Phocylides

Author(s): M. L. West
Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 98 (1978), pp. 164-167
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/630205
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 164 NOTES
republishing one This pointof requires amplification.
the It appearsfinest
at first sca
Professor O. Masson reconsidered the evidence then sight to be in flat contradiction to the testimony of Dio of
available for the necropolis in question, he concluded Prusa
thatxxxvi II f.:
Tomb no XII (or XI as it is called more often than not by KGL aS 5TOO WKvASOUv 7TOL77r3W S Eug T k aOt actEW V
Ohnefalsch-Richter) was identical with Tomb no. IV,
SELyALa iV PpaxeL' Kat yap orL oV TWV frAaKpav rtva Kat
thus conflating the two separately existing tombs into
ouavvEX rroIrlatv elpdOvv, WairTp 6 6oi"'repoS [Homer]
one.9 The German Tamassos Expedition has recently f.Leav Eg7s 8LWeeta ' IXf1%E TTAEL aLV 1 7r vTaK(aXLALOLS
managed to relocate both tombs and has completely eTavLr, aAAa Ka7ra o Ka Tpa 17a7 T Ka c p'ia-v q
re-excavated no. IV.10 In the light of this, Masson's
7ToLaLS~ Kal reTpas Aa/flaVEL. or Kar arrpoaorltOoa rb
conflation of the tombs must be discounted and the early
Attic black-figure skyphos in the Fitzwilliam Museum Ovopya av'rov KcaO EcKaorov 8Lav0dlpa, TE 7r o vrrov Kat
7roAAov ALov 7oyqcvdEVor.
can henceforward be assigned with confidence to 'Royal
Tomb' no. XII at Tamassos, which lies to the west of What
no. Dio found in his Phocylides was a sequence of
IV. short, apparently independent items, marked off one
from another by the phrase K' Tr 'Se WKvAhjEW which
RICHARD NICHOLLS and appears in four of our fragments. But they stood together
HANS-GUiNTER BUCHHOLZ in one book, and there is no reason to suppose it was any
Cambridge and Giessen different with the Phocylides known to Isocrates and
Plato. It is not hard to imagine a fifth-century schoolmas-
8 E. Zwierlein-Diehl, Antike Gemmen in deutschen Museen i, Berlin ter reciting such a Phocylides to his class and hearing them
(1969) 65 no. 135, pl. 32; see also A. Furtwingler, Beschr. dergeschnittenen
recite it back; or a rhapsode giving a recital of Phocylides'
Steine im Antiquarium (1896) pl. 3 and AG i pl. 7. 19; discussed also by M.-L.
Vollenweider, Cat. Mus. d'Artetd'Histoire de Genive i (1967) 123 under no.
collected wisdom in the same catalogue form.
I57. I suspect that it was intended as a coherent composition
from the start. It is usually thought that the purpose of the
9 'Re herches sur les Antiquit6s de Tamassos', BCH lxxxviii (1964) 199
ff.

10 Buchholz in AA 1973 299, 322, 330 ff., figs. 23, 32; AA 1974 578.
Phocylides
Phocylides was famous as a poet of admonitory or
gnomic verse. Isocrates names him together with Hesiod
and Theognis, saying that they are praised as the best
counsellors for human life, though their advice is seldom
followed (ii 43). He is again bracketed with Theognis by
Dio of Prusa (ii 5), Athenaeus (632d), and Cyril (c. Iul.,
Patrol. lxxvi 841d). Theophrastus quoted a line of
Theognis (147) in different works as 'Theognis' and as
'Phocylides': we should not infer that it occurred in both
poets, but simply that people tended to muddle them.
And when Phocylides is dated as aoiyXpovo Bedyvcs8os,
we must suspect that this was a guess based on nothing
more than the similar tendency of their work, for cer-
tainly neither named the other.'
