The Oedipus Tyranwas of Sophocles, with Translation, Notes, and Indices.
By B. K. Kennedy, D.D. (University Press, Cambridge.) —In this edition the text is followed (it might better have been ac- companied) by a verse translation, with foot-notos. An appendix of longer notes is almost entirely a reprint from " Viudiciaa Sopho. cleae," which appeared in the Journal of Philology in 1872. Three indices follow, illustrating the language of Sophocles with especial reference to this play. The translation is exceedingly close, but, while never unreadable, it sometimes attains the high level of Coe. ington's "Agamemnon" and Donaldson's "Antigone." Lines 19-30 are thus rendered:—
"The other crowds with suppliant wreaths Sit in the public tigusros, HOMO at the shrines Of Pallas twa'n, seine by the altar-ash Oracular of Istuenus,—for, us thou Thyself observest, ioreis LO this time The city fluctnates, and bath power no more From a deep sea of blood to lift its bead, Wasting in fruit-encircling lends of earth, Wasting In pastured kiln-droves, and in births Abottive of its women. All the while, The god, fire-laden, loathed Pestilence, With smiting bolts the city persecutes; Whereby depopulated is the abode Of Cadmus, and black llartes is enriched With groans and mailings."
Of the unrhymed choruses, a good specimen is the antistrophe at line 1,057 :— " Who was she that bore thee, child ?
Who, of all the long-lived maidens Visited by father Pau, Mountain-walker,—tor, it may be, Concubine of Loxias,
For amo g his favourite places All the rural tructs he coutateth P Or did he, Cyllene's king, Or the god Bacchetan, dwelling On the summit of the mountains, From some Ilelieonian nymph Thee receive, a new-born offspring P For with them he playeth must."
The main interest of the notes centres in the passages in which Pro- fessor Kennedy claims to have discovered the true sense missed by previous editors. In lines 44 and 99 he maintains vigorously the two interpretations of cup:fropd which were originally suggested as fax back as 1854. In both passages it seems to as that Professor Kennedy has proved his case, and shown by brilliant examples what results may be obtained by patient and sympathetic study of the text. The principle is laid down that "a verbal substantive of the form ¢opci, crwmpopii, is, a priori, capable of obtaining all the senses as a substantive which its verb spipar or OpoAcu, rrutio4w, or rrumpipolAas, exhibits as a verb." The interpreta- tion "comparisons of counsels," in line 44, may be said to have passed beyond the stage of conjecture, since it received the approval of ShilIeto, but we think the suggestion in line 99 scarcely less valuable and equally well founded. Besides these and other in- terpretations, which, after a lapse of thirty years, Professor Kennedy reaffirms as "true, necessary, and unassailable by sound argument," evidences are not wanting of more recent work. In the difficult pas- sage lines 319.20, it is proposed to interpret, "I will never speak my things, call them what I may On fie dro2), lest I disclose your things as evil." If this be right, Sophocles certainly succeeded in his de. sign of "hiding his exact meaning from the bearers behind the veil of an unusual and obscure construction. In line 1,481, for " geses" is read "14 TIS," "for one who never eyed jealously the aspiring hopes and fortunes of the citizens," where Professor Campbell gets the same sense by supposing the loss of a line. At the end of the appendix, Professor Kennedy takes the opportunity, as he "may find no other," of offering sense remarks on "Antigone 2.13, which we hope the veteran scholar may have both time and strength to embody in another such edition as his "Agamemnon" and the one before us.
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