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Issue 12 – Assumption 2022

Correspondence

Correspondence

This issue's letters and comments.

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I am loath to point to a textual error in his otherwise excellent article, but Pat Smith’s translation of Propertius 4.9.57 does not match the text he quotes.

Mr. Smith quotes the text as magno Tiresias aspexit Pallada vates. This is indeed the standard text of Propertius, adopted ad loc. by Heyworth in the current Oxford edition (2007), by Barber in the previous Oxford edition (rev. ed. 1960), by Fedeli in the Teubner (1984), and by Goold in the Loeb (rev. ed. 1999). It does not, however, mean “the seer Tiresias beheld the great Pallas”: In the Latin, magno is not an adjective modifying Pallada, with which it agrees in neither case nor gender, but an ablative of price: magno (sc. pretio), “at great cost.” Thus Goold’s Loeb translation: “At great cost did the seer Tiresias set eyes on Pallas.”


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