PINDAR, OLYMPIAN 2.5–7, TEXT AND COMMENTARY—WITH EXCURSIONS TO ‘PERICTIONE’, EMPEDOCLES AND EURIPIDES’ HIPPOLYTUS

In 1998, I suggested a new text for a notably corrupt passage in Pindar's Isthmian 5. This article is in effect a sequel to that earlier discussion. In the 1998 article, I proposed, inter alia, that the modern vulgate text of I. 5.58, ἐλπίδων ἔκνισ’ ὄπιν, is indefensible and the product of scribal corruption in antiquity, and that chief among the indefensible products of corruption there is the supposed secular use of ὄπις, as if used to mean something like ‘zeal’. This (as I hope to have demonstrated) is a sense for which there is no good evidence in classical Greek, where ὄπις always has a delimited religious denotation, meaning either (a) ‘gods’ response’, ‘divine retribution’, or else (b) ‘religious awe’ or ‘reverence’ towards the gods, through fear of that response or that retribution. If we discount I. 5.58 itself (and likewise the focus of the present article, O. 2.6), all the pre-Hellenistic attestations can be straightforwardly listed under these headings: (a) Il. 16.388 θεῶν ὄπιν οὐκ ἀλέγοντες, Od. 14.88 ὄπιδος κρατερὸν δέος, Hes. Theog. 221–2 θεαὶ . . . | . . . ἀπὸ τῷ δώωσι κακὴν ὄπιν, Pind. P. 8.71–2 θεῶν δ’ ὄπιν | ἄφθονον αἰτέω, sim. Od. 20.215, 21.28, Hes. Op. 187, 251, 706, along with, seemingly, a fragmentary fifth-century Thessalian verse inscription, CEG 1.120.1 Hansen; (b) Hdt. 9.76.2 θεῶν ὄπιν ἔχοντας, 8.143.2. In addition, one other instance can be interpreted as either (a) or (b), or in effect both: Od. 14.82 (of the suitors) οὐκ ὄπιδα φρονέοντες . . . οὐδ’ ἐλεητύν. In all cases, though, ‘gods’ are specified, usually as a dependent genitive with ὄπις, or else separately but in the near context. Hellenistic and later occurrences of the word are few, and (as I argued in 1998) hints there of a secular reading can actually be taken to reflect misunderstandings based on, precisely, the early corruption in I. 5.

Hermann's ὄπι . . . ξένων 8 only serves to highlight the anomalousness of a 'reverence' felt not for mighty gods (θεῶν ὄπιν ἔχοντας, Hdt. 9.76.2) but for vulnerable humans. Traditional Greek respect for strangers/guests indeed reflects, or is correlative to, the ultimate commitment to Zeus xenios (πρὸς . . . Διός εἰσιν . . . | ξεῖνοι, Od. 6.207-8), but feeling, or expressing, ὄπις for xenoi is as unlikely in this era as worshipping xenoi as gods themselves. 9 Meanwhile, in an aside in my earlier discussion, I added: To the crux in O. 2.6 I have no solution, but note that, besides importing the ad hoc and otherwise unattested form ὄπῑ, the 'uncertain' text (coni. Hermann) offers a sequence, δίκαιον . . . , ἔρεισμ' . . . , εὐωνύμων τε πατέρων ἄωτον, which is in effect a triadic structure, ABC τε. Such a structure is not common in any period ('rarely, τε couples the last two units of an otherwise asyndetic sequence': Denniston [1959], 501), and does not seem to occur in Pindar (see Slater [1969], 488-9). 10 For this corrupt passage in O. 2, I now propose a solution: not, as it turns out, a new solution. That is: this article will champion and elucidate one of the numerous existing proposals for the passage. 11 I start by first assuming the prima facie plausibility of Hermann's ξένων, not, indeed, because of its proposed connection with the hypothetical ὄπῑ 12 but on metrical grounds. In the sequence ξένον ἔρεισμ', the final syllable of ξένον must be heavy, (cor)responding to the final syllables of Ἀλφεοῦ (13), φιλεῖ (26), τελευτάσομεν ῥ-(33), πρέπει (46), δεδαιδαλμένος φ-(53), εὐορκίαις (66), δενδρέων (73), φυᾷ (86), πόλιν φ-(93). ξένον, before ἔρεισμ', would be ᴗ ᴗ, whereas ξένων gives the requisite ᴗ -. 13 This ξένων, however, is not to be regarded as a textual emendation. It is a recognition that here, as elsewhere in Pindar, we have surviving traces of his use of the pre-Ionic alphabet, 14 in which Ο is indifferently ο or ω.
