Alcmanica Author(s): M. L. West Reviewed work(s): Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Nov.

, 1965), pp. 188-202 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/637912 . Accessed: 26/08/2012 17:23
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ALCMANICA
I.
THE DATE OF ALCMAN

lived sometime in the seventh century.'" 'ALCMAN 'At some period in the seventh century Sparta was occupied with the Second Messenian War, but we do not know its date or whether Alcman lived before Between these two utterances, part of a papyrus commentary on Alcman was published,3 from which it appeared that the poet mentioned names known to us from the Spartan king-lists. It might have been expected that this discovery would lead to a more precise dating for Alcman. Some people think that in fact it does, and I am one of them. We shall have to inquire what persons Alcman mentioned in the poem concerned, what he said about them, and then when they lived. We must also consider the other available evidence on Alcman's date, and see how well it fits the conclusions drawn from the commentary. I shall argue that it fits them satisfactorily,and that both bodies of evidence indicate that Alcman was active well after the Second Messenian War, in the last decades of the seventh century, perhaps still in the early years of the sixth.4 The passage of Alcman that we must try to reconstructwas preceded by one in which he addressed a girl and praised her beauty. According to one ancient reading of the text-we do not know what the alternative was-he said something that meant, 'Even though you stand beside gold, no one will find fault with you'. Then comes an obscure lemma,
or during or after it.'z

ovyap roAvrT-j1tov KJ[Aa]trosd'VpTrr83' Jv3p_3v

o0I1S'] a'yptos.

I merely note the general similarity to fr. 16 (Page) oVtK` Jv?7pJypEOsO o833E UcKa~SOo833 7rp %aoof ('not even in poetic circles'? Cf. av47p 7rTE' v83p6v)and is not a mistake for rroAvrrdTowv observe that if 'wealthy', and if rroAv7wov does not then there may be a pun on the name represent KActlOo-,s Kd\crtosin fr. 3. 74. like the on pun (KaAo's, Ar-rvtdAora arUa)part of the fragment runs: The next
VUV8' 'LO[EST7G 8al'povoO &pLacrav' Ew(s) -70oITraL[SWv] AEwTrvXl8aS I am indebted to Mr. W. G. G. Forrest for reading this section and saving me from several errors. I D. L. Page, Alcman, The Partheneion, 1951, P. 166. 2 C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry, 2nd edition, 1961, p. I9. 3 By E. Lobel in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri xxiv, 1957, no. 2390 fr. 2. 4 A similar conclusion has been reached by P. Janni, Studi Urbinati xxxiii (i959), 162-72, but his argumentation is slack. Cf. G. L. Huxley, Early Sparta, 1962, pp. 61-62. As I was working on this article in the Ashmolean Library, I discovered that at the next desk Mr. F. D. Harvey was writing one on the same subject. We found on comparing notes that we had independently reached the same conclusions on some points, but that there was sufficient divergence to justify our each proceeding to publication. s As might be suggested by the name mother of a herdsman from Sybaris KaAaLOls, in Theocr. 5. 15 (codd.).

ALCMANICA
U v flaotAEVs. X&,Aov A]aKE&L[juov1`]w

189

' Ttuatjulp3p6ra O]vydrqp

viv 38 marks a transition. The chorus apparently said, 'But now we will go to

(do something to) the noblest of the children .. .'. The commentator'snote on this is, 'Leotychidas was a king of the Lacedaemonians; but it is not clear [whether] Timasimbrota is [his] daughter [or...']. It appears certain that Alcman had named Leotychidas (presumably in the form AarvXt`8as: Page, C.R. N.s. ix [19591, 19); and practically certain that he had named Timasimbrota.I But the commentator was in some doubt about whose daughter she was. There are three possibilities: (i) Leotychidas was named in the genitive, but there was more than one way of construing the genitive in the sentence. Against this the following consideration may be urged. There is a high probability that wja[85v]aptorayv, must have been 'noblest of the children ...', referredto Timasimbrota. w7ac&7v in the text, any name was there if a and a father's name; genitive qualified by reader must have construedit with 7ract&v,whether or not syntax allowed some other construction. (ii) Two genitives stood in the text, in such a way that it was not clear which of them qualified 7rrat&v. Against this possibility is the fact that the commentator's a680Aov-sentenceends with the indefinite trvos': it follows that his uncertainty is not about which of two or more specified persons was the father of Timasimbrota, but was of a more general nature. (iii) Timasimbrota was unambiguously said to be the daughter of Leotychidas, and the commentator was only in doubt about whether Leotychidas was the king or someone else of the same name. This third alternative seems far the most likely. I supplement: -rovrov O]vycdr7p TilaU8 [rrdrEpov a,5Aov T OS.2 t [~7 U~lf~ppOd ETE~pOV ILELVJ?17TclL If, as now seems certain, Aa-rvXLSa appeared in the sentence, there is at least a fair possibility that r5 8axltovos referred to him. Other ways of fitting the phrase in can of course be imagined, and the uncertainty is tantalizing; for if we could be sure that Leotychidas was characterized as 0' 8atwv, we could also be sure that he was indeed the king, and that he was already dead.3 8' LKE.v The next lemma reads: qvadv [ ................7T]actt eavO2cHoAvSto will we 'Now The choir has go (praise, presumably) Tima[p]w[. just said, 8' EOLKEV, there is a strong simbrota'. When the following lemma begins vadv presumption that Timasimbrota is the subject of the new proposition. What stood between IOLKEv and there is no way of telling,4 but the chances are
rata&'

2 It is remotely possible that she was not I have inquired of Mr. Lobel whether the traces are compatible with i4LLv]]-TaL,and named in the text, but known to the commentator from some other source as a gather from his reply that they are. 3 J. A. Davison, Proceedings of the Ninth daughter of Leotychidas. On this hypothesis, International the text would have referred to 'the daughter 1961, p. 33 ; Congress of Papyrology, of Leotychidas', and the commentator Xen. Resp. Lac. 15. 9 at 8 r1EAEv7r'aav-rL would be saying, 'it is not clear whether the r7LIai .aaLtAEi 68ov7ra 7~)8 ftoAowraS 870Aofv ot AvKOVpyOUvdOOL 05r O X o davOpcTOUSv daughter referred to is Timasimbrota'. But v flaatAELthis would be an odd comment, oddly ex70;ov dAA' dsgpowa AaKEaqovtocV pressed; and the fully Doric form in which 7TpoTETLL'Kafl~. the name appears (contrast AEcowrvXLas) 4 Presumably not more than a couple of words; in a lemma abbreviated by means of suggests that it is quoted directly from the ws 70-oo,there would have been no need to text, not taken from history books.

