James Adam, The Republic of Plato

If (with A) we omit ἔχειν, the meaning must still be: ‘the corpse (τοῦτον) <had> nothing else upon it, only on its hand a gold ring, which he (Gyges) took off and went out.’ But it is impossible in Greek, as in English, to dispense with ‘had.’

Dr Jackson proposes to read τούτου for τοῦτον, and omit ἔχειν and ὅν, understanding the sentence to mean ‘he took nothing from the corpse except a gold ring on its hand, and then went out’ (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philol. Soc. Vol. II 1882, p. 12). In favour of this view he urges that ‘the nudity of the corpse is not mentioned, either in Cicero's paraphrase de Officiis III 9 § 38, or in that of Nizámí’ (see App. I). Philostratus is also silent on the subject (Heroic. 28). If the principle of this solution is correct, I should prefer to retain τοῦτον: for there seems to be no reason why περιαιρεῖσθαι should not take two accusatives like ἀφαιρεῖσθαι, περικρούειν, περικόπτειν, and the like; or, as Dr Verrall remarks (Proceedings, etc. l.c.)—I think with less probability—τοῦτον might be ‘regarded as a second accusative after ποιήσαντα understood with ἄλλο μὲν οὐδέν.’ The reading τοῦτον δὲ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδέν, περὶ δὲ τῇ χειρὶ χρυσοῦν δακτύλιον περιελόμενον ἐκβῆναι is adopted also by the Zurich editors (1839) on the suggestion of Winckelmann.

Dr Jackson's view of the passage, in which I formerly concurred, gives excellent sense, and may be right. But it is to be noticed (1) that our chief authority for ἔχειν is Ven. Π, a MS which is quite independent of Paris A and constantly enables us to restore lacunae in that MS, and (2) that there are other examples in Paris A of the omission of a single word without the excuse of homoioteleuton. See Introd. § 5. Ξ and Flor. B omit ἔχειν, but add φέρειν after δακτύλιον—an obvious attempt to amend the error which survives in A.

Madvig conjectures πλούτου δὲ οὐδέν and Liebhold (Fl. Jahrb. 1888, p. 107) κόσμου δὲ ἄλλο μὲν <ἔχοντ̓> οὐδέν for τοῦτον δὲ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδέν. Neither of these proposals has any plausibility, and it is best to regard this as one of the places where we owe the right reading to Π.