How Penelope Looks: Textual Problems in Odyssey 23.94-95 (abstract)

by Edwin D. Floyd

Modern emendation is not often resorted to in editing Homer. In Allen's Oxford Odyssey , for example, there are only about one or two modern emendations per Book; all other variations from the main manuscript tradition are actually found in some actual manuscript or papyrus and/or an ancient commentator or citation. Occasionally, though, to judge from modern texts of Homer, a single letter or so has been obscured in the ancient tradition. In that spirit, I propose to read Od. 23.94-95 as follows:

ὄψει δ᾿ ἄλλοτε μέν μιν ἐνῶπ᾿ ἰδίως ἐσίδεσκεν,
ἄλλοτε δ᾿ ἀγγνώσασκε κακὰ χροῒ εἵματ᾿ ἔχοντα.

Since word-division was not originally indicated, the suggested modification in line 94 is scarcely any change at all - especially since ἐνωπιδίως, rather than the current vulgate ἐνωπαδίως, is clearly the ancient reading. The change in line 95 is also minimal, in view of ancient vagaries in writing double consonants. (Moreover, both the presence of another adverb in line 94 and a meaning more or less along the lines of "recognized" in line 95 may be suggested by the words περιεργότερον and ἐγνώριζεν in the Scholia Vetera.) Combining these two changes, we reach a text which provides deeper insight into the overall treatment of recognition in the Odyssey and which also has some tantalizing parallels in Linear B.