Phocylides' maxims, like Theognis', have a nominal
addressee (3.8 Bgk. 0WA' &rarpE), but they are clearly
intended to be of general utility; Dio loc. cit. represents
him as giving advice roi~ rroAAoois Kat ltw'Tats. They
differ from Theognis' in being in hexameters, not ele-
giacs.2 They were not, therefore, sung to the aulos at
symposia, as Theognis expects his verses to be (237-43),
but recited.3 Whatever kind of occasion is to be imagined,
it seems likely that they were recited not as isolated
apophthegms of two or three lines but in connected series,
as they were later to be found in books.
1 Suda, from Hesychius of Miletus. Cf. my Studies in Greek Elegy for
Iambus (1974) 65 f.
2 They are collected in Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci, ii 68-72; Diehl, Anth.
Lyr. I, i 57-6o. I follow Bergk's numbering. The evidence that Phocylides
also wrote elegiacs is unreliable; see my lambi et Elegi Graeci, ii 93, and tit'.
Studies 171.
3 Chamaileonfr. 28 Wehrli (Ath. 62oc) knows of performers who sang
(JsCA?c.r) oD CdIvov rd T'O~Lipov d AAa K Ta 'H7ad ov al 'ApXtAdXov, e7T
8C MqEv.ipflov KGal I0cvA(8ov. These were presumably citharodes who had
lost the art of composing for themselves; see CQ xxi (1971) 307 ff.
Kaa T7dE ' WKUlVAJEW was to label each separate utterance
in the hope of preventing misappropriation-the kind of
misappropriation that Theognis alludes to in 19-23, and
that Thestorides of Phocaea is said to have practised with
certain poems of Homer.4 But it must have been obvious
to anyone who thought twice about it that such a device
offered no protection whatever. A plagiarist had only to
substitute his own name, or, if that could not be fitted in,
some other phrase such as E~~ pot pdceaOaL. It is further to
be noted that Kat 7r8e places each item so introduced in
relationship to others already given. The particle itself
implies, not a wholly independent utterance, but an addi-
tion to a series.
Phocylides is named not merely to give credit where it
is due but to lend authority to the precepts; I think we
may take it as axiomatic, whenever precepts are presented
in association with a name, that such is the intention. If we
look about in the field of gnomic and didactic literature
without limiting our gaze to classical Greece,5 we see that
it is usual for the source of the advice to be identified,
whether as a god, a king, some other respected personage,
or simply an anonymous wise man. It is a feature of some
texts that we are reminded of this source repeatedly. Two
thousand years before Phocylides, a Sumerian poet com-
posed the Instructions of Suruppak, in which the antedilu-
vian sage Suruppak was represented as instructing his son
Ziusudra.6 The line
suruppak dumu na na-mu-ri
'Suruppak gave instructions to his son',
4 Ps.-Hdt. vit. Hornm. 15-17. Much has been written on the supposed
device of the orpayls, a pseudo-technical term constructed on a misinter-
pretation of Thgn. 19 and idle speculation about the meaning oforpaylg as
a part of the citharodic nome (Poll. iv 66). Poets mention their own names
and a variety of reasons. To put all such mentions under the single heading
orpayis is to succumb to that love of formulaic labels that so often serves as
a curb to thought. J. Geffcken, Gr. Literaturgeschichte i (Anmerkungen) 96
n. 2 diagnoses Phocylides' repetition of his name as a 'Mangel an Originali-
s I have made a short survey of this literature, with particular emphasis
on the ancient Near East, in the introduction to my edition of Hesiod's
Works and Days (Oxford 1978).
