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‘Another (may be borrowed) from the accusation of calumny and malicious insinuation itself, (shewing) its enormity (magnitude, how great it is)—and this in particular that it raises extraneous points for decision’ (ἄλλας different from, foreign to, the question at issue: like Hygiaenon's quotation in the last section, which may perhaps have suggested this topic. This seems to fix the meaning of ἄλλας and so Victorius: otherwise it might be “gives rise to other trials,” one trial generated out of another ad infinitum); ‘and because it places no reliance on the facts of the real matter at issue’. Comp. Rhet. ad Alex. 29 (30). 12, and Isocr. περὶ ἀντιδόσεως § 18, who διαβάλλει διαβολήν—and in good round terms.

‘Common to both (τῷ διαβάλλοντι καὶ ἀπολογουμένῳ) is the topic of signs and tokens: as, for example, in (Sophocles') Teucer, Ulysses charges him with being closely connected with Priam (i. e. with the enemy: closely connected in a double sense: it is an inference from his connexion by blood to his political connexion, to his favouring the cause of Priam); for Hesione (Teucer's mother) was his (Priam's) sister1: the other (Teucer) replies (in the same topic) that his father' (a still nearer relation. See Apollo's speech in Aesch. Eumen. 657—673 and in many other places, on the nearer connexion, and higher obligation, of the son to the father than to the mother) ‘Telamon, was Priam's enemy, and also that he did not betray (inform against) the spies to him’. This play of Sophocles has already been named before—in II 23.7. There are only two short fragments of it remaining (Dind., Wagn. Soph. Fragm.), from which absolutely nothing is to be learned as to the plot of the play. It is clear from this passage, that Ulysses' accusation was that Teucer had betrayed the Greek cause, and had dealings with the enemy. The charge is supported by the sign of Teucer's connexion—in the double sense above explained—with Priam; and met by the other with two signs or tokens leading to the opposite inference. Wagner, Soph. Fragm. (Fr. Trag. Gr. I, 385—391, Τεῦκρος), supposing that Pacuvius “Soph. fabulam imitatione expressisse”, collects a number of his fragments from various Latin writers, from which he derives an interpretation of the story of the play, totally different—as he candidly admits—from that which we shall gather from this passage. But as the interpretation of this passage is perfectly clear, and his hypothesis altogether the reverse, uncertain in every particular, there is little doubt which of the two is to be preferred for the elucidation of Ar.'s text—provided we confess our entire ignorance of all else in and about the play in question.

1 On this connexion, Victorius refers to Virg. Aen. VIII 157, Nam memini Hesiones visentem regna sororis Laomedontiadem Priamum seq.; and Soph. Aj. 1299 seq., where Teucer in answer to Agamemnon, boasting of his descent, says, ὂς ἐκ πατρὸς μέν εἰμι Τελαμῶνος ... ὅστις ... ἴσχει ξύνευνον μητέρ᾽ , φύσει μὲν ἦν βασίλεια, Λαομέδοντος.

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