the Adriatic coast in Epirus, south of Thesprotia and north of Acarnania. Early inscriptions from Ambracia suggest that the dialect was colonial Corinthian Doric, and are written in the Corinthian alphabet.Footnote 4 The polis played a brief and prominent role in the early years of the Peloponnesian war, and was an independent city of some importance in the third century b.c. during the reign of the Epirote king Pyrrhus, but otherwise never made much of a mark in the cultural or literary world of ancient Greece.Footnote 5 A possible, though unlikely, source for Ambraciot glosses in the glossographical tradition might be Epicrates of Ambracia, a poet of Middle Comedy active in the earlier fourth century. However, Middle—like Old—Comedy was in Attic, and thus the only plausible source for dialect forms would be in non-Athenian characters (such as the Megarian and the Boeotian in Aristophanes’ Acharnians [729–835 and 860–954 respectively], and the Laconian throughout Lysistrata). There is, however, nothing in the exiguous remains of Epicrates to suggest that he ever represented his compatriots on stage, and while we cannot make too much of an argument ex silentio, there is no compelling reason to ascribe Hesychius’ lemmas to Epicrates. At the same time, it has to be said that Athenian comedy would be a likely source for vocabulary pertaining to rape and pederasty.

A somewhat more compelling case can be made for ascribing Hesychius’ lemmas to Anaxandrides, one of the most prominent exponents of Middle Comedy, and seemingly one of Aristotle's favourite comic poets.Footnote 6 To begin with, the somewhat cursory Suda vita (α 1982 Adler = T 1 K.–A.) says of Anaxandrides καὶ πρῶτος οὗτος ἔρωτας καὶ παρθένων φθορὰς εἰσήγαγεν, ‘and he was the first to depict love affairs and seductions/rapes of girls’. The statement that he was the first to do so is of course absurd, an instance of the incessant hunt for the πρῶτος εὑρετής, in this case of the plot devices and subject matter of Menander and New Comedy generally. The Aristophanic vita makes the same claim for Aristophanes’ Cocalus,Footnote 7 while Satyrus advocates for Euripides (whose plays, Satyrus says, commonly represented the rape of young women [βιασμοὺς παρθένων]) as the progenitor of New Comedy;Footnote 8 Nesselrath has sensibly argued that all three poets can be seen as forerunners of the genre.Footnote 9 What the Suda entry does suggest is that παρθένων φθοραί were a plot device in Anaxandrides,Footnote 10 perhaps even a prominent one in more than one play. Yet, this can also be said for many poets of Middle and New Comedy, and does little to explain the possibility of Ambraciot glosses being culled from his work.

Further help can be obtained from the didascalic inscription found in Rome in the 1770s.Footnote 11 Boeckh (on CIG I 230) first recognized that the inscription listed a number of victories for Anaxandrides at both the Lenaea and the City Dionysia, and amongst the titles in the inscription, many already known from ancient sources, were several new plays, one of which won second prize at the Lenaea (IGUR 218.3 = Anaxandrides T 5 K.–A.): Ἀμπρακιῶτις, The Woman from Ambracia.Footnote 12 We thus have on the one hand a play centred on a woman from Ambracia by a poet known to the ancient scholastic tradition for depicting rape, and on the other Hesychius’ lemmas βαρδῆν and δαλιοχεῖν, glossed as instances of sexual violence and pederasty, and attributed to Ambraciot. We still have some way to go before a plausible attribution of the lemmas to Anaxandrides can be made, and at this point we must address what the words preserved by Hesychius might mean, and whether they are in any way likely to have occurred in a poet of Middle Comedy.

We can begin with βαρδῆν. In earlier scholarship the word was interpreted as a loan from Illyrian or another possibly Indo-European language,Footnote 13 though on no better grounds than geographic contiguity; unsurprisingly, Beekes following Furneé suspects substrate origin.Footnote 14 Bechtel, however, proposed underlying *ϝαρδῆν, connecting the word to ἄρδα, ‘dirt, filth’, tentatively endorsed by Chantraine.Footnote 15 A figurative sense for ἄρδα is suggested by Erotian's gloss of ἄρδαλος as ἄνθρωπος ὁ μὴ καθαρῶς ζῶν (‘a man who does not live in a pure manner’) at 28.19 (56.10 Klein), and by the denominative verb ἀρδαλόω meaning ‘defile’.Footnote 16 Further light can be shed by a gloss in the Suda (β 106 Adler), which is repeated verbatim in Zonaras’ lexicon (β 370.11 Tittman): βαρδίσαγνος· ὁ τὰς γυναῖκας βιαζόμενος, ‘βαρδίσαγνος: one who rapes women’. A connection of βαρδί– in this lemma with βαρδῆν seems evident, so the question then becomes how βαρδίσαγνος is to be analysed,Footnote 17 and what the sense of –(σ)αγνος is.

