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SCHOL. SOPH. OT 1025 AND ITS POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTION TO SOPHOCLES' TEXT*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2016

Federico Condello
Federico Condello*
Affiliation:
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
*
[email protected]
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Extract

At line 1025 of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus,

      σὺ δ᾽ ἐμπολήσας ἢ τεκών μ᾽ αὐτῷ δίδως;,
our hero seems victim of some serious ‘obtuseness of understanding’, because the Corinthian to whom Oedipus is speaking has already clearly denied being the father of the foundling (line 1020 ἀλλ᾽ οὔ σ᾽ ἐγείνατ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἐκεῖνος [sc. Polybus] οὔτ᾽ ἐγώ, ‘well, neither he nor I begot you’). Is Oedipus in such a state of mental confusion? Perhaps his supposed ‘obtuseness of understanding’ depends on his permanent hallucination? Maybe the same hallucination that keeps him from understanding the explicit prophecies of Teiresias (lines 408–25, 447–62) or drawing obvious conclusions from the revelation of Jocasta (lines 707–25). If so, the text requires no correction, and Sophocles' strategy is to show, through this and similar clues, the basic weakness of the protagonist, who proves to be nothing but a puppet in the hands of the gods.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 395 - 398
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank all those who have read and discussed with me a first draft of this note: Lowell Edmunds, Massimo Magnani, Enrico Magnelli, Andrea Rotstein, Renzo Tosi.

References

1 ‘Did you buy me or generate me before you gave me to him?’. Hereafter, English translations are from H. Lloyd-Jones, Sophocles. Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus (Cambridge and London, 1994), with some changes when needed (here, for example, ‘generate’ instead of ‘find’).

2 So J.C. Kamerbeek, The Plays of Sophocles. Commentaries, vol. 4. The Oedipus Tyrannus (Leiden, 1967), 198.

3 See in particular, after Kamerbeek, Dietz, H., ‘Notes on Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone ’, RCCM 16 (1974), 281–8Google Scholar, at 285–6; T. Halter, König Oedipus. Von Sophocles zu Cocteau (Stuttgart, 1998), 104 n. 6; J. Bollack, L'Oedipe roi de Sophocle. Le texte et ses interpretations (Lille, 1990), 1.258–9 and 3.654–7; O. Longo, Sofocle Edipo re (trans. M.G. Ciani) (Venice 2007), 66–7 and 254 (not so in the first edition of his commentary, Sofocle Edipo re [Florence,  1972], 219–20); before Kamerbeek, the staunchest defenders of the transmitted text were L. Campbell, Sophocles The Plays and Fragments (Oxford, 18792), 220 (see also id., Paralipomena Sophoclea. Supplementary Notes on the Text and Interpretation of Sophocles [London, 1907], 109); E. Bruhn, Oedipus Tyrannos, vol. 2 of  F.W. Schneidewin, A. Nauck (edd.), Sophokles (Berlin, 191011), 158; J.T. Sheppard, The Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1920), 160; B.M.W. Knox, Oedipus at Thebes. Sophocles' Tragic Hero and His Time (New Haven, CT, 1957), 180 and 262–3. A cautious explanation of the text was proposed by G. Hermann (Sophoclis tragoediae septem [London, 18272], 1.255: ‘videtur hoc ita explicandum esse, ut putemus Oedipum non ad verba nuncii, sed ad mentem attendisse’), who five years later changed his mind and judged the text surely corrupt (cf. Sophoclis Oedipus rex [Leipzig, 1833], 187). A psychological explication of Oedipus' incredulity (but in relation to Laius only) is offered by the ancient scholia: see below, n. 14. This does not prove anything about line 1025, because Oedipus has already called the Corinthian ὁ μηδείς (1019), that is ‘in itself “a mere nobody”, but in the context “someone totally unrelated”, like οὐδὲν ἐν γένει (1016)’ (R.D. Dawe, Sophocles Oedipus Rex [Cambridge 20062], 160).

4 So explicitly J. Diggle, in a review of Kamerbeek (n. 2), CR 19 (1969), 150–3, at 151.

5 See H. Lloyd-Jones and N.G. Wilson, Sophoclis fabulae (Oxford, 1990); R.D. Dawe, Sophocles Oedipus rex (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 19963). Before them, see e.g. R.C. Jebb, Sophocles The Plays and Fragments, vol. 1. The Oedipus Tyrannus (Cambridge 18933), 136. The correction τυχών is now accepted by B. Manuwald, Sophokles. König Ödipus (Berlin, 2012), 216.

6 The attribution of the correction was dubious for F.H.M. Blaydes, Sophocles (London, 1859), 1.141; the names of Bothe and Foertsch are mentioned together by F. Ritter, Sophokles' König Oidipus (Leipzig, 1870), 87–8 and by Jebb (n. 5), LX and 136, ad loc.; so again in the first and second Teubner editions by Dawe ([Leipzig, 1975], 1.162; [Leipzig, 19842], 1.135), while only Bothe's name survives in the third and last revision. Bothe was unquestionably the first to propose the emendation τυχών (see F.H. Bothe, Sophoclis Oedipus rex [Leipzig, 1826], 83), but Foertsch, as it seems, came independently to the same conclusion in a brief excursus in his Observationes criticae in Lysiae orationes (Leipzig, 1829), 12–13. The editor who credits the silence of Foertsch as proof of independence has to record his name in the apparatus.

