Notes on the Text of Lycophron

Abstract

The proverbial obscurity of the Alexandra discourages conjecture, and Lycophron's editors have not been given to bold emendation. It may indeed seem that much has been suffered to pass unquestioned which no-one would think tolerable if it stood in the MSS. of Aeschylus, whose style Lycophron clearly sought to emulate. Yet despite the prophetic form of his Rahmenerzählung his manner of expression is far removed from the deliberate opacity, all too often accompanied by defective grammar (and, where appropriate, defective metre), characteristic of genuine apocalyptic prophecy, whether bona fide or post eventum , nor does the appeal of this rather bookish poetry lie in that power to enlist our sympathies for impossible dreams and lost causes beside which animadversions on syntactical abnormality seem stony-hearted.