Bechtel's suggestion of *ϝαρδῆν for βαρδῆν is the most promising, in which case we can analyse the lemma as a Doric infinitive of a denominative verb *(ϝ)αρδάω, ‘to defile’.Footnote 18 As for βαρδίσαγνος, βαρδίσ– suggests another denominative formation *βαρδίζω/*(ϝ)αρδίζω, ‘to defile’;Footnote 19 an analysis as βαρδίσ–αγνος, a verbal governing compound, is further suggested by the likely import of –αγνος, for here we must have not the adjective ἁγνός, ‘holy, full of reverent awe’, but the noun ἄγνος, ‘the chaste-tree’ (= λύγος), ‘the branches of which were strewed by matrons on their beds at the Thesmophoria’ (LSJ s.v.).Footnote 20 A βαρδίσαγνος is then quite literally ‘one who defiles the chaste-tree’, ‘one who defiles the tokens of chastity’. In its connection with chastity and the Thesmophoria, the chaste-tree is associated specifically with married women,Footnote 21 and thus the gloss of βαρδίσαγνος as ὁ τὰς γυναῖκας βιαζόμενος might reflect the specificity with which the word was used in the source from which it was taken, indicating the rape of specifically married women rather than of παρθένοι. Here we can also recall the gloss of βαρδῆν as specifically τὸ βιάζεσθαι γυναῖκας. As to where some intrepid glossographer happened upon βαρδίσαγνος, suspicion must again fall squarely upon a comic source.

We can now turn to the second of our Ambraciot glosses, δαλιοχεῖν. Supposing the sexual definition in Hesychius to be correct, in –οχεῖν there can be little doubt that we have a cognate of ὀχεύω, ‘to mount’, med. ‘copulate’.Footnote 22 The verb is generally not used of humans, although Plato uses it of men who are like animals having sex at Resp. 586a.Footnote 23 If –οχεῖν is cognate with ὀχεύω, and if Hesychius’ gloss as τὸ παιδὶ συνεῖναι is by and large accurate, then we certainly have a striking image. For δαλι– we can entertain a connection with δηλέομαι, Doric δαλέομαι, ‘hurt, damage, spoil, ravage’.Footnote 24 Specifically, the derivational path is likely to have been a compound δαλιοχός, which is indeed attested in Hesychius in the immediately following lemma: δ 157 Latte δαλιοχός· μοιχός (‘δαλιοχός: adulterer’).Footnote 25 δαλιοχέω was then formed as a denominative to δαλιοχός. Without more context, the force of δαλι– is impossible to establish; it could have the sense ‘damagingly’, i.e. violently, with force. Or perhaps the sense is closer to ‘harm, spoil, violate’ in a figurative sense, for which compare the Homeric ὅρκια δηλήσασθαι, ‘violate a truce’. In support of δαλι– implying a moral outrage rather than actual physical damage, we might adduce yet another Hesychian gloss which likely preserves a cognate of δηλέομαι, and which would fit nicely into the plot of a New Comedy: δ 810 Latte δήλιοι· οἱ ἀδελφὰς γεγαμηκότες, ‘δήλιοι: those who have married their sisters’. We can thus suggest that δαλιοχός properly meant ‘one who copulates violently or violatingly’, with δαλιοχεῖν meaning ‘to copulate in a destructive or degrading manner’, in which case Hesychius’ gloss can be taken at face value as indicating that the word was used of pederasty (or perhaps incestuous pederasty).Footnote 26

Aristophanes’ use of dialect to represent non-Athenian speech is well known; at both the phonological and the morphological level Aristophanes represents Megarian and Boeotian in the Acharnians, and Laconian in the Lysistrata.Footnote 27 His contemporary Strattis ridicules the Boeotian dialect in a passage of Boeotian pastiche at fr. 49.Footnote 28 Epylicus, fr. 4 is a passage of convincing Laconian, as is Crates I, fr. 47, while a line of Doric from Apollophanes’ Cretans (fr. 7) would presumably have sought to represent the Doric dialect of Crete.Footnote 29 Middle Comedy continued this tradition—Alexis parodies the Doric dialect of a physician at fr. 142, again with respect to both phonology and morphology, while Eubulus represents Boeotian in the Antiope (fr. 11).

We can thus ask whether Anaxandrides is likely to have represented non-Athenian speech in his plays, and—if he did—whether the glossographic tradition might have drawn on it. An answer to both questions is happily supplied in the remains of Anaxandrides, preserved at Schol. (AT) Il. 23.1b = fr. 45 K.–A. πτόλιν· Κυπρίων τῶν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ἡ λέξις· κεῖται δὲ καὶ παρὰ κωμικῶι Ἀναξανδρίδηι ἐν Σωσίππωι, ‘πτόλιν: a word of the Cypriots in Salamis. It is found in the comic poet Anaxandrides in Sosippus’. While a form such as πτόλινFootnote 30 in a comic poet might suggest nothing more than epic parody,Footnote 31 the specificity of the scholiast's statement should leave us in no doubt that it was found in a passage representing the speech of a Cypriot or specifically a Salaminian character, and that the word was culled by a glossographer. It is thus prima facie likely that a play by Anaxandrides centred on a woman from Ambracia would have contained a representation of her native dialect.Footnote 32

The question then becomes whether the vocabulary in question is a faithful attempt at representing Ambraciot in a strict sense, or whether we have more of a Corinthian/Doric veneer. Here we are hampered by the limited evidence from contemporary inscriptions, as well as by the varying degrees of accuracy with which non-Athenian speech is represented in the fragments of Old and Middle Comedy. The phonological features that we can identify as being generally Doric in our lemmas are:

