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Two Scenes of Combat in Euripides
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
The lines come from the messenger's speech describing the attack of the Delphians on Neoptolemus, a passage which I have discussed elsewhere in connexion with the tradition of Neoptolemus as inventor of the armed Pyrrhic dance. LSJ seem to be in several minds about the meaning and connexion of some of the words describing the missiles used by the Delphians. S.v. ‘σφαγεύς’, they give ‘sacrificial knife, spit’ uniquely of a word elsewhere meaning ‘slayer, murderer’, etc. (elsewhere Euripides uses σφαγ-ίς, -ίδος in this sense). S.v. ‘βουπόρος’, they cite ἀμφωβόλοι σφαγῆς … βουπόροι ‘spitst fit to pierce an ox's throat’—i.e. taking σφαγῆς as gen. sing., rather oddly dependent on βουπόροι. S.v. ‘ἔκλυτος’, they quote this passage, again uniquely, in the sense ‘easy to let go, light, buoyant, of missiles’. This last seems even less likely than Wecklein's ohne Riemen or the Budé's doubles dards sans poignée, which presumably invoke a rather frigid contrast of the true javelins fitted with thongs (μεσάγκυλα) and the spits, sharp at both ends, which were pressed into service of a similar sort, but of course had to be thrown without this attachment: but these implements could hardly be described as ἔκλυτοι of thongs which they never had at all in the first place!
With Murray's punctuation (a comma after ἀμφώβολοι), since a combination of a, b, c τε, d is scarcely credible, σφαγῆς βουπόροι is presumably not to be taken as the description of a separate type of weapon, but as an explanatory appositional phrase with ἀμφώβολοι. This interpretation is found in the schol, ὀβελίσκοι σφάττειν δυνάμενοι and followed by Hermann and Paley (‘These same spits might be called exegetically “beef-piercing cutters”’).
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References
1 JHS lxxxvii (1967) 18–23: cf. Hermes xcvi (1968) 63 ff.
2 In Soph. Aj. 815, σφαγεύς is of course the sword with which Ajax commits suicide, but this can hardly be taken as evidence for the existence of the word as a technical term for a sacrificial weapon—it is simply a poetical personalisation, as though the sword were the active instrument of death.
3 El. 811, 1142. Cf. Poll. i 33, x 97.
4 So Garzya in his edition translates ‘leggeri’.
5
I do not take seriously a scholiastic statement that 
are 
6
Cf. the marginal note on Callim. fr. 110.45 
7 Hermann long ago glossed e carnibus extracti, but did not associate ἔκλυτοι with σφαγῆς as genitive. I am much indebted to Professor Sandbach for his criticisms of this article.
8
Cf. Hom. Il. ii 859–60 
Soph. Trach. 1151 
Mr J. G. Howie points out to me that in all the examples of repeated ἀλλά in
Denniston, , Greek Particles, intro.
lxii
Google Scholar, the first introduces a negative statement, while the second expresses the positive aspect of the earlier negation.
9 This use of χωρεῑν of weapons occurs also in line 12 of the same fragment. Otherwise I find it only in Xen. An. iv 2.28.
10
When Eustathius (331.39) refers to Θετταλὸν πάλαισμα in Athenaeus (which he glosses ὦ Θετταλὲ ἐλεγκτικέ) he quotes also Θετταλὸν πήδημα καὶ σόφισμα καὶ τὶν ὁμοίων as proverbial expressions. It seems that by Thessalian leap (to which he refers also in his commentary on Dionysius Periegeta p. 179.10 Bernhardy) he is thinking of the parallel phrase 
of Eur. Andr. 1139, which he loosely connects with the tradition of Achilles' powers as a leaper, witnessed also in Lyc. Alex. 245 where schol. glosses 
but see my article in JHS referred to above, p. 15 n. 1.
11
As is implicit in all Plato's strictures on athletic training (cf. especially Leg. 830 ff., Lach. 182). Cf. also Plut. Mor. 639e, Athen. 629b-c, Luc. Anach. 24, 28; and the assertion of Phil. Gym. 11 (p. 140.12 J.) 
