Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/458

 as cognate accusatives, and to suppose that the subject to the infinitive is the poet; "he began the practice of (the poet) competing with play against play," etc. We might then compare Herod. 5. 22, contending in a foot-race. Thus would be equivalent to, and  to. But and  are opposed to each other, merely as different instruments of the same contest; and therefore, if the poet were the subject to the infinitive, we should rather have expected the dative,. It is true that Aristides (ii. 422) has the phrase , "Sophocles was defeated with his Oedipus"; but there the accusative seems rather analogous to the cognate accusative in such phrases as. It will appear bye and bye that, although the general sense of the passage is not affected by the question as to the subject of the infinitive, yet this point is perhaps not wholly without significance.

I propose to discuss the interpretations which have been placed upon the statement of Suidas, and then to offer my own.