[317] Fab. 148.—Barth on Statius’ Thebaid. V. 59.
[318] Tragoed. Hippolyt., 124.; and Servius on Virgil, Aeneid, Bk. VI. v. 14., Venus vehementer dolens stirpem omnem Solis persequi infandis amoribus coepit. (Venus, exceedingly indignant, proceeds to afflict all the descendants of the Sun with abominable loves.)
[319] Amores, ch. 2., οὕτω τις ὑγρὸς τοῖς ὄμμασιν ἐνοικεῖ μύωψ, ὃς ἅπαν πάλλος εἰς αὑτὸν ἁρπάζων ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ κόρῳ παύεται· καὶ συνεχὲς ἀπορεῖν ἐπέρχεταί μοι, τίς οὗτος Ἀφροδίτης ὁ χόλος· οὐ γὰρ Ἡλιάδης ἐγώ τις, οὐδὲ Λημνιάδων ἔρις, οὐδὲ Ἱππολύτειον ἀγροικίαν ὠφρυωμένος, ὡς ἐρεθίσαι τῆς θεοῦ τὴν ἄπαυστον ταύτην ὀργήν. (for translation see text above.) The word ἔρις—strife, in this passage is obviously corrupt, having got into the text probably by confusion with ἐρεθίσαι—to provoke, standing just below in the MS. Jacobs proposed ἔρνος—scion, but according to Lehmann this is too poetical a word for Lucian; ἐρεὺς—in the sense of heir, might very well be read, giving the same meaning. Could ὕβριν—insolence, have been the original word in the text? Lucian must have written the passage with a reference to the above mentioned punishment of the Lemnian women by Venus, and by Λημνιάδων—Lemnian women, we must understand not the descendants of the women of Lemnos, but these women themselves, Apollonius Rhodius (Argon., I. 653.) also using Λημνιάδες δὲ γυναῖκες—Lemnian women, of these same inhabitants of the island. Now the Greeks characterized every form of behaviour of a kind to incur the anger of the goddess by the word ὕβρις—overbearing insolence; and this would exactly fit in the passage, for the οὐδὲ ... οὐδὲ—neither ... nor, calls for a correspondence of phrase in each clause, and ὕβρις and ἀγροικία—brutal insensibility, tally excellently. For ὕβρις in the sense indicated comp. Clement of Alexandria, Paedag., Bk. II. ch. 10., ἐπιθυμία γὰρ κακὴ ὄνομα ὕβρις, καὶ τὸν τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ἵππον, ὑβριστὴν ὁ Πλάτων (Phaedr. pp. 1226, 27.) προσεῖπεν, Ἵπποι θηλυμανεῖς ἐγενήθητέ μοι, ἀναγνούς. (for evil concupiscence is called ὕβρις, and the horse of concupiscence Plato named Ὑβριστὴς—Overbearing, having read “Wild horses ye became to me.”) We should then have to translate, supposing we read ὕβριν in the text, “I am neither puffed up with the insolence of the women of Lemnos, nor yet with the brutal insensibility of Hippolytus.” Very possibly an Attic writer would not have expressed himself so; but we must remember that Fr. Jacobs, a man of fine discrimination of Classical diction, denied from the first Lucian’s authorship of the passage ob orationem difficilem valdeque impeditam—because of its difficult and exceedingly awkward style. The unfavourable judgement which Lehmann in his edition passes on this Work (Lucian’s Amores) so far as its general tenor is concerned, is based we may observe almost entirely on the confusion of paedophilia with paederastia. However under no circumstances has any actual allusion been made to the lewdness of the Lemnian women, if Belin, de Ballu, and others agree in this rendering.
[320] De special legib., Opera Vol. II. p. 304.
[321] Ovid, Metamorphos., bk. X. 238.
[322] Ovid, Metamorphos., bk. X. 298.—Servius on Virgil, Eclog. X. 18. Fulgentius, Mytholog. III. 8.
[323] Ausonius, Epigr. C.,
De Hermaphrodito
Mercurio genitore satus, genetrice Cythere,
Nominis ut mixti, sic corporis Hermaphroditus,