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Mnasalces: Notes and Queries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2009

A. S. F. Gow
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge

Abstract

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Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1956

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References

page 91 note 1 A.P. iv. i. 29.

page 91 note 2 A.P. vii. 437.

page 91 note 3 Cf. R.E. xviii. 1. 1175.

page 91 note 4 Before leaving Oropus I remark (whether relevantly or not I have no idea) mat I.G. vii. 395 is an honorific inscription from the Amphiareum at Oropus on the Euripus in favour of Μνασάλκης Μνασίππου σικυώνιος, and Wilhelm (Sitz. Wien Ak. 179. 6, p. 3) plausibly supposed it to relate to the epigrammatist, who is known to have been a Sicyonian. Cf. Wilamowitz, Hell. Dicht. i. 138.

page 92 note 1 Ἄδε is the accentuation in Suidas; P hasἁδε, which Brunck retained in the erroneous belief that it was Doric for ὡδε.

page 92 note 2 Ἄργιλος does not occur in connexion with pottery, but this may well be an accident for the word is rare and the Lat. argilla is frequently so used.

page 92 note 3 A.P. vii. 203, 199, 211, Cat. 3. 11. For other pets in Hades see, e.g., A.P. vii. 190, 213, 364, ix. 432, Mart. xi. 69; for other animals Theocr. 4. 26, 25. 271. The road taken by humans is called εὐρώεντα κέλευθα by Homer (Od. xxiv. 10), κοίλα ἀγυιὰ θνᾳσκόντων by Pindar (O. 9. 34), and ἡ ἀπὸπυρκαῊῆς κέλευθος by Hegesippus (A.P. vii. 545); the first and last are among the many passages which signpost it for us.

page 92 note 4 On which see C.R. lxix. 240. The absence of the def. art. there and here may possibly be felt to be a difficulty, but it is absent also from similar phrases in A.P. vii. 199, 203, 211 and its absence is hardly more noticeable in this than in the accepted interpretation of δολιχά κέλευθος. It is, moreover, a part of speech in which Mnasalces at any rate is remarkably parsimonious. In 76 lines he has it five times in connexion with proper names (vi. 264, vii. 171, ix. 324, and twice in Anth. App. iii. 71) but otherwise only in ὲ σῡριγξ voc. (ix. 324), and τοῖς καλοῖς (xii. 138; see below). In vii. 54, 212 τοῦ and τᾶς are relatives.

page 92 note 5 C.Q. xxix. 67.

page 92 note 6 Locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets are superficially much alike. It may be doubted whether Greek laymen distinguished between locusts and grasshoppers, and though Arist. H.A. 55Ob32 (cf. 556a8) ἀττέλαβοι καί ἀκρὶδες seems to draw the distinction, the first word is used by others to denote immature locusts somewhat more advanced than βροῦχοι (βροῦκοι). If they distinguished crickets I do not know what they called them; possibly τρωχαλλίδες (cf. Plin. N.H. xxx. 49), but as in Alex.fr. 15. 12 these are alleged to have created a shortage of veget ables they too may be locusts. Μολουρίς I have discussed in C.Q. xlv. 104; I leave others to sort out ἀσὶρακος or ὂνος, κόρνοψ, μἁσταξ, ὂρπας, πἁρνοψ, πετηλίς, and to deal with Ael. N.A. vi. 19 . See, however, R.E. viii. 1381, Quellen u. Stud. z. Gesch. d. Naturwissensch. iv. 292, D. W. Thompson on Arist. H.A. 555b18.

page 93 note 1 See Imms, Text. of Entom.3, 246, 248, 249; Uvarov, Locusts and Grasshoppers, 29; Fabre, Life of the Grasshopper (1917), 177, 228, 250.

page 93 note 2 So Plin. N.H. xi. 267 pinnarum et feminum attritu.

page 93 note 3 Mnasalces writes of another ἀκρίς (vii. 192) πτερύγεσσι λιγυφθόγγοισιν ἀείσεις and ἐκπτερύγων κρέκουσα μέλος; Simias' ἂγλωσσον στόμα (vii. 193) is imprecise but not incorrect, unlike the otherwise accomplished poet of I.G. xiv. 1934 f. whose ἀκρίς and cicada both make vocal music.

page 93 note 4 The cicada produces its rattle very differently by vibrating membranes in the thorax (cf. Arist. H.A. 535b7), but Meleager (vii. 196) gives one the apparatus of a locust (πριονώδη κῶλα) and Archias (vii. 213), if I understand him, that of a cricket (εὔταρσος ἰξύς), and earlier writers also had mistakenly supposed a cicada's wings to be the source of the sound (Hes. W.D. 584, Ale. fr. 39). Nicias may make the same mistake in vii. 200, where he writes ἀπὸ ῥαδινῶν φθόγγονἱεὶς πτερύγωνof an insect which the lemmatist took for a cicada—perhaps rightly, for though the creature is not named in the quatrain it was tree-haunting and the participles attaching to it are masc.

Since the cicada's sound-producing apparatus is invisible externally these inferences from other insects are not very surprising; that the poets should have confused the insects themselves is hardly credible, for the cicada's note is different, its appearance totally different, from those of crickets and grasshoppers, and cicadas are plainly distinguished from the other species by engravers of coins and gems (see Imhoof-Blumer and Keller, Tier- u. Pflanzenbilder, Index s.vv. Cicade, Heupferd, Heuschrecke). Fabre (Life of the Grasshopper, 233) had indeed postulated such a confusion on other grounds. He had read that Greeks kept cicadas in captivity, and argued that no sane person would want a cicada rattling in the house, and that it is in any case impossible to keep a cicada in captivity. The first argument is of little weight, for Greeks liked noise (cf. N. Douglas, Birds and Beasts of the Gk. Anth., p. 190), but the second is cogent. Cicadas, which live on the sap of growing trees and shrubs, would quickly starve and probably be silent in a cage. Fabre's ultimate authorities were presumably Anyte's epitaph on an ἀκρίς and a τέττιξ buried together by Myro (A.P. vii. 190), and the imitation by Marcus Arg. (ibid. 364); but though the insects are described by Anyte as παίγνια it does not follow that they were kept in captivity, and her opening lines suggest that they were not (cf. Starkie, Ar. Ach., p. 254). A.P. vii. 192, 200, 201 also are epitaphs for insects which did not die in cages.

page 93 note 5 Άλίκλυστος πόντος in Orph. Arg. 333 is not much of a defence, but, as D. L. Page reminds me, verbals in -τος are capable of an active sense; see Fraenkel on Aesch Ag. 12.

page 94 note 1 Xenophon's use of the word is elusive, but sometimes at any rate he seems to use it of the south shore rather than of the sea or of the area generally; see An. v. 6. 15, vi. 5. 20.

page 94 note 2 Black Sea Pilot, 1942, pp. 399, 401.Google Scholar

page 94 note 3 Cf. Farnell, Cults, ii. 637. The assertion of the lemmatist that the epigram relates to the temple at Cnidus is obviously a guess.

page 94 note 4 C.Q. xvii. 84.

page 94 note 5 Aichil.fr. 21, Soph. El. 895, O.T. 83, and less plainly Il. viii. 232, Od. ii. 431.

page 94 note 6 Strab. xiii. 617.

page 94 note 7 Steph. Byz.; cf. Suid. s.v.

page 94 note 8 See D. W. Thompson, Gloss. Gk. Birds, s.v.

page 94 note 9 There may be exceptions but the nearest I have found—A.P. v. 226 (Paul. Sil.)—is centuries later and not exact.

page 94 note 10 Cf. Ar. Av. 1151.