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[493] πρὸς ὅτου In the antistr., 509, the words γὰρ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ are undoubtedly sound: here then we need to supply ¯¯ ˘˘ or ˘ ¯¯ ˘. I incline to believe that the loss has been that of a participle going with βασάνῳ. Had this been βασανίζων, the iteration would help to account for the loss. Reading πρὸς ὅτου δὴ βασανίζων βασάνῳ, I should take πρὸς with βασάνῳ: “testing on the touchstone whereof” —“using which(νεῖκος) as a test.” [Receiving my βασανίζων, Kennedy (ed. 1885) replaces the word βασάνῳ by πιθανῶς.] To Brunck's βασάνῳ χρησάμενοςPlat. Laws 946cβασάνοις χρώμενοι”) the objections are (1) the aorist part. where we need the pres., (2) the tame and prosaic phrase. Wolff writes, πρὸς ὅτου δή, βασάνῳ <πίστιν ἔχων>: Wecklein and Mekler (in his recension of Dindorf's ed., Teubner, 1885) indicate a lacuna, ¯˘˘¯, after βασάνῳ. Two other courses of emendation are possible: (i) To supply after ἔμαθον something to express the informant, as τινος ἀστῶν or, προφέροντος, when πρὸς ὅτου would mean “at whose suggestion.” This remedy seems to me improbable. (ii) To supply σύν and an adj. for βασάνῳ, as σὺν ἀληθεῖ β., or β. σὺν φανερᾷ. As the mutilated verse stands in the MSS., it cannot, I think, be translated without some violence to Greek idiom. The most tolerable version would be this: —“setting out from which(πρὸς ὅτου neut., referring to νεῖκος), I can with good warrant(βασάνῳ) assail the public fame of Oed.” Then βασάνῳ would be an instrumental dative equivalent to βάσανον ἔχων: and πρὸς ὅτου would be like 1236 πρὸς τίνος ποτ᾽ αἰτίας; Soph. Ant. 51πρὸς αὐτοφώρων ἀμπλακημάτων: πρός” denoting the source back to which the act can be traced.

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