R. J. Cholmeley, M.A., The Idylls of Theocritus

[51] φατί of speechless things; Xenophanes, i. 5 οἶνος ὃς οὔποτε φησὶ προδώσειν: Catull. iv. 2 'Phaselus ille ... ait fuisse navium celerrimus.' But in this picture, as in the first, the description reads more into the carving than can strictly be expressed. Cf. Verg. Aen. viii. 634 sqq.; Martial, viii. 51. 14 'Palladius tenero lotus ab ore sonat.'

πρὶν ἢ ἀκράτιστον, κ.τ.λ. is the MS. reading. In this ἀκράτιστον cannot be the verbal adjective from ἀκρατίζομαι or the accent would be oxytone, but must be a substantive--'breakfast'--cf. ἄμητος, τρυγητός （̣ τρύγητος）: (1) Ahrens (Philol. vii. 410) takes it thus as a substantive, and explains the phrase as a metaphor from navigation, 'before the breakfast has been wrecked.' He supports this by Polyb. xx. 5. 7 ἐκάθισαν πρὸς τὸ ξηρὸν αἱ νῆες ('the ships grounded'); Diodorus, xi. 77 τῶν νεῶν ἄφνω καθιζουσῶν ἐπὶ ξηρὰν τὴν γῆν. This explanation is rendered improbable by the weakness of the phrase, even if ἐπὶ ξηροῖσι can have this meaning. To say 'the breakfast has touched bottom' is far from saying 'the breakfast has been totally wrecked.'

(2) J. A. Hartung (reading ἀκρατισμόν) takes the metaphor to mean 'before she has safely docked the breakfast'--καθίζειν, active. This is a good sense, but there is no evidence for the phrase. (We might also change the metaphor and say, 'before she has safely landed the breakfast.') The question is whether ἐπὶ ξηροῖσι can possibly mean 'on dry land' in face of the fact that ξηρά (fem. sing.) and τὸ ξηρόν (sing.) are the standing phrases. Cf. also Thucyd. i. 109; viii. 105.

(3) Changing the accent to ἀκρατιστόν, verb. adj., the only explanation possible is 'before she set him down to starveling fare to get his breakfast.' ξηρός = 'wasted,' 'used up'; see Eurip. Androm. 637; Callim. vi. 113 οἶκον ἀνεξήρανεν. The use of the verb. adj. is then strangely and scarcely parallel even to Thucydides' μενετοὶ καιροί ('inclined to wait') bk. i. 142. 1.

(4) Interpreting ἐπὶ ξηροῖσι as in (3), we should get a good sense by substituting for ἀκράτιστον a verbal in -τος formed with ἀ- privativum. Nearest would be ἀκράστιστον, a nonexisting word but formed regularly from κραστίζομαι, 'to eat green stuff.' Tr., 'Before she set him down to a starveling fare with not a bite of green stuff.'

[The explanation recorded in Liddell and Scott, 'having breakfasted on dry stuff,' i. e. 'having made no breakfast,' joins ἀκρατιστόν and ἐπὶ ξηροῖσι in a way that is hardly Greek; we should at least have ἀπὸ ξηρῶν.]