Incertarum fabularum fragmenta (fr. 53)

269

to βουλεύεται resulting from the use of that form twice in the previous line
and the participle occurring in the midst of a string of finite verbs).
The transmitted text of 3 is unexceptional and ought to be retained despite
attempts at emendation. Nauck 1884. Ixxvii (cf. 1888. 233-5; 1894. 93) intro-
duced αρχηγόν ούσαν into this line in place of γάρ έστιν αρχή on the basis
of passages such as E. Hel. 425-6 γυναίκα τήν κακών πάντων έμοι / άρξασαν
(perhaps more to the point is E. Hipp. 881 κακών αρχηγόν έκφαίνεις λόγον
or Men. fr. 296.9-10 τήν νύκτα τήν / πολλών κακών αρχηγόν). The change
makes the woman explicitly responsible for her husband’s future problems,
which is the main point of the argument in the following lines, but the point
here is that marriage itself is the beginning of trouble. Schmidt’s adaptation
(1887. 49-50) of Nauck’s conjecture simply uses a different word to express
the same thought as the transmitted text.
The word order in 4-5 is unusual but not corrupt; Bothe struggled with
τήν γυναίκα χρήματα / λαβών (‘quae vereor ut quispiam intellexerit’) and
emended to τής γυναικός.
6, particularly και πένης, has routinely been considered corrupt,124 on the
ground that a man who marries into money would no longer be poor. But the
transmitted text unproblematically makes the desired point that a man who
marries a rich woman becomes her slave and is still poor (because she keeps
her money to herself; see ad loc.\ i. e. there is no point in marrying a rich wom-
an. Some scholars attempted to remove the presumed difficulty by emending
away και πένης; others rewrote the end of the line to varying degrees to make
πένης the subject of the next sentence (the easiest such solution was that of
Grotius 1623 11.277, who simply punctuated after δούλος rather than πένης,
and removed 6’ from later in the line). But the parallel structure thus created
(the poor man who marries a rich wife becomes a slave; the poor man who
marries a poor wife also becomes a slave) is not the one that is wanted, because
it stresses the financial wherewithal of the man rather than the assertion that
all women have an equally deleterious effect.
αύτός in 7 has often been considered corrupt, but is probably acceptable.
Hense 1920/1921. 97 defended the transmitted text, but his interpretation (‘Er
wird aus eigenen Antrieb [αύτός] zum Skiaven’) is dubious. Gesner’s αύθις
might be an improvement; Scaliger’s αύτως is unlikely, since the word is
extremely rare in comedy (only Eup. fr. 260.26).
Hense 1920/1921. 98 suggested transposing 9-10 and 11-12 on the basis
of a two-fold argument. He first noted that since τις must be supplied in 9,

124 Bothe prints the vulgate, without obelizing or commenting, and so seemingly
endorses it, but his translation reflects the text of Grotius 1623 11.277.