Note 6, p. [15].
We read in Pliny (lib. 34, sect. 19): “Eundem [Myro] vicit et Pythagoras Leontinus, qui fecit statiodromon Astylon, qui Olympiæ ostenditur: et Libyn puerum tenentem tabulam, eodem loco, et mala ferentem nudum. Syracusis autem claudicantem: cujus hulceris dolorem sentire etiam spectantes videntur.” “Pythagoras Leontinus surpassed him (Myro). He made the statue of the runner, Astylon, which is exhibited at Olympia, and in the same place a Libyan boy holding a tablet, and a rude statue bearing apples; but at Syracuse a limping figure, the pain of whose sore the beholders themselves seem to feel.” Let us examine these last words more closely. Is there not evident reference here to some person well known as having a painful ulcer? “Cujus hulceris,” &c. And shall that “cujus” be made to refer simply to the “claudicantem,” and the “claudicantem,” perhaps, to the still more remote “puerum?” No one had more reason to be known by such a malady than Philoctetes. I read, therefore, for “claudicantem,” “Philoctetem,” or, at least, both together, “Philoctetem claudicantem,” supposing that, as the words were so similar in sound, one had crowded out the other. Sophocles represents him as στίβον κατ’ ἀνάγκην ἕρπειν, compelled to drag his limping gait, and his not being able to tread as firmly on his wounded foot would have occasioned a limp.
Note 7, p. [24].
When the chorus perceives Philoctetes under this accumulation of miseries, his helpless solitude seems the circumstance that chiefly touches them. We hear in every word the social Greek. With regard to one passage, however, I have my doubts. It is this:—
Ἵν’ αὐτὸς ἦν πρόσουρος οὐκ ἔχων βάσιν,
οὐδέ τιν’ ἐγχώρων,
κακογείτονα παρ’ ᾧ στόνον ἀντίτυπον
βαρυβρῶτ’ ἀποκλαύ—
σειεν αἱματηρόν.
Lit.: I myself, my only neighbor, having no power to walk, nor any companion, a neighbor in ill, to whom I might wail forth my echoing, gnawing groans, bloodstained.