298

Incertarum fabularum fragmenta (fr. 63)

Metre lambic trimeter.
— -K— x—>
Discussion Meineke 1840 III.199; 1847. 592; Bothe 1855. 433; Meineke 1857
V.clxxx; Kock 1884 11.161; Blaydes 1890a. 84; 1896. 126; Edmonds 195911.78—9;
Kassel-Austin 1991 11.274; Sanchis Llopis et al. 2007. 272
Citation context The Antiatticist cites the fragment together with Philem. fr.
18 as examples of the first and second person pronouns used in place of the
corresponding reflexives.
Text The hiatus in the transmitted text πράττε δτι is intolerable, yet eli-
sion creates a metrically deficient line. Sansone’s πράξον neatly removes the
problem while not introducing others. Meineke’s πράτθ’ ότιοϋν is simple,
but ότιοϋν is always used with a negative elsewhere in comedy (e. g. Ar. Nu.
344 κούχι γυναιξιν μά Δί’ ούδ’ ότιοϋν; Crates Com. fr. 19.3 ούκ άρ’ έτ’ ούδέν
κρέας, ώς ύμεϊς λέγετ’, ούδ’ ότιοϋν; Xenarch. fr. 14.2).145 Kaibel’s πράτθ’ δ τι
άν σαυτω implies a conscious change to the text introduced on the basis of
the Antiatticist’s lemma and removes from the lemma any example of the
second person pronoun used for the reflexive. The first point runs counter to
the inattention to detail characteristic of the Antiatticist in its current form;
the second is not fatal, since the text of the Antiatticist is often hopelessly
abbreviated and internally contradictory, but there is no compelling reason
to thus further reduce the intelligibility of the lemma.
Interpretation The lines seem to be part of a dialogue in which two charac-
ters discuss what course of action to take and agree to act independently (or
at least one of them proposes to do so).
Despite the Antiatticist’s demonstration of the use of the personal pro-
noun for the reflexive in the first and second persons (implying that this had
been condemned by Atticists), the usage is not uncommon (e.g. S. OT 379;
E. Andr. 256; Hipp. 1409), except in comedy; cf. Kuhner-Gerth 1898-1904
1.559; Moorhouse 198 2. 137.146 Apparently for this reason and because the
Antiatticist’s lemma contains εμέ and σέ instead of έμοϋ and σου or σοι, Bothe

145 In prose of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, the usage is not so restrained, and
ότιοϋν appears with and without a negative in roughly equal numbers. The word
is not attested in tragedy.
146 Moorhouse’s note on this usage, that ‘in principal clauses there is regularly a
contrast, with reference to another person than the self’, is a more exact way of
explaining the phenomenon than Edmonds’ comment that ‘έμοϋ is due to contrast
with σοι’, although the latter is still correct.