μίμνοντος ὲν χρόνῳΔιὸς. “The meaning is sufficiently plain, if we do not disturb it by any philosophical notions about the difference between time and eternity.”—Con. The reader will note here the grand idea of retributive justice pursuing a devoted family from generation to generation, and, as it were, entailing misery upon them, concerning which see Sewell’s remarks above, [p. 349]. Sophocles strikes the same keynote in the choric chaunt of the Antigone, ἀρχαῖα τα Δαβδακιδᾶν ὄικων ὁρῶμαι.
“. . . in a separate dish concealed
Were legs and arms, and the fingers’ pointed tips.”
Editors have a great difficulty in settling the text here; but there is enough of the meaning visible—especially when the passage is compared with Herod. I. 119, referred to by Schütz—to enable the translator to proceed on the assumption of a text substantially the same as that given by Fr., where the second line is supplied—
Τὰ μὲν ποδήρη και χ(ε)ρων ἄκρους κτένας
[Ἔθετο κάτωθεν πὰντα συγκρύψας τὰ δ ἀυ]
Ἔθρυπτ ἄνωθεν ὰνδρακὰς καθημένοις
Ἄσήμ᾽· ὁ δ ἄυτῶν ἀυτικ᾽ αγνόιᾳ λαβὼν.
The reader will observe that in these and such like passages, where, after all the labours of the learned, an uncertainty hangs over the text, I think myself safer in giving only the general undoubted meaning that shines through the passage, without venturing on the slippery ground of translating words of which the proper connection may be lost, or which, perhaps, were not written at all by the poet.