6 B. Alster,
Sumerian The(Copenhagen
Proverbs Instructions1975).
of ,uruppak (Copenhagen 1974); Studies in

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 NOTES I65
upon material
which first appears in that was
the by nature lacking in structural
introducti
cohesion. Essentially
after fourteen lines, again the same purpose
after is served byten,
other
at least once subsequently.
formulas in some Norse gnomic poetry. In theIn a lat
Loddfafnis-
work, dating from
mdl (Hdvamdlc. ISoO
III 1-37), stanza after B.C., the
stanza of Oin's in-
reduced in number but made more elaborate: struction begins with

(78) Suruppak gave instructions to his son, Ri5omc per Loddfifnir, at Pui rai6 nemir,
Suruppak, son of Ubartutu, gave instructions to his ni6ta mundo, ef pui nemr,
son Ziusudra.
Per muno g65, ef pii getr.
A second time Suruppak gave instructions to his
'I counsel thee, Loddfafnir, and hear thou my counsel:
son, profit shalt thou if thou hearest,
Suruppak, son of Ubartutu, gave instructions to his
good thy gain if thou learnest.'
son Ziusudra.
Often only a single precept follows. In the Sigrdrnfumdl
And likewise in 148 ff., with 'third' instead of 'second'. (22-37), the instruction of the Valkyrie Sigrdrifa to
We find a similar technique in an Old English gnomicSigur6 is marked out by the series 'pat rae ec Per ip
poem preserved in the Exeter Book.7 The opening verses fyrsta', 'pat rae ec j6r annat', 'This I counsel thee first',
announce that this is how a wise old father taught his 'This I counsel thee second', and so on up to the eleventh.
noble son. Then after eleven lines of precepts we have In view of the parallels I would suggest that the recur-
ring Ka t7d'E - wKvAlSEW in Phocylides' book served
Faeder eft his sunu fr6d gegr&tte
simply to mark new items or sections in a single gnomic
6pre sipe:
poem. Its implication is that Phocylides is a man whose
'The experienced father again addressed his son
another time:' advice is worth attending to. The ancients assumed that he
was the actual poet, but appear to have known nothing
After only four and a half more lines of instruction it is about his life or person. It is equally possible that he was
someone known at the time and place of composition as a
Driddan srpe poncsnottur guma
sage of a former generation. Later Greek poets, after all,
breostgehygdum his bearn l rde.
'A third time the wise man composed moralizing poems in the persons of Bias of
with his breast-thoughts taught his child.' Priene (7rept 'Iwcovta, rtva LLta-or av rpo rov Ev3atspovoltq,
El 7T7r StaXlAa), Periander (67TrofKat, EL 1e Er q StaXAta),
And so on until ten lessons have been reported. ThePythagoras, and others.9 It may be that the technique of
introduction occupies two lines in each case; the wordingrepeating 'This too is the instruction of-' came ultima-
is skilfully varied, the most constant feature being the tely from some oriental model. Suruppak was still studied
adverb eft 'again'. The number of verses in the successiveby the Babylonians (in translation) towards the end of the
sections of instruction from the third to the tenth is: four,second millennium, more than a thousand years after the
three, nine, seven, five, four, nine, seventeen. original composition, and its form may have been copied
A more stereotyped form of heading appears in ain later Babylonian wisdom texts now lost. In my intro-
Middle English gnomic poem, the Proverbs of Alfred,duction to the Works and Days I argue that there must
composed in the twelfth century." After the prologuehave been a tradition of wisdom poetry in Ionia before
which explains that King Alfred gave all this advice to aHesiod, and that Hesiod's poem shows the influence of
gathering of bishops, scholars, earls and knights at Sea-Near Eastern literature of this type, whether this influence
ford, each section-there are 28 of them in the longestcame through the Ionian tradition or by a separate route.
recension, amounting to 512 short verses-is introduced It is quite possible that Phocylides inherited the Kia TdOE
by form from orientalizing Ionian forerunners.