And, as will soon be apparent, 15 Hermann's ξένων is clearly right, as against the substantial implausibility of his ὄπῑ-a problematic form of a word 16 in a problematic sense-which the discussion that follows will show to be yet more implausible. 17 8 Not a problem in itself: cf. (e.g.) τοκέων . . . αἰδῶ (P. 4.218). 9 In retrospect, one might well think that, as prospective support for the improbable secular ὄπιν vulgarly ascribed to I. 5.58, this improbable ὄπι is actually not secular enough. 10 Silk (1998), 37 n. 43. 11 Gerber (1976), 32 lists fifteen. 12 Nor indeed because, in a sequence Θήρωνα . . . ξένον, there would in fact be anything amiss in acclaiming Thero as a 'just host' through the phrase δίκαιον ξένον-a usage that evidently worried at least one ancient commentator (ξενοδοχικόν. ἀντὶ τοῦ δίκαιον καὶ εἰς τοὺς ξένους· οὐ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἦν ξένος, Σ11b, I page 61 Drachmann). The noun ξένος, though commonly signifying 'stranger' or 'guest', is of course also used by classical authors in the sense 'host' (LSJ s.v. A.I.2), as by Pindar himself (e.g. of Hiero, O. 1.103). 13 The only alternative would be to take ξένōν as brevis in longo, which is not unparalleled in Pindar (see e.g. Braswell on P. 4.184d), but not something to be assumed, and certainly not in ('iambic') mid period, as the relevant syllable would be.
14 See e.g. Braswell on P. 4.14d; Silk (1998), 48. 15 See pages 504 and 509-10 below. 16 The form would be paralleled in other comparably shaped words: i.e. as an epicism, like Homeric μήτῑ, alongside μήτιδι, and Θέτῑ, alongside gen. Θέτιδος (there is no attested **ὄπιδι, but cf. the -δforms of ὄπις cited in n. 7 above: ὄπιδα and ὄπιδος), with μῆτιν and Θέτιν corresponding to ὄπιν. But with a word so obviously restricted in form (see n. 7), such parallels have little force. 17 See page 504 with n. 30 below. Hardly more plausible are proposals involving a conjectural ὄπιν. Hartung, for instance, proposed ὄπιν δίκαιον ξένων, which avoids the hypothetical ὄπι at the cost of a less idiomatic construction, while still retaining the problematic ὄπις itself.
Putting ὄπῑ aside, now, we can more profitably focus on the issue of the triadic structure, ABC τε. Such a sequence, though it would be rash to call it impossible, is certainly suspect. On closer inspection, though, the sequence is seen to be not ABC τε at all but something even more suspect. The point is that, on reflection, the C (the sequence ἄωτον ὀρθόπολιν with which the sentence ends) cannot be regarded as a single phraseological unit, as the attested usage of ἄωτος/-ον makes clear. I have reviewed the usage of this curious word on two previous occasions: in 1974, by way of explaining how limited is its supposed association with 'flowers'; 18 and in 1983, in a discussion of its iconymic status, as a verse word 'obsolete in the speech-community', a word that has 'lost its denotations' and has no straightforward reference, but only 'a few faint scattered connotations'. 19 Let us now reconsider the usage of the word, from yet another perspective.
