A MOOD CALLED DESIRE: THE OPTATIVE

Desire. In French désir, in Spanish deseo, in Portuguese desejo. From Latin desiderium, from the phrase de + sidere, “from the stars.” To gaze at some attractive person or thing as if gazing at the hieroglyphic stars at night.

Estrangement, which is to say, turning away, looking elsewhere. The stars fade from view. Longing. Then, in your mind’s eye, gazing at someone or something you cannot have, someone or something you yearn for. Hence desire.

In ancient Greek, this business is spoken in the optative mood, as in this fragment from Archilochus:

Εἰ γὰρ ὣς ἐμοὶ γένοιτο χεῖρα Νεοβούλης θιγεῖν

καὶ πεσεῖν δρήστην ἐπ᾿ ἀσκὸν κἀπὶ γαστρὶ γαστέρα

Ancient Greek conceived of reality, and represented it in language, in a manner totally different from our own, taking great pains to choose grammatical mood. In Italian, the degree to which something is feasible (and therefore desired) is completely independent of mood. Instead, that degree is expressed with adverbs and locutions: lots of words to say or not say where things stand. Maybe too many. On the other hand, in ancient Greek, every human action was measured by its degree of potential, by how likely it was to become reality: for each degree, a speaker chose a specific mood. A verb in the indicative always indicated objectivity, no matter its position in a sentence; a verb in the subjunctive or optative mood indicated expectation or possibility. Ἀναβιῴην νύν πάλιν, writes Aristophanes in Frogs. “I’d sooner live again!”13

In ancient Greek, only the speaker can take the measure of life, only the speaker is free to choose the verbal mood by which to represent it to themselves and others. Is it real, concrete, objective life, or probable, subjective, a maybe? Possible or impossible? Is their desire attainable or unattainable?

The following table shows the degrees of reality by which ancient Greek evaluated life events; it will enable us to comprehend how Greeks arrived at such evaluations by their choice of verbal mood. For us to understand, we will have to swim below the surface, like deep-sea explorers, and bring to light the meaning in our own language; for this reason, the example used is all about the sea.

Unreality is the opposite of reality, yet also identical to it. That which has never been or never will be has the same degree of objective and impartial existence as that which was or will be. Both of these objective perceptions were expressed in the indicative, on no uncertain terms. “I want to sail,” the first and last sentence in the table, can be either realistic or unrealistic; in English, there is no linguistic difference to show what the speaker thinks the degree of likelihood is. The words, whether written or spoken, are exactly the same. Whether the speaker raises anchor or not depends on what they are willing to admit to themselves, on how capable they are of taking a good long look in the mirror; that is how an action becomes possible or impossible.

Our language has no way of distinguishing between an action’s likelihood or unlikelihood when it comes to expressing a desire. Period. It’s all up to us as we face the mirror in the morning, and how true we are to our word (if you catch my drift, great, and if not, oh well).

Between reality and unreality, there are two degrees of subjective reality, which closely rely on how the person speaking sees the world and articulates it: probability and possibility.

Probability means that there is a concrete possibility that an action will be performed, and in ancient Greek that is expressed in the subjunctive. In English, we use the conditional to cover probable reality; the conditional comes from the Latin phrase conditio sine qua non, the prerequisite, the point of departure, if something is actually going to get done. That is why the second sentence in the table, “I would like to sail,” means that everything’s all set and that an action will most likely be performed. We just need to wait for a favorable wind, unfurl the sails, and raise anchor.

Possibility, on the other hand, is a speaker’s projection, in words, of their desires, their plans, their fears, even their passion. In Greek, possibility was expressed in the most personal and intimate mood: the volitive optative. Translating it can be complicated, thorny, uncomfortable, since we have to take other people’s desires into consideration. The third statement in the table, “I would like to sail,” describes a speaker’s desire, the likelihood of which depends neither on the right wind nor the cargo onboard. Instead, it expresses the odds that a person must reckon with as they see their desire reflected in the sea and take stock of their courage and their strength: will they raise anchor, leave everything behind, and set sail? Or will they be seized by fear and stay put?