190o

M. L. WEST The 'OL1KEV. words

TcratL8

that rra~t was the dative construed with

may be taken in any of three ways: HoAv8Copw[ (i) 'The son of X, light-haired Polydorus.' (ii) 'Light-haired son of Polydorus.'

avO~cL

Either of the first two alternativeswould seem to involve the comparison of Timasimbrota with a man. Now it might be possible to say, 'in respect of her build' she is like a man'; but it becomes very odd if she is likened to a particular man-odd if he is a man of normal build, and odd if he is a man of exceptional build. Alcman must have meant something less definite, and this involves the adoption of alternative (iii). I take him to be saying that Timasimbrota, who was possibly more sturdy than beautiful, is like a child of a hero of the past: the famous Agiad king Polydorus, a man with an unrivalled reputation for his constructive policies and righteous dealings.2 If her actual father Leotychidas was still alive, he cannot have wished for a better compliment.3
Page comes to very different conclusions (PoetaeMelici Graeci,p. 23). First he says, 'potius (HoAv)-&wpwquam opinor', and declares his belief that -&owpwL to be between and mratl. This gives the is supplemented 'ITTroKpa-r&aS OLOKEV

(iii) On the easy assumption that the t of eavOw8 was added erroneously after TaL81, 'child of light-haired Polydorus'.

sense, 'Hippocratidas resembles in stature the fair-haired son of Polydorus'. Then he contradicts himself, and says that Hippocratidas is being compared with Polydorus,who is an otherwiseunrecordedson of Eurycrates(the Second). But he has left himself no room in which to accommodate Eurycrates'name in the text; it cannot have come after rrat& %avO8L HoAv&ipwt. Even supposing that these difficulties could be overcome, it is hard to conceive how Alcman, having apparentlyjust proposed to praise Timasimbrota, could proceed, 'And in build, Hippocratidas is very like Polydorus'. It is true that something else might have intervened, of which the commentator has said nothing, and that we cannot expect to recover the poem by simply stringing the lemmata together. But where there is an obvious connexion between one lemma and the next, interpretation must make the most of it if it is to be plausible. of Leotychidas known to us, is virtually certain in view of the following considerations. I. The commentator found in the text a name which he knew as the name of a son of King Leotychidas. 2. The occurrence of such a name close to the name Leotychidas, and in a context actually concerned with children of Leotychidas, would be an

The commentator now says, ['I7ToKpartasi A3w7Eo-vXl'av6s ( 70 O [TpoELP7EU IAdvov] flaato[rw]g. The restoration of the name of Hippocratidas, the only son

S' 'OLKEV quote more than bvdv similarly 355; Alc. 130. 32 drrwat ToiO) akwtkos-, . H., and os 70oO (4.,s not AcapaS EVatL tav IT'AIEVT' AKEcby itself would KpLVVL wrraL& ES if Timasimbrota is fill the space. But compared to 7rrTEroL. The normal meaning of before a man, only the more usual meaning comes ,v'4 Pindaris 'height', 'build'; fvdav S' OLKEV re- into question. 2 On this sembles Homeric expressionslike ElodS ,rE reputation see W. G. G. Forrest,
kyyEOOdS -E

seems to have a more general meaning in connexionwith female beauty, 'form': Hes.
Th. 259 E3dipvrl TE v4v dpa-4T Kal ?'o0'

0vflV Ka

e'o0sdcpolo7. Occasionallythe word

P 7' 9Ov77V

YXLeta

EWIKEL,

aaVa7cTL

Phoenixxvii (1963), 170- . 3 I know of no evidence that a Eurypontid would be likely to be offended at being compared with an Agiad.

ALCMANICA

191

incredible coincidence if the Leotychidas in question were not the king of that name. We shall proceed on the assumption that he was. 3. The noblest of his children was indisputably his successorHippocratidas (unless Hippocratidas had an elder brother who died before his father; if Leotychidas is dead at the time of the ode, this need not bother us). Therefore Timasimbrota can only have been called 'the noblest of Leotychidas' children cratidas' presence in the text; the commentator'snote explains who he is. The next question is, why is the commentator in such doubt about whether Leotychidas is the king or not? Is he merely being cautious, or is there some special reason for his uncertainty? I believe the explanation to be as follows. Alcman had said, 'We now praise Timasimbrota, noblest of Leotychidas' The commentator took this to mean that she was like her father. An understandable error, and one that accounts for his puzzlement. Here was a Leotychidas, with a son of the right name for the king, but the wrong father. His note runs, 'Hippocratidas was the son of Leotychidas the king; but it was
Eurycrates whose father was Polydorus'.
TOO

apart from Hippocratidas',

That accounts for HippoVE3' 'I7UToOKpapr5aYv.I

children after Hippocratidas; and in stature she is like vat&

vavO63 HoAv53Wpw.

[POEtprgd[EVOv] /3catcn[W]o. [-o]l3

[U'IaoKpar1t&a] 8' El;pvK[P]aC[rov7 9va-'jp

vtOdsEU'OTL AEWTorVXl'a HoAv'8]wpos {cKal

vls But the writing Ovyd[rr7p.]} is irregular, as W. S. Barrett xxxiii [196I], points out (Gnomon 688 n. 2), and it is difficult to say that there is room for thirteen letters but not

TtC[aaru]f/pdra

Lobel prefers

to -cav~-p on grounds of space.

