Lexicography

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Jun 19 17:50:16 EDT 1999


At 2:22 PM +0100 6/19/99, Maurice A. O'Sullivan wrote:
>When consulting the Perseus LSJ, I found the following in the entry for
>SKEPTOMAI
>
> , Hom. Il. 17.652, Thgn.1095, and Ion.,
>                    Hdt. 3.37, al., Hp.Prog.2, Herod.7.92; but Att. writers
>                    (before Arist.) hardly ever have the pres. and impf.
>                    ske/ptomai, e)skepto/mhn (exc. Plat. Lach. 185b,
>                    ti=Plat. Alc. 2.140a; in Thuc. 8.66, Bauer restored plpf.
>                    prou)/skepto ), but use skopw= or skopou=mai as
>                    pres., and take the other tenses from ske/ptomai , fut.
>                    ske/yomai
>
>Could anyone on the list tell me what was going on when "Bauer restored
>....etc "?


Here's the text of Thucydides in question:
[8.66.1] ên de touto euprepes pros tous pleious, epei hexein ge tên polin
hoiper kai methistasan emellon. dêmos mentoi homôs eti kai boulê hê apo tou
kuamou xunelegeto: ebouleuon de ouden hoti mê tois xunestôsi dokoiê, alla
kai hoi legontes ek toutôn êsan kai ta rhêthêsomena proteron autois
prouskepto

I don't have Thuc with an apparatus criticus with me, but my guess is that
the form in the MSS may have been either eskepteto or prouskepteto and that
Bauer recognized that a pluperfect would be appropriate in this text; this
would be a proper form of the pluperfect and this perfect MP does take a
passive sense as it must taken in this instance. So I assume that what
Bauer was doing was based upon an assumption that Thucydides would NOT have
used an imperfect form of PROSKEPTOMAI. One other factor: the AUTOIS
(dative of agent) immediately preceding PROUSKEPTO in Bauer's restored text
is much more likely with a perfect or a pluperfect; with an imperfect one
would expect hUPO with genitive to express agent in a passive construction.

This is guesswork, of course. What else?


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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