The word ἄωτος/-ον occurs twenty-eight (or very possibly twenty-nine) times in pre-Hellenistic Greek. In Homer the word is attested five times, with reference to wool or linen cloth: Il. 9.661,13.599,13.716,Od. 1.443,9.434. The seeming coherence of that usage implies that in ἄωτος/-ον we have a rare example of a subsequent iconym whose original (pre-iconymic) meaning we seem to know 20 -even if it is not at all obvious that our understanding of the post-Homeric outcomes is thereby enhanced. Those other twenty-three (or twenty-four) occurrences are all fifth-century, twenty of them in Pindar, and in all cases the word is used as if it meant 21 something elusively complimentary in the range of 'the best', 'the paragon', 'the consummation', 'the glory', 'the glorious product', 'the glorious reward'. In all cases, too, the word belongs to a phrase with a dependent genitive noun, as if 'the paragon of . . .', 'the glorious product of . . .', 'the glorious reward for . . . '. 22 The occurrences fall into two groups. In the larger group (a), the dependent genitive noun signifies a non-personal abstraction, or more concrete entity, indifferently singular or plural, with the genitival relation itself variable: in 'Antigenes', 1. 3   . In this group, however, the genitive, though variable, is never partitive. Thus, in O. 3.4, for instance, the ἄωτον 'of the horses' is not (e.g.) 'the best of the horses' but (something like) 'the glorious tribute to the achievement of the horses', namely Pindar's poetic 'tribute', while in P. 10.53 the ἄωτος 'of songs' is (something like) 'the glorification arising from, or consisting in, this ode'; the 'Antigenes' is comparable ('roses that glorify').
In the second, smaller, group (b), the whole phrase refers to a person or persons; the genitive is always partitive; and the genitive noun itself is always in the plural (or else the noun or the plurality are implicit): in Pindar, ναυτᾶν ἄωτος P. 4.188, ἡρώων ἄωτοι 18 Silk (1974), 239-40. 19 Silk (1983), 311-12 (the quoted phrases) and 316-17 (ἄωτος/-ον); on iconyms, see also Silk (2019), 318-26. 20 Contrast such iconyms as ἀμαιμάκετος: Silk (1983), 328-9. 21 With iconyms, one should avoid speaking of the, or even a, 'meaning' without qualification. 22  The anomalousness of the supposed unitary phrase in O. 2, πατέρων ἄωτον ὀρθόπολιν, comes into view when we scrutinize the structures of the phrasing in the post-Homeric passages. In most of the occurrences we find simple two-term phrases, ἄ. + genitive noun, as in δίκας ἄωτος (group [a]: N. 3.29) or ναυτᾶν ἄωτος (group [b]: P. 4.188). In four instances from the first group, ἄ. is additionally qualified by a simple intensifying adjective, hardly descriptive of the purported object (vel sim.): ἱερὸν εὐζοίας ἄωτον (P. 4.131), Ἰσθμιάδων . . . κάλλιστον ἄωτον (N. 2.9), ζωᾶς ἄωτον . . . τὸν ἄλπνιστον (I. 5.12), σοφίας ἄωτον ἄκρον (I. 7.18). In (Pindar's?) O. 5.1, the qualifying adjective, in effect intensifying, is marginally more descriptiveστεφάνων ἄωτον γλυκύν-while the same adjective occurs at fr. 52f.59 S-M: μέλιτος ἄωτον γλυκύν. In that last instance, one might still see the qualifier as intensifying, though it would make more sense to read it as metonymic (transferred epithet), semantically attachable to the genitive noun: the μέλι is literally γλυκύ. In the fragmentary sequence at Bacchyl. 23.1, from the second group, there is another metonymic transference-Ἀθανᾶν <εὔ>ανδρον ἱερᾶν ἄωτον-where it is Athens itself that is full of 'good men' and the Athenians themselves (implied in the name of the city) who actually are those 'good men'. Then, in one Pindaric passage from group (a), O. 8.75, an adjectival metonymy is operative on a more elaborate basis: χειρῶν ἄωτον Βλεψιάδαις ἐπίνικον-where a ceremonial crown is 'victorious reward for hands . . .', that is, (in full) 'glorious reward for hands that produced victory <in the wrestling competition> for <a new honorand from> the Blepsiad clan'.
