Aristophanes Clouds 1311

William James Hickie (Translator)

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Clouds. Aristophanes. William James Hickie (Translator). London. 1853.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Clouds (English) (Aristophanes. The Comedies of Aristophanes, Vol. I. Hickie, William James, translator. Bohn: London, 1853.)

Editions (1)
Νεφέλαι Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.) — 1311 focus
Translations (1)
English (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) Experimental (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) — 1311 focus

Commentary

Commentary (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) focus

1312. mvp-tlg0019-tlg003-sanjaya-com-eng1-89

Line 1312

πάλαι ποτʼ †ἐπεζήτει†
The text †ἐπεζήτει† is a critical crux in the manuscript tradition. The verb ζητέω ('to seek') is semantically awkward with the adverbial phrase πάλαι ποτ' ('long ago once'), as the imperfect ἐπεζήτει implies a continuous or repeated action that does not easily accommodate the punctual or vague temporal marker 'once'. Most editors, following the reading of the codex Venetus Marcianus (L), emend the verb to ἐπείπει ('once he had said' or 'once he had commanded'), derived from the aorist imperative or aorist indicative of πείθω, or consider the phrase to be a corruption of ἐπεζήτησεν. However, some scholars defend the transmitted reading, arguing that the imperfect denotes a long-standing, habitual search that was finally interrupted, a usage attested in later Greek but rare in Aristophanes. The crux lies in determining whether the text preserves a unique temporal aspect or a corruption of a more standard narrative verb.

1313. mvp-tlg0019-tlg003-sanjaya-com-eng1-90

Line 1313

εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν δεινόν οἱ
The phrase οἱ is an enclitic dative plural of the relative pronoun (or possibly an abbreviated form of οἱ [ἄνδρες] in a vocative or nominative context, though less likely here), functioning as an indirect object or dative of reference for the infinitive εἶναι. However, the construction 'εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν δεινόν οἱ' is syntactically irregular: the adjective δεινόν agrees with τὸν υἱὸν (accusative), but the dative οἱ lacks a clear antecedent or explicit verbal governor in this fragment. In context (Clouds 1397–1398), this likely reflects a colloquial or elliptical usage where οἱ refers to the 'Clouds' (Νεφέλαι) as a collective entity, functioning as a dative of interest or reference ('it is terrible for them that the son exists'). This construction is rare in Aristophanes and may reflect the playwright's experimentation with syntactic compression in the parabasis or a specific rhetorical effect tied to the personified Clouds.