Can καὶ γὰρ mean “just like”, or am I approaching these two wrongly
The question arises while reading:
This seems to be Denniston’s καὶ γὰρ II.
My thinking arises from that flowers are probably, and nightingales are certainly standards against which to measure visual and aural beauty.
Following Denniston, and saying, “Daphnis is comely. Yes, and the flowers (are comely too)”, sort of turns that assumption that the flowers are the reference point on its head. The comment in the Particles that “If καὶ γὰρ is ever so used in continuous speech may be questioned”, perhaps means that has Chloe in two minds and conversing with herself, or that this is not the καὶ γὰρ of dialogue mentioned by Denniston, but rather that the γὰρ is the beginning of an explanatory phrase and the καὶ is adverbial, "for even the flowers are comely (because Daphnis has given my heart a new sense of appreciation for comeliness).
The example quoted from Against Phormio, the καὶ γὰρ is a rhetorical response to the somebody quoting a term from a contract, so even though it is not in the form of a dialogue, it is still a reply to something somebody else is portrayed as saying:
Here, I think that καὶ γὰρ motivates the “ἀλλ᾽ ἐκείνων οὐδείς μοι λόγος.” She’s saying that while those are beautiful too, the only λόγος to her is of Daphnis. Something like this:
How many thorns have stabbed me, and I have not cried. How many bees have stung me, but I have bit my lip. But this thing pricking my heart is the most bitter of them all. Daphnis is beautiful; and so the blossoms. Beautiful sounds his syrinx; and so the nightingales. But none of those is a thought to me. If only I had been born his syrinx, that he might sound me with his breath.
I’m not sure about the τουτὶ δὲ τὸ νύττον μου τὴν καρδίαν, but that’s already another thread.
If the lips were swollen and numb, there would have been plenty to bite on. My only approach to this was from the point of view of swelling, anaphylaxis and difficulty breathing (and eating).
Now that I think about it, the contrast meant is between people pricked by love (legendarily) not eating, and her eating despite the prick of bees. So no indication of any anaphylaxis here. Something like:
“How many bees have stung me, but I have eaten [like normal].”
I initially thought similarly too, but then looked for any ancient understandings of the effect of beestings. While accepting the contrast between the previous experience and the present, you sound confident in dismissing the relationship between bee stings and eating, but that removes the parallelism.
Πόσοι βάτοι με ἤμυξαν, καὶ οὐκ ἔκλαυσα: πόσαι μέλιτται κέντρον ἐνῆκαν, ἀλλὰ ἔφαγον:
If the construction is parallel, then the first half viz. - “one might have expected me to cry when the brambles scratched me, but I didn’t.” - with the second - “one might have expected me not to eat after the bee injected its stinger, but I did eat”, then there needs to be some relationship between beestings and (not) eating. Without a reaction causing difficulty in eating, the metaphor is weakened.
Pain can sometimes cause loss of appetite, which would be enough for the metaphor. Along with the fact that cupid’s prick and the bee prick are associated elsewhere. Maybe the idea of bee stings specifically causing loss of appetite was enough of a commonplace the ancient world for the author to use it, but it would be surprising to me if so – it’s not exactly a common symptom.
That sounds more plausible to me. The Sioux City Journal (May 19th 2001) claims 3% of people have severe reactions to bites and stings. Contrasting these physical worse case senarios of the bushes and bees, (rather than the common things that happen) with the situation of her infatuation with Daphnis, may be suggesting that this love is her emotional worst case senario.
This is pastoral, and the thing about bee stings is that they’re painful—just like bramble scratches (and Love, we can add but Chloe can’t—dramatic irony). We shouldn’t go thinking of anaphylaxis or anything of the kind! Bees and brambles, straightforward exempla from the pastoral world that Daphnis and Chloe inhabit, parallel each other. They’re both πικρον—but not as πικρον as whatever this thing is that’s stinging/pricking Chloe. The thought is put in rhetorical form but is very simple: Chloe is an ingenue, yet is allowed full control of rhetorical tropes. (She’s modelled on Sappho, of course, as the Lesbian setting signals at the outset.)
—Note the companion passage 1.18 (where Chloe’s kiss is κέντρου μελίττης πικρότερον).
αλλ’ εφαγον is very much out of balance and can’t be right. What we need after πόσαι μέλιτται κέντρον ἐνῆκαν (or whatever precisely the text should be) is not αλλα and not anything to do with eating (or biting one’s lip—wherever did that come from?) but και ουκ ε-(?yelp: react as a girl in pastoral would be expected to react to being stung), to match Πόσοι βάτοι με ἤμυξαν, καὶ οὐκ ἔκλαυσα. It has to be same figure (cf. e.g. the string of και γαρ’s above). And taking a look at Michael Reeve’s Teubner edition—far and away the best edition, the only one to use—we find that he aptly prints και ουκ ανεκραγον (a conjecture by Tournier).
Back for moment to the και γαρ’s (Denniston’s II, as Joel recognized). We should read this as a dialogue that she’s conducting with herself.
“Καλὸς ὁ Δάφνις.” — “καὶ γὰρ τὰ ἄνθη.”
“καλὸν ἡ σύριγξ αὐτοῦ φθέγγεται.” — “καὶ γὰρ αἱ ἀηδόνες.”
“Ἀλλ̓ ἐκείνων οὐδείς μοι λόγος.” (It’s a paradox, a mystery. Why should it be that I care for Daphnis and not for those other exemplary pastoral καλά?)
ἀλλ᾽ ἔφαγον may be wrong, though it’s easy enough to take τροφῆς ἠμέλει in the preceding paragraph as motivation for it. (I retracted my “bit my lip” guess upthread and wrote “but I have eaten [like normal]”.)
But I don’t like καὶ οὐκ ἀνέκραγον (or Edmonds’ οὐκ ἔκραγον) at all.
We’ve just had a long description of the symptoms of love that she is experiencing.
τροφῆς ἠμέλει, νύκτωρ ἠγρύπνει, τῆς ἀγέλης κατεφρόνει· νῦν ἐγέλα, νῦν ἔκλαεν· εἶτα ἐκάθητο, εἶτα ἀνεπήδα· ὠχρία τὸ πρόσωπον, ἐρυθήματι αὖθις ἐφλέγετο.
And now we get her internal monologue about those symptoms.
ἀλγῶ, καὶ ἕλκος οὐκ ἔστι μοι· λυποῦμαι, καὶ οὐδὲν τῶν προβάτων ἀπόλωλέ μοι· κάομαι, καὶ ἐν σκιᾷ τοσαύτῃ κάθημαι. πόσοι βάτοι με πολλάκις ἤμυξαν, καὶ οὐκ ἔκλαυσα· πόσαι μέλιτται <τὰ> κέντρα ἐνῆκαν, καὶ οὐκ ἀνέκραγον· τουτὶ δὲ τὸ νύττον μου τὴν καρδίαν πάντων ἐκείνων πικρότερον.
Which of these is the odd man out? Certainly ἀνέκραγον. It’s not mentioned as one of the symptoms in the preceding paragraph, and in fact it’s not a normal symptom of unrequited love at all (but rather the other kind).
EDIT:
Maybe something like καὶ οὐκ ἐδάκρυσα
αλλ’ εφαγον must be wrong, not may be. And your objection to the conjecture is misguided. Symptoms of unrequited love don’t come into it.