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Notes on Euripides' Andromache1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Professor Stevens's fine edition of Andromache, which treats all kinds of problems–linguistic, textual, metrical, theatrical, and interpretative–with great authority in a well-balanced commentary, and in a short introduction deals succinctly with the main ‘background’’ questions, must have prompted many to look anew at the play; so prompted, I here offer some supplementary points, mostly of interpretation.
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References
page 62 note 2 Stevens, P. T., Euripides Andromache (Oxford, 1971),Google Scholar hereafter referred to as Stevens. Other editions and commentaries cited by author's name alone are: Paley, F. A., Euripides (London, 1874), vol. 2;Google ScholarHyslop, A. R. H., The Andromache of Euripides (London, 1900);Google ScholarMéridier, L., Euripide (Paris, 1956), vol. 2.Google Scholar
page 62 note 3 Properly, 
should be used only of women and 
of the place, according to the grammarian Phrynichos, who cites and censures Euripides' usage at And. 194: Fischer, E., Phrynichos, Ekloge (Berlin, 1974);CrossRefGoogle Scholar cf. Rutherford, W. G., The New Phrynichus (London, 1881), p.428.Google Scholar So far from observing this distinction, Euripides never uses 
at all; 
is used once, of Klytaimestra (Tr. 249). None of these adjectives occurs in the masculine form in Euripides.
page 62 note 4 Such terms would be particularly emotive during the protracted Peloponnesian War. (On Athens' relations with Sparta as a criterion for dating Andromache, see Stevens, , Introduction, pp.15 ff.)Google Scholar Aeschylus' hostility towards Helen and Klytaimestra is never expressed in the ethnic-perhaps because of the earlier time of writing. Sophocles' Lakainai (frs. 367–9, Pearson) probably had as chorus Helen's maids at Troy.
page 62 note 5 Examples are
and
The last is addressed, in comic abuse, to immoral women–e.g.
Hermippos fr. 10 K. and Edmonds. Some
formations are neutral feminines of nouns in
but others are coinages for comic effect
, Ar. Nu. 666,
Ar. Lys. 184), or have a positively hostile or derogatory note
and
Pherekrates fr. 64 K. and Edmonds). On this question, cf. Fraenkel, E., Kleine Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie (Rome, 1964), i.147 ff. on (rude)
Google Scholar
page 64 note 1 Cf. Denniston, J. D., The Griek Particles2 (Oxford, 1954), p.217Google Scholar on 
with 2nd or 3rd person imperative or (as here) with jussive subjunctive.
page 64 note 2 Zielinski, T., De Trimetri Euripidei Evolutione (Cracow, 1925)Google Scholar included proper names; later refinements of his work, as Ceadel, E. B., ‘Tragic Trimeters in Euripides’’, CQ 35 (1941), 66 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar excluded them. But cf. Stevens, , Introduction, p.18 n.2 on whether exclusion is an over-simplification.Google Scholar
page 64 note 3 Or one, if the first two syllables of 
might be treated as one long by synizesis: might 
on occasion be ‘felt’’ as monosyllabic? (Cf. Maas, P., Greek Metre, tr. Lloyd-Jones, H. (Oxford, 1962), p.73.)Google Scholar
page 64 note 4 The precise meaning of 
is uncertain, but it may be taken, with Stevens, as parallel to 
The contrast is surely between 
pace Kamerbeek, J. C., ‘L'Andromaque d'Euripide’’, Mnemosyne 11 (1943), 47 ff.,Google Scholar who finds, p.59, an antithesis between the verbs 
page 65 note 1 For a somewhat similar use of 
cf. S.Ant. 43, O.C. 450.
page 65 note 2 For 
introducing the second of two rhetorical questions, cf. Hec. 311 ff.Google Scholar
page 65 note 3 Lorimer, H. L., Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950), pp.373, 377.Google Scholar