Republic 456a1

Specific Text Questions
1

I ran across this in Burnet, and it haunted me for a couple of nights, because it seems like it should be so easy to fix:

Burnet: [Καὶ] γυμναστικὴ δ᾿ ἄρα οὔ, οὐδὲ πολεμική, ἡ δὲ ἀπόλεμος καὶ οὐ φιλογυμναστική;

Slings gives the following fix (justified in detail here).

Slings: Γυμναστικὴ δ᾿ ἆρα οὐ καὶ πολεμική, ἡ δὲ ἀπόλεμος καὶ οὐ φιλογυμναστική;

He mentions that this is “virtually the reading of Laur.85.7pc”. I assume that this is described in Boter, which I don’t have. I did not see a description in his introduction. I also assume that it’s related to Laur.80.19pc, discussed in “On Ancient Manuscripts of the Republic,” (highly recommended) but if someone can tell me more, I would appreciate it.

Regardless, I’m not really convinced by Slings’ explanation, as it looks like a fix to me, and his moveable καί explanation for the corruption, in addition to the ἆρα postponement, is a little hard to swallow. IMO, the οὐδὲ to καὶ is similar to a fix seen here in the apparatus for this same line quoted in Galen.

So I do what I do when I get into trouble lately: add an <ἢ>

My fix: Γυμναστικὴ δ᾿ ἄρα; <ἢ> οὔ, οὐδὲ πολεμική; ἡ δὲ ἀπόλεμος καὶ οὐ φιλογυμναστική;

This gives a nice reading, nearly the same as F. See also in the apparatus for Galen above, which gives “Corn.” as: Γυμναστικὴ δ᾿ ἄρ; ἡ δ᾿ ἄρα καὶ πολεμική. And the corruption from an original αρα η or αρ᾿ η is obvious.

Also look how nice the rhetoric now becomes for this cornerstone bit of the argument. “Is there a gymnastic [woman, by nature]? Or not, nor a warlike? And another who is unwarlike and is not gymnastic-loving?” The first is a leading question that makes it hard to claim that there is no such thing as a warlike woman. And an affirmative to final question, that there exist women who are neither warlike nor gymnastic-loving leads again to the proposition that is being sneakily slid in, that there exists a warlike woman.

Poor Glaucon: Οἶμαι ἔγωγε.

And as long as we are on the subject, my youngest daughter, 4 years old, has been waking me up every morning to beg me to play more of the Odyssey (Rouse’s translation) on my phone to her. Listening together, we got up to the scene where Antinous has been shot and Eurymachus begs to be allowed to make compensation. I paused the audio and asked her whether she thought that Odysseus would let the other suitors go? She got a terrible glint in her eye, balled her fists, and answered with, “No! He’s going to kill them all!” Earlier, she had also displayed a notable lack of compassion for Hector in the Iliad.

2

Boter has appeared. Laur.85.7pc is his “x”, Florentinus Laurentianus, with the pc standing for a scribal correction, post correctionem. He believes that it derives from F, Discussion pg. 35-36, 190-197, 237-239. Completely unrelated to Laur.80.19pc.

x itself is a (possibly direct) transcript of F (see pp. 190-192), and does not have any peculiar readings, except some obvious errors. Yet several later hands have occupied themselves with adding corrections, variant readings, glosses etc.; some of these readings are quite interesting and there are a few cases of agreement with the indirect tradition.

3

Is Rouse’s translation of the Odyssey a prose version, by chance? If so, that maybe the one I read years ago. (I no longer have it, but seem to remember he was the translator.)

4

Yes, it’s a prose version, though with good attention to flow. It bounces along really well. He corresponded with Ezra Pound on creating it. The end essay on translating Homer and lively translation in general doesn’t seem to be included with new editions, but is very good. Maybe I’ll scan it and make a thread about it at some point. A number of bold statements there.

EDIT: I’ve uploaded the essay here, and will create a thread once I have the time.

5

The correspondence between Rouse and Pound is definitely worth reading, and quite funny in places. I attended, though long after his time as headmaster, the school where Rouse taught. The school library still contained many books from his personal collection, but I’m afraid the Direct Method approach to the classics was no longer practiced.

6

Thanks, Joel. I’m pretty sure now that Rouse’s Odyssey and his Illiad are the English versions I read. I’d like to find them and read them again. Maybe after I read Homer in Greek… Thanks also for posting the essay on Homer’s words. I’ll look forward to reading it.

Although not a Greek teacher myself (I did get to teach Exploratory Latin for two and a half years, though), I admire Rouse’s use of the direct method with his students. I’ve read portions of his edition of Lucian of Samosata’s Dialogues of the Gods. In the notes, he defines many of the Greek words and phrases in neo-Attic (or neo-Koine), which I found fascinating, and generally helpful to me as an autodidact. Were I to get to teach Greek, I would definitely use at least some direct method approaches, I did do a little in my Latin classes.