  1. 1) retention of wau in βαρδῆν. Our most important early inscription from Ambracia, the polyandrion inscription (SEG 41.540A), a mid to late sixth-century funerary epigram of eight preserved lines, shows non-observance of digamma in Εὔξενον and ἴστε. However, the language of the epigram is not perfectly representative of any vernacular, whether Ambraciot or Corinthian.Footnote 33 We find o-stem genitive singulars in –οιο alongside –ου, (note especially ἀπ’ εὐρυχόροι[ο ϙορίνθου] at line 3), and τότε instead of τόκα in line 6. Though the epigram does show dialectal and graphic peculiarities (cf. n. 33), its closest analogues in both dialect and vocabulary are with the language of Stesichorus and PindarFootnote 34 rather than with anything that would have been spoken at Ambracia or Corinth.Footnote 35 Thus the treatment of digamma in the inscription can have no bearing on the question of the synchronic status of /w/ in Ambraciot. Early inscriptions from Corinth observe digamma in some instances (mostly in the dedicatory formula Ποτε̄δᾶνι ϝάνακτι) and omit it in others, and it seems likely that by the second half of the fifth century (if not earlier) the sound was lost in the Saronic dialects, an areal feature shared with Attic.Footnote 36 However, colonial Corinthian and Megarian show retention of digamma after its loss in Corinthian and Megarian proper, and thus it is possible that wau, in initial position at least, was part of the segmental phonology of Ambraciot in the time of Anaxandrides.

  2. 2) the infinitive terminations in δαλιοχεῖν and βαρδῆν would both be appropriate to Corinthian and, by extension, Ambraciot. Corinthian and Ambraciot did not merge original and secondary long /e/, and thus the active thematic infinitive –ειν (–εῖν in contract verbs) < *–e–hen < *–e–sen is expected for δαλιοχέω. –ῆν is the regular outcome of active thematic infinitives of –αω verbs in all Doric dialects, whether ‘mild’ or ‘severe’.

The evidence, meagre as it is, does not decisively answer the question. If, as is likely, /w/ had been lost in Corinthian by the middle of the fifth century (if not earlier) but retained in the colonies, then we could point to Ambraciot as the speech community the forms sought to emulate. That the forms reflect a Doric veneer via the more familiar Laconian dialect is unlikely. First, we would not expect a comic poet to employ Laconian forms to represent a non-Laconian Doric dialect. In Aristophanes, Laconian is rendered quite faithfully with, for example, η for the spurious diphthong (for example, μυσίδδην for μυθίζειν at Lys. 1076) and loss of intervocalic /s/ (for example, Λυἵστρατον for Λυσίστρατον at Lys. 1105), while /w/, both initial and internal, can be restored in every instance where it is etymologically expected, and in certain cases, such as παραϝιδών at Lys. 156, it is guaranteed,Footnote 37 to give but a few of many examples. Megarian, on the other hand, a Saronic dialect like Corinthian and its daughter Ambraciot, did not merge original and secondary long /e/, retained intervocalic /s/ and had likely lost /w/ well before 400 b.c., and thus in the Acharnians we find infinitives in –ειν (for example, φέρειν at 739) and retention of intervocalic /s/ (for example, ἀγορασοῦντες at 750), while any attempt to introduce digamma would disrupt the metre (for example, ἱξεῖτ’ οἴκαδις at 742). If we imagine Anaxandrides to have aimed for the same level of verisimilitude as Aristophanes, the ‘mild’ thematic infinitive in δαλιοχεῖν as well as the representation of /w/ in βαρδῆν (*ϝαρδῆν) might indeed point to specifically Ambraciot rather than Corinthian or ‘Doric’ as the dialect the forms sought to emulate. As to a source for Anaxandrides’ potential knowledge of the dialect of Ambracia (presumably less represented in the streets of Athens than Megarian or Boeotian), we can recall his aforementioned contemporary Epicrates, whose western accent might have stood out to Anaxandrides’ Rhodian ear.

The final question to address is whether regional dialects represented in a comic poet would be a likely source for glossographers to draw citations of Ambraciot from. Here again the evidence is mostly inferential, although we can anticipate the answer as a guarded ‘yes’, and, as we previously saw, Anaxandrides has already supplied the glossographical tradition with an attestation for Cypriot πτόλις. As was touched on above, the glossographic tradition relied for the most part on literary sources. Even Trypho, spoken of with reverence by no less than Apollonius Dyscolus, betrays this prejudice in the works ascribed to him. The Suda tells us that he wrote on the dialect of the Greeks and of the Argives, the Himerians, the Rhegians, the Dorians and the Syracusians;Footnote 38 as Hainsworth observes,Footnote 39 Trypho was obviously drawing on Telesilla, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Sophron and Epicharmus. Yet, the glossographical tradition records words for regional dialects that have not, to our knowledge, left any trace in the literary tradition, and for which the glossographical tradition does not cite any author as an authority, for example Messenian and Corinthian.Footnote 40 Here a somewhat inexact experiment might be revealing. A TLG search of Hesychius for Αἰολεῖς yields roughly forty-five results of the ‘X·Y. Αἰολεῖς’ type, with Sappho, Alcaeus and perhaps Erinna undoubtedly providing most if not all attestations. A search for Συρακούσιοι yields roughly sixteen results (add another six for παρὰ Συρακουσίοις), with Epicharmus likely furnishing the lion's share. We can compare this with five results for Κορίνθιοι, and a lonely single result for Μεσσήνιοι. While sources other than poets could contain material of interest to ancient glossography and dialectology,Footnote 41 the paucity of citations from regional dialects that were not represented in the literary and poetic traditions serves to reinforce just how reliant Hellenistic scholars were on literary sources.