Pus qua6 Alfred Englene frouere, I have so far said nothing of the one or perhaps two
'Thus quoth Alfred, England's support', elegiac distichs of Demodocus of Leros that begin Kia T'dE
JArpLO8dKOV. 10 There is little that needs to be said except
or more often simply that Demodocus is notable for his sharp wit, which he
pus quai Alfred. directs infr. I against his neighbours the Milesians. His KaI
rdSE ArnPLOS8KOV is surely to be understood as parody of
In the Trinity College Cambridge MS. B. 14. 39 the the well-known Milesian Phocylides-poem. If we knew
Proverbs are followed (without indication of a change) by his exact date, it would give us a terminus ante quem for
another, shorter poem of somewhat later date in which Phocylides; but we do not really know whether he lived
Alfred again plays the part of instructor, but this time in the sixth century or the fifth.
addresses his son. There are five sections, 133 lines, and
again each section begins 'pus quad Alured', followed this Now for some remarks on the individual fragments of
time by 'Sune min so leue', 'Sone min so dere', or 'Lewe the poem. There is more in some of them than meets the
sone dere'. eye at first glance.
Obviously this repetition is not the result of collecting
together in one book a quantity of little pieces that had
13 xp) ratis' ~7' "dvra
Kad 8L8 KELtV pya.
been circulating separately, each labelled 'pus qua6
Ifa Phocylides followed his own advice, he add
Alfred', no two of them overlapping in content. It is
instruction to a boy, and this fragment may com
literary device designed to impose some organization
introduction in which he explained why he was
7 T. A. Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (1976)
48-52.
ing him. In the pseudo-Hesiodic Precepts of Ch
8 0. Arngart, The Proverbs of Alfred (Skrifter utgivna av kungl.9 See further my Hesiod, Works and Days 24 f
humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund, 32/2) 1942. 10 The phrase is attested only infr. 2, plausibly supplemented infr. i.

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 166 NOTES

said that children's

12 IOAAa Laootaty apta Ta* peaoos OE'A V rTOA eyat.educa
seven, or in the sevent
likewise have been laid down in relation to the addressee
The middle is the safest station when the city is polarized

of the poem, Achilles, who according to Pindar went by

to class strife. Cf. Thgn. 219 f. p/t77lv lyav yaXaMA
rapaaao4Lvwov
the Centaur 4i6rr r 7 rpw6rov (Nem. iii 49). Cf also Thgn.
aoarrp rToAr'rEov
d (when the Kt6pve,
democrats are /. v7the
turbulent, Y pru-
S' 6PX.o or-qv 050v
27 f. aol 8' ~EyJ E 6 povEwv vol7roOaooLaL, otarep av-ro'
dent aristocrat does not express his indignation too
Kpvy' dai ro d~v yaOcov nrais Jr' 4wv 4paOov, and 104911 aol
loudly); 331 f. ovxos o rrcTp iy'& 'ao~ v 0d8v 0 PXeo
8' Ey, old TE raLs 7rava p vo 7roOaotLaL a"7v' aOAad. 7Trooav, 7rl7r7ipoatL 8t8obvs Kvpve r' tcZv "-r'pwv; perhaps
io 8'LcoaL Ptorqv, apaperqv8' &vrav 8 f'os v 8Jt . 335 tL8dv aYv Y c7'rEvELV" rcv pewv 'a' aptae Kat oK-rw9
(even so) Kvpv' ;leeLs dperr-v.
7 XP77loWV 1TAot"rov p4EAcr-qv EXE iTovoS dypoO-
aypov yap rT eAyOowcLV 'ApaAOdr K5 Kpa etvat.
6 Ka 7drO' 0 WKVALEW Xp roL 7rOV %raipov ~7raipy
Like Hesiod, Phocylides encourages his pupil to seek OpovrTEltv, aa' a 7'Tv EpyoyyvwaL ITOAlTrat.
prosperity and livelihood through agriculture. It is 'One must be concerned for one's friend about whatever
through this prosperity that one may hope to attain
the people are murmuring'-and presumably warn him
apE'-rh, still used here in the sense of social status, being an if he is in danger.