a genitive, the issue was evidently whose father Polydoruswas, not whose son he was. This is confirmed by the naming of Eurycrates,who was indeed the son of the one Polydorus known to history.2 The words Kac TLtzaatqflpd'ra seem to have no place here; in face of the commentator's previous Ovycdryprp uncertainty about her father's identity, where the king Leotychidas was the main candidate, he cannot now declare that she was daughter of Eurycrates. I take the addition to be a mere stupidity, or else a survival from a longer remark to the effect that if Timasimbrota's father was really the son of Polydorus, that would make her the daughter of Eurycrates and not (as Alcman said) of Leotychidas.3 To sum up so far: Alcman certainly named a Leotychidas, and everything points to his being the Eurypontid king. He very probably named two of There is a fair Leotychidas' children, Hippocratidas and Timasimbrota. ' and enjoying heroic honours. We have now to consider the implications of this for Alcman's date. Herodotus 8. 131 gives the following genealogy: Theopompus-Anaxandridas-Archidamus-Anaxilaus-Leotychidas-Hippocratidas. Theopompus was the hero of the First Messenian War (Tyrt. fr. 4. I D.), which is fairly
IaL&-Jv d'plarav cannot mean 'best of his dealing with a boiled-down version of this. female children'. 3 That Ovya[ belongs to this note and not 2 One to the following lemma, as Ov'ya[rEp AOLs might have expected the commentator to say rather troO-rov 8E (sc. -r'v AEcWrv- M65]aa or the like, is shown by the position of vltv laropovaLv &AAa the coronis and diple below the line, indicatXLtav) oi3 HoAv3pov Ava~lAEw 70o ApXL8aov, 7rv 8E HoAv'Swpov ing that the new poem began in the middle But perhaps we are of the line. E0pvKpc'rov-S -awrpa.

for fourteen, apart from the possibility of abbreviation of -rovs or rrac-4p. The decisive consideration is that unless we are wrong in reading HoAv&o*pw as

possibility that he referred to Leotychidas as

8alwlov, that is, already dead

192

M. L. WEST

firmly dated in the latter part of the eighth century. The Second Messenian War, with which Tyrtaeus was contemporary,took place two generationslater.' The kings reigning at the time were, according to Pausanias (3- 3- 4, 3- 7. 6, 4. 15- 3), Anaxander, the second Agiad after Polydorus, and Anaxidamus, the third Eurypontid after Theopompus. Pausanias' account is suspect, above all because he makes the Eurypontid throne descend from Theopompus to Demaratus in a direct line of successionwhich bypasses Leotychidas I; this contradicts Herodotus and our commentator, and if we could only be sure about 8allovos, it would be finally refuted by Alcman. If we accept Herodotus' ^account of the succession, we can only guess which Eurypontid was reigning at the time of the second war. It would be natural to guessthat it was the second king after Theopompus, Archidamus, or the third, Anaxilaus, the father of Leotychidas. Pausanias tells us further that according to Rhianus, Leotychidas was king at the time of the war. But compelling arguments have been adduced to show that the conflict described by Rhianus was not the revolt in the time of Tyrtaeus, but a real or mythical war in the early fifth century, and that his Leotychidas was the younger one.2 Leotychidas I can hardly have been king in Tyrtaeus' time, even if his predecessorshad short reigns: it is not likely that a great-great-grandsonof Theopompus ruled over the grandsons of Theopompus' contemporaries. Hippocratidas, therefore, the prince whose stalwart sister's praises Alcman loyally sang, must have been the second or third Eurypontid king after the Second Messenian War, which was fought by the grandfathers of Alcman's No precise absolute date for the contemporaries,if not their great-grandfathers. rising can be established. Ancient datings are 685 (Paus. 4.- 15. I; but he may have meant 681), and perhaps 660 (Apollodorus ?) and 644 (Sosibius ?).3 It might have been prompted by the Spartan defeat at Hysiae,4 which Pausanias (2. 24. 7) and others date to 669; but any date in the period 680-640 would be possible. Timasimbrota's charms may have reached their zenith at any time between about 620 and 570. The limits cannot unfortunately be narrowed by reckoning backwards from later history. The only fixed datum is that Ariston, who was the second Eurypontid king after Hippocratidas, was on the throne at the time of Croesus'embassy, about 560-550 (Hdt. I. 67. I). His predecessorAgesicles reigned long enough for Herodotus to link his name with a period of military aggression that was directed in several directions But an active ten-year reign would be enough to justify this; (I. 65. I). and if Hippocratidas died young, our ode could still be fitted in as late as

570.

At least one of Alcman's poems, then, was composed not earlier than about 620. We can safely say that the Louvre Partheneion too was composed well after the middle of the seventh century. The girls who sang it appeared in Lydian 5Irpac,which they refer to as a great ornament together with their in exile, that this was We know from a poem of Sappho, apparently composedlavoyAEpwov
r Provided
7/rLETipwv r7ardpES

purple and their gold bangles:

that

t'rpa AvIla,

vEav5wov

dyaA/,a.

literally, as I am sure it is. 2 These arguments have not been universally accepted, but they seem to me cogent.

Tyrtaeus' TardwpovjSee F. Kiechle, MessenischeStudien, 1959, (fr. 4. 6) is to be taken pp. 9goff.

3 Jacoby, ApollodorsChronik,pp. 130 ff. 4 So Huxley, op. cit., p. 57-

ALCMANICA

193

a comparatively recent fashion. When Sappho's mother grew up, even a red ribbon was considered a more than ordinary adornment:
a ydp tz
E)yEvvacET 'ca KAE'ts,'

cL 7rOPbPwCO Ka 7EAtLecFE"Eva

KO'Kw,

L a EFFLEV

...

tz]t-rpdvav 7TrOLKAav dT Zapo[v ...

croo 1c, aprlo'. o[o [ ...

55'

KA[EL, -u-

Greek remains datable before 6oo.3 He also referred to the 'Eaa78dvEg or Ala(fr. I56).4 This was the remote tribe that Aristeas claimed to have UrO8dVEg and there is much to be said for the view that before the composition visited, of the Arimaspea they had never been heard of.s The influence of this poem on Alcman has also been found in his Rhipaean Mountain (fr. 90o), and in the adjective KoAacatuog (fr. I. 59).6 It has been denied, necessarily, by those who
Sappho'smotheris said to havehad the same name as the daughterwhom Sappho
Aa(a)ES-.

than in (fr. 98). It is unlikelythat the fashionraged earlierin Lacedaemon Lesbos. The remarkably conditionof the Greekracing stable at the cosmopolitan date of the poem also favoursas late a date as possible.It containshorses fromLydia,fromScythia,and probably fromthe northern Adriatic.z of Alcman,especially in geography Otherfragments 148ff., showhisinterest is the factthathe referred, and ethnography. Of particular importance perhaps in an exuberantcatalogueof the peopleshis fame had reached(fr. 148), to the Balearicislands(fr. 157), which are unlikelyto have been knownto the Greeks beforeColaeus' voyagein about640 (Hdt.4. 152),and whichshowno