Doric comedy was of course an important source of lexical and dialectal curiosities; we know of several scholars who wrote on Sophron and Epicharmus, while the mention of an Ἰταλικαὶ Γλῶσσαι attributed to one Diodorus at Ath. 11.479a has enabled Kassel and Austin to collect 262 unattributed glosses culled no doubt from Epicharmus, Rhinthon and others, appended to PCG I, pages 303–32 as the Glossarium Italioticum. The ancient glossographers were most happy with poets whose overall dialect could be used for illustrative purposes; thus Pindar could stand for ‘Doric’ rather than Lampito in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, and Epicharmus for ‘Syracusan’ rather than Praxinoa and Gorgo in Theocritus’ Idyll 15. Yet, when no large corpus was available to draw upon, it seems likely that examples of regional dialects would be culled from any source available, and the representation of non-Athenian speech in the poets of Old and Middle Comedy, whatever its actual reliability, would have been a valuable source of information for regional dialects that had no exponents in the literary tradition of ancient Greece.

In conclusion, the evidence must speak for itself. Hesychius’ lemmas βαρδῆν and δαλιοχεῖν can be analysed not as Illyrian or ‘Pelasgian’/Pre-Greek but straightforwardly as Greek, and more than that as Doric, possibly even specifically Ambraciot. The etymological analysis reveals a meaning in line with the glosses Hesychius provides them with. The sexual nature of the words, with notes of defilement and degradation, would make an attribution to a comic poet prima facie attractive. The lemmas are attributed to Ambraciot, a sub-dialect of Corinthian Doric which has, to the best of our knowledge, left no significant remains in Greek literature. Anaxandrides, a seminal figure in the transition from Old to New Comedy who was known to the scholastic tradition for his representation of παρθένων φθοραί, wrote a play entitled The Woman from Ambracia. Middle Comedy continued the tradition of representing non-Athenian speech, as evidenced by Alexis and Eubulus, and thus the presence of regional dialects in Anaxandrides is both expected and attested in the Homeric scholia. The glossographical tradition drew readily on ancient comedy, and dialect speech in comedy can be identified as a possible source for attestations of dialects not well represented in the literary tradition. Thus, although we cannot claim that an ascription of the lemmas to Anaxandrides is assured beyond all doubt, the cumulative weight of evidence argues strongly in its favour.

References

1 While the default meaning of παῖς is ‘boy’, without more context it cannot be established whether δαλιοχεῖν is gender specific, or whether it could equally be used of intercourse with a girl. Furthermore, while the pederastic sense of δαλιοχεῖν is clear from the gloss, we cannot exclude the possibility of pederastic incest (on which cf. n. 26 below), even though we might expect the article (τῶι/τῆι παιδί) in such a context. For συνεῖναι, see Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse 2 (Oxford, 1991), 159Google Scholar. I am grateful to the anonymous reader for CQ, whose comments forced me to clarify several important points.

2 Cf. Dion. Thrax, GG I/1 5–6 Uhlig, for whom γλῶσσαι were a subset of γραμματική, the purpose of which was the ἐμπειρία τῶν παρὰ ποιηταῖς τε καὶ συγγραφεῦσιν ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ λεγομένων, ‘the empirical knowledge of that which is said for the most part by poets and prose writers’; for the interpretation of Dionysius’ words, and the variant preserved at Sext. Emp. Math. 1.57, see Pagani, L., ‘Pioneers of grammar: Hellenistic scholarship and the study of language’, in Montanari, F. and Pagani, L. (edd.), From Scholars to Scholia: Chapters in the History of Ancient Greek Scholarship (Berlin and New York, 2011), 14–64Google Scholar, at 18. There was properly something of a distinction between glossography, an aspect of grammar, and dialectography, which was in some ways an aspect of ethnography. Yet, the two traditions were complementary; thus the glossographical tradition took an ethnographic approach in categorizing attributions by city or region; cf. Σ. Dion. Thrax, GG I/3 302–3 Uhlig (attributed to Trypho) Δωρὶς γὰρ διάλεκτος μία, ὑφ’ ἥν εἰσι γλῶσσαι πολλαί, Ἀργείων, Λακώνων, Συρακουσίων, Μεσσηνίων, Κορινθίων (‘Doric is one dialect, of which there are many γλῶσσαι [sub-dialects or regional variations], Argive, Laconian, Syracusian, Messenian, Corinthian’). On ancient glossography, see Latte, K., ‘Glossographika’, Philologus 80 (1925), 136–75Google Scholar; for the practice of dialectology in antiquity, see Hainsworth, J.B., ‘Greek views of Greek dialectology’, TPhS 66 (no volume number in print edition) (1967), 62–76Google Scholar, who notes that ‘Hellenistic glossography was … overwhelmed by mythology, history and literature, and … had little impact on the conception of the dialects’ (72); see also Cassio, A.C., ‘Parlate locali, dialetti delle stirpi e fonti letterarie nel grammatici greci’, in Crespo, E., Ramón, J.L. García and Striano, A. (edd.), Dialectologia Graeca. Actas del II coloquio internacional de dialectología griega (Madrid, 1993), 73–90Google Scholar. Pfeiffer, R., History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford, 1968), 202Google Scholar expresses a high regard for Aristophanes of Byzantium's glossographical work, which he imagines went beyond ‘mere bookishness’; yet, we can feel confident that his research did not begin to encompass fieldwork in any recognizable modern sense. For a recent detailed treatment of linguistic science in antiquity, see Pagani (this note).

