CHOEPHORI.
A few NOTES on the Text, by F. W. Newman.
The text of this play, especially in the Choral Odes, is manifestly very corrupt, and the corruption may have been a thousand years earlier than any MS. of it which came down to the age of printing. The Greek Commentator, whom we call the Scholiast, is often puerile, and absurdly satisfied with a very erroneous text. Thereby we are driven to conjectural improvement, if we are to attain a text worthy of the poet. Some of the following suggestions, I believe, seemed to my friend Miss Anna Swanwick to deserve her acceptance.
v. 56. Read μένει χρονίζοντας ἄχη, omitting βρύει.
64. Here retain βρύειν, probably with παγκαρτέρας for παναρκέτας.
65. For ἐκ μιᾶς ὁδοῦ, I wish ἐκ παγκυμίας ὁμοῦ.
67. ἰοῦσαν ἄτην all reject, μάτην meets general approval; but we seem to need κλύσειεν ἂν μάτην before metre and sense are satisfied.
71, 72, we require [δεῖ] δίκαια, μὴ δίκαια, [μὴ] πρέποντ᾽ ἀρχαῖσι μου for ἀρχαῖς βίου; and in 73, βίαια φυρωμένον for βίαι φερομένων.
150. σεβάσω must be wrong; σεβάσια (reverential), though not in our dictionaries, may be right. This piece is Antistrophic, but the Antistrophe abounds in small errors. I propose: 152, for ἀνὴρ to read ἂν ἥκοι; in 154, τίς ἐκ κεροῖν παλιντόνοιν ἐνεργοῖ for vulg. τά τ᾽ ἐκχεροῖν παλίντονα ἐν ἔργῳ.
