A Note on Praxilla Fr.

754 PMG
Author(s): James W. Halporn
Source: Hermes, 111. Bd., H. 4 (1983), pp. 499-500
Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag
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 Miszellen 499

what was left, after the catastrophe, of Western civilisation was salvaged by

the Tuareg - felt driven, by exhaustive studies, to declare Haydn's Sixth

symphony, the 'Morning', spurious. It had survived, we may posit, together

with the four most famous of the 'London' - and two of the 'Paris'

symphonies, and our musicologist was able to demonstrate irrefutably the

total incompatibility of Nr. 6 with 'normal Haydn practice' . ..

The second argument is given with the dependence upon 'Prometheus' of

Sophokles' 'Triptolemos', dated 468 B. C. With Aeschylus, the chained Titan

described for lo (and for an audience fascinated by exotic lore) the Eastern

half of the oikumene as the scene of her wanderings, and to Herakles, in the

'Lyomenos', the Western half. Young Sophokles outrivalled his master by

having Demeter describe the world as seen by her ward from his winged

chariot (fr. 598 PEARSON = 541 NAUCK2); he stressed his emulation by

prefacing this passage with a verse distinctly alluding to Prom. 789 (fr. 597 P.

= 540 N.2). >>f the relevance of the Sophoclean fragments is admitted((, says

A. C. PEARSON prefacing the fragments of 'Triptolemus' (p. 239), othere can

be no question which of the two poets was the imitator<<; incidentally he also

refers (fr. 597, p. 244) to HAIGH, Tragic Drama, p. 144.

>>f the relevance of the Sophoclean fragments is admitted< - and how

could it fail to be? - the observations of M. GRIFFITH and his predecessors

loose their relevance for the question of dating; but apart from this, they

remain valid and indeed doubly interesting. How could this play, if it is to be

dated in the early 470ties, or even before Marathon - how could it show so

many features which otherwise we do not observe until forty or more years

later? Could it be, that at an early stage of the development many features

appeared simultaneously and that some of them were subsequently rejected,

only to reappear a generation later?

Cambridge, England GONTHER ZUNTZ

A NOTE ON PRAXILLA FR. 754 PMG

X 61t(i 'I Oup&w6v xaX6v tigXmotaoa

tapcpvc Tttv XspaX(tv Ta 6' AVspQs vi5g.upa.

PAGE remarks on two difficulties in the text. The plural trbv Oupi&cov is odd,

since, as PAGE states, the point of the lines seems to demand the singular; yet,

it is difficult to explain why this reading should have been replaced1. On a

vase at G6ttingen (Boeotian, c. 450 B.C.), there is a scene of two men at a

symposium and from the mouth of the right-most figure come the words

OAIATE?EYPIAOX right to left. JACOBSTHAL, who discusses this painting,

1 R. RENEHAN in a recent lecture explained the change of singular to plural as follows: tar4

Oupt8o; > Ta; Oupt8aq > tcov Oup&o)v. The Doric gen. sg. article td4 was misunderstood as

acc. pi. and then 0upi8o4 was altered to suit the article. When it was recognized that the sense

demanded 8t6 + gen., the phrase was turned into the plural.

33* Hermes, 111. Band, Heft 4 (1983) ( Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, D-6200 Wiesbaden

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 500 Miszellen

suggests that the words are from this poem of Praxilla and represent the use of

her verses in sympotic songs in the fifth century2.

What the line on the vase and the appearance of the phrase ta' Ttfjg

Oupi6o; in Aristophanes and elsewhere (passages cited by PAGE in his

apparatus) indicate rather is that the phrase was both popular and proverbial.

This view is supported by its appearance in yet another erotic context in the

last line of the Locrian aubade (PMG 853), cited by Athenaeus (15, 697 B):

. .6. TO p t/6uax Tri Oup'6o; oix sioopi g; Further, PAGE notes that we would

expect the participle to be tx3X?irotota rather than s.p4Xl~otoa.

