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Solon, Fragment 251

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

T. C. W. Stinton
Affiliation:
Wadham College, Oxford

Extract

7 πῖαρ Plut.: πυαρ pap. Ath. Pol. ἀνταράξας … ἐξεῖλε pap., coniecerat Gildersleeve: ἂν ταράξας ἐξέλη Plut.

Solon is answering his critics (Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 12.5). The demos has never had it so good. The ‘bigger and stronger men’, μείζους καὶ βίαν ἀμείνονες, also have cause to thank him. For if anyone else had had this office, ‘he would not have restrained the demos, nor would he have stopped, before’, etc. Plutarch (Vit. Sol. 16) introduces the lines in almost the same words.

V. 7 is difficult. Bergk and others construe: ‘until, having stirred up the milk, he had taken the cream’. There are two objections to this. Firstly, the word order would involve an interlacing of main and participial clauses which Greek normally eschews. Bergk claims that Solon is peculiar in the freedom of his hyperbaton, but the examples he quotes (frr. 1.43–5 and 23.5D) are not of this type and are very much easier. Secondly, the sense: ‘it is not usual to stir up milk when it is wanted to skim off cream’. Linforth recognised the force of this argument, and concluded, in the truth of the ancient evidence, that πῑαρ refers to butter.

Type
Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1976

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References

2 ‘A part of a sentence the verbal centre of which is a participium coniunctum, provided that it serves to describe a self-contained action, forms a syntactical colon on its own’, which cannot be interlaced with the main sentence (Fraenkel, , Agamemnon, p. 512Google Scholar, from ‘Kolon und Satz, I’, NGG, 1932, 202 = Kl. Beitr. i 78). Fraenkel's, view is contested by Page in his note on Ag. 1127Google Scholar; but see PCPS n.s. 21, 1975, 82–8.

3 ‘Solet passim Solo verborum traiectione satis licenter uti’ (PLG 4 ii 54).

4 As Arthur Platt points out (J. Phil. 24, 1896, 256).

5 Allinson, F. G. in AJP I, 1880, 458Google Scholar; ‘Laval's centrifugal apparatus had not yet been invented’, A. Platt (loc. cit. [n. 4]).

6 Linforth, I. M., Solon the Athenian, 1919, 193Google Scholar.

7 It is clear from Hdt. 4.2, Hippocr. de Morb. 4.51, Anaxandr. 41.8 that butter-making was regarded as a barbarian activity (cf. Casaubon ap. Schweighäuser on Athen. 447d). Linforth disarmingly remarks: ‘we must conclude that Solon became acquainted with this Scythian practice in the course of his travels, and referred to it in a rather obscure metaphor; or that butter-making, though not mentioned in literature, was not unknown to the Attic peasants’.

8 Art. cit. (n. 3), Platt's authority was a farmer's wife.

9 So Buchholz (see Allinson, loc. cit. [n. 4] and Masaracchia, A., Solone, 1958, 357Google Scholar.

10 So Allinson, Platt, Leaf on Il. 11.550; but Buttmann, Lexilogus s.v., Monro ad loc., Allen, and Halliday, on h. Ven. 30Google Scholar take it as a noun.

11 A suggestion of Sandys adopted by Linforth, though both take ἀνταράξας; with γάλα.

12 As the imaginary speaker of fr. 23.1–7 says he himself would have done.

13 Since γάλα is governed by both ἀνταράξας and ἐξεῖ;λεν, this rendering does not involve an interlacing of main and participial clauses (of. n.2 above).

14 The double accusative is in fact found only with the sense ‘deprive’, cf. E. Alc. 69, IA 972. Elsewhere the verb is middle with this construction, but cf. ἀφελεῖν τί τινα, also found, though rarely, with the sense ‘deprive’ (S. Phil. 933), alongside the normal ἀφελέσθαι τί τινα in this sense. Alternatively, we can take πῑαρ γάλα=‘cream’ (see p. 2), ἐξεῑλεν=‘got rid of’ (cf. E. H.F. 153–4, with Hipp. 18): ‘before, by stirring it up, he had got rid of the cream’, i.e. by dissipating it. The interpretation suggested below holds either way.

15 E.g.

16 The relevance of this passage, and of fr. 5.5–6 below, was pointed out to me by Mr W. G. Forrest.

17 ‘Rich’ is not quite accurate for ἐσθλοί, since their status was determined by other factors besides wealth—Solon himself was (i.e. ), (Ath. Pol. 5.3)—and the terms ἀγαθός and κακός can some times be independent of wealth (fr. 4.15 ). But wealth is normally the important determinant, and renderings such as ‘nobles’, ‘upper classes’, ‘aristocracy’, ‘establishment’ are misleading in other ways. It does not follow that Solon had the same attitude towards all the rich; he no doubt distinguished between the παλαιόπλουτοι and the profiteers (Ath. Pol. 6).

18 Si monumentum reguiris, circumspice. One must, however, be careful, in speaking of the ‘economy’ of early Attica, not to read too many modern overtones into the word.

19 Wade-Gery, H. T., ‘Horos’, in Mélanges Gustave Glotz, 1932, 877Google Scholar ff.

20 Pagondas warns the Boeotians: ‘others fight about their frontiers but we, if we are beaten, will have one horos-pillar stuck up affecting all our land and admitting of no argument; for the Athenians will come by force and possess all that is ours’, cannot mean ‘one boundary-stone’: it means one contract-pillar, ‘a record which admits of no further argument’ (Wade-Gery, op. cit. 881–2).

21 As Sommer, F., Griechische Lautstudien, 1905, 112Google Scholar (cited by Wade-Gery), posits for (in ).

22 Cf. Frisk, s.v. I am not competent to make any judgment on my own account. ‘Pawnstones’ is perhaps too narrow, since the ὅροι may have recorded terms of service as well as mortgages.

23 Solon would have written as (possibly ΟΥΡΟΣ, but the impure diphthong ου was regularly written ο in saec. vi and earlier saec. v Attic orthography; see Meisterhans, , Grammatik der attischen Inschriften 3, 1900Google Scholar, para. IIC), and ὅρος as ΗΟΡΟΣ (words with initial aspirate are occasionally spelt without H in vase-paintings, but so rarely that it is probably due to negligence; see Kretschmer, , Griechische Vaseninschriften, 1894Google Scholar, para. 137, cf. p. 190). For anyone transcribing the poems after Ionic spelling came into use for literary texts (say c 450), the only correct interpretation of ΟΡΟΣ in fr. 25 would be since Solon was not the mountainous queen of the Laestrygones (Od. 10.113), and ὅρς was always spelt with an aspirate (in fact ΗΟΡΟΣ appears regularly in inscriptions long after heta had become otherwise obsolete). The transcription of ΟΡΟΣ as ὅρος would therefore be strictly incorrect, but little more than a misinterpretation: a mistake all the more easily made because of Solon's well-known preoccupation with ὅροι.

24 Mr G. W. Bond suggests that ‘umpire’ is the sense required.

25 Eum. 706 Ath. Pol. 4.20

26 Hence Jaeger proposed δορὸς for ὅρος, a conjecture with little to recommend it.