sigmatism is a figment of later erudition, and that the creative dramatic poets had no conception of such a thing. Plutus, 223: τοὺς ξυγγεώργους κάλεσον, εὑρήσεις δ' ίσως κτλ. In the much-criticised verse of the Medea six sigmas are used in seven syllables; Aristophanes has here put the same number into five. This verse in the Plutus is no parody, but is in the poet's own style, so that it is certain that the quips of comedy must have been unknown or ignored for many years after the death of Euripides. This single verse in itself is sufficient answer to all that is implied by the phrase "Euripidean sigmatism". The results thus far obtained are as follows: Aesch. has 43 verses with 7 or more sigmas, an average of 6+ to a play. However, it is of little importance whether a writer has a few more or a few less, and one need not give statistics or discuss differences in the use of sigma, when we have such examples as these: It is perfectly clear that the sigmatism of all four of these poets is essentially the same, and that while certain poets showed their poetic dexterity by writing asigmatic verses (Athenaeus 455 c), the four great dramatic poets had no aversion to the free use of sigma. Eustathius has this comment to Iliad 813, 43 ff.: Αίλιος δὲ Διονύσιος ἱστορεῖ τοὺς κωμικοὺς μάλιστα ἐκκλίνειν πᾶν τὸ ἔχον σιγμόν λέγει δὲ καὶ ὅτι Περικλέα φασὶ πρῶτον ἐκκλίναι τὸν διὰ τοῦ ὁ σχηματισμὸν τοῦ στόματος ὡς ἀπρεπῆ καὶ πλατὺν, γυμναζόμενον ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ κάτοπτρον. This would lead to the belief that the fashion, said to have been set by Pericles and presumably so universally followed by the comic poets of the next generation, was a fashion steadily growing into favor, so that we are to expect that we can trace a diminishing use of sigma in the later plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes, if not in those of "sigma-loving " Euripides. However, it is just in the Oedipus Coloneus, the last play of Sophocles, and Plutus, the last of Aristophanes, that we find the most pronounced sigmatism. Either the tradition is false, or the fashion set by Pericles was ignored by these dramatic poets. As they wrote for popular approval they could hardly have ignored a canon of taste emanating from Pericles. The tradition concerning Pericles is probably false, and the facts show that the comic poets used sigma quite as freely as any one of the four poets studied. In proportion to their bulk the Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum show just as free use of sigma as do the plays of Euripides. The following examples quoted from Meineke will suffice: Theopompus, Hedychares I: καὶ στῆτ' ἐφεξῆς κεστρέων νῆστις χορός. Nicophron, Aph. Gon. I: σέρφους ίσως, σκώληκας, ἀκρίδας, πάρνοπας. Antiphanes, Epiclerus 4: οὐδείς, κακῶς δὲ πᾶς τις ὃς σοφῶς λέγει. Exactly the sigmatism of Medea 476. Philoth. I, 10: κεστρεύς, λεπισθείς, πασθείς στραφείς, χρωσθείς. Here ten sigmas are crowded into a very cramped trimeter, which in prose would be read as eleven syllables. No verse in the four poets studied heaped up sigmas in the way this verse heaps them. Eubulus, Pan. 4: ἐν λεπτοπήνοις ὕφεσιν ἐστώσας, ὅσας. This is the poet who made fun of the sigmas of Euripides, yet he out-sigmas Euripides in this verse, putting seven sigmas in the space Euripides gave to six. Fabulae Incertae XIX (Eubulus): ταῖς ξυστίσιν ταῖς χρυσοπάστοις στρώννυται. No verse in Euripides crowds more sigmas into the same space. These quotations are sufficient to show that the comic poets do not materially differ in their usage of sigmatism from the four poets studied above. It seems impossible that a theory so wide of the facts could ever have originated. The free use of sigma in both tragic and comic poetry might lead to the belief that something else is intended than the sigmatism I have investigated, and that it is the use of double sigma for double tau that is meant, but in no one of the passages ridiculed in Euripides is there a single verse where double tau might be used for double sigma, and in the discussion of this matter by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in De Comp. Verb. 100: ἄχαρι δὲ καὶ ἀηδὲς τὸ σ, καὶ εἰ πλεονάσειε, σφόδρα λυπεῖ· θηριώδους γὰρ καὶ ἀλόγου μᾶλλον ἢ λογικῆς, ἐφάπτεσθαι δοκεῖ φωνῆς ὁ συριγμός. Τῶν γοῦν παλαιῶν σπανίως ἐχρῶντό τινες αὐτῷ καὶ πεφυλαγμένως· εἰσὶ δὲ οἱ ἀσίγμους ᾠδὰς ὅλας ἐποίουν, there is no mention of double sigma, but it is the sigmatism here studied which is condemned. It is Lasus' of Hermione, the so-called teacher