Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T13:19:31.057Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Notes on the epic poems of Statius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. S. Watt
W. S. Watt
Affiliation:
Aberdeen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

At their first meeting Polynices and Tydeus come to blows. They are reconciled by Adrastus, who expresses the hope that their quarrel will lead to loyal friendship between them, as it did.

Esse pro fuisse dixit, says Lactantius, more ingenuously than Klotz, who tries to make the same thing more palatable by saying esse est pro imperfecti quodammodo infinitiuo. Some have taken the accusative and infinitive to be a general statement, but Heuvel is clearly right in saying that it is Tydeus and Polynices whom the poet has in mind. The most favoured solution has been Grater's conjecture isse, but (as Helm says) that produces an unnatural expression (the passages adduced by Mueller are not parallels); Mozley renders it by ‘grew’, thereby translating not what stands in his text but what ought perhaps to stand there, namely <cr>esse, a conjecture of Gil, which has been almost entirely overlooked. This contracted form is found in extant literature only at Lucretius 3.683 and (concresse) Ovid, Met. 7.416 (at 3.200 Statius flesse). The first letters of a line are particularly liable to omission; despite Hill, I do not find it at all surprising that at 1.544 perseus lost its first letter and the remnant became aureus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , December 2000 , pp. 516 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The following editions are referred to: Delphin (London, 1824); Nisard (with French trans. by Arnould and Wartel, Paris, 1865); O. Mueller (Books 1–6, Leipzig, 1870);Garrod, H. W.(OCT, 1906); A. Klotz (Leipzig, 1908); J. H. Mozley (Loeb edition, 1928); H. Heuvel (Book 1, Zutphen, 1932); H. M. Mulder (Book 2, Groningen, 1954); R. D. Williams (Book 10, Leiden, 1972); D. E. Hill (Leiden, 1983); R. Lesueur (Bude edition, Paris, 1990–4); J. J. L. Smolenaars (Book 7, I Leiden, 1994). I am very grateful to Professor J. Delz for his comments.Google Scholar

2 For example,Helm, R., Lustrum 1 (1956), 275.Google Scholar

3 Gil, J., Emerita 35 (1967), 105.Google Scholar

4 Hall, J. B., ICS 17 (1992), 57–77Google Scholar, at 70.

5 Damsté, P. H., Mnem 36 (1908), 381.Google Scholar

6 Hall, J. B., ICS 17 (1992), 287–99Google Scholar, at 292.

7 Delz, J., Hermes 111 (1983), 381ff.Google Scholar

8 Hall (n. 6), 295.

9 Meurig Davies, E. L. B., CQ 44 (1950), 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Hall (n. 4), 76.

11 Watt, W. S., BICS 31 (1984), 160.Google Scholar

12 Eden, P. T., Mnem 47 (1994), 234–5.Google Scholar

13 Helm (n. 2), 296.

14 Zwierlein, O., RhM 131 (1988), 74Google Scholar, n.12

15 Delz, J., MH 32 (1975), 155Google Scholar, n. 1.

16 The following separate editions are referred to: M. R. J. Brinkgreve (Rotterdam, 1913); O. A. W. Dilke (Cambridge, 1954).

17 Browning, R., CR 5 (1955), 252.Google Scholar