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[1035] δεινόν γε in comment, as Soph. Phil. 1225, Soph. El. 341, Soph. Aj. 1127.

σπαργάνωνfrom my swaddling clothes ”: i.e. “from the earliest days of infancy ” (cp. Ovid Heroid. 9.22 Et tener in cunis iam Iove dignus eras). The babe was exposed a few days after birth (717). Soph. El. 1139οὔτε ... πυρὸς ἀνειλόμην ... ἄθλιον βάρος.” Some understand, “I was furnished with cruelly dishonouring tokens of my birth,” δεινῶς ἐπονείδιστα σπάργανα, alluding to a custom of tying round the necks of children, when they were exposed, little tokens or ornaments, which might afterwards serve as means of recognition (crepundia, monumenta): see esp. Plaut. Rud. 4.4.111-126, Plaut. Epidic. 5.1.34: and Rich s. v. Crepundia, where a woodcut shows a statue of a child with a string of crepundia hung over the right shoulder. Plut. Thes. 4 calls such tokens γνωρίσματα. In Aristoph. Ach. 431 the σπάργανα of Telephus have been explained as the tokens by which (in the play of Eur.) he was recognised; in his case, these were ῥακώματα (431). But here we must surely take σπαργάνων withἀνειλόμην.

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