Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/323

 On Schneidewifo's Edition of the CEdipus Rex. 313 words, and their prepositions cannot be shared with any other word. The meaning of the poet in this place is plain enough : but the terms in which he conveys it are somewhat puzzling, until we observe that he has used akyos to express the motive or cause of grief rather than the feeling, just as in v. 337, dpyrjv ffitjiya ttju eprjv he uses opyrj to imply a disposition provoking anger, and not anger itself. Translate then : " for the cause of grief in your cases applies to each single person privately, and to no one else, whereas," &c. 86, O. riv rjfiiv rjiceis tov 6eov (prjprjv (pepatv ; K. icrffkrjv. Xe'yo) yap nal to. dvafpop*, el tvoi KaT 6p6bv eeX66vTa, ttuvt av cvrvxelv. Elmsley and Schneidewin remove the comma after hva-<popa. Wunder keeps it, and rightly. Schneidewin asserts (without assigning his reason), that to. bva-cpopa must not be taken in con- nection with evTvxw, and renders the two latter lines thus : " A good one : for I assert that, if the difficult things also should turn out happily, it (the oracle) would be wholly prosperous ;" meaning, I suppose, that the oracle will be wholly favourable (and there- fore entitled to the epithet ZaBXri), if what there is in it of diffi- culty and unpleasantness should turn out happily as well as the rest of its contents. But in the terms of the oracle, as afterwards stated (96), there is nothing to justify us in dividing it into two portions, to. bvo-qjopa and to eadXa. The Thebans are simply com- manded to expel a pollution existing in their city, and no clue is given whereby they may discover it. This is dia-cpopov altogether ; though capable of becoming evTi^es {i(r6X6v) f el ri>xoi Kar opObv egev, if they ultimately discover and expel the murderer of Laius. In the bvg and ev it is impossible not to recognize a studied antithesis, which requires us to connect dva-cpopa with evrvx^v. And the general maxim, which hence results, appears to give a much apter force to the passage. Render : " A good one : for I say that even froward things, if they eventually came right, would wholly deserve to be called toward." Such I suppose to be pretty nearly Wunder's interpretation also ; but his note is not very clear on the point, and he cites, without condemning, the untenable notion of the Scholiasts, who make iroXiv or jpas understood ( ! ) the subject of eirvxelv.