EaOAoe , a man of quality. Op. 312 f. El 8.' KEVy , 7 xa
ao qA'aEL dapyo lTAov4vov-ra" TAovr(p 8' dperv I Ka% KVOS9 4 KaL TO& 'EWK~VAW' 7L rTAeOV, 7YVOS EvEyVeS9 EvaL,
drormE; see my commentary ad loc. According to the story ok oV' Iv ptOo oS E7re-ral XdpL~ 0ot' iYv fovX1?;
told by Herodotus v 29, Milesian farming in the sixth
Criticism of unpleasant nobles. One expects better from
century was in a poor state, and the city was only put on
men of good family.
its feet when the government was entrusted to those few
who were found to run their farms efficiently.
9 7ToAAol Trot 8OKEovat aaoGdpoves gLL aVaSpEs
av KaipWco aUlEXOVrES, AaOp6vooL r7Tp iOVrES.
16 XP2ar'Y7 KaKOV ~LEYvatL daVSpo
EvYEtV, p adc y' avLtn rapd KaLpOV 7 CaOl wV.A warning to distrust outward appearances. Cf. Thgn. 965
ff.Bergk
Hesiod also gives advice on borrowing, Op. 349 ff. In view of ardeXOVreS, KoapwOS may mean not just 'a
sober manner' but 'ornate apparel'. That such apparel was
conjectured that KGa 7dro6 WKvAlEw preceded.
assumed by certain men of note in sixth-century Miletus
may be gathered from a tradition about Anaximander:
15 W &A' apa aalpovs elaL iT' advpdactV aAAore aAAOL,
oL tEVi 7EpXoLVov KaKoV davepas ivKaaeaL,. ...
Adto'WpoS 8 6 'E'0 atoS r7ept 'Avaetpadv8pov ypdc~cwv ~-oa1v
14 (XP%) &AA' JEKov-ra 7rra8Oiv 8,L77EVOV E VLEVa, fOf Aotov i7rlA KEL( (sc. 'EE~SOK79S ) 7paytKobV abaKcv
eaOAov.
r aOOV Ka1 O~VV -v dvaafl&CV iC~ 7ra (D.L. viii 70).
For all one's efforts, success depends ultimately on the
I I p-q 8' iv av tLrroaq K vALKWv rrep7VLaoleEVaWV
gods. Cf. Op. 474, 483 f., 667-9; Thgn. 133 ff., 149 f., 155 7a KW7rhOV7-a KaO77pEVOv olvoTro-aetLV.
ff., 161 ff., 66o ff.; Solon 13.67-70.

8 VVKlTS OU VAEVV' VVK7~O 8g t70UOr O 7p' ~Opr v
av8paiaLV- 7Tv1Xl- 8 apE' dp.cVr<v> )&7pLedvcTOA7.
Advice on r flovAev'evw: Thgn. 69 ff., 633 f., 1051 ff. Note
the recurrence (here and in 14 above) of 81?(laOat
ape-r77v/ILErvat eaOAOv as the goal.
The next group of fragments brings us more into the
sphere of politics and society.
5 Kal T6 & K W' rWvC "rLE iv 7ro orrA TK Kalr KdoGa ov
OKeovaa a1J ptlKp Kp(aacWV NtvovU bpatvwoarqg.
Eunomia is more important than magnificence. Nineveh
was destroyed in 612, and with it collapsed the mighty
Assyrian kingdom after three centuries of splendour. It
did not impinge on the Greeks while it existed: it was its
fall that attracted their attention and made it suitable as a
moral paradigm. I take it, then, that the verses date from
after 612. But if Phocylides was a sage of an earlier time,
he might have been represented as saying this while
Nineveh still stood, in the same way as a later fable made
Solon disparage the wealth of Sardis before its fall.
Albrecht Dihle argues further that the verses will date
from before 547, because the impression made upon an
Asiatic Greek by the fall of Lydia must have put the fall of
Nineveh 65 years earlier very much in the background of
his thoughts.12 This is reasonable.