The seeming collocation in O. 2.7, πατέρων ἄωτον ὀρθόπολιν, is different in kind from any of these instances. The adjective is neither intensifying nor metonymic: it makes a new point, and its referent lies wholly outside the genitive phrase. It is not the 'fathers' who make, or keep, 'the city upright' but Thero, the honorand and focus of the praise: he is ὀρθόπολις. As such, though grammatically and positionally attachable to the ἄωτον phrase, the adjective is logically and semantically separate, and is thus, and would surely be felt as, a separate and self-contained item of praise. In effect, then, the weighty compound adjective ὀρθόπολιν would constitute a fourth, final member of the list: δίκαιον . . . , ἔρεισμ' . . . , . . . ἄωτον, ὀρθόπολιν. Compare, for instance, the similarly weighty compound adjective that constitutes the final member of a shorter list at O. 13.4-5: τὰν ὀλβίαν Κόρινθον, Ἰσθμίου | πρόθυρον Ποτειδᾶνος, ἀγλαόκουρον. But if ὀρθόπολιν is a separate member, the list as it supposedly stands is now wholly anomalous: ABC τε D-a sequence much more improbable than ABC τε 23 In these last two cases, sufficient context is lacking to make it entirely certain that the genitives are partitive, but they give every sign of being so. 24 Ἀργείων, implied by ἥβας (663), ἀνδρῶν (659), Ἀργείοις (625). 25 The relative coherence of this group, and especially of the genitival usage in it, raises the possibility that here, as often with iconyms (Silk [1983], 314), some re-etymological association is operative, albeit here one of an unusual kind. Specifically: is ἄωτος in group (b) felt as a quasi-superlative form, on the analogy of the similar-sounding πρῶτος in uses like πρῶτος ἀνθρώπων πλούτῳ (Hdt. 7.27.2)? Cf. the discussion of πατέρων ἄωτον, page 511 below.
itself. Is such a counter-intuitive sequence ever attested in classical Greek? There is certainly nothing like it in Pindar, and no sign of anything like it elsewhere. 26 The obvious implication is that Pindar's τε does not connect two members (supposedly the last two members) of the list but two items within a single member. That is: the accepted division of phrases is wrong, and the accepted punctuation misleading. 27 Pindar's list ends not Ἀκράγαντος, | εὐωνύμων τε πατέρων ἄωτον ὀρθόπολιν but, rather, Ἀκράγαντος | εὐωνύμων τε πατέρων ἄωτον, ὀρθόπολιν. 28 From which it follows that the division assumed for the previous member is wrong as well: so, not . . . ξένων, ἔρεισμ' Ἀκράγαντος, | εὐωνύμων τε πατέρων ἄωτον (where ξένων goes with the as yet undetermined word[s] preceding), but ξένων ἔρεισμ', Ἀκράγαντος | εὐωνύμων τε πατέρων ἄωτον.
All of which leaves us with a shorter problem-sequence to come to terms with: not (let us now confine ourselves to Pindaric capitals) 29 ΟΠΙΔΙΚΑΙΟΝΞΕΝΟΝ (that is, following Hermann, . . . ξένων) but a seemingly self-contained phrase, or equivalent, ΟΠΙΔΙΚΑΙΟΝ, which (to restate) must be metrically ᴗ -ᴗ --. Here ὀπί (ᴗ ᴗ, not ᴗ -) is out of the question, while the hypothetical ὄπῑ, now without an explanatory genitive, is even less plausible than it was with one. 30 The solution is to posit a simple scribal slip, ΟΠΑΙΔΙΚΑΙΟΝ > ΟΠΙΔΙΚΑΙΟΝ-which, it will become apparent, must have occurred in antiquity itself 31 -and restore the text with a self-contained elliptical clause, ὅπᾳ δίκαιον.
