previous next

[681] “οὕτως Ἀρίσταρχος ἴδοιτο, τὰ ὄσσε δηλονότι” Schol. A (Did.). ““ἴδοιντοτὰ ὄσσε: οἱ δὲ ἑνικῶςἴδοιτο,” ἵν᾽ ἦι τὰ ὄσσεα ἴδοιτο . . οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς σχολῆςἴδοιογράφουσιν”, Schol. T. Of these three readings the last has most MS. support; the only reason against it is that it is obviously the simplest and easiest, and is therefore most likely to be an intentional alteration. “ἴδοιντο” has no MS. authority, and the only Homeric form is “ἰδοίατο”. The question remains as to the subject of ἴδοιτο. If we take it to be Menelaos we have a very harsh change from apostrophe to narrative; in 16.584-86, 692-94, 17.702-05 the transition is made with a fresh sentence, not in a subordinate clause. In the last instance it is further softened by the interposition of another subordinate subject in the relative clause. All this is in favour of making ὄξξε subject to ἴδοιτο, thine eyes ranged . . in hope to see. This involves a slight personification of the eyes — the hope is of course Menelaos', not theirs — but under the circumstances this is hardly sensible.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (3 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (3):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: