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Some Emendations to the Family Tree of Isokrates
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
There is no hint in either work that any of the information contained in this reconstruction of family relationships might be open to serious question. It is the purpose of this note to suggest that this is none the less the case.
The problem concerns the supposed wives and children of Isokratesü adoptive son Aphareus. The information presented on this subject depends on two passages of the pseudo-Plutarchan Vitae Decem Oratorum. The first (838B/C) is a list of members of the family buried in Kynosarges, which mentions Isokratesü
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1980
References
1 Berlin, 1901 and Oxford, 1971 respectively.
2 The second name is correct. See below, pp. 301 ff.
3 Viz: a = Cod. Ambros. 839 (alias C 126 inf.); A = Cod. Paris, 1671; E = Cod. Paris. 1672; γ = Cod. Vat. Gr. 139. On the MS tradition see C. G. Lowe, The MS Tradition of Pseudo-Plutarchüs Vitae Decem Oratorum (= University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature IX, 4, Urbana, 1927). The MS readings in the text derive from my own examination of photographs of aAEγ, obtained with financial assistance from the Univ. of Liverpool Research Fund, for which I am most grateful. (I have corrected accentuation where necessary). It will be noticed that in both the passages I discuss the apparatus criticus in the Teubner edition of Mau, J. (Plutarchi Moralia V.2, 1 (Leipzig, 1971)) gives a false impression of the paradosis. (a) at 838 C (line 6) Mau prints üAvalcotic ink without noting that this reading is only in E; (b) at 839D (line 4) he allows the reader to assume that is in all MSS, whereas it is in fact in none. A cursory glance at other parts of the Vitae Decem Oratorum suggests that these are not the only occasions on which the Teubner apparatus is deficient. However, a full investigation of the matter would be inappropriate here. (Unfortunately, no full-length review of the volume seems to have appeared).Google Scholar
4 With the help of Reiskeüs for in 1 and Wolfüs for in 5. The motherüs name should probably be Nalco (cf. codd. at 839D, PA 10518). ’Anako’ does not occur elsewhere.
5 Thus Wyttenbach, D., Plutarchi … Moralia V (Oxford, 1797),Google ScholarBernardakis, G.N.Plutarchi Moralia V (Leipzig, 1893),Google ScholarFowler, H.N., Plutarchüs Moralia X (London/ Harvard, 1936),Google ScholarMatthieu, G./Bremond, E., Isocrate: Discours I2 (Paris, 1956), pp. xxvii–xxxii; Mau, op. cit. (n. 3).Google Scholar
6 Fowler and Mau however print the MS text without comment.
7 Cf. … just above.
8 Fowler, however, prints the MS text, and translates it, without noticing any difficulty.
9 Thus e.g. Wyttenbach, Dübner, Plutarchi Scripta Moralia … (Paris, 1841), Westermann, : Vitarum scriptores Graeci Minores (Brunswick, 1845), Mau.
10 Thus e.g. Bernardakis, Matthieu/ Brémond.
11 surely belongs to that list.
12 As the collocation suggests, since it is of Isokrates that it is established that his father was Theodorus and his wife Plathane.
13 Ps.-Plut. 838A, 839B; Harpocr. s.v. Zosimos, Vit. Isocr. 253 f. (in Westermann, op. cit. (n. 9)).
14 These objections apply also to B. Snellüs solution (in Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, I (Göttingen, 1971), 73T2), the deletion of just ü.
15 Notice that in the case of nearly all the other people in the list names as well as relationship to Isokrates are given. The exception is Isokratesü mother; she, how ever, unlike the grandsons on the Kirchner/Davies hypothesis, is not named anywhere in the Vita. Ofenloch, however, proposed , (cf. PA 6398) for in 838B, which would give names to all the individuals in the Kynosarges list.
16 The meagre information bearing on the date of the adoption and the birth of the children in Ps.-Plut. 838A, Isoc. Epist. 8.1 does not exclude this possibility.
17 Thus also the translation in Matthieu/ Brémond, which, however, does not correspond to their Greek text.
18 Hermes 30, 1895, 204.
19 Professor Davies writes (letter, 6.4.78) ’to extract Nako as subject of out of … does not seem to run very easily’. But it is surely easier than the alternative. He goes on to suggest that the text or substance of the -sentence may be very much more disturbed and that it might be ’predicated of a late fourth century member of the family’, implying either a major lacuna before or some very considerable confusion in the mind of the author of the Vita. If this were correct it would, of course, mean that the sentence had no relevance to 838B/C.
20 Or perhaps something more drastic, e.g. that … belongs in a quite different context (perhaps 838D, an earlier passage about statues). There would then be no guarantee that … was not part of the section to be transposed.
21 Neither author, however, points out the necessity of such an expedient. Keil (op. cit. (n. 18), 204 n. 2) considered but rejected the possibility.
22 This is reasonable enough, whether or not one reads with Bernardakis, Fowler, Matthieu/Bremond.
23 loc. cit.
24 Consideration of this possibility was prompted by a comment of Professor Daviesüs.
35 This is the only ex. in Pape-Benselerüs Lexicon (Brunswick, 1863) and I have found nothing further in the existing files of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (on that project see Fraser, P. M. in Tribute to an Antiquary: Essays presented to Marc Fitch (London, 1976), pp. 73 f.).Google Scholar
26 PA 8697 (and cf. 8698). For the emendation, see Keil (loc. cit.), Mau.
27 Alexandros Mylleou (PA 526) is excluded as being by origin a Macedonian from Beroia (was he perhaps a relative of Alexanderüs naval commander Mylleas Zoilou of Beroia (Arr. Ind. 18)?). The origin of the Alexandros in IG ii2 116141 (mid-fourth cent.) cannot be established.
28 Hyper. 3, 12 = PA 512.
29 SEG xxiv.162, line 164.
38 SEG xxi.897. The same name, patronym, and deme should probably be restored in IG ii2 1626, 9–10 (naval list, c.330).
31 PA 495.
32 See below, n. 38.
33 IG ii2 1611, 328; 1612, 202–7; 1613, 211 (357/6, 356/5, and 353/2 respectively).
34 Lyc. In Leocr. 22–4.
35 The hero of Polyaen. 6,10 (set in the 390s) was probably Spartan (ForaIla, P., Prosopographie der Lakedaimonier (Breslau, 1913) s.v.), the Alexandros killed by Argives in 370/69 (Diod. 15.64) certainly so. The latter was probably a commander and old enough to have been born in the fifth century.Google Scholar
36 1G 112 7000.
37 Excluding the husband of Nako and the father of Alexandros Alexiou of Oios (and assuming the latter to be identical with PA 529 in accordance with the restoration mentioned in n. 30) only three examples appear: the archon of 405/4 (PA 528); an Erechtheid casualty in 459/8 (1G i2 929 (= ML 33), line 85); Alexias of Euonymos, father of an Erechtheid bouleutes of 367/6 (Hesperia 11(1942), 233, line 12).
38 Thus A. N. Oikonomides, (1958), 73. If the restoration mentioned in n. 30, also due to Oikonomides, is correct, then, given the date of that inscription, the identification of Alexandros Alexiou of Oios and the Alexandros of Oios in Hyper. 3,12 seems perfectly reasonable.
39 Further Alexandroi from Oios appear in a Hellenistic inscription copied by Cyriacus of Ancona (SEG xxi.639).
40 Thanks are due to R. J. Seager and J. K. Davies for comments on an earlier draft of this note, and to M. J. Osborne for the provision of prosopographical information from the files of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.