neither Bowra nor Bergk thought well enough of it to print it in the text, but Bergkhowever unconvinced himself-correctly divined the knock-on effect for the division of the two phrases that follow (albeit not the separate issue about the division of the items at the end of the sentence). 35 A few words on MS G: Gottingensis philol. 29 (mid thirteenth century). In his account of the history of Pindar's text, Irigoin ([1952], 170-6) makes it clear that G is an important and independent witness, and that its scholia include 'scholies de type ancien' ([1952], 172, 174), along with additional material from the Byzantine scholar Manuel Moschopoulos ([1952], 172). The gloss under discussion must itself be 'ancien', reflecting an earlier text with ΟΠΑΙ/ὅπᾳ: it is surely inconceivable that any medieval scholar would have independently offered a new gloss, ὅπως, καθώς, on a text with ΟΠΙ (whether read as ὀπί or as ὄπι)-whereas one notes that elsewhere in Pindar a straightforwardly attested (if grammatically rather different) ὅπᾳ attracts the scholiastic gloss ὅπως likewise. 36 In the relevant (first) volume of his Scholia Vetera in Pindari Carmina (1903), Drachmann makes no mention of G's gloss, though citing G for the lines immediately following. 37 In his preface (I, page ix), he explains: 'codicem [sc. G] non totum contuli (quod nunc paenitet)'. Drachmann's relative inattention to G has no doubt contributed to the subsequent inattention to the crucial gloss; it remains regrettable ('quod nunc paenitet').
And now the important evidence of P.Oxy. 1614 (= Π 1 in Snell-Maehler: fifth or sixth century A.D.). In the transcription by the editors, Grenfell and Hunt, the relevant portion of this papyrus reads: 38 ΓΕΓΩΝΗΤΕΟΝ ΟΠΙ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΝ ΞΕΝΟΝ ΕΡΕΙΣΜ' ΑΚΡΑΓΑΝΤΟΣ ΕΥΩΝΥΜΩΝ ΔΕ ΠΑΤΕΡΩΝ ΑΩΤΟΝ ΟΡΘΟΠΟΛΙΝ Like the medieval manuscripts of O. 2, then, the papyrus has ΟΠΙ (and ΞΕΝΟΝ), 39 from which it follows that our corruption is early and belongs to the era of undivided capitals. No less noteworthy: from ΕΡΕΙΣΜ' to ΟΡΘΟΠΟΛΙΝ, the word-groupings on the papyrus correspond to those assumed in modern scholarship. That is: the essentially colometric layout of words on the papyrus (presumably Alexandrian in origin) no doubt facilitated erroneous presumptions about sense division-in line with modern (mis)understandings (ἔρεισμ' with Ἀκράγαντος; 40 ὀρθόπολιν with ἄωτον). 38 But in capitals: Grenfell-Hunt transcribe in unaccented minuscules. 39 The papyrus also has δέ (for MSS τε). On the evidence provided by Denniston (1959), 164-5, ABC δέ is even rarer than ABC τε (except where the ABC involves anaphora), and ABC δέ E quite anomalous. Xen. Cyr. 8.2.6, cited by Denniston ([1959], 165) as a solitary example of δέ linking 'two . . . units in the middle of an otherwise asyndetic series', is quite different: in effect, marking a separate contrast within a longer 'series'. The δέ on the papyrus can safely be ignored as a trivial corruption. 40 Ancient scholarship already assumes the association: Σ12a, I, page 61 Drachmann: ἔρεισμ' What are the palaeographical implications of our restoration? In scribal activity, almost anything can be miswritten as almost anything else, but across the centuries, both in antiquity and later in the Middle Ages, some errors are much more common than others. And ΑΙ > Ι is not especially common, and certainly less common than (for instance) ΑΙ > Α. Very relevantly, though, given the evident antiquity of the corruption, ΑΙ > Ι is reasonably well attested in ancient capitals (see [i] below). The slip is hardly so complicated as to call for special explanations, but in O. 2 more than one such explanation is readily available in the event. The misreading of ΟΠΑΙΔΙΚΑΙΟΝ as ΟΠΙΔΙΚΑΙΟΝ would seem to involve a kind of anticipatory haplography from the syllables immediately following (-ΠΑΙ-ΔΙ-ΚΑΙ-> -ΠΙ-ΔΙ-ΚΑΙ-), while, after γεγωνητέον, a sequence ΟΠΙ (as if ὀπί, 'voice') could of course feel speciously natural; 41 then again, ὅπᾳ δίκαιον, though perfectly Greek and eminently Pindaric in spirit, is not familiar as a specifiable Pindaric phrase (see [ii] below).
