Aeschylus, Agamemnon 72–5

Abstract

In the first of his three magisterial articles on the Agamemnon H. L. Ahrens showed that all the evidence then available best fitted the conclusion that ⋯τ⋯ται derived from τ⋯νω and not from τ⋯ω. Subsequently Ed. Fraenkel in his own note on the word reviewed and supplemented the evidence gathered by Ahrens, and expressed the view that Ahrens' ‘discussion, details apart, is final’; and there seems to be widespread agreement that on the linguistic side at least Ahrens' argument cannot be refuted. If this means anything, it means that the sense of the word cannot be ‘unhonoured’ or ‘dishonoured’. Yet Denniston–Page in their commentary say that ‘”unhonoured” seems the only possible sense here’, and R. Fagles' recent translation, which generally rests on sound scholarship as well as poetic gifts, has ‘dishonored’. The principal reason for this persistent disagreement seems to be that the sense proposed by Ahrens for ⋯τ⋯ται has been thought to have rather less plausibility than the linguistic considerations that appear to lead to it.