The -7 in the second syllable is guaranteed by the following words E plaKETaL ) SEv-rEpaI addresses in this poem. The assumption that E. In the first q rap' cAAotLS aL 70o0 she was named here, 'the other Kleis, the syllable, the vowel is elsewhere 'I- in Greek, one who bore me', will explainwhy Sappho except for an alternative in A- recorded in says 'she who bore me' instead of 'my P. Oxy. I6II fr. I I. 7, but E- in Latin. If is doubtful; Alcman wrote A-, he may have associated mother'.The division ~yE'vvaro /' thrice Alcaeushas yE'vvaro without augment the name with the Mysian town of Assos, (43. 13, 308. 3, 327. 2), but all in mythical which he also may have mentioned (fr. 153)s Cf. J. D. P. Bolton, Aristeas of Procongenealogies. 2 Fr. I. 51, 59. Venetian horses were nesus, 1962, pp. 5 and 40; on the other side, celebratedat least as early as the fifth cen- Schmid-Stahlin, Gr. Lit. i. I. 303 n. 7, tury, and Euripides has no qualms about K. Meuli, Hermeslxx (1935), 154 n. 2, and giving them to Hippolytus,though perhaps W. Burkert, Gnomonxxxv (1963), 235f., he is not the poet mostlikelyto be worriedby arguing from the different form used by It is not veryprobablethat Alcman. an anachronism. 6 A. A. Blakeway ap. Bowra, op. cit., in this one passageof Alcman the reference is to the PaphlagonianEneti, who are not Ist ed., p. 66; Bolton, op. cit., pp. 40, 43, known as horse-breedersto us and were 187 n. 4, 188 n. 9. Bolton suggests that not knownto Strabo(212) either. KoAaeatog was coined by Alcman from apparently Cf.Beaumont, (ColaxesVal. Fl. 6. 48), the Scythian J.H.S. lvi (1936), 19I.Another Kohad4'ns Adriatic tribe appearedin Alcman, fr. I5'. king known to Herodotus as KoAd&a's, and On Greekpenetrationof the Adriaticsee in meant no more than ?KUOLKOS. It is perhaps more likely that he had heard (from general J. Boardman, The Greeks Ovwrseas,Aristeas or elsewhere) of a tribe KoAdeat, 1964, pp. 232-5. whose eponymous ancestor the king was, 3 Boardman, op. cit., p. 2 19. of Stephanusof Byzan- and formed his adjective from that. The * The manuscripts and scholia to the Partheneion in P. Oxy. 2389 tium are at variance between 'Ecao7qO

M. L. WEST 194 have dated Alcman early and Aristeas late. Personally, I cannot see any valid was composed in the seventh century, reason for doubting that the Arimaspea or that the verses quoted by 'Longinus' and Tzetzes are genuine fragments of it.' It is not certain that Alcman knew it, but if he was a contemporary of Sappho and Alcaeus, there is no reason why he should not have done. These considerations, based on the fragments, are our best evidence for Alcman's lifetime. Compared with them, the statements of Eusebius and the Sudaare such stuff as dreams are made on. Of the three dates they offer,672/68, 659/8, and 611i/o, the last, which has generally been thought unworthy of serious discussion, now seems nearest to the truth. The two higher dates, as Rohde pointed out, have it in common that they both represent the seventh year of the reign of Ardys in Lydia, on different systems of chronology; and it has been thought that Alcman may have referredto some event in the seventh year of Ardys (really 646/5). This remains possible. He might have referred to such an event at the time of its occurrence,and still have been writing poetry in 6oo.2 Or the relationship between the two dates may be fortuitous.3 II. 39 Eyiov
THE LOUVRE PARTHENEION

Ayt36Ysri-% oaosr3 Jpa

AyL~to tLaprvpE7aL,

lWc ase'

A ov, rTEp Fc Vr' altw

0alvtvqv.
picks up &,L'pav (&ai7VIKEL)in 38, which probablymeansman'sbrief ~C6S v (a derivative span of life, not a single day.4 It is then itself picked up by Oalv, and the idea of shining is continued in dK~rpE7rTi of dacos), must in 46. alvatv be taken with dpao"FE, not with iap-rvdpErat. 'I means appeal pap-rvpolpal a-va to someone to act as a tLiprvS,' that is, either to take note of what is happening now, or to declare what he has seen on some previous occasion. It cannot mean 'I appeal to someone' for any other purpose, such as to shine; shining is no part of a witness's function. It has been objected that dpo wd Vt-c rTOLEtL is not a normal construction. But this is not a normal type of statement: awrov normally a man is doing something, and we observe him at it, opWiLEv Here, Agido is not being spied on in the act of shining like the sun, 7osotvvra.
i-

fr. 6. i do not give the impression that Colaxaean horses were known from any other source. Pace Bolton, pp. 7-19. Cf. D. A. Russell, 'Longinus' On The Sublime, 1964, p. 103. 'Longinus' 's fragment is surely not 'the surprised comment of innocent continentals on the first ship they have heard of' (Russell)they seem to know all about navigation by the stars, seasickness, and the danger of drowning -but the comment of a man who only sails from necessity, probably Aristeas himself, upon men who go to sea for weeks at a time: perhaps long-range Greek traders who conveyed Aristeas as far as the north shore of the Black Sea, and whose way of life was

not generally known in Aegean Greece. Hesiod's comments would have been similar in tone. 2 He represents himself as an old man in fr. 26. 3 Page calls archaeology to witness that the bright Sparta of Alcman is that of the seventh century, and does not correspond to conditions in the sixth. The argument is weakly grounded: see H. T. Wade-Gery, J.H.S. lxxvii (1957), 3244 Death is 'night' as early as Homer. Pind. N. 7. 98 florov ... . and a7rAEmKoLS other parallels quoted by Page (op. cit., p. 84) support the equation d'ipa- = pflos. Cf. Antiphon the sophist, B 5o.