" Theognidean line-references in sloping type indicate that the poem
in question is anonymous.
12 Gr. Literaturgeschichte (1967) 79.
KwrAAE is somewhat pejorative, used in archaic Greek
of foolish chatter or insincere pleasantry. The addition of
~S'a definitely suggests the latter sense, cf. Op. 374 alto.Aa
KoW-r7l ovaa, Thgn. 363 EU KTLArAE r7v iXpdV, 852
paAeaKad KWL AAcWV, Solon 34-3 KW7rLAAov7a AetwS. Phocy-
lides probably went on to say 'but one should be careful
and observant of those present'. In times of political
uncertainty the symposium afforded good opportunities
for seeing into other men's minds, but one had to avoid
appearing too alert. The best commentary is Thgn. 309 ff.
ev /eV aV(aaYTOUatV dv-p rrEr7vvLevo9v EVatL, 7rravira (e LV
AhOEtV WS9 cga7TEdVa 8OKOF, E9 8& rEpOL9 7&. yAho'ia" .0pT1L
KaplEprS9 rl7, yLV aKWv Opy'lv 7)V7rtv KaaTLOS XEL.
Miletus suffered severely from civil strife for two gen-
erations after the tyranny of Thrasybulus (Hdt. v 28). The
dating inferred from the Nineveh allusion would put our
poem in this period of strife, and the above fragments fit
well into that context.
3 KaL Td qWKUvSW' 7.E7dpWV 0.7 tlCwV YEvOVlO
i3Aa yvvaLKElwvt 77 LV KVVd,, 77 &i LEACCaar,
77 avO8 vShoavp77, 8' Lrrrrov Xarl.77iaa77f.
EV,0poo 178e, "raxeLa, rrepl8poLos, Et80o daploar7
4 84 avTd Aovp~, o1Y ap Ka0.K7 O"t 8p V iacTr0
77 8 KVVOS XaAE7T77 7l Kat aypLos 7 8E /t AUTC7s/
olK0ovdOoS 7' dyaaO7 Kat ETrrlaaGaL iEpyaEcOaL
EV EdyO /A E arpe AXELv ya/Lov l/pdOvVros.
A quite different subject. The choice of a suitable wife and
the avoidance of dangerous women is a typical topic in
oriental wisdom literature, touched on also in the Works

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 NOTES 167
and Days. The idea
by Dr Lyons); of
or by the consultation type
of further Arabic
different animals is
manuscripts, which showed set
faults of transcriptionout
in the
Semonides 7. Phocylides'
manuscript from which our first transcript was made. To f
women who explain what we from
come have found with respect
the to Hunain's
7r
are describedchoice
in of individual
similar
words, we must describeterm
the method
sow- and bitch-women, how
we adopted. One of us (J.S.W.) made a translation, as
correspond nearly as possible literal,
rather to from the Arabic into English,
Semonid
ydp KaKOV scrupulously Er'
o07 avoiding any aOv consultation of the Greek text.
oViv
respectively. WePhocylides
then met and compared this English version hard
with the
allows himself, in again
Greek. It happened giving
and again that an Englishhis
word
porcine feature.
was found to represent Whether
the Greek word tolerably well,
Semonides orbut noton a
exactly. Reference commonp
to the lexicons showed, how-
cannot be decided
ever, that the English with certai
word chosen represented merely
To sum up: the evidence
one of the possible meanings of the Arabic, and isamongco
esis that the thehexameter frag
others listed was to be found the exact equivalent of
come from athe Greek.
gnomic poem,
first half of theA persistent source of scepticism
sixth as to the value of
century
represented as giving
Arabic manuscripts of translations advice
from the Greek is the t
of topics including
belief that, however good the how
original translationto
may
how to conduct oneself
have been, the extant manuscripts mugreatly in infected a
political tensions; the
with glosses, introduced differ
in the course of transmission,
poem fits well when
that no reliance seen
can be placed upon in
the Arabic, as we now
less well when
have it, as a seen against
representation of the original text of the
archaic translation.