ὅπᾳ δίκαιον: as our earlier findings indicate (pages 504 and 506-7 above), the restored phrase, vouched for by the gloss in MS G, is an isolated expression in Pindar, but comparable with (e.g.) the simpler σὺν . . . δίκᾳ at P. 9.96 (αἰνεῖν . . . | παντὶ θυμῷ σύν τε δίκᾳ καλὰ ῥέζοντ'). The sentiment that this particular acclamation is 'worthy' and 'appropriate' is echoed at O. 3.9, in the parallel ode for the same victory: πρεπόντως . . . γεγωνεῖν. 50 In Pindar, 'appropriate' praise for the laudandus is frequently signalled as such, as it is again later in O. 2 itself: πρέπει τὸν Αἰνησιδάμου | ἐγκωμίων τε μελέων λυρᾶν τε τυγχανέμεν (46-7). The principle is asserted in general terms in one of his encomia: πρέπει δ' ἐσλοῖσιν ὑμνεῖσθαι (fr. 121 S-M). 49 Carey resists the relationship of ἄνδρα and στεφάνωμα there, partly for lack of a parallel to στεφ. words as honorific metaphors for a man: 'Pindar nowhere terms an athlete "crown of the city".' This is true, and would be highly relevant if one were introducing such a usage in an emendation; but much less relevant in a sound text, the run of which invites the interpretation. For the 'honorific metaphor' itself, cf. Lycurg. Leocr. 50 εἰπὼν στέφανον τῆς πατρίδος εἶναι τὰς ἐκείνων ψυχάς, and cf. Eur. Heracl. 839, where τὸν καλλίπαιδα στέφανον is a phrase applied to Ηeracles' children. Pindar elsewhere does use στεφάνωμα (as opposed to στέφανος) metaphorically in other ways (as at P. 1.50: cf. Slater [1969], 472 s.v.). 50 See page 513 below.
The tone of the sequence γεγωνητέον, ὅπᾳ δίκαιον is not easy to assess. The -τέον is clearly a modernism, 51 and ὅπᾳ δίκαιον too, to judge from the distribution of comparable examples (pages 506-7 above); as a lexical item, γεγωνέω is standard usage, verse and prose, from Homer onwards (LSJ s.v.). Epicisms abound in Pindar, but one notes the absence of any specifiable epicism here (such as the imagined ὄπῑ would yield: see n. 16 above). Some of the various ellipses in which ὅπᾳ is seen to participate elsewhere look colloquial (καρυξῶ Δικαιόπολιν ὅπᾳ, Ar. Ach. 748), but there is nothing to suggest that here, and the apparent legal associations of ὅπᾳ δίκαιον certainly pull in a different direction. The predominant tone would seem to be one of contemporaneity. Thero, if not exactly, like W.S. Gilbert's Stanley, a 'modern Major-General', 52 is pre-eminently a great figure of 'our' time-but then, this is contemporaneity at once allied to ancestral achievement (εὐωνύμων . . . πατέρων).