ALCMANICA but to 3oKCo or bOxptl(ai37)rv

195

her shining is dependent upon the poet's vision, and Jdp6 is parallel not to
(a3i-rjv Oalvovav) yyvarKcw She shines like the the

sun, very sun which she is calling upon. The emphasis is not used elsewhere in the lyric that J&wrp I notice but justifies perhaps JvrEp, and it is possible that we should poets except in the adverbs Cd;orp,CdrTEp, &arEp, the sun to take note of the proceedings. It follows that the sun is in the sky, blazing down on Hagesichora's auburn tresses and the gold and purple finery of the choir.2
49 Toyv Vro7rpETLOWY ovELpwOv.

a'vEtv).

read rrEp' Jwv, 'on our behalf'.' The sense is the same in either case: Agido invites

The equation 67ro7r-plSpto= Vdr7rEpos is linguistically impossible. To talk of 'metathesis', or to conjure with a hypothetical intermediate ITro7rEpstosr, is characmeans rock; and -18tos is to return to the philology of past ages. 7rerpteristic of adjectives specifying a locality, as dwrtrvIfl8tors, E2XELp08tor, TrapaOaaaaudos, heat of midday, is where people sleep.3 the
riOl018tos, etc. Dreams lurk under shady rocks, because that, in

50

d Xara FEVr-TLK6OS, 7'ia E/l-agS

avEoaS

1q OV;X ' d t11EKEA;q op-,qi;

ETavOEC

Ay-rqortQpas

Xpvaou cs 55

38abdc3av rt rot Ao'YW;

gaKcparoS" r7d - apyvptov 7poawrov

The Xopayok, that is Hagesichora, has just been compared to a racehorse. To coming immediately afterwards,is not Hagesichorabut Agido, say that from Hagesichora-fair enough, is nothingKAdIA, short of perverse. It is distinguished she is not really a horse, she belongs to the visible world, the horse to the with her. Having said that the horse is imaginary world-it is not contrasted a Venetian, Alcman must give some clue as to what he means by it. Evidently it is a Venetian because of the splendour of Hagesichora's hair, which is like
in 101 (assuming that Hagesichora is there referred to).4 gold here, and 6avOdc

x Elision of rrEpt is found in Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar; in Laconian inscriptions the short form rrEpis attested before consonants, in several other dialects before vowels too. 2 So Wilamowitz, Hermes xxxii (1897), 255. The idea that the proceedings take place by moonlight becomes absurd. The idea that the sun is about to rise seems to me no more tenable. The Greeks were long past the stage of praying for the sun to rise. They knew he could be relied on to do that, and they would certainly wait till he did so before attempting to communicate with him. This is another argument against
is, as always, thought of as coming from outside. When Epimenides took his historic siesta in a Cretan cave, he enjoyed an instructive dream in which he
alvrlv. tzaprTpE-rac 3 The dream

conversed with A4AAOELa and lK77 (Max. Tyr. Io. I p. III H.): not because he was specially favoured of the gods, but because of where he was sleeping, in a holy cave. I suppose Alcman suggests that you might dream of your horse on a hot day, rather than at night, because it is a hot day. There is nothing to indicate that the AEvKdS-7rE-rp-q of Od. 24. 1I has anything to do with the dreams in the following line. 4 Of course not only Venetian horses were chestnuts: II. 9. 407 eav6d Kadp'va, 7'rrrTov i. 680 to'rrovr favOds. Horses called EdvOosbelonged to Achilles and Hector in the Iliad in Alc. (Achilles is ecfvOav E''ar7[pa TC(OAwv 42. 14), and to the Dioscuri in Alcm. 25, Stes. i. Hiero's famous horse Pherenicus, which won at the Olympic Games in 476, is described as eavO'rptXa by Bacchylides (5- 37), and cannot have been a Venetian

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M. L. WEST

'AE is not just any horse, but specificallya horse for riding. The implication K,neither have will escaped the audience' nor offended them; the girl is on show, like a May Queen, and forthright public approbation is licensed. It is too impersonal to be genuinely erotic. too, whether of horse or of girl, has sportive connotations. Semonides 7. Xala 57 ff. describes the kind of woman whom ~"oos dfl3p7 XarE'Eora' yElva-ro: she abhors housework, and washes herself twice a day, or even thrice, applies perfume, atE E Xatrrv EKKEVtt0VLEV OPEL flaOE'av,dvOEtoLctw E'aKLaU/tvL7v.

KaAov cv 6Oal-a ToLalv)7 yvv7) L*&v 'AAotuat, 8..OVtL YlVE-atc rco' . KaKov. us that equarum libido Pliny, H.N. 8. 164, assures exstinguitur iubatonsa. i avE?0a^ It has been inferred fromira E.a3s that the girlsof the choirare all cousins.One wonders.Must all ten have been relatedfor the expression to be possible-not just nine, say, or six? For all we know, 'cousin' couldbe used at Spartaas a generaltermof affection, like 'sister' in both Greekand Latin. We mightreadilybelievethat Hagesichora and Klesithera and Damaretaall came from the same aristocratic family; but we might doubt whethergirls with nameslike Nanno or Philullaz camefromthe samestable.
58 a' 3E v-'r'pa ITES'Ayc~b FE0o ogs KoAaeatos 3patjq-aL. o 'I/qvC^

It is not certain whether the two breeds of horse are compared in respect of speed, as is usually assumed, or in looks. 3patv-rat does not settle the question: it is used because horses compete together in races, not in beauty contests, but it is perfectly possible, when two horses are seen on a racecourse, to comment on other differencesbetween them than their difference in speed. What is clear is that the Scythian horse3is inferior to the Lydian. Probably not just slightly inferior, but much inferior: for one thing, Alcman likes his contrasts to be violent (cf. below on 60-63); for another, we cannot really suppose that the characteristicsof the different breeds were so constant that an unspecified Lydian could be predicted to outrun an unspecified Scythian 'by a short head',4 or to be marginally more handsome; for another, Alcman is not likely to be saying that a girl whose appearance has dazzled him 17 lines earlier is after all only slightly more beautiful than anyone else. So it looks as if the Colaxaean horse was notoriously of poor appearance or racing performance or both-this would fit the usual Scythian horse, a small, hardy type-while the Lydian was outstanding. If the contrastis in looks, it is relevant to note that Greece at this time was captivated by all things Lydian: in were a fine sight (Sappho 16. 19), and the horses particular, -7ra AdvwvapIuara and their trappingsmust have been an important part of the spectacle. Even so
if sch. E. Hipp. 231 is right in saying that the first Olympic victory with Venetians was that of the Spartan Leon in 440. As far as I can discover, nothing is recorded about the appearance of Venetic horses; they were no longer bred in Strabo's time (212), and our information about ancient horses comes mainly from later writers.
4q.tawL

adjective KoAaea'osg above, P. 193lxxiii (1938), 446. 4 Davison,Hermes

E'XAo~V 72 rrT1AE Op&pKl'q, Ip "/ LeoV v77AE(WA g VYELS;. .. E yap oVK EXEL5 yv. LSJ s.v. E7TrrE/flBc L7Trr7o7ELp77v III, o II. KEr77S KEA rr friends called her, not Philylla. 2 So her 3 On the cf.
/3AE'7rova

' Anacr.