Greek and earlier ori
We can say categorically that this is totally false of the
M. L. WEST extant manuscripts of the treatise here considered; and
Bedford College, London equally false of the manuscripts of the Ars parva with
which we are now engaged (It is also false of the MSS of
the De usu pulsuum and of the An in arteriis natura sanguis
13 Bergk appends to his collection of fragments a number of anony-
contineatur,
mous gnomic hexameters which may come from Phocylides. Their J.S.W.).
inclusion would not significantly affect the picture I have drawn.We have found perhaps five or six possible glosses, each
consisting of only a few words. Of these it is possible that
one or two represent words present in Galen's Greek,
which have dropped out of the Greek MSS. It is, more-
over, extremely difficult to distinguish between what is to
be considered a gloss (where only a few words are con-
The Arabic version of Galen's
cerned) and what is a legitimate explicative translation. In
'De Sectis ad eos qui introducuntur
one case, where we have conceded a possible gloss, Dr
Lyons considered that what we have is introduced simply
In this study' we have compared an Arabic translation
to avoid a gross inelegance, which would result in Arabic
with a well-edited Greek text, in the preparation of
from the adoption of a too direct rendering of the Greek
which, moreover, the editors have found no evidence of
syntactical form (see below on H 15.24).
any major lacunae in their MSS, and which we may
We defer the identification of the Arabic MSS to the
suppose to correspond closely with Galen's original com-
end of this paper and pass at once to our results.
position. It was, consequently, from the first improbable
that we should make any very striking discoveries: (Note on abbreviations. H: G. Helmreich's edition in Clau-
nothing was to be expected at all comparable with the
dii Galeni Pergameni Scripta Minora iii (Leipzig 1893). K:
indubitable evidence for the inversion of a leaf in the
Kuihn's edition, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, i (Leipzig
codex from which are derived our Greek manuscripts of A: J. S. Wilkie's translation of Arabic version. The
1821),
Galen's An in arteriis natura sanguis contineatur (Furley and
Greek MSS are referred to according to Helmreich's
Wilkie, CR xxii [1972] 164-7).
edition, viz. L=cod. Laurentianus LXXIV 5, Ll=eius
For anyone interested in the Arabic translations of
manus prima, L2= eiusdem manus altera; M= cod. Mos-
Galen's works there was, however, a compensatory
quensis 283; m=cod. Mosquensis 51; V=cod. Venetus
advantage in the possibility thus presented of assessingbibliothecae
the Marcianae V 9; v=cod. Venetus eiusdem
quality of the Arabic version. The reputation ofbibliothecae
the 282.)
translator, Hunain ibn Ishiq, has, indeed, already been
long established; and we were prepared to find his trans-
H 4.22 f. [?aEL]. K 69.10 ;aLv. Marquardt ;aToEW . A:
lation at the least respectable; it is safe to say, however,
'be well acquainted with the diversity of states of the
that we have found it uniformly excellent. In the three or
air, of waters...' K's /aeTLV is ungrammatical. The
four cases where a sentence seemed to have been misun-
Arabic suggests the presence, in his Greek text, of a
derstood, the initial impression of error has been dissi-
word (e.g. caToEws or qfaEov) governing dipwov,
pated by a more careful reading of the Arabic (confirmed
68rowv.. .: a double genitive would have been clumsy
but might help to account for the corruption.
I We must express our warmest thanks to Dr M. C. Lyons of Pembroke
College Cambridge, who has been most generous in allowingHus5.3 to [fpptaKov]. K 69.16 stet. A: 'this drug'. The Arabic
supports retention of /apt/aKov.
consult him on many particular points. He takes, of course, no responsi-
bility for any inaccuracies that may remain. H 7.12 ff. The Greek text suggests greater bleeding if the

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