7 The norm is respected even when the question is not asked by Oedipus: see Jocasta at line 704 αὐτὸς ξυνειδὼς ἢ μαθὼν ἄλλου πάρα;. An exhaustive examination of the disjunctive interrogations in Sophocles (see Aj. 265–7, 543; Ant. 315, 497, 534, 632–4, 1176; El. 310–11; OC 66, 588, 960–1, 993–4; Trach. 187, 239, 342–3; Phil. 563, 1384) demonstrates that no other tragedy shows a comparable regularity.

8 In fact, a case exists in which the answer given to Oedipus is not a clear choice between the two alternatives he previously posed: see lines 750–1 πότερον ἐχώρει βαιός, ἢ πολλοὺς ἔχων | ἄνδρας λοχίτας, οἷ᾽ ἀνὴρ ἀρχηγέτης;, with Jocasta's reply at lines 752–3. I have offered elsewhere an examination of all the internal reasons that argue in favour of the correction τυχών: see Condello, F., ‘Sul testo di Soph. OT 1025, con alcune osservazioni sul Lapsus di Timpanaro’, Sileno 39 (2013), 59–96 Google Scholar.

9 On the tradition of the scholia vetera, see the exhaustive introduction by G.A. Xenis in his Scholia vetera in Sophoclis Electram (Berlin and New York, 2010), 13–100. Waiting for Xenis's volume devoted to the Oedipus Tyrannus, we still depend on the largely unsatisfactory edition by P.N. Papageorgiou, Scholia in Sophoclis tragoedias vetera (Leipzig, 1888).

10 See Marco, V. De, ‘Sulla tradizione manoscritta degli scolii sofoclei’, SIFC 13 (1936), 3–44 Google Scholar and id., De scholiis in Sophoclis tragoedias veteribus (Rome, 1937), 109–19 and 155 for our passage. We also know of an abridged form of the scholium, like the one in H (Laur. Plut. 32.40, fol. 64r), placed in the interlinea: ἀγοράσας ἢ εὑρών.

11 Namely ἐμπολήσας] πωλήσας· κερδήσας Xr. τεκών] καὶ γεννήσας Xr. (Max. Plan. p. 150 Longo) and ἐμπολήσας] κερδίσας ποθέν (Th. Mag. p. 240 Longo). The equivalence given for ἐμπολήσας is a standard one: see e.g. schol. Ar. Pax 563a (p. 90 Holw.) or schol. Od. 15.456 (p. 619 Dind.).

12 Let us remember that the formula δηλοῖ δὲ ἡ λέξις καὶ (uel similia) is not rarely employed to enlarge the semantic spectrum of a word which is the target of a comment, in order to include the greatest number of its virtual meanings, whether relevant or not for the specific context of use. A good example is schol. Gen. Il. 10.430 (II, p. 109 N.) ἀγέρωχοι] σημείωσαι πόσα σημαίνει ἀγέρωχος· αὐθάδης, θρασύς, ἔστι δὲ ὅτε δηλοῖ ἡ λέξις καὶ τοὺς ἄγαν ἀνδρείους καὶ ἰταμούς, παρὰ τὸ ἄγαν αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τοῦ γέρως ὀχεῖσθαι. See also e.g. schol. Il. 2.99b (I, p. 198 E.), schol. Soph. Aj. 220 (p. 23 Pap.), schol. Eur. Hipp. 93 (I, p. 18 Schw.), Eust. ad Il. 9.541 (II, p. 799 V.), etc. But here, in our scholium, the supposed synonymy between ἐμπολήσας and εὑρών is very strange, and only the present context of use could have inspired the scholiast.

13 This form of conflatio occurs very often in L: see De Marco (n. 10 [1936]), 13 and 22–7; id. (n. 10 [1937]), 109. For the phenomenon, see also Xenis (n. 9), 21 and 27, and e.g. J.G. Kamerbeek, The Plays of Sophocles. Commentaries, vol. I. Aiax (Leiden, 1953), 102 (on line 464), with Casali, C., ‘ Schol. in Soph. Ai. 464’, Giornale Filologico Ferrarese 12 (1989), 37–8Google Scholar. Other instructive examples in Jones, D. Mervyn, ‘Notes on the scholia to Aristophanes, Knights ’, CQ 6 (1956), 157–60Google Scholar, at 157. For these and similar phenomena, see in general R. Tosi, Studi sulla tradizione indiretta dei classici greci (Bologna, 1988), 59–86.

14 A further detail can be underlined. It should be noted that the ancient commentators are extraordinarily sensitive to Oedipus' utterances seemly inspired by strong emotions. So, at line 1019, Oedipus calls Laius ὁ φύσας, even though the Corinthian has already stated that Laius is not Oedipus' father (lines 1015–18); the scholium ad loc. (p. 201 Pap.) observes: ἴδιον τῶν ἐν παραδόξοις ἀκούσμασι τὸ αὐτὸ πολλάκις ἐπερωτᾶν (an even broader formulation is in MR, where is added: ἤδη γὰρ οὗτος ἔφη ἀλλ᾿ οὐ σ᾿ ἐγείνατο [p. 155 De Marco]; cf. n. 3). It is therefore strange that the stronger contradiction represented by τεκών deserves no observation at all. But this, of course, is simply an argument ex silentio.