Eur. Hec. 540 πρευμενοῦς

[Hylander]

I'm not sure I see what the objection is to reading εὐμενοῦς in line 540 to avoid the repetition πρευμενὴς/πρευμενοῦς, but no one seems to have proposed this (or at least no editor seems to have taken it seriously enough to put it in any critical notes I've seen), so I must be missing something.

LSJ:

4. of places and things, γῆ εὐ. ἐναγωνίσασθαι favourable to fight in, Th.2.74; εὐμενεῖ ποτῷ (of a river) kindly, bounteous, A. Pers.487; of the air, mild, soft, Thphr.CP2.1.6; so of medicines, beneficial, “ὑποχονδρίψ καὶ σπλάγχνοισιν” Hp.Acut.59, cf.Aret.CA1.3; but also, agreeable, [“κόμμι]-έστερον κόλλης” Hp.Art.33; of a road, easy, X.An.4.6.12 (Comp.).

No Euripidean citations, but still . . .

Luigi Battezzato, in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics ("green and yellow") series, defends the repetition and prints πρευμενοῦς in l. 540 without daggers.

[jeidsath]

The scholia for line 540:

(540) † δὸς δ’ ἡμῖν πάλιν ἀπελθεῖν ἀπὸ τῆς Τροίας εἰς τὴν πατρικὴν γῆν τυχόντας πρευμενοῦς, ἤτοι ἀλύπου, νόστου, ἀπὸ τοῦ πράου καὶ εὐμενοῦς: —A

[Aetos]

Friedrich Heimsoeth (1814-1877) suggests εὐμαροῦς. I went to the line in Euripides Fabulae edition and checked for alternates. That's either the original or an alternate, I'm not sure.
URL:
https://archive.org/details/euripidisfa ... i/page/334

[jeidsath]

That's either the original or an alternate, I'm not sure.

"εὐμαροῦς Heimsoeth" means that the suggestion is from Heimsoeth, and that the printed text is evidently the manuscript reading.

For the other direction, look down to 559, where he has printed μέσας in the main text. The apparatus reads: "μέσας Brunck: μέσον codd. et Σ"

There, he has printed Brunck's μέσας in the main text, notes that it is from Brunck in the apparatus, and says that the codexes and scholia (Σ) have μέσον.

The rule is that if he prints the manuscript version in the main text, he doesn't have to bother listing "<text> codd." for it (which would just fill the apparatus with nonsense).

[Aetos]

Thank you, Joel!
I've never really done much with the critical apparatus; hence, I'm woefully ignorant in its formatting. The first book I ever attempted with a critical apparatus was Fordyce's Catullus (Oxford,1961) and I had my hands full with translation and metre, let alone looking at variants. At some point, I intend to go back and make a proper job of it. Right now, I'm focusing mostly on Greek. I've finished Pharr and am starting Cynthia Claxton's "Attica".

[polemistes]

One objection is that reading something which is not found in the manuscripts without a very good reason will lead to very poor texts in the end. Here the meaning is clear, and the repetition can be seen as a poetic device rather than a flaw. The alternating repetitions of πρ and τρ in στρατός, πρευμενής, πρύμνας, πρευμενοῦς and πάτραν give Neoptolemus an air of solemnity, maybe to the extent that it becomes parodic, conveying his crudeness and lack of sensibility. Even if you think the repetition is a flaw, I think we should not change the text just to improve something Euripides might have written. Although he was a genius, he wasn't flawless.

[jeidsath]

From the other thread:

As for πρευμενοῦς, the objection to it is not the repetition as such but rather the syntactical imbalance between the two occurrences of the word. It’s indefensible. Hylander’s ευμενοῦς is too close to it, intolerable after the πρευμενὴς γενοῦ invocation of Achilles. Diggle in the OCT reports Heimsoeth’s ευμαροῦς, which seems as good a guess as we’re likely to get.