3 The likelihood of Athanadas’ History of Ambracia (FGrHist 303 F 1, mentioned only at Anton. Lib. 4.5) containing dialect glosses, particularly ones of a sexual nature, is extremely slim (though cf. the case of Derkyllus at n. 41 below).

4 For Corinthian and the Saronic dialects generally, see Buck, C.D., The Greek Dialects 2 (Chicago, 1955), 164–6Google Scholar and 293–7; Schmidt, R., Einführung in die griechischen Dialekte (Darmstadt, 1977), 34–9Google Scholar; Colvin, S., A Historical Greek Reader: Mycenaean to the Koiné (Oxford, 2007), 142–50Google Scholar. Early inscriptions from Ambracia are woefully scant; for the evidence of the polyandrion elegy (SEG 41.540A), see below with nn. 33–5.

5 For the polis, see Hansen, M.H. and Nielsen, T.H., An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Oxford, 2004), 354–6Google Scholar, no. 113; D. Strauch in Der neue Pauly s.v. Ambrakia. Callimachus related the myth of the death of the Ambracian tyrant Phalaecus early in Book 3 of the Aetia (Phalaecus Ambraciotis), frr. 62a–c Harder; cf. Gallazzi, C. and Lehnus, L., ‘Due nuovi frammenti delle Diegeseis. Approssimazioni al III libro degli Aitia di Callimaco’, ZPE 137 (2001), 7–18Google Scholar.

6 See Hartwig, A., ‘The evolution of comedy in the fourth century’, in Csapo, E., Goette, H.R., Green, J.R., Wilson, P. (edd.), Greek Theatre in the Fourth Century B.C. (Berlin and New York, 2014), 207–27Google Scholar, at 214–15.

7 T 1.49–51 K.–A. = Proleg. de com. XXVIII 54–5 Koster ἔγραψε κωμωιδίαν τινὰ Κώκαλον, ἐν ὧι εἰσάγει φθορὰν καὶ ἀναγνωρισμὸν καὶ τἆλλα πάντα, ἃ ἐζήλωσε Μένανδρος, ‘he wrote a play called Cocalus, in which he introduced rape and recognition scenes and everything else that Menander emulated’.

8 Satyrus’ Life of Euripides fr. 39 col. 7 = P.Oxy. 1176; see Schorn, S., Satyros aus Kallatis. Sammlung der Fragmente mit Kommentar (Basel, 2004)Google Scholar.

9 Nesselrath, H.G., ‘Parody and later Greek comedy’, HSPh 95 (1993), 181–95Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Hunter, R., ‘The comic chorus in the fourth century’, ZPE 36 (1979), 23–38Google Scholar, at 35 n. 61.

11 IGUR 218 = CIG I 230 = IG XIV 1098; editio princeps in Oderico, G.A., De Marmorea Didascalia in Urbe Reperta (Rome, 1777)Google Scholar. See Bergk, T., ‘Verzeichniss der Siege dramatischer Dichter in Athen’, RhM 34 (1879), 292–330Google Scholar, at 328–30; Capps, E., ‘The Roman fragments of Athenian comic didascaliae’, CPh 1 (1906), 201–20Google Scholar; Luppe, W., ‘Zu den griechischen didaskalischen Inschriften in Rom’, ZPE 8 (1971), 123–8Google Scholar.

12 The words that follow Ἀμπρακιώτιδι in line 3, γʹ ἐν [ἄστει, introduce the following list of titles, and do not refer to Ἀμπρακιῶτις.

13 See Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris, 1968–1980), 165Google Scholar and Frisk, H., Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg, 1960–1972), 220Google Scholar s.v βαρδῆν. Amongst those who suggest a non-Greek source are Blumenthal, A., ‘Illyrisches und Makedonisches’, IF 49 (1931), 169–83Google Scholar, at 178–9, who suggests IE *bher- (now reconstructed as *bherH–), ‘work with a sharp tool, cleave’; Pisani, V., ‘Zur Sprachgeschichte des alten Italiens’, RhM 97 (1954), 47–68Google Scholar, at 62 n. 14 opts for *bher–, ‘carry’; the Diccionario Griego-Español suggests a connection with the root *mer– (i.e. *merh 2–/*mr̥h 2–), ‘grab forcefully, crush’. One might also suggest *bherh 2–, ‘move quickly’. ‘Alles hypothetisch’, as Frisk (this note) observes.

14 Beekes, R.S.P., Greek Etymological Dictionary (Leiden and Boston, 2010)Google Scholar, 1.127.

15 See Chantraine (n. 13), 105 s.v. ἄρδα; Bechtel, F., Die griechischen Dialekte (Berlin, 1921–1924)Google Scholar, 2.282. β for ϝ occurs already in fourth-century inscriptions, representing an underlying fricative pronunciation /f/, /v/, for which see Buck (n. 4), 47; ϝ for β occurs in an early inscription from Corinth, IG IV 212 = CEG 360 (c.510–500). Beekes's statement (n. 14), 1.127 that a connection of ἄρδα with ἄρδω, ‘to irrigate’, ‘is impossible because ἄρδα has a short initial ἀ–’ is nonsensical. The second syllable of the acc. sg. ἄρδαν is scanned short at Pherecrates, fr. 58, while Herodian tells us that the initial ἀ– of ἄρδω is long (GG 3/I 522.9, cf. 3/II 109.15; see Chantraine [n. 13], s.v.), but that is the sum of our knowledge.

