NOTES.
The Seven against Thebes.
286. The abrupt τί γένωμαι; cannot be right. I make no doubt that the poet's syntax was continuous; whether στείχουσι στεφανωταί, or, ποτὶ πύργου . . . . στείχουσι στεφάνωμα, as in Soph. Antig., or again, στεγάνωμα, the roof.
338. κορκορυγαὶ δ᾽ ἀν᾽ ἄστυ, ποτὶ πόλιν δ᾽ | ὁρκάνα πυργῶτις, should be responded to by παντοδαπὸς δὲ καρπὸς χαμάδις πεσὼν | ἀλγύνει κυρήσας. First, I make little doubt that ποτὶ πόλιν should be ποτιπίλναται (approaches) which answers all the conditions of the case. Next, the Cretic ὁρκάνα convicts the Molossus ἀλγύνει as false. Πυργῶτις is wrong both in metre and in sense. Ὁρκάνα must be the net-rope, by which victors swept the streets and squares, and caught runaways. It seems to be alluded to in Iliad, v. 487, where it has the epithet πάναγρος, which in the tragic poets may be παντᾰγρος, or here, perhaps, παντᾰγρεῦτις.
In 356–364 Hermann has rightly discerned, that the νύκτερον τέλος does not mean death, but violation of the person; that ἐλπίς means apprehension, fear, and that εὐνὰν has been inserted by some one who did not understand the word τέλος aright. For τλήμονες εὐνὰν Hermann has τλῆμον αἷσιν: but it seems to me that we rather need (writing ἐκ τυχόντος, "any random man," for εὐτυχοῦντος)—