ΙΙΙ ECHOES
Towards the end of O. 2, at lines 93-5, Pindar picks up the topic of Thero's beneficence to xenoi: in a hundred years, no city has produced φίλοις ἄνδρα μᾶλλον | εὐεργέταν πραπίσιν ἀφθονέστερόν τε χέρα | Θήρωνος. In passing, one notes the concrete force of Thero's 'hand'. 58 Less noteworthy in itself: the momentary concreteness precisely matches the implicit physicality of ξένων ἔρεισμ' in line 6. 'Ηands' are hardly what 'support' the xenoi there, but ἐρείδειν and χείρ are readily associable in Greek usage (ἔρεισμα itself is not common enough to show up the association): Il. 5.309 ἐρείσατο χειρί; 11.235 ἐπὶ δ' αὐτὸς ἔρεισε, βαρείῃ χειρὶ πιθήσας; Od. 11.426 χερσὶ . . . σὺν . . . στόμ' ἐρεῖσαι; Hippoc. Art. 58 τῇ χειρὶ . . . ἐρείδεσθαι, 11 τῇ χειρὶ ἐπερείδειν, 52 τῇ χειρὶ πρὸς τὴν γῆν ἀπερειδόμενοι. Meanwhile, the φίλοι to whom Thero has shown himself a εὐεργέτας in lines 93-5 doubtless are, or subsume, xenoi: cf. I. 6.70 ξένων εὐεργασίαις ἀγαπᾶται. The association of ξένος and φίλος is familiar in Greek usage more generally, from epic-era verse (Il. 6.224 ξεῖνος φίλος; Od. 1.313 φίλοι ξεῖνοι; CEG 1.453 Hansen ξένϜος τε φίλος: Ithacan inscription, c.700 B.C.) to classical prose (Xen. An. 2.1.5 φίλος καὶ ξένος; sim. Lys. 19.19,Dem. 21.110,Aeschin. 3.224) and Pindar himself (N. 5.8,. The echo is hardly perceptible -which tells us what? That, for Pindar, unobtrusive self-echoing is, or may be, a significant mode of composition. A more consequential example, for present purposes, is provided by the echoes of our passage in the parallel ode, O. 3, a second celebration of the victory that is the occasion for O. 2. As with at least one other group of related poems in Pindar's epinician collection, private compositional imperatives lead the poet to recall phraseology or verbal sequences from one ode to another, far beyond any question of Lieblingswörter or, indeed, random repetition. The case in point is the three pankration odes for the brothers Pytheas and Phylacidas, N. 5, I. 5 and I. 6, where the phenomenon is surely beyond dispute. 59 In particular, I. 5, the latest of the three, shows such striking correspondences as these, with the earlier I. 6: 'where the χαλκοcompounds and the noun σύμμαχος (not otherwise attested in Pindar) are distinctive'. 61 With O. 2 and O. 3, it is impossible to know which ode was composed first, but that hardly matters. The point is that the two commemorations of Thero's Olympic victory contain comparable echoes ('allusions' would be an inappropriate characterization) 62 and that, as will become apparent, the echoes serve to strengthen the case for the textual restoration proposed for O. 2. 63 There are, of course, substantive elements in common between O. 2 and O. 3. Not only do the poems celebrate the same victor and the same victory; they share at least one noteworthy mythological connection. Heracles figures in both odes, while, specifically, both the opening of O. 2 and the closure of O. 3 associate Thero and Heracles as great achievers: Ὀλυμπιάδα δ' ἔστασεν Ἡρακλέης | ἀκρόθινα πολέμου· | Θήρωνα δὲ . . . | γεγωνητέον (O. 2.3-6); νῦν δὲ πρὸς ἐσχατιὰν Θήρων ἀρεταῖσιν ἱκάνων ἅπτεται | οἴκοθεν Ἡρακλέος σταλᾶν (O. 3.43-4). Much less striking, no doubt, but much more to the point, is the set of correspondences in the following two passages (the second of which subsumes that same closure), where any overt substantive connection is lacking. The first passage belongs to Pindar's remarkable depiction of the afterlife; the second, to the sequence that begins with Heracles' foundation of the Olympic games and ends with the poet's affirmation of limits: Ὀρθωσίας --πνοιαῖς --ψυχροῦ --δένδρεα --ἀγῶνα νέμειν --μακάρων τελετάς --ὕδωρ --χρυσὸς --κενεός 65 (O. 3.30-45). In the I. 5/I. 6 example, the correspondences largely involve repeated words or word-elements (πέφνον/πέφνεν), but also sound-echoes (χαλκοάραν/χαλκοχάρμαν). So too here we have κενεάν/κενεός but also νέμονται αἰῶνα/ἀγῶνα νέμειν. 66 In this light, two other-much shorter-sequences have a special relevance. First, we have the correspondence, both in word and sound, between O. 2.6-7 Ἀκράγαντος | εὐωνύμων τε πατέρων ἄωτον, ὀρθόπολιν and O. 3.3-4 (likewise early in its ode) ὕμνον ὀρθώσαις, ἀκαμαντοπόδων | ἵππων ἄωτον, or specifically: Here, it is arguably no coincidence that in the O. 3 sequence the ἀκαμαντοelement (like the echoic Ἀκράγαντοin O. 2) 67 goes closely with the ἄωτον that follows. In Pindar's authorial-compositional mind, the shape of the phrasing is determinative.