16 Phot. Lex. a 2796 Theodoridis ἄρδα καὶ ἄρδαλος· τὸ μόλυσμα. καὶ ἀρδαλῶσαι τὸ μολῦναι ἀσχημόνως (‘ἄρδα καὶ ἄρδαλος: a taint/impurity. And ἀρδαλῶσαι means to defile in an obscene manner’); Galen 19.85.11 Kühn καὶ ἀρδαλῶσαι τὸ ῥυπᾶναι (‘ἀρδαλῶσαι means to defile’). Hesychius’ glosses δ 259 Latte δάρδα· μόλυσμα and δ 261 Latte δαρδαίνει· μολύνει (cf. also α 4795 Latte) are likely to be corruptions of an unfamiliar *ϝάρδα, *ϝαρδαίνει, perhaps on analogy with the Homeric δαρδάπτω, reduplicated from δάπτω. While δ is not a readily expected graphic or phonological development of ϝ (β and υ are more common, and cf. Masson, O., ‘Sur la notation occasionnelle du digamma grec par d'autres consonnes et la glose macédonienne abroûtes’, BSL 90 [1995], 231–9Google Scholar), A. Willi, BMCR 2011.02.40 n. 3 has identified other plausible instances of δ for ϝ in Hesychius. We hardly have ‘substrate’ interchange of δ/ø, as Beekes (n. 14), 1.127 muses. Another crumb might be provided by Hesychius’ enigmatic gloss ε 33 Latte ἐαρδάλη· ἐπλησίασεν, where we might again have corruption of an original *ϝαρδάλη, while the sexual sense of πλησιάζω (for which, see LSJ s.v.) is well established.

17 That is, is the word to be divided as βαρδ–ίσαγνος or βαρδί–σαγνος or βαρδίσ–αγνος.

18 On the status of initial /w/ in Corinthian and Ambraciot in the early fourth century, as well as the treatment of the thematic infinitives in βαρδῆν and δαλιοχεῖν, see further below.

19 We would typically expect –άζω in a denominative formation to an a-stem, although the use of –ίζω with consonant stems (e.g. ἑλληνίζω ← Ἕλλην, Dor. Ἑλλᾶν) could have led to analogical remodelling, particularly in a case such as βαρδίσαγνος which, it is suggested below, was likely an ad hoc formation.

20 On the many and fascinating uses for (and associations of) the chaste-tree in ancient Greece, see generally Staden, H. von, ‘Spiderwoman and the Chaste Tree: the semantics of matter’, Configurations 1 (1993), 23–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with specific reference to the Thesmophoria and the ‘chaste’ associations of the tree at 37–41; see also Versnal, H.S., ‘The festival for Bona Dea and the Thesmophoria’, G&R 39 (1992), 31–55Google Scholar, at 35; Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘Alcaeus fr. 130 B, 1–2 Voigt’, ZPE 108 (1995), 35–7Google Scholar.

21 Cf. Plin. HN 24.59 Graeci lygon uocant, alias agnon, quoniam matronae Thesmophoriis Atheniensium castitatem custodientes his foliis cubitus sibi sterunt, ‘the Greeks call it (the uitex) lygos, otherwise agnos, because the wives of the Athenians, guarding their chastity at the Thesmophoria, spread its leaves on their beds’.

22 Thus rightly Pavese, C.O., ‘δαλιοχός e δάλλω’, Glotta 72 (1994), 75–81Google Scholar. For the formation as ὀχέω, cf. ὀχέωνται at Aratus, Phaen. 1070. Whether the formal source of ὀχεύω is ἐχώ < *seĝh– or ἐχώ < *ṷegh– is debated, although it seems evident that the semantic range of both ὀχεύω and ὀχέω have fallen together under the influence of the highly productive ἐχώ < *seĝh–.

23 Similarly, βαίνω, a word usually reserved for animal copulation, can also be used of humans (cf. Henderson [n. 1], 155; for the compound εἰσαναβαίνω, see Watkins, C., ‘The golden bowl: thoughts on the New Sappho and its Asianic background’, ClAnt 26 [2002], 305–25Google Scholar, at 311–15). Pollux, in his extensive list of verbs of sexual congress at 5.92–3, lists both ὀχεύω and βαίνω under the heading of τὸ μίγνυσθαι ἐπὶ τῶν ἀλόγων, ‘copulation amongst animals’.

24 I assume a derivation from *delh 1–, ‘split, cleave’, cognate with Latin dolēre; cf. Frisk (n. 13), s.v. δηλέομαι and Hackstein, O., Die Sprachform der homerischen Epen (Wiesbaden, 2002), 219–20Google Scholar (the first laryngeal, and thus the connection with dolēre, is suggested by the reflex δάλερος discussed in n. 25). Pavese (n. 22) tries to connect δαλι– with θάλλω < *dhalh 1– (or *dheh 2lH– for those who do not believe in PIE *a), ‘grow, flourish’. The semantic connection is unproblematic, given the root's connections with fertility and fecundity. However, *dh– invariably yields the voiceless aspirate θ in Greek, and thus Pavese (n. 22), observing the Albanian reflex dal, must postulate a borrowing scenario from Illyrian or Macedonian. Pavese (n. 22) also tries to connect the lemma δάλλω in Hesychius (δ 160 Latte), glossed ἡ ἀπόπληκτος. οἱ δὲ τὴν ἔξωρον παρθένον, ἢ γυναῖκα πρεσβυτέραν, ὅταν συμπαίζηι ταῖς παρθένοις. ὑπερῆλιξ (‘a senseless/crippled woman; otherwise an unmarried woman past her prime, or an older woman, when she frolics around with young girls; past his/her prime’; for the image cf. Anaxandrides, fr. 67 K.–A. ὑπερήμεροί μοι τῶν γάμων αἱ παρθένοι, ‘my daughters are past their prime for marriage’). Hesychius’ glosses, however, unambiguously support the connection with δαλός, ‘ember’, < δαίω.

