Dicaeopolis brushes the informer aside and closes his deal with the starving Megarian:

Even before Douglas Olson's thorough study of the tradition in his commentary on Acharnians (Oxford, 2002) it was clear that the oldest manuscript, R, has as much weight as the agreement of the others that editors report. In 833 it reads πολυπραγμοσύνη, the others –σύνης. A scholion runs λείπει (δὲ) τὸ ἕνεκα, (ἵνα ᾖ) ἕνεκα τῆς πολυπραγμοσύνης (‘because of is not expressed, [to make it] because of the meddling’), plainly written for a text that had –σύνης, which is also the lemma in one manuscript; the lemma in the other that has one is –σύνῃσιν.Footnote ¹ It has not been shown, however, either that this scholion is ancient or that its agreement with all the manuscripts but R overrides the testimony of R. As regards attestation, therefore, the tradition offers two readings of equal weight, or three if –σύνῃσιν is taken to be a relic of a text different from the one that prompted the scholion.Footnote ²

J. van Leeuwen, in his edition of the play (Leiden, 1901), observed of –σύνη and –σύνης that in utraque lectione aegre desideratur articulus, and A. Willems expressed the point more strongly: ‘L'article manque devant πολυπραγμοσύνη, ce qui rend la phrase inintelligible.’Footnote ³ It led him to propose replacing –σύνης νυν, attested by ‘la plupart des manuscrits’,Footnote ⁴ with –σύνη ᾽στιν; ‘paléographiquement, le changement de σνυν en στιν est insignifiant’. This conjecture remedies the absence of the article by making πολυπραγμοσύνη the complement of ᾽στιν, and in support he adduced καταπυγοσύνη ταῦτ᾽ ἐστιν from a fragment of Aristophanes (now PCG III 2 fr. 128.3). V. Coulon in the Budé edition (1923) accepted the conjecture.

Objecting that nothing fit to be called πολυπραγμοσύνη has come to pass, Denys Page emended it.Footnote ⁵ Here is his text, with his translation of 832–3 χαῖρε … ἐμοί:

Nevertheless, Kenneth Dover spoke up for πολυπραγμοσύνη,Footnote ⁶ and editors go on printing it. Like Dover, Jeffrey Henderson in the new Loeb edition (vol. 1, 1998) and Douglas Olson accept πολυπραγμοσύνη νυν, but Alan Sommerstein (Warminster, 1980) and Nigel Wilson in the new Oxford text (2007) follow Willems, though Sommerstein takes the conjecture as a question. Only Wilson mentions πολυχαρμοσύνη, which he puts in his apparatus and judges ‘clever’.Footnote ⁷

Walter Lapini now reiterates at length Page's objection to πολυπραγμοσύνη.Footnote ⁸ Though he observes that Page should have written πολυχαρμοσύνα, he finds the conjecture plausible. His own solution, however, which he defensively calls ‘nothing more than a hypothesis’, is to follow Willems but move 833 so that the remark about meddling comes from the informer:

As Lapini just paraphrases 833, the translation is mine. Quite apart from making two changes, however, this ‘hypothesis’ leaves ἐς κεϕαλὴν τράποιτ’ ἐμοί baffling and spoils the repartee by separating οὐ γὰρ ϕανῶ; from ϕαίνεις.

Page's objection is indeed unanswerable, but his conjecture has a drawback: in spite of rejecting –σύνη ᾽στιν, he omitted νῦν from his translation, and it blunts the edge of ἀλλ’ ἁμὶν οὐκ ἐπιχώριον. True as it is that the Megarians are ‘now’ in a sorry plight, that point was made in 535 and is amply conveyed by the present encounter as a whole; and nowhere else in Aristophanes is anything that a speaker dubs ἐπιχώριον a merely passing trait (cf. Clouds 1173; Wasps 859; Wealth 47, 342).Footnote ⁹ Accept πολυχαρμοσύνη but apportion the dialogue as follows:Footnote ¹⁰

The comedies are full of imperatives accompanied by νυν, and it accompanies an optative at Wasps 758, Lysistrata 285, 531, and Frogs 177. Olson's rendering ‘in that case’ is appropriate here, but ‘then’ would serve equally well. The nonce-word πολυχαρμοσύνη invited corruption to the everyday word πολυπραγμοσύνη, and it suits Dicaeopolis, who in his opening speech is given another from the same root: ϕέρ᾽ ἴδω, τί δ᾽ ἥσθην ἄξιον χαιρηδόνος; – the subject of the first discussion in a much cited monograph.Footnote ¹¹