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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
984 ἐπεὶ F: ἐπί Tr ξυνεμβόλοις FTr: corr. Casaubon 985 ψαμμίας FTr: corr. Wecklein ἀκάτα F: ἀκάτας Tr: corr. Wilamowitz παρήβησ' Tr.
The above is the text of Wilamowitz and Fraenkel, which I believe correct, requiring only interpretation. Wilamowitz translated (Gr. Trag. ii 85), ‘Die Zeit ist grau geworden, seit der Sand von Aulis aufflog, da zur Troiafahrt das Heer die Taue löste’; Fraenkel similarly but more literally, ‘Time has grown old since with the throwing-in of the mooring-cables the sand flew up, when the naval host set forth to Ilion’. Denniston-Page make the linguistically correct objection me ‘sand does not “fly up” when mooring-cables are “thrown in”’. But this misses the real point, viz. that no one ever throws in a cable when a ship is leaving—it is pulled in: throwing occurs only when a ship is coming in to land.
1 The assumptions behind it, that χρόνος is the subject of παρήβησεν and that the verb of the ἐπεί- clause is hidden in ἀκάτα, seem certain: otherwise the unparalleled χρόνος ἐπεί ‘it is a long time since’ is introduced and/or violence is applied to innocent words, see Fraenkel. Cf. also n. 3—Triclinius' conjectures are the merest trifling.
2 In his commentary Fraenkel seems to realise this, as he speaks of ‘the hauling-in of the mooring-ropes’: but ἐμβολή ‘hauling-in’ is impossible. Ahrens' comparison with ἐμβολή and ἐμβάλλω used of the loading of cargo proves nothing: that is merely one facet of the frequent development of βάλλω from ‘throw’ to ‘place’: it is a very long way from there to ‘haul’. This sense, ‘stowing away’, would in itself be appropriate here, but the difficulty of the following line would still remain.
3 The only explicit exception I have noticed is B. H. Kennedy, who translates ‘as neath the walls of Ilion advanced the naval army’, without comment: his treatment of the preceding words requires no criticism. Young, D. C. C. (CQ n.s. xiv (1964) 11–12)Google Scholar also places the action on the Trojan beach (and thus gets the nautical matters correct, though he does not mention this), but I do not find his text and trans lation credible. Prof. H. Lloyd-Jones now tells me that he has so taken the clause for several years in his lectures.
4 To follow Casaubon, however, would be wrong, as it means tampering (however slightly) with words unobjectionable in themselves, and leaving the difficulty in the previous words unsolved, and apparently insoluble.