12 Theoph. Char. 27.14: cf. Theoc. xxiv. 111 (quoted below, p. 20).
13 Cf. Aul. Gel. xv 20.2, Eus. PE 5.227c.
14 One might note how common πόνος (cf. τοῦ παρεστῶτος πόνου) is of athletics—Pindar (passim), B. xii 57, Plat. Rep. 410b, L.g. 646c, Arist. Pol. 1338b41, AP ix 588.6 (Alcaeus)—the last actually of ‘bouts’ in the arena.
15 Originally, it appears, a term of American baseball.
16 For which, in Greek boxing also, see Gardiner, , Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals 419 ff.Google Scholar, and the attacking punch aimed by Amycus in Theoc. xxii 121.
17 Cf. Philostr. Gym. 38 (p. 166.6), Im. ii 6.3, Luc. Anach. 2; συμπλέκω Hdt. iii 78, Ar. Ach. 704, Soph. fr. 618.2, Eur. Ba. 800, Plut. Per. 11, Luc. Asin. 9, Poll, iii 149; πλέκω P. Oxy. iii 466 (see below); περιπλέκω Luc. Anach. 31; διαπλέκω Philostr. Gym. 41 (p. 166.25); ἀντιδιαπλέκω Aeschin. iii 28; ἀμφίπλεκτοι κλίμακες Soph. Tr. 519.
18 Plat. Leg. 833a.
19 This is undoubtedly what line 1411 means, not ‘watching his mark in his foe's belly’, as it is translated in Grene and Lattimore, Complete Greek Tragedies, and elsewhere.
20
Not dissimilar is the sequence of wrestling terms in Lucius' ἀνακλινοπάλη with Palaestra (Luc. loc. cit.) 
21
Cf. μετάβασις of shifting from one leg to the other (Hp. Mochl. 20). (Incidentally there is an inferior reading 
in Phoen. 1410.)
22 Also Athen. 629b, 631b, Poll, iii 155, Anec. Bekk. 327.10, Eust. 1327.13, schol. Hom. Il. xxiii 730, schol. Soph. Tr. 520.
23
Καταβάλλω is the commonest word of throwing an opponent in wrestling, but 
occurs in the Oxyrhynchus fragment referred to 
These verbs are contrasted here with the discomfiture achieved by a παράκρουσις involving either a change of feet or a feint with the hands. Doubtless of similar meaning is πλαγιάζειν (Poll, iii 155) ‘sidestep’—cf. πλαγίαν καταβάλλειν Ar. Pax 897, and πλάγιος εὑρεθείς and ὡς εἶναι πλάγιον in schol. Phoen. 1410 in explanation of Eteocles' tactics. For the ἀπάτη of wrestling in general, see Xen. Cyr. i 6.32, Plut. Mor. 638d, and the pompous phrase of Nonn. Dion. 37.576 
24 For σφάλλω cf. Il. xxiii 719, Ar. Ran. 689, Theoc. xxiv 112, etc. Perhaps the same metaphor is intended by Plato in Lys. 215c, Crit. 47a.
25
There is much to be said for the reverse emendation in Valckenaer's 
(MSS. 
) in Eur. Suppl. 902–3: cf.
δεινὸς παλαιστής in 704, δεινὸν πάλαισμα Xen. Mem. ii 1.14; also Med. 1214, Cycl. 678.
26 A note on this passage, which goes back to Musgrave, referring to Pausanias, that Eteocles had been helped by auxilia e Thessalia appears to be a fiction.
27 For refs. see Helm's Eusebius vii, Die Chronik des Hieronymus p. 307: cf. also P. Isth. 4.55.
28 Cf. καταπήγνυμι and καταφέρω (LSJ s.v. ‘καταφορά’ of a downward cutting as opp. thrusting).
29 Cf. πως νοήσας, where I cannot agree with Pearson's interpretation ‘contriving, as a present expedient’.
30 Note Aristophanes' characteristic delight in caricaturing a stilted tragic phrase—this use of δίπτυχον is an Euripidean mannerism, which occurs in Phoen. 1354 διπτύχων παίδων φόνος, IT 242 δίπτυχοι νεανίαι, etc.
31
Fr. 558 is based chiefly on Phoen. 1361–3 
For the wrestling metaphor of single combat (in which incidentally both parties die, as in the Phoenissae), cf. also Soph. fr. 210.50 (also ibid. 12) 
referring to the bodies of Eurypylus and his opponent.