The line that is troubling me is 17, which I take to mean: “Why? You consider yourself to be but one thread of the tunic. Why then? You ought to have given thought to how you are unlike other men, even as the thread does not want to be remarkable in relation to the other threads.” I notice the translations give the opposite sense “you should give thought to how you are like other men.” But ἀνόμοιος means “unlike, dissimilar.” What am I missing here?
I think part of the confusion lies in the fact that the translation is based on a different reading than what you see in Perseus. In the Loeb, ἀνόμοιος is read as ἄν ὅμοιος. …πῶς ἄν ὅμοιος ᾖς τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀνθρώποις is a relative clause dependent on φροντίζειν. ἄν of course is there because of the subjunctive in the dependent clause.
Thank you. I am glad I asked, for I had been puzzling over it for quite some time. I should have thought of the possibility of separating ἄν from ὅμοιος. Now it makes perfect sense.
I’ve looked up the passage in Schenkl’s 1916 Teubner edition and it has ἀνόμοιος as the preferred reading and ἄν ὅμοιος as the variant. Perhaps mwh or Hylander can explain why Schenkl preferred ἀνόμοιος. The only explanation I can posit is that ἔδει…φροντίζειν normally expresses unfulfilled obligation or propriety, and so implies a negative. Perhaps then the interpretation is “You ought to be taking care about how you are unlike other people (but you’re not)”. I think this is being expressed in the translations by turning the double negative into a positive in the case of Oldwater and Long or make the main clause (ἔδει…φροντίζειν) negative as Higginson does.
P.S. Just saw your reply-I still prefer ἄν ὅμοιος myself!
I think that the subjunctive ᾖς would be anticipatory in the other (ἀνόμοιος) case. I wouldn’t really know how to translate it to idiomatic English, but it would be like “You need to concern yourself about how it might fall out that you are different from others (leading to τραχηλοκοπηθῆναι).”
That is, “your sort needs to be anxious about being different” versus “you need to think about how to conform”. Same thing, but I like the ἀνόμοιος version with implied anxiety because the twist of the knife is just a bit sharper.
So there are two possible articulations: ανομοιος as one word or αν ομοιος as two. With ἀνόμοιος the subjunctive will be deliberative: “you ought to have given thought to how you’re to be unlike the rest of mankind,” the suggestion being that he is not unlike them; and that fits with the following ὥσπερ οὐδ᾽ ἡ κρόκη πρὸς τὰς ἄλλας κρόκας θέλει τι ἔχειν ἐξαίρετον.
I take the σέ emphatic against ἐγώ. He’s just told him to “ἄπελθε τοίνυν καὶ τραγῴδει”. He’s not turning around and giving him straight advice now. He’s saying, “you be a sheep and avoid getting yourself killed, me I’m a star.”