25 Cf. φρενοδαλής, ‘mind-destroying’, at Aesch. Eum. 330 and πανδάλητος, ‘completely ruined’, at Hipponax, fr. 4 IEG 2, for which see Masson, O., Les fragments du poète Hipponax (Paris, 1962)Google Scholar, ad loc. Following Pavese (n. 22), we likely have a Caland-like formation in δαλιοχός (the Caland system is a complex set of rules governing IE nominal derivation in which, most basically, adjectives with a suffix in *–ro– substitute an *–i– when forming the first member of compounds, and an *–es– when forming the second member of compounds; cf. e.g. κυδρός ~ κυδιάνειρα ~ ἐρικυδής; see generally Rau, J., Indo-European Nominal Morphology: The Decads and the Caland System [Innsbruck, 2009], 65–186Google Scholar). Compare δαλιοχός with φρενοδαλής in Aesch. Eum. 330 (above). This would presuppose a form with a –ρο– suffix, e.g. δάλερος. Happily, such a form is attested as a hapax in the MSS of a fragment of Empedocles quoted at Plut. Quaest. conv. 663A = 31 B 90.2 DK = D 68 Laks and Most, although in the text of DK and Laks and Most the word has been replaced by Diels's conjecture *δαερός (unattested). This is unnecessary. Far more likely is that δάλερος, a cognate of δηλέομαι, has converged with the many cognates of δαίω that contain a –lo– suffix (e.g. δαλός, ‘ember’), a convergence facilitated by the complementary senses of ‘destructive’ and ‘burning’. The short –ᾰ– in φρενοδᾰλής and δᾰ́λερος (both guaranteed by metre), and likely in πανδάλητος and δαλιοχός, is readily explained via a zero grade *dl̥h 1–V– of the root *delh 1–; cf. Hackstein (n. 24), 219–20, who suggests that the long –ᾱ– (η) of δηλέομαι is a secondary development within Greek. (More precisely, the short –ᾰ– in δᾰ́λερος specifically is likely analogical with predicted Caland formations in *–i–, as well as with possible verbal formations such as *dl̥h 1–ei̯e/ o– [cf. καλέω < *kl̥h 1– ei̯e/ o–], as the predicted outcome of a Caland form *dl̥h 1–ro– would be ×dlē–ro– [cf. λῆνος < *ṷl̥h 2–neh 2–; κλητός < *kl̥h 1–to–]). For the compound noun formed from two underlying verbal roots, cf. e.g. Homeric ὀλοοίτροχος, ‘a roller, a rolling rock’, with the first member either cognate with εἴλεω < *ṷel– (i.e. *ṷel– 2 in LIV), or from ὀλοός < *h 3elh1–ṷo– (see G.P. Shipp, Studies in the Language of Homer 2 [Cambridge, 1972], 122–3 and Janko on Il. 13.136–8), and the second element deverbative from τρέχω. The agent noun δαλιοχός is rightly accented on the ultima; cf. τόμος, ‘a cutting’ (nomina actionis) / τομός, ‘a cutter’ (nomina agentis).

26 Pederasty is a common element in comedy of all periods, and requires no comment here. Incest was one of the taboos that even comedy did not revel in portraying too much, yet it is referenced for one effect or another in all periods of Attic comedy. Strepsiades expresses horror at Euripides’ depiction of incest in the Aeolus (Nub. 1371–6; cf. Aeschylus’ words at Ran. 1194 with Dover), while the subject is glossed over at Vesp. 1178. Niceratus adduces incest as amongst the worst sexual crimes at Men. Sam. 495–7. Teleclides, fr. 52 παιδοφίλης παιδέρως Ζεύς is presumably a reference to Zeus's rape of Ganymede. Cratinus, fr. 311 describes incest in language strikingly similar to Hesychius’ glossing of δαλιοχεῖν: ‘to lie down with one's father’, συγκαθεύδειν τῶι πατρί. See further D. Clay, ‘Unspeakable words in Greek tragedy’, AJPh 103 (1982), 277–98.

27 See, above all else, Colvin, S., Dialect in Aristophanes (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar, as well as Arnott and Hunter on the passages from Alexis and Eubulus cited immediately below.

28 For dialect and non-Athenian speech in the fragmentary poets of Old Comedy, see Colvin, S., ‘The language of non-Athenians in Old Comedy’, in Harvey, D. and Wilkins, J. (edd.), The Rivals of Aristophanes (London, 2000), 285–98Google Scholar.

29 Though in this case somewhat unsuccessfully. In καὶ λεπαστά μ’ ἁδύοινος εὐφρανεῖ δι’ ἁμέρας (‘a limpet-cup of sweet wine will cheer me through the day’) we might expect ϝαδύϝοινος (μ’ ἁδύ– guaranteed by metre; for ϝ– < *sw– in Cretan cf. ϝέκαστος < *swe–kn̥– and ϝός < *swo– in the Gortyn Law Code, IC IV 123–71, and see Bile, M., Le dialecte crétois ancien [Paris, 1988], 113–15Google Scholar) and ἀμέρας. The dialect is neither Cretan nor Laconian, and might reflect only the sort of Doric colouring found in choral lyric. Another instance of indeterminate Doric occurs at Philyllius, fr. 10.