of Pindar, who won a certain kind of fame by producing asigmatic verses; but it was evidently a species of poetic gymnastics such as was later achieved by the poets of the Ιλιὰς λειπογράμματος and the 'Οδύσσεια λεiπоурáμμатos, where the trick was to write the first book of each poem without the second without B, and so on." Pindar seems to have had no aversion to sigma, as these few examples will show: a, 60: IV, 27: χρησμὸς ὀρθωσεν μελίσσας Δελφίδος. VIII, 8ο: νίκαις τρισσαῖς, ὦ 'ριστόμενες, δάμασσας. Here eleven syllables have nine sigmas. Pindar is clearly not of those who shrank from sigmatism. Homer was a great source of sorrow to Eustathius because of his too free use of this despised letter (cf. any of the passages quoted above). If Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, 1 Athenaeus 455 c. 2 Suidas, sub Νέστωρ Λαρανδεὺς ἐκ Λυκίας. Aristophanes and the Comic Poets knew nothing of the necessity of avoiding sigma, or at least did not put this knowledge into practise, there seems to have been a large field exempt in this regard from the working of the precepts of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the later commentators. CONCLUSION. The origin of the belief that the comic poets carefully avoided the free use of sigma and that Euripides was a peculiar sinner in this regard is to be found in the passages first quoted above, where Plato and Eubulus make a joke out of the sigmas of Medea 476. It was only a joke, and Eubulus himself did not shrink from a more lavish use of sigma, as has been already shown; while Plato, in the very play in which he raises a laugh at the sigmatism of Euripides, has a verse with exactly the same number of sigmas as the verse ridiculed, Heortae, frag. 5, Meineke : καὶ τᾶς ὀφρὺς σχάσασθε καὶ τὰς ἔμφακας. This is another of the jokes in regard to Euripides from the comic poets which has found its way into the learning of later ages; and that which was only a bit of nonsense, and intended as such, has been received as a piece of genuine literary criticism. The phrases & piλooiyμaros and "Euripidean sigmatism", which rest on the assumption that Euripides in a peculiar way marred his style by an excessive use of sigma, have no basis of truth to support them. Here is one more illustration of the way the reputation of Euripides has suffered by scholars taking as sober fact an empty joke of the comic stage. NORTHWESTERN University, JOHN A. SCOTT. V.—THE ETYMOLOGY OF ΠΡΕΣΒΥΣ. The Vedic noun purogavá is usually translated by 'leader', as though it meant originally, 'going in front'. The word labors under the disadvantage of being surrounded by quite a number of seductive synonyms which determine well enough its general meaning, but at the same time tend to efface its interesting individual traits. For instance, in Rig-Veda 10, 110, II we have a word purogá, a compound of puras 'in front', and gā 'go'. This obviously means, 'going in front', 'leader': agnir devánām abhavat purogaḥ, 'Agni became the leader of the gods'. Similarly in Maitrayaɲī Samhitā 4, 4, 13, indro devānām abhavat purogáḥ, 'Indra became the leader of the gods'. Or, in RigVeda 3, 2, 8 we have the word purohita, from puras 'in front', and dha 'put', which means 'spiritual leader', ' chaplain': agnir devánām abhavat purohitaḥ, ‘Agni became the chaplain of the gods'. Once more, we have puraetár 'going in front', 'leader', from puras 'in front' and 'go'; e. g., Rig-Veda 1, 76, 2: agne... ádabdhaḥ sú puraetá bhávā naḥ, ‘O Agni, pray, be thou our unerring guide'! Under conditions such as these purogavá seemed a perfect synonym in passages like the following two: Atharva-Veda 12, 1, 40, indra etu purogaváḥ, 'May Indra go as guide'! Or Kauçika-Sūtra 104, 2, indro no astu purogavaḥ, ' May Indra be our guide'! In Aitareya-Brāhmaṇa 1, 13, 4 the Talmudist, in fact, explains puraetar by purogava. The result was that purogavá was also analysed as meaning 'going in front', and that gava was derived from a verb gu 'go'. This is the way the word is treated in the Lexicons and Translations, and also in the very abundant references devoted to it in treatises on Comparative Grammar. The effect is enhanced by the usual misleading superficiality of the native Hindu commentators, who may be counted on to derive purogavá from gam 'go'. So, e. g., Sāyaṇa to Rig-Veda 10, 85, 8 glosses the word with purogantar and 1 For an attempt to vindicate an Indo-European root gu 'go', by the side of Indo-European guem 'go', see Persson, Wurzelerweiterung und Wurzel. variation, p. 150, note 3. |