Both these features suggest that Praxilla has consciously altered a popular

phrase to produce a more pointed statement. The Oupt6s; of which Praxilla is

speaking are not 'windows' in a literal sense, but she is employing a metonymy

in which 'windows' are 'eyes'. Perhaps the most famous literary example of

this transfer is not Greek but Hebrew, and appears in Ecclesiastes 12:3 which

presents the famous allegory of the inhabitants of the house who represent the

various organs of the human body and describes the effect of old age on each.

In the final versicle, )>And they will find it dark (lit. 'be darkened') who look

out from the lattices<, the poet equates the ladies at the lattice windows of the

great man's house with the blurred eyes of the old man3.

The pervasive and popular notion of the eyes (and often all the senses) as

fenestrae animi (Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 1, 20, 46) goes back to Heraclitus: ?v 6&

'yopiyypo? ircXtv (6 vo15) 6ia tc civ aio0a txCov it6pov Coonp &da ttvwv

Oupit'&ov ipoxu6 iac xci tti irsptcXOVT1 ovaup3xciv XoylxfIv ?V80Ialt & vacltv

(Sextus Empiricus Adv. math. 7, 130 [22 A 16 D.-K.6J).Perhaps the clearest

expression of the idea appears later in a fragment of Philo of Alexandria4: at

ciioei]oiG; Opit'tv totxCot 68t dyap TaOtwv xcivrav Oupi0ov tnFtGFpXvrCil

T5O vC f xarcit)ixt; t6)v aciio8nliv xcii narXlv 6 voO; txx6Vrtt 8ala aciimov.

j.upoC 6? 0oti tCbV OUpl6wCV, 'YCO 6i T6CiV aciOiia&o?v il 6pacic, eitl? xaii

MUXfl4t xtarotci Oy7Y?F4.

The meaning also of 43XUirw with its sense of an intense gaze revealing an

emotional quality within the subject perceived by the external observer5 fits

well into the present metonymic context: ?with the sweet (i. e., innocent)

glance through your eyes<<. It is the sweet glance which makes the prostitute of

Praxilla appear virginal in her xsepcaiX despite what the poet knows of the

condition of the lower part of her body6.

Bloomington JAMES W. HALPORN

2 GOttinger Vasen (= AbhGott N.F. 14 [1912] 59ff.; pl. XXII.81), p. 63.

3 Proverbs. Ecclesiastes, intro., trans., and notes by R. B. Y. SCOTT, Garden City, N. Y. 1965

(= The Anchor Bible), pp. 253 and 255; E. PODECHARD, L'Ecclesiaste, Paris 1912, p. 457.

4 THOMAS MANGEY, ed., Philoni Judaei Opera, II (London 1742), p. 665 (>>ex libro de Mundi

Opificiox<). The fragment was quoted by DIELS in Doxographi Graeci, p. 210, n. 1 with incorrect

pagination (he gives p. 615), and this incorrect reference of DIELS' is repeated both by POHLENZ in

his edition of Cicero Tusc. Disp. (Leipzig 1912 [1957], vol. 1, p. 76) and BAILEY in his commentary

to Lucretius (Oxford 1947 [1950], vol. 2, p. 1052, fn. 3).

s Cf. Plato Ion 535e: &tv6v tgIXtovTa; and Plutarch Pyrrhus 34,3: tvto3?X,c (nVOppoS)

8a1v6v, and JEBB's note to Sophocles Electra 995.

6 That Oupi8rS (and O0pat) can be used for the places where the inner self is revealed seems

supported, also in an erotic context, by a phrase in Aristaenetus Ep. 2, 7 (Epist. Graec. 163 H.), a

letter which contrasts the characteristics of the ctap0tvo; (OFpdnaivct) and the vOg(pn (&cnrotlva).

In speaking of the virgin's qualities, the writer remarks parenthetically: ?-yy$ u?v yap ToO

TZ6gaTo; t xcap&ia, iq 6t 'uxii r&v Oupcvi fiv 8? rfiv %?Ipa rT Otfpvq npoaaydyil;S, 6O?le z6

iri6ina.

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