Soph. OT 1091— who is the subject of αὔξειν ?

Greek Learning Greek
1

ΧΟΡΟΣ
εἴπερ ἐγὼ μάντις εἰ-
μι καὶ κατὰ γνώμαν ἴδρις,
οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων,
ὦ Κιθαιρών, οὐκ ἔσῃ τὰν αὔριον
πανσέληνον μὴ οὐ σέ γε καὶ πατριώταν Οἰδίπου 1090
καὶ τροφὸν καὶ ματέρ᾿ αὔξειν,
καὶ χορεύεσθαι πρὸς ἡ-
μῶν ὡς ἐπίηρα φέροντα
τοῖς ἐμοῖς τυράννοις. 1095

LCL Lloyd-Jones 1994



chorus
If I am a prophet and wise in my judgment, O Cithaeron, you shall not fail to know that tomorrow’s full moon exalts you as the fellow-native and nurse and mother of Oedipus, and that you are honoured by us with dances, as doing kindness to our princes.

Lloyd-Jones 1994

Lloyd-Jones has a different take on this than D. Grene, R.C. Jebb and a few others.

Χορός

εἴπερ ἐγὼ μάντις εἰμὶ καὶ κατὰ γνώμαν ἴδρις,
οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων, ὦ Κιθαιρών,
οὐκ ἔσει τὰν αὔριον 1090
πανσέληνον, μὴ οὐ σέ γε καὶ πατριώταν Οἰδίπουν
καὶ τροφὸν καὶ ματέρ᾽ αὔξειν,
καὶ χορεύεσθαι πρὸς ἡμῶν, ὡς ἐπὶ ἦρα φέροντα τοῖς ἐμοῖς τυράννοις. 1095
ἰήϊε Φοῖβε, σοὶ δὲ ταῦτ᾽ ἀρέστ᾽ εἴη.

Chorus
If I am a seer or wise of heart, [1090] Cithaeron, you will not fail—by heaven, you will not—to know at tomorrow’s full moon that Oedipus honors you as native to him, as his nurse, and his mother, and that you are celebrated in our dance and song, [1095] because you are well-pleasing to our prince. O Phoebus to whom we cry, may these things find favor in your sight! — R.C. Jebb

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L-J’s text is different from Jebb’s: L-J has Οἰδίπου, while Jebb has Οἰδίπουν. That accounts for the difference in translation–in L-J’s text genitive Οἰδίπου can’t be the subject of αὔξειν, so the subject has to be πανσέληνον. Obviously, it’s difficult to make sense of this passage, and something is likely wrong with the text.

The accusative without preposition τὰν αὔριον πανσέληνον doesn’t seem right (at least not to me) for “time when,” so L-J’s text seems more natural (or, I should say, less unnatural). I don’t know offhand whether Οἰδίπου is a ms. reading or a conjectural emendation to resolve the difficulty. I’ll look up the OCT and Dawe’s Cambridge edition when I get home. L-J and his collaborator on the OCT Nigel Wilson published a book entitled Sophoclea explaining their text, and there’s probably a discussion there.

In the end, though, there’s probably no definitive answer to your question. The text of Sophocles is in really, really bad shape, and dilemmas like this crop up on every page.


Another thing that seems odd here is that σέ is the object of αὔξειν but the subject of χορεύεσθαι. And what does οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων, which L-J simply declines to translate, mean?

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And what does οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων, which L-J simply declines to translate, mean?

I read it as οὐκ εἰμὶ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων, reinforcing the above. But Sophocles is more or less a closed book to me.

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Update:

I checked the new OCT and Sophoclea, by Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, which explains the readings adopted in the OCT, as well as Dawe’s edition of OT in the Cambridge Greek & Latin Classics series. Apparently, Οἰδίπουν is a conjecture, which Dawe adopts but LLoyd-Jones and Wilson reject. They justify their retention of the mss. reading with a note. Among other things, they note that τὰν αὔριον πανσέληνον as an accusative of extent of time is difficult to swallow. Various other editors have offered different conjectural solutions to this passage, which goes to show that others have found it vexing, too.

Dawe also notes the change of Κιθαιρών/σέ from object to subject, which I find a little strange.

οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων – Dawe interprets τὸν Ὄλυμπον as an oath without μα. “not, by Olympus, ignorant”, but who is not ignorant–ἐγὼ or Κιθαιρών? Clearly Κιθαιρών, as In Jebb’s translation, in light of the repeated οὐ, reinforced by the oath. [Edited to remove a stupid misinterpretation.]

Dawe: “The text given is by no means certain.” That’s probably about as much as can be said about this sentence, which seems to have been almost as perplexing to the experts as it is to me. But that’s not infrequent in Sophocles.

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Thanks Q, for enlightening comments. I noted the difference in the texts but somehow over looked the genitive ending Οἰδίπου. Chalk it of to old age and poor eyesight. This chorus isn’t the most difficult I have seen but the syntax is fascinating.

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οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων,
ὦ Κιθαιρών, οὐκ ἔσῃ τὰν αὔριον
πανσέληνον μὴ οὐ σέ γε καὶ πατριώταν Οἰδίπου 1090
καὶ τροφὸν καὶ ματέρ᾿ αὔξειν,

Now I see how this fits together.

οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων,
ὦ Κιθαιρών, οὐκ ἔσῃ

“You will not be ignorant/unknowing, by Olympus, o Cithaeron”

μὴ οὐ – this is what Smyth calls the “redundant or sympathetic negative”, sec. 2745:

Any infinitive that would take μή, takes μὴ οὐ (with a negative force), if dependent on a negatived verb. Here οὐ is the sympathetic negative and is untranslatable.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Smyth+grammar+2745&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0007

Except that here what follows must be positive:

either “that tomorrow’s full moon will exalt you as Oedipus’ fellow-native and nurse and mother” (LSJ)

or “for the duration of tomorrow’s full moon that Oedipus will exalt you …” etc. (Jebb, Dawe et al.)

The sequence of negatives: οὐ . . . ἀ- . . . οὐκ . . . μὴ οὐ, makes this very confusing. αὔξειν here is presumably meant to be positive, and if you read without parsing through the negatives (or hear it as a native speaker of Greek in the original audience), it comes out that way. However, assuming the text is correct (a dangerous assumption in Sophocles), it would seem that if you try to unscramble the negatives it could or should come out negative.

I wonder whether there could be deliberate irony in the confusing tangle of negatives: in fact, the positive prophecy that the Chorus thinks it is delivering doesn’t come to pass because Oedipus is undone by the next day’s full moon. If they are in fact unknowingly delivering a negative prophecy, having stumbled over their own syntax, they are, unwittingly and ironically, ἴδρις.

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I am making good use of Geoffrey Steadman and occasionally dipping into Guy Cooper. Steadman is indispensable. Can’t hardly believe that I suffered through thousands of lines of Sophocles OT, OC, Electra, Ajax, Antigone, before Steadman came along and made it almost pleasurable to read the plays.

1088 οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον: by Mt. Olympus!; an
invocation: μά is omitted before οὐ
πείρων…οὐκ ἔσει…μὴ οὐ…Οιδίπουν
…αὔξειν: you will not be ignorant that
Oedipus will honor…; ἔσε(σ)αι, 2nd sg.
fut. εἰμί ; a double neg. may follow a
negated verb (often a prohibition)

Geoffrey Steadman, Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus
Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and
Commentary, January 7, 2014, p.73

On the oath/invocation where “μά is omitted before οὐ” see also:

Guy Cooper, Greek Syntax, vol. 3, p1991, 2:47.5.7.5.c where Cooper reverses the order μά is omitted after οὐ and cites several examples from Sophocles.

S.Ant. 758
Ἄληθες; ἀλλ’ οὐ τόνδ’ Ὄλυμπον, ἴσθ’ ὅτι,
χαίρων ἐπὶ ψόγοισι δεννάσεις ἐμέ.

S.OT 660
{ΧΟ.} Οὐ τὸν πάντων θεῶν θεὸν πρόμον
Ἅλιον· ἐπεὶ ἄθεος ἄφιλος ὅ τι πύματον
ὀλοίμαν, φρόνησιν εἰ τάνδ’ ἔχω.

S.OT 1088(89)
οὐ τὸν Ὄλυμπον ἀπείρων, ὦ Κιθαιρών,
οὐκ ἔσῃ τὰν αὔριον

S.El. 1062
{ΧΟ.} …
Ἀλλ’ οὐ τὰν Διὸς ἀστραπὰν
καὶ τὰν οὐρανίαν Θέμιν,
δαρὸν οὐκ ἀπόνητοι.

EDIT:

RE: μά is not omitted after οὐ

Euripides uses the expression οὐ μὰ Δί’ where μά is not omitted after οὐ.

Euripides Trag., Cyclops (Diggle OUP 1984)

line 9
οὐ μὰ Δί’, ἐπεὶ καὶ σκῦλ’ ἔδειξα Βακχίωι.

line 154
{Οδ.} εἶδες γὰρ αὐτήν; {Σι.} οὐ μὰ Δί’, ἀλλ’ ὀσφραίνομαι.

line 555f
{Σι.} οὐ μὰ Δί’, ἐπεί μού φησ’ ἐρᾶν ὄντος καλοῦ.
{Κυ.} ἔγχει, πλέων δὲ τὸν σκύφον δίδου μόνον.
{Σι.} πῶς οὖν κέκραται; φέρε διασκεψώμεθα.
{Κυ.} ἀπολεῖς· δὸς οὕτως. {Σι.} οὐ μὰ δί’, οὐ πρὶν ἄν γέ σε
στέφανον ἴδω λαβόντα γεύσωμαί τ’ ἔτι.
{Κυ.} οἱνοχόος ἄδικος. {Σι.} > <οὐ> μὰ > δί’, ἀλλ’ οἷνος

Contra Diggle 1984, D.Kovacs (LCL 1994) reads Euripides Cyclops 559

<ναὶ> μὰ > Δί᾿, ἀλλ᾿ οἷνος γλυκύς.
ἀπομακτέον δέ σοὐστὶν ὡς λήψῃ πιεῖν.

“Yes, but the wine is sweet. But time to wipe your mouth: here comes a drink.” — D.Kovacs (LCL 1994)

Aristophanes has the idiom in several forms:
οὐ μὰ Δί’
οὐ μὰ τοὺς θεούς
οὐ μὰ τὼ θεὼ
Οὐ μὰ τὸν Δία
ναὶ μὰ Δία