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197

captivating is Agido. The choice of simile does not of course imply that she and some rival are due to run a race: one could as well infer from 86 that the whole choir is sitting on a rafter. Much ink has been wasted on the question whether Agido or Hagesichora is supposed to be the more beautiful. Wasted, because Alcman studiously avoids comparing the two. Agido shines like the sun, when we look at her; but let's not talk of her now, for Hagesichora is as splendid as the finest racehorse you can imagine. She has golden hair and a fair complexion. But Agido, as far as beauty is concerned, is a winner. Each is pre-eminent and without a rival for as long as we look at her: we never look at both together. Alcman tactfully preservesthe balance between the two. He celebratesAgido in 39-44; then we turn aside to admire Hagesichora, from 44 to 57; now in 58-59 we are briefly reminded of Agido's beauty, and the two girls stand firmly before us, equal in looks and importance, as we pass on to consider the rest of the choir.
60 ra' yap luv H17EArJ3ESr

VVKra 'St dtL/pocTiav-rE ZpLOV LEVaL "aXyov7aL. da-rpovaFr7Po The Pleiades are the star-cluster. With Z4pLov dl-rpov in the same sentence,

any other view is unlikely from the start; and once we see what Alcman is getting at, every word fits into place. with': satisfactoryparallels appear to ?.LtaXodvrat. be lacking, but in a lyric poet we cannot expect a parallel for every metaphor, and no alternative meaning seems possible. The Pleiades therefore stand for a rival choir, either an actual one or a theoretical one, any choir that might try to challenge us. They are rising up the sky, dFVpop~vaL.'i SK7Sa &' d'fpoolav is probably to be taken with ?Epolsince there is no sense, astronomical or otherwise, in saying that the Pleiades
rise up the sky like Sirius, it appears that JrIE 7Z?ptov 'orrpovalso belongs with like Sirius through the ambrosial night. In fact, 9EpolcoLs. We bear our bcdpos the metaphor.2 And cats, with which it is immediately adjacent, and not with aFV7po[PvaL. The Pleiades are fighting us, aL .. . 'Fight' must mean 'compete

as we have seen, the action takes place in broad daylight: the night is part of

Of all the stars or star-groupsthat Alcman could have named, the Pleiades are the faintest.3The six principal stars in the cluster are of magnitudes 3-0, 4-2, and 4'4. It is only because of their concentration that they 3-8, 3-8,
'ALos7rptv vw dp6o4vat Pind. O. I. I d 85 Xpvos adgOLEvov rop aTE Xen. Symp. Arat.326rogdso0 ('QplwOv) VVKTI, Ka'L LcaTrpE~WEL I. 9 cdorrTEp oTray oUKTL7AdL/TEL, E/Yyyo3 TL EV VVKTC avk 7T, fT(LvTwv 7poadyeratc 405 bpovpoa a EtcLoLEpVp lTO fI alvIErat, Vrc TO TOOA3o70TKOV yap dElpErat ApKTrovpOLO. Cf. 558; CdrTrTrEp'7V Tr otJtLara, 0o)7 Kal TOTE

4"0, I Hp. Air. 6 J yap

Eur. Alc. 450. dvariAAwX means 'rise' in the

sense of 'appear about the horizon',

A.R. 2. 40 ff. 83' avrog K(AAos, 01pavYL drda'

darpTE Tvvwapls53,

For comparison of a thing seen by daylight to something else seen at night, cf., e.g., II. 22. 3i7 if. &dcrr0p ofos 8' tEEr'
2

means 'climb up the sky'.

al'poltaL

ErTTEPlv

8tr

vKT

Ra

LCL 03 darpdao vVKTo~S a OAyo Iy "EawEpoS, K3dAAtr-rog dv

0ovpavc

LGTraatLdarcp,
ralioavwv-ra,

There are of course fainter stars and constellations; but it is uncertain to what extent they had been named by Alcman's time, and even when they had they were too obscure

Env Ah3 v1'.

3

oV7rrEp K LAAcToraL EctLv TotoS aELtvotEvOU dptLapvya&"

q7TEp

alXtpisdr aalr' Ea1gKEOS, Ibyc. 33 C V Kaca aEtpta

35& iiKpdv

,AEyEOWV

for a lyric poet and his public.

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M. L. WEST

arrest the attention and are specially named. Sirius is the brightest of all the fixed stars, magnitude --I-58, that is some 70 times more brilliant than the brightest Pleiad and some 23 times as bright as the six combined. From among the fixed stars Alcman could not have drawn a greater contrast. But not content with the natural difference in brilliance between Sirius and the Pleiades, he makes the contest still more uneven by setting Sirius in the ambrosial night not only in twilight, but low against the Pleiades in morning twilight, dpOpl: in the sky as well, aFvypoo~vwa. That there actually was a rival choir called the Pleiades remains distinctly If Alcman outbids them: they call themselves the Pleiades, but so, possible.I we shine bright as Sirius. ydp in 60o is now intelligible. The radiant beauty of Agido and Hagesichora has been described, and the connexion of thought is, '(we are able to put on display such lovely girls as these,) for we are outstandingly radiant as a group'.Z One problem survives: the meaning of dapos. Since antiquity it has been debated whether it means a robe or a plough. But it is hard to see why, even supposing the choir to be carrying one or the other, they should refer to it here, in the middle of a sentence about their dazzling beauty. The other choir, if it is competing on the same occasion, should presumably be carrying a similar offering, so that it cannot give our choir any advantage. Nor is it clear how either a robe or a plough can be carried like Sirius sparklingin the night. These real difficulties can be overcome, and the sense greatly improved, by What we bear like Sirius is light.QOowa~bdpos heraldsthe approach reading OdaFos. of day. But any source of light can be said to qdos E'pEv. The Dioscuri appear EvvKCT&OS A. Ag. 489; Alc. 34. I I ; torches are bac0cbdpot, tEAalva, dodpoVgESVi"r q OwdpOS Iacchus is v-K-rpov sJrr4p, Ar. Ra. 342. The corruption of TE,9S F to p is found in 41 opoap' (perhaps,but the reading is disputed, cf. Page, p. 7), and in Hesychius p-rpo and (Weir Smyth). That Alcman has the crE 3O3pOCKoS to the contracted form 06sg in 40 is no conjecture: he had AA2K~ objection iV (I7- 4, 39. I) beside A4AKUL(F)W v (95(b)) in his own name, KAEvvds (I. 44) and apparently (4 fr. I. I I) and (13 (d) 4) beside KAE(F)EYVJS KA-qvd fr. KAELVt beside (io (b) 12), KAqcgfl[pdra (4 I. 9) KAc(F)1ncrelOpa (I. 72), and in the root beside It be that 0dFos at may wrroAvdavos (56. 2) 4aFOa(F)dvva(62). some stage was written ac0os :3 this would account for the un-Doric accent attested for Alcman 0 pos in the papyrus, and possibly for the intelligible bcavos by sch. (A) II. 12. 137.4 The contrasts now emerge clearly. I set the sentence out once more, not changing the order of words, but dividing them according to sense instead of musical phrases:

Cal HEAc3S(Yap)
i

He~ga'Seg

(y
in Sparta (Wilamowitz, art. cit., p. 255 n. i ; dergriechischen differently in his Textgeschichte Lyriker, p. 56), though he was certainly famous throughout Greece by the fifth century: Eupolis fr. 139, Pindar (?) P. Oxy. 2389 fr. 9. i. 9. 4 Fr. 147; a00s cj. Garzya, Alcmane: I Frammenti,I954, p. I65.

Like the Pleiad of Alexandrian tragedians. 2 Rather similar is Hes. Th. 154 (after description of the fearsome Cyclopes and TE Kat Hundred-Handers): JaaoUyap FaL77S O3pavoi EeeyvoVro, IjsEdwo-aro ralSoWv. 3 As avapo'dvaet in 63, a late Laconian spelling. The Alexandrian text of Alcman seem to have been based on a copy written

ALCMANICA
9Epol (c'Fo0 Op~pl'u La) qOaFOS 9Epoaa~tcL vVKra &LIpo aCLV arE Z pEov aurpov aFrlpo0tEvacILaXovrat.

199

Subject-image Counter-subject Predicate of subject Predicate of counter-subject Counter-subjectimage verb. Binding

64-77

ov1-E yapreTop9vpac
Tocaaos

KopoS cur' altvvac,

KrA.

The choir now explain the nature of their splendour.While they pretend to belittle their own appearance and finery in comparisonwith Hagesichora, in fact they are drawing attention to it: the purple, the gold, Nanno's hair, the beauty of Areta, and so on. They do not rely on these assets,but on Hagesichora. adtLvac continues the metaphor of taXdvraL, and it is further continued in Iprva (9 1). Eight girls are here named; the choir consists of ten girls (99). It has been thought that the other two are Agido and Hagesichora. Hagesichora may very well be one of the ten. But Agido can hardly be; it is clear in 42, and again in 80, that she is not singing with the choir, but attending to other matters, and it is significant that for all her beauty she is not mentioned in this strophe. Wilamoxxxii [18971, 259) that there is no point in such a list witz's argument (Hermes unless it is complete, is not compelling: it would not be surprisingif the choir contained one or two girls too plain to be mentioned in this context without absurdity, and there is no reason to assume that 70 ff. is meant as a complete Aufzdhlung, any more than that 64 ff. is a complete account of their apparel.'

73

oVE' E~ avOo Alvqrqa~flpd7raS Sb TE

tLOt YEVOtyoo

ca bcaacUts

oryoAEOt 0,,AvAAa" ZauapcE-a r Epara r FtavOEctLS, AA' MyIqatXopa 4LtE cTELpE

C??A Kalt

You will fall in love, not with Astaphis, Philulla, Damareta, or Wianthemis, but with Hagesichora.-The erotic sense of these imagined wishes is indisin particularis unequivocal,zand so is rEIpEL.3 The feminine putable; 7rroTyAETrot participle JvOoraa does not necessarilymean that the audience is composed entirely of women, but is used, I would suggest, because it was more natural for girls to discuss each other's charms among themselves, or with other female friends, than with men. Who is Ainesimbrota? What is she? 'She is... one to whose house you would go to find choir-girls; a dancing-mistress.'4Most scholars have taken
I Presumably they were not barefoot. 3. 62 TaKEp &7-pa S' VtrTVW KaL OavCda TorTLSpKETaL, Theocr. 3. 39 Kal KE L' T'aos oSr0t OL,ETrEL o'K dcapLavrlva Earv. 3 yap /pLv rtLpEV [Hes.] fr. 105 Rz. 3SLVOS AL'yA-S,Theocr. 1. 78 r's rv ,pws Havoql'03os
2 e.g.

Ar. Pax 987); 10o. 15

KaV-Tpx)EL;

7~VOS

dyaO

The reading rEL'pEis confirmed AvptalvETaL; by P. Oxy. 2389 fr. 7. i (b) i i. 4 Page, p. 46 n. i, cf. p. 65.

(cf. paaat; ' 7droaaov 3E Tv rv rayaov

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M. L. WEST

this view, or something like it, and other answers that have been proposed are certainly absurd. So Ainesimbrota has come to be regarded as the principal of an 'academy', a residentialchoir school. I believe this to be quite wrong. The idea that you can, or ever could, knock at the door of a dancing-school and say 'Please may Philulla fall in love with me?' is ludicrous. Even a dancingmistressprepared to lend out her pupils for the asking could not be represented as a steward of their affections. No, Ainesimbrotais not a woman to whose house you would go to find choirgirls, or, I hasten to add, girls of any other sort. She is a woman to whose house you would go if you were in love and not loved in return; to whom you would say 'I long for Astaphis, or Philulla, or Hagesichora, to look on me with favour'. And she would help you, with potions, incantations, iynx, or whatever she knew. Love-magic is attested from the sixth century on,' and must have existed from the earliest times.
96 ' a 8 rav p~plqvISwv /[E'V Co~Sor1'pa ad"o Oca yap, av-r[t'" EvSKa a8' a'EIS]EL. SEK[CaS 7TrLatSJv

