Atalante philandros: teasing out satyric innuendo (Sophocles, Fr. 1111 Radt = Hermogenes, On Ideas 2.5) (original) (raw)

2019, The Classical Quarterly

Among the one-word fragments from unknown plays of Sophocles, fr. inc. 1111 R. (φίλανδρον) has been treated as one of the more straightforward. It derives from a passage in Hermogenes of Tarsos' treatise Περὶ Ἰδεῶν (late second century C.E.), 1 which includes the Sophoclean adjective, its referent and a brief gloss: … ὁ Σοφοκλῆς … φίλανδρόν που τὴν Ἀταλάντην εἶπε διὰ τὸ ἀσπάζεσθαι σὺν ἀνδράσιν εἶναι ('… Sophocles called Atalante philandros somewhere because she enjoyed being with men'). 2 Brunck assigned the fragment to Sophocles' tragic Meleagros; 3 most subsequent editors have edited the fragment as sedis incertae while commenting favourably on Brunck's ascription. 4 This suggestion has also found support beyond Sophoclean scholarship, 5 and, to my knowledge, no alternative has been brought forward. While the ascription of the fragment to the Meleagros is prima facie not implausible, I shall argue that a thorough analysis of the difficult passage in Hermogenes calls for a revision of the current lexicographical accounts of the word φίλανδρος-as well as φιλανδρία-and suggests that fr. 1111 may in fact originate in a satyr-play. 1 On the dates of Hermogenes and Περὶ Ἰδεῶν, see M. Patillon, Corpus Rhetoricum Tome IV: Prolégomènes au De ideis. Hermogène, Les catégories stylistiques du discours (De ideis). Synopses des exposés sur les Ideai (Paris, 2012), VIII-IX. 2 Id. 2.5.5 [341]. Text of Hermogenes and page numbers follow Patillon's edition (n. 1) with the page numbers of Rabe's edition added in brackets. Translations of Hermogenes are adapted from C.W. Wooten, Hermogenes' On Types of Style (Chapel Hill, NC / London, 1997), here 82; all other translations are my own. 3 R.F.Ph. Brunck, Lexicon Sophocleum, in id., Sophoclis tragoediae septem cum scholiis veteribus … accedunt deperditorum dramatum fragmenta, vol. 4 (Strassburg, 1789), s.v. φίλανδρος. 4 Only W. Dindorf, Sophoclis tragoediae superstites et deperditarum fragmenta (Oxford, 1832), 370 confidently edits it among the fragments of 'the Meleagros' (sc. fr. 356); it is also referred to as such in the various Lexica Sophoclea s.v. (Ellendt [Königsberg, 1835], Ellendt/Genthe [Berlin, 1872], Dindorf [Leipzig, 1870]). Subsequent editors list it among the incerta: Nauck in TrGF 1 (1856) has it as inc. fr. 1003, but notes 'ad Meleagrum rettulerim cum Brunckio', and this is repeated in TrGF 2 (1889) where the fragment features as inc. fr. 1006. Similarly, A.C. Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1917), 3.165 edits it as inc. fr. 1111, but notes that 'Brunck was probably right in ascribing this fr. to the Meleager'. Radt (TrGF), who also edits it as inc. fr. 1111, refrains from explicit judgement, but see below, p. 855. H. Lloyd-Jones, Sophocles Fragments (Cambridge, MA / London, 2003 2), 213 briefly mentions it in his introduction to the Meleager without engaging with previous scholarship ('Did Atalanta figure in Sophocles' play? Fr. 1111, from which we learn that Sophocles called Atalanta φίλανδρος, might suggest it.'). The fragment is mentioned neither in the edition of G. Paduano, Tragedie e frammenti di Sofocle (Turin, 1982) nor in the detailed survey of Sophocles' fragmentary plays in