The line between a probable and impossible wish is razor thin, totally dependent on the speaker’s sense of responsibility and the action their words translate to. Whether a desired action will go from possible to probable and become reality, or else slip away into unreality, is—in life as in Greek—all contained in the optative mood.

The word optative comes from the Latin verb optare, meaning “to desire, wish for, hope.” Given its etymology, this exclusively Greek mood is also called the desiderative mood.

Like all incomparably elegant relics, the optative comes down to Greek from the Indo-Europeans. But unlike other languages that are derived from Proto-Indo-European, Greek (as well as the languages of India and Persia) chose to preserve the distinction between the indicative, subjunctive, and optative moods, the infinitive and imperative.

There is evidence that the optative was used to express both desire and regret as far back as Homer’s day, though it didn’t always draw a distinction between probability and improbability:

Ζεὺς ἀγαθὸν τελέσειεν, ὅ τι φρεσὶν ᾗσι μενοινᾷ.

No author of antiquity, from Plato to Thucydides and from Sophocles to Aristophanes, is afraid to use the optative to express a desire that might come true, whereas the historic tenses of the indicative indicated desires that would never come true.

In short, the optative enables Greek writers to make very fine points of distinction; there is no other mood like it in the world. There are two poles and two colors in the Greek language: real and unreal, black and white. In between, there’s the whole color spectrum of human choice.

As a desire fades from reality to unreality it can also be expressed in Greek by various ways of formulating hypotheses. This is the so-called hypothetical period or if-clause, which is formed by a protasis (from Greek προτείνω, “to put forward, propose”), meaning the condition needs to realize what is expressed in the main clause, and by apodosis (from Greek ἀποδίδωμι, “to render or give back”).

Reality is put in the present indicative, and probability in present subjunctive. Whereas possibility is put in the past optative, and unreality in the past indicative.

No, linguistically evaluating the degree of realism in human affairs is not left to luck, fortune, destiny, your horoscope, or, worse, chance. Ancient Greek is far more sophisticated than that. Let me be clear: If the odds of something happening are good, Greek uses the subjunctive. If they are not, it uses the optative.

Probability and linguistic decisions are determined by the will of the speaker and external circumstances.

If you say “the libeccio wind might be coming” while standing at night on the Terrazza Mascagni, Livorno’s waterfront, and the wind that “ruffles the soul” is, as usual, blowing, then the chances of that happening are excellent. In ancient Greek you would employ the subjunctive. If you said the same thing on a barren northern heath, the chances of such an occurrence are far more remote, and therefore sorely regretted and sorely desired. In ancient Greek you would employ the optative. But if the libeccio wind was already blowing, the wind would be a reality, so the statement would be made in the present indicative. Were we in the desert, the odds of the wind that “borrows the sound of the sea” arriving would be impossible, the words unreal, and therefore in Greek you would put it in the past indicative.

ὡς ὅθ᾽ ὑπὸ Τροίην λόχον ἤγομεν ἀρτύναντες.

Would that I were young and my strength firm as when we made ready our ambush, and led it beneath the walls of Troy.15

That’s Odysseus, in Book XIV of The Odyssey, opting for the optative, and the nature of his desire, his staggering sense of longing, and his tenacity born of struggle are all wrapped up in the mood of the verb.

In the same book, we meet Eumaeus, the faithful swineherd whom Odysseus loves like a son. After finally reaching Ithaca, exhausted from all his trials, Odysseus learns from his slave that everyone believes the king died at Troy, and that a group of usurpers, the suitors, are vying for his estate and his wife Penelope. Odysseus wants to rally the strength and bravado he felt twenty years earlier at the walls of Troy, but the long journey and the many trials he’s suffered have left scars on his body and soul. When Eumaeus asks his real identity, Odysseus lies, passing himself off as a beggar from Crete. Finally, the two divvy up dinner, and poor Eumaeus gives his king, whom he fails to recognize, a cloak to keep warm at night.

Without this context, we’d never fully understand Odysseus’ words. They’d be like a declaration of love graffitied on a train station wall—maybe those words still meant something, maybe they didn’t. But we know the nature of Odysseus’ desire and the urgency with which he has called on the gods to make his long trip home from Troy. (We know this, because we’ve read the Odyssey.)