The kinship, however, is apparent. Here, as with the ἀκαμαντοπόδων sequence, Pindar's perhaps unexpected compositional habits have given us a correspondence that tends to confirm the plausibility of a corrected text. 69 M.S. SILK King's College London michael.silk@kcl.ac.uk APPENDIX A: 'PERICTIONE' (see n. 7 above) Meineke's ὄπις in 'Perictione' apud Stob. 4.25.50 Wachsmuth-Hense: this is a flowery neo-Pythagorean paragraph on the right treatment of parents by (especially) daughters, written in quasi-Ionic Greek, probably in the second century A.D. 70 The passage as transmitted is seriously corrupt. Meineke provided various improvements and at least one-this one-more questionable adjustment. The relevant sentence, as printed by Wachsmuth-Hense, runs: θείη γὰρ καὶ καλὴ ὄψις γονέων, καὶ ἡ τουτέων ὄπις καὶ θεραπείη, ὁκόση οὐδὲ ἡλίου οὐδὲ πάντων ἄστρων, τὰ οὐρανὸς ἐναψάμενος ἀμφιχορεύει, καὶ εἴ τι ἄλλο δοκέει τις χρῆμα μέζον εἷναι ἐόντων κατὰ θεωρίην. This, seemingly, is to mean: 'The appearance of one's parents is divine and beautiful, and <likewise> our regard and care for them, beyond even <the appearance of> the sun and all the stars that heaven sets alight in its circular dance, or anything else one could imagine as a greater spectacle.' This ὄπις is Meineke's conjecture. Of the manuscripts, as the Wachsmuth-Hense apparatus criticus indicates, A (Parisinus: fourteenth century) has (that is, repeats) ὄψις; S (Vindobonensis: eleventh century) and M (Escurialensis: twelfth century) have ἁψις ('sine acc.'); while Tr. (the sixteenthcentury editio Trincaveliana) has ἅψις (whether by simple correction of SM or through reference to some additional witness is not clear). By any reckoning, the Greek is intricate, and, among much else, the non-visual-related sequence καὶ ἡ . . . θεραπείη is a noteworthy parenthesis, in that it interrupts a flamboyant visual-centred comparison of ὄψις γονέων and ἡλίου κτλ. Τhe sentence (as indeed the passage more generally) is characterized by wordplay: not only εἷναι ἐόντων but θείη first word, θεωρίην last. This might seem to support a sequence ὄψις . . . ὄπις; and, if so, we would have an instance of the nominative ὄπις, prospectively in the secular sense (ἐπιστροφή) posited by the likes of Hesychius (see n. 4 above). However, Malcolm Schofield (who has kindly commented on my discussion) advises me that arguably ὄπις here would suggest religious 'reverence', in line with θείη, and likewise θεραπείη religious 'service' (as to gods); and he finds the conjectural ὄπις 'very likely right' on this basis. He notes: 'For the divinity of parents in this kind of context, and the requirement to accord them worship, see Stob. 4.25.53, from Hierocles, thought also to be second century A.D.: especially pages 641.3-642.5 Wachsmuth-Hense, where children are to think themselves ζακόρους τινὰς καὶ ἱερέας for the household, as if in a temple.' As such, the passage would provide no support for secular ὄπις, though indeed it would exemplify the nominative form. That said, one should still note that the conjecture would offer a unique attestation of the nominative in a continuous text (even in later texts); and that there is at least a case for retaining Tr.'s version of SM's text, ὄψις . . . ἅψις: 'The appearance of one's parents is divine and beautiful, and likewise touching and tending them . . .'. Not surprisingly, ἅψις/ὄψις is an attested collocation in philosophical Greek (Arist. Hist. an. 535a12-13; cf. Posidonius Phil., fr. 394 Theiler), while here, in an extra bit of wordplay, ἅψ-ις would then be picked up (however inconsequentially) by ἐν-αψ-άμενος. Non liquet?