The supplement in 97 is that of P. Von der Mtihll (Mus.Helv.xv [1958], 83). The Sirens are not the remote Lorelei-figures of Argonautic and Odyssean legend; 6Oalimplies forces active in the world of here and now, and fr. 30 c Aly'qa shows that for Alcman they are alternatives to SMiCuaKEKAcay' 2Eqp'/v the Muses. Being half-bird in form, they make good Muses for a poet who thinks of himself as an imitator of bird-music.2 His ideas about the Muses are anything but fixed; they are now plural (fr. 3. I, 8. 9, 46, 59(b)), now Mnemosyne(8. 9, 27, 28, 43), now of Earth and Heaven (67, cf. 5 fr. 2. i. 28). SV3EKa in 98 appears to refer to the Sirens, though not known as their number elsewhere. There is a double contrast: they are goddesses, we are children; they are eleven, we are ten. Nevertheless,the choir is suggesting a comparison; as in 64 ff., the self-depreciationis a boast in disguise. The announcement 'we are not goddesses but children', coming near the end of the poem, recalls
the end of the song of the Rhodian XEA8ovwalra: LvOLcE Trlv Opav lvoL" Xa"EAc6L o3 yap yEpovrms EqpLEV, &ad rrat ca. singular (5 fr. 2. i. 22, 14(a), 27, 28, 30, 31, 43), now the children of Zeus and

This may be found significantby those who think, on the strengthof HEATcdES, yAaa?,etc., that Alcman's choir and its rivals may have been dressed as birds.3 But the Partheneionis obviously not a children'sbegging-songlike the swallowsong and its cognates.4What it is, is perhaps destined to remain obscure.
100 KVKVOS.

()w()[KUKOvO

B0Eyyr

w p'oa
might suggest that Alcman vzLEvalwvI K1KVOv somewhere spoke of himself as a swan, as the choir does here. 3 Cf. Bowra, op. cit., ed. 2, p. 56. (Hom. epigr. i5), 4 The Samian EpEaL;rLV the Attic (Plu. Thes. 22), Phoenix' ELpEaLJ'v7 Kopwvtn-ra (Ath. 359 e). The custom has a

[Hes.] P. Oxy.2481 fr. 5. ii. 14 (Deianeira), Pind. P. 4. 213, E. Hipp.509 ff., etc. 2 Fr. rasEKaLp'os AAKLdV Eipe 39 FAAKL
KaKKaG33v yyAwaaaadvav in this 40 wgrrav-rav, FoE3a3' pvixwvvows poem 87 yAai6, Io1 KVKVOS;Leonidas

r7TaavvtELEVOS,

v A.P. 7. 19 Ig7 v XaplE?vr' AAKLZdva, T7

vrl-rp'

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201

Against Blass's8' ap' it has been urged that ipa does not occur elsewhere in the fragments of Alcman.' What is more to the point, the combination 8' pa is restricted in lyric poetry (excluding Tragedy) to (a) narrative: Sappho 44. 25, 141- 5, Stes. 42, Ibyc. I. 41, 2 (dub.), Pind. O. 10. 43, P. 3. 27, 57, 4. 121, 6. 37, 11. 34, N. I. 48, 9. 21, 10. 69; (b) enlightenment: Pind. N. 8. 32, fr. 123. I3.2 I have no alternative supplement, but suggest that JrE is not obligatory (cf. 85). I end with an attempt to reproduce, partly in translation and partly in paraphrase, the sense of lines 30-101: 'In one way or another, they all met violent death, and suffered severely for their sins. The vengeance of the gods is real; blessed is the wise man3 who weaves his daylight to its close without suffering.My song is of the light of Agido: I see her shine like the sun that she is now calling to witness on our behalf. But the renowned choir-leader forbids me to talk of her merits and defects; she herselfshines out so, as if one set among the herds a stronggalloping horse, a champion from among the dreams that lurk in the shade of rocks. See! The steed is a Venetian: the mane of my cousin Hagesichora blossoms like virgin gold; and her silvery face-why need I tell you ? There you have Hagesichora; while the nearest rival to Agido's beauty will be found a Scythian horse on the same racecourse as a Lydian. 'Yes, the Pleiades our challengers rise up a lightening sky to challenge ones who bear light like Sirius through the ambrosialnight. For we do not rely only on our abundance of purple, or our serpent-bangles of solid gold, or our Lydian caps, fine adornment for dark-eyed girls, or Nanno's tresses,nor yet on Areta divinely fair, or Thulakis and Klesithera; nor will you go to Ainesimbrota's and say "I long for Astaphis", and "I wish Philulla would look my way", or Damareta, or lovely Wianthemis-no, you will say, "Hagesichora is my torment". 'We rely on her, Hagesichora with the pretty ankles; for though she is not here beside us, she waits with Agido and commends our sacrificeto the gods. O gods, accept their prayer! For to the gods belongs the accomplishingand the fulfilment. Choir-leader, I would expressmy feelings so: by myself, I am a girl screeching to no purpose like an owl on a rafter; and it is Aotis above all (rather than the goddess of singers?) that I long to please, for she is the healer of our troubles; but through Hagesichora girls set foot on the path of harmony. For the team must follow the trace-horse,and the rowers must obey
striking modern parallel in Ireland, where boys go begging from house to house on Boxing Day, with blackened faces, carrying a holly bush decorated with ribbon (edpeaLjvrl) and singing or reciting the following verse or a variant: The wren, the wren, the king of all birds, St. Stephen's Day got caught in the furze. Though he is small, his family is great, So rise up, your honours, and give us a treat. I have an old canister under my arm. Three or four pence would do no harm. ( The Guardian, 27 December 1963, 6 January 1964. Cf. Frazer, The GoldenBough, ed. 3, viii. 317 ff.; Nilsson, Gesch.d. gr. Religioni2. 124, with literature.) The custom is said to have started in the famine of 1846-8; the Athenians believed that their woolbranch song was instituted in a famine in the time of Theseus (Plu., loc. cit., sch. Ar. Eq. 72o, etc.). Every Englishman is familiar with another children's chant of similar nature: 'Please to remember the fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot.' Davison, Hermeslxxiii (1938), 453. 2 Exceptions in Tragedy, e.g. A. Pers. 568, S. Tr. 962, E. Ba. i66.
3 idea CeVpOaLvv seems an inappropriate here: I prefer to take Eg'Opwv as the opposite

Et E~cpOVfl of afOpwv; Kal. JatS IPWV = oartS

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M. L. WEST

the pilot. The voice of the Sirens is indeed more songful--they are goddesses, and instead of their eleven, we are but ten, and children, that here do sing. But our tune is like the swan's on the waters of Xanthos, and she with her marvellous auburn locks, Hagesichora...'. M. L. WEST University College, Oxford