If we knew nothing of Odysseus’ adventures around the Mediterranean, the sentence “Would that I were young” would tell us nothing about his desire to reclaim his birthright and expel the usurpers from Ithaca. All it might convey is an old surge of regret spoken by a man disappointed with his life, an anonymous veteran of the Trojan War.

Nothing would suggest to us that his desire is a possibility about to become a reality. After ten years to and ten years fro, Odysseus has finally returned to Ithaca and is posing as a refugee to take back his kingdom and wife: to take back his livelihood.

Interpreting what the Greek says by the mood alone totally depends on the sensibility of the translator, who is saddled with the job of deciphering how people’s desires are given voice in Greek. To convey the optative in most other languages, more words are called for, or fewer. The difference is one of form, not content.

The optative in this sentence might be teased out in English with expressions like, “I really wish I were young again” or “If only I were as young as I was when we declared war on Troy!” And anything else needed to transmit Odysseus’ desire to bring an end to his return (his νόστος) and take his place on Ithaca’s throne next to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus.

καὶ μὴν εἴς γε ἀνδρείαν Ἔρωτι “οὐδ᾿ Ἄρης, ἀλλ᾿ Ἔρως Ἄρη, Ἀφροδίτης, ὡς λόγος· κρείττων δὲ ὁ ἔχων τοῦ ἐχομένου· τοῦ δ᾿ ἀνδρειοτάτου τῶν ἄλλων κρατῶν πάντων ἂν ἀνδρειότατος εἴη.

And observe how in valour “not even the God of War withstands” Love; for we hear, not of Love caught by Ares, but of Ares caught by Love—of Aphrodite. The captor is stronger than the caught; and as he controls what is braver than any other, he must be bravest of all.16

This is a punishment unique to the study of dead languages: in ancient Greek, the most intimate mood, the mood created to convey desire, elicits further dismay when translating it. I was always well aware that moods were taught but almost never explained. Saying Greek has four finite moods—indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative—and displaying a chart isn’t enough to convey the meaning of the language. Especially if that language has a mindset that our own lacks. Especially if that language possesses something extra that, in our own language, is missing. Especially if that language is beautiful; and ancient Greek is awesome to behold.

Maybe it’s my firm belief that in this life—and not just in school—there is value in cultivating a Latin-style curiositas (which is a far cry from Italian-style cravings for rumor and innuendo). The desire to discover yourself and the world, to always, like a child, ask why. The need to question everything that doesn’t quite make sense, everything that seems weird or bizarre. The beautiful effort to inquire after subjects, languages, human beings, life itself. That’s how you learn, in my opinion.

Maybe it’s that I have traveled a lot, lived for a long time in different, far-flung places, and have come to learn that you cannot fully inhabit the world, that you will be doomed to pass through it like a tourist, unless you probe the underlying reasons for things.

That’s it. The lack of curiosity that I observe in students of ancient Greek, due to certain teaching methods, fills me with consternation. Sometimes even rage. Because no one should spend years studying a language and still feel like a nomad bouncing from rules of grammar to dictionary definitions to a handful of pages in a workbook. Either you inhabit ancient Greek, and really get inside the language, or you remain silent.

Nostos

The word to describe one of the most devastating human desires may look like it comes from Greek, but in all actuality it doesn’t. Nostalgia is formed by combining the Greek words νόστος, “return,” and ἄλγος, “pain, sadness,” to express the downhearted wish to get back home, to the place of your childhood, to the people and objects dearest to you. But the word is totally alien to the Greek world. It was coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, a medical student from Alsace, whose graduate thesis at the University of Basel was entitled “Dissertatio Medica de Nostalgia.” For years the young physician studied the emotional distress of Swiss mercenaries who served Louis XIV, the King of France, were forced to spend many years far from the mountains and valleys of their homeland, and often suffered from an undefined illness that proved fatal unless they were returned home.

Ever since, the Greek neologism nostalgia has permeated other European languages, expressing the feeling of sadness and separation from the land one loves, a type of melancholy called mal du pays in French and Heimweh in German. German also has a beautiful word that my language doesn’t—beautiful for those who can relate to this strange form of grief. Fernweh, a word combining “pain” and “distance,” means wanderlust, the desire to go places you have never been.

