606 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



The construction becomes clearer if we neglect the paren- 

 thesis, and read : ovcey yap, 6vt aXyewoi', ovt c'tTijc arep kaQ ottolov 

 6v, ovK oTTu-Ka, " For nothing, neither what is painful nor free 

 from bane what is not, have I failed to see " — i.e., I have seen 

 all kinds of misfortune. The well-known use of ovUiq oo-tiq 6v 

 might be adduced as a parallel for this construction, and is so 

 brought forward in Dr. Jelf's Greek Grammar. 



All reverence is due to the mighty name of Hermann. 

 There were giants in scholarship in those days ; and, if we ever 

 do see farther than they do, it may be that we are after all 

 dwarfs mounted on the shoulders of giants. With all respect 

 then, be it said, that even when thus ingeniously elucidated, the 

 fact remains that Sophocles has chosen a very awkward way of 

 saying what he meant, by writing ovre arj/e arep eo-9' birmov 6v 

 where, according to the general usage of similar phrases, the nu 

 would be expected to negative oTrwTra and not orr/c iirep ; and 

 this when there seems nothmg to be gamed by it, and in the 

 beginning of a play, too, where such a difficult collocation of 

 words might be more than usually disi)leasing. 



Is it impossible for drrje arep to mean, " besides the curse 

 that rests upon us," (in addition to it,) like the Latin " ut 

 omittam," referring to twv cltt Olciirov Kaicuiv. Lines 2-6 might 

 then be translated : — 



" Do you know what evil that we inherit from (Edipus, 

 aye and what evil we do not inherit, Zeus will fulfil 

 in the lifetime of us twain ; for there is nothing, 

 neither what is painful, nor — to say naught of the 

 curse that rests upon us — is there aught of private 

 disgrace or public infamy, that I have not seen in 

 the number of thy woes and mine ?" 



The word ovxi is thus taken to negative rwy air Olliirnv 

 KaKdjv ; and the sense is, " Do you know what misery Zeus is 

 going to spare us, for I know of none — whether inherited from 

 (Edipus as a curse, or not — that we have not suflfered ?" I 

 may remark that ov^l in the "Iliad" (ok/) is, I think, m- 

 variably used as above — i.e., as the last word in the negative 

 clause of an alternative ; e.(j., 6q t ainoc, 6q te kuI ovd, and 

 still oftener ?}e rai ovkI, at the end of a line. It is also used in 

 the same way in two out of three places where I have noted it 

 in ^schylus. I have not been able to compare other pas- 

 sages in Sophocles or Euripides. 



I have not been able to find a similar iise of arep, but there 

 is a similar use of the word ^wptf i^^ lldt., i., 93, also " Medea," 

 297, and Msch., Sep. c. Th., 25, irvpog Bixa, where 2t'x" seems 

 to bear the same meaning, according to Hermann himself. 