30 A regular feature of Syllabic Cypriot, e.g. po–to–li–(se/ne/wi) in the Idalion Bronze, no. 217 in Masson, O., Les inscriptions chypriote syllabiques (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar; see Egetmeyer, M., Le dialecte grec ancien de Chypre (Berlin and New York, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 1.199, §217.

31 Cf. Colvin (n. 28), 291 on τρηχύς at Eupolis, fr. 341 and Ar. Pax 1086; Millis, B.W., Anaxandrides: Introduction, Translation, Commentary (Fragmenta Comica Bd. 17) (Heidelberg, 2015)Google Scholar, on fr. 45 suspects epic parody here. Note that καὶ in the grammarians and scholia is often used simply to introduce a quotation or an author's name, and thus there is likely no copulative sense in κεῖται δὲ καὶ παρὰ κωμικῶι Ἀναξανδρίδηι.

32 It should also be noted that there are no non-Athenians in Old Comedy who do not speak in a regional dialect.

33 On the inscription generally, see Cassio, A., ‘I distici del polyandrion di Ambracia e l’“io anonimo” nell'epigramma greco’, SMEA 33 (1994), 101–17Google Scholar; Athanassoudi, I., ‘Du bon usage d'un texte poétique par le dialectologue: le cas des distiques du polyandrion’, Verbum 18 (1995/1996 [1997]), 217–25Google Scholar; del Bario Vega, M.L., ‘Observaciones lingüísticas sobre el polyandrion de Ambracia’, in Gabaudan, F. Cortés and Dosuna, J.V. Méndez (edd.), Dic mihi, Musa, uirum. Homenaje al Profesor Antonio López Eire (Salamanca, 2010), 47–54Google Scholar. The communis opinio is that the dialect is essentially Corinthian, although most Corinthianisms are graphic (e.g. use of a distinct grapheme [commonly transliterated as E] to represent the monophthongization of the diphthong *ey, and AE to represent *ay [καΕ and πολῖταΕ in line 9, and κατέχΕ for κατέχει in line 8]; cf. Athanassoudi [this note], 220–2). The ‘mild’ Doric of Corinthian is closer to the literary Doric of Stesichorus and Pindar than Laconian or Cretan is, and—graphic representation aside—there is nothing in the polyandrion inscription that could not be found in Doric lyric.

34 Note for example that Pindar will use both ξένος and ξεῖνος metri causa.

35 An instructive comparandum is CEG 145, a roughly contemporary funerary verse inscription from the nearby Corinthian colony of Corcyra, in which we find such non-epichoric forms as ἐπ’ Ἀράθθοιο ρhοϝαῖσι (a-stem dat. pl. in –αισι[ν] are alien to Corinthian and Doric generally), as well as plentiful digammas in e.g. στονόϝεσσαν ἀϝυτάν. Another Corcyran inscription of the mid sixth century, SEG 146, provides us with Ξενϝάρεος.

36 The handbooks are not overly consistent with respect to the status of wau in Saronic, and the older ones tend not to differentiate between inscriptions from the colonies and inscriptions from the mother city. Thus for Corinthian Buck (n. 4), 164 states that digamma is retained in early inscriptions in all positions; Schmidt (n. 4), 38 implies retention in initial position, with hεκατεροι in a late sixth-century inscription from Selinous as an exception; most recently, Colvin (n. 4), 45 records that it is lost early in Corinthian, with the exception of post-consonantal digamma, while he notes its retention in initial position in fifth-century Corinthian inscriptions from Corcyra (Colvin [n. 4], 144) and in Megarian from Selinous (Colvin [n. 4], 147).

37 See Colvin, S., ‘Aristophanes: dialect and textual criticism’, Mnemosyne 48 (1995), 34–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 41–2. At 156, Attic παριδών would not fit the metre. The question of the interpretation of the manuscript evidence for dialect forms that are not guaranteed by metre is of course a complex one, for which see again Colvin (this note).

38 Or ‘On the Dialect’, Περὶ τῆς Ἑλλήνων διαλέκτου καὶ Ἀργείων καὶ Ἱμεραίων καὶ Ῥηγίνων καὶ Δωριέων καὶ Συρακουσίων at τ 1115 Adler.

39 Hainsworth (n. 2), 74.

40 Cf. Hainsworth (n. 2), 71.

41 Cf. e.g. Etym. Magn. 391.12 on the Argive historian Derkyllus (FGrHist 288), who evidently represented the loss of intervocalic /s/ (an areal feature in Argolic and Laconian) in his work (ὡς ἐπὶ τοῦ ποιῆσαι ποιῆἁι κ.τ.λ. κέχρηται τούτωι τῶι εἴδει τῆς δασείας καὶ Δέρκυλλος, ‘for example, ποιῆἁι in place of ποιῆσαι, etc.; Derkyllus uses this type of aspiration’). We may doubt, however, that this was a regular feature of his prose style, but was rather noted in passing in his Argolica. See generally Cassio, A.C., ‘Storiografia locale di Argo e dorico letterario: Agia, Dercillo, e il Pap. Soc. Ital. 1091’, RFIC 117 (1989), 257–75Google Scholar.