The Nostoi (Νόστοι, “returns”) is the title of a group of Greek epic poems about the repatriation of Achaean heroes after the Trojan War. Its author’s identity is shrouded in mystery. Some say the author is Eumelos of Corinth, others Agias of Troezen. Preceded by the Cypria, the Aethiopis, the Little Illiad, and the Illiupersis, and followed by the Telegony, the Nostoi is part of the Epic Cycle, a collection of epic poems that tell the story of the Trojan War and are independent of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are never mentioned in the Epic Cycle. The latter represents an alternative history to the one that Homer gives us.

How is it that no one, and I mean no one, asks why ancient Greek has this extra mood called the optative and no other language does? How is it that everyone, and I mean everyone, considers it a B-list subjunctive or an alternative version of the conditional? Most of my students have nothing more than a vague idea of the concept of possibility that the optative carries with it. I myself found it vague until I scratched below the surface and took possession of its meaning.

I’ve often heard it said that the optative is the mood that goes “-οι,” on account of its vowel stems—and clearly “oh” isn’t your typical cry for joy, nor does it contain a scrap of lexical semantics. Almost always, when handed a text to translate, the nervous student scans the page like a seagull, glimpses the particle ἄν, and immediately senses a threat, a challenge, hard work ahead. In short, a gigantic neon sign goes on: Danger! But for a Greek, the particle actually helps underscore the meaning of the verbal mood: ἄν is none other than a welcome glimmer of the subtleties of significance. Paired with the historic tenses of the indicative, ἄν indicates unreality or impossibility: the action wasn’t performed, and it won’t be. Paired with the subjunctive and the optative, ἄν indicates probability or possibility: the action is about to occur or may occur. So how do we translate it? Usually we don’t. Or rather, we find other ways of rendering the nuance of ἄν in your own language. This time the possibilities are up to us.

So, without freaking out, handling it with all the care it demands, like a box of diamonds marked “Fragile,” let’s take a look at the meaning of the optative in ancient Greek:

Ποιοίην: “I want to write poetry!” / “For heaven’s sake, if only I could write poetry!”

In the sentence above, the optative expresses a desire, a good (or bad) omen, an intention, a helpful piece of advice, a concession—like εἴεν, “let it be,” “very well.” The desire may refer to the present, the future or the past; you can desire for something to have happened in the past (it’s called regret).

The verb can be preceded by the particles εἰ, γάρ, εἴθε, ὡς to mean “if only,” “I sure hope.”

The potential optative expresses the likelihood of an event coming to pass or not, as well as an invitation, a prayer, a polite command, or an ironic ἂν λέγοις, “by all means,” or οὐκ ἂν φθάνοις λέγων, “go on, the suspense is killing me!” (said with a wink and a smile).

It could be translated with auxiliary verbs to form a conditional or, better yet, with a circumlocution with the verb “to be” that enlarges the meaning of the phrase. In many languages, the conditional retains a sense of irony, say, “I might have plans” (when you want to skip another dreary brunch, if only to get back at that ugly word), or, “If it were anybody else, I would ask . . .” (when you want to sugarcoat a steep price).

• The oblique optative, or the lens through which the speaker views the world.

Ἔλεγεν ὅτι ποιοίη: “He said that he was writing poetry” / “He said that he wrote poetry.”

Frequently used in storytelling, the oblique optative appears in all kinds of subordinate clauses (final, causal, temporal, declarative, etc.) supported by a main clause in the past tense. In this instance, the optative loses its original meaning and preserves only a hazy sense of possibility. It indicates indirect (i.e., oblique) speech. You might say that it underscores a degree of subjective distance between the speaker and what is being said about them. Once again, it’s a question of courtesy, accuracy, integrity.

Using the oblique optative is not obligatory; it is determined by the person talking about other people’s thoughts and actions—the liberties they take, and their sincerity. If only the media (or what little remains of it) had this Greek mood!

Poetry

The word poetry comes from the verb ποιέω, “to make, do.” The verb also means “to build, construct,” as in by hand. For the Greeks, there was nothing poetic about writing poetry, