Line 807
τὸν χορὸν εἶχον ἁδελφός
The manuscript tradition preserves the reading ἁδελφός ('brother') here, but this creates an insurmountable grammatical and semantic difficulty: the verb ἔχω ('had') requires an accusative object, yet ἁδελφός is nominative, and the notion of 'holding a brother' as a choreographer holds no sense in the context of the play's plot. The consensus among scholars is that ἁδελφός is a corruption of ἁδελφός in the sense of 'the chorus' (a rare metonymy) or, more likely, a dittography or corruption of ἁπλοῦς ('simple') or a specific technical term for a chorus leader, though the exact restoration remains a crux. Some editors have conjectured ἁδελφός for ἁδελφός, but the most compelling solution, supported by the context of the play's satire on the chorus's role, is to read the text as a corruption of ἁπλοῦς or a similar term, with the current reading representing a scribal error that has persisted in the transmission.
Peace. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.