Πόλεις (fr. 245)

291

Discussion Dobree 1820. 90; Raspe 1832. 84-5, 112 n. 4; Meineke 1839 11.508;
Wilamowitz 1880. 73; Whittaker 1935. 183; Schiassi 1944. 73-4; Wilson 1977.
282-3; Storey 2003. 229; Olson 2007. 96 (B27); Sansone 2011
Citation context From a small cluster of notes, variously arranged in the
manuscripts, on a mention of Tenian garlic at Ar. Pl. 718 (smeared inside
Neokleides’ eyelids by Asclepius to make him suffer). Σν is far more full than
the others, including not only the second half of 2 but Antimachus fr. 91
Matthews as well. Σλ also offers δτι ή Τήνος, νήσος μία των Κυκλάδων,
θηριώδης δοκεΐ είναι (“Tenos, one of the Cycladic islands, appears to be
infested with wild beasts”; a slightly longer version of the first half of the note
ιηΣ ) separately, while Σ adds the note οτι εν τη Ιήνω, μια των
Κυκλάδων νήσω, δφεις καί σκορπίοι δεινοί έγίνοντο (“On Tenos, one of the
Cycladic islands, there were terrible snakes and scorpions”).
Text The line-division is that of Sansone, and serves to make sense of the
otherwise difficult final word in 2 by converting it into the beginning of a
bomolochic response.
Σ alone preserves εχεις τε συκοφάντας after σκόρπιους in 2. Perhaps
the words were deliberately omitted by another scribe or set of scribes when
εχεις was mistaken for a form of εχω,139 making the line seem to be nonsense.
Interpretation Frr. 245-7 are all in iambic tetrameter catalectic and are most
economically understood as part of a single scene, in which a series of per-
sonified cities (all three members of the Athenian Empire) appear onstage,
one after another, and are briefly described. That these figures are somehow
connected with the chorus of Cities is an obvious hypothesis, but they may not
belong to it; cf. the four specialized, elaborately costumed bird-dancers who
appear at Av. 268-93, just before the chorus arrives. Cf. also Ar. fr. 410 (from
Nesoi, and probably a description of one of the personified Islands as she/it
enters the Theater). In fr. 246 (printing ύμΐν; see n.) a group of Athenians are
seemingly addressed, and in fr. 247 (n.) there may be two speakers. Fr. *244
scans as an iambic trimeter, but the theme is similar enough that it might
alternatively be understood as an incomplete iambic tetrameter catalectic and
thus as another verse from the same scene.
Tenos (IACP #525; the fourth-largest of the Cyclades and among the most
northerly of them) may have been an original member of the Delian League

139 Routinely mishandled by recent translators, including at Olson 2007. 426. I thank
David Sansone for this correction. I would have been even more grateful, had he
pointed the problem out when he read the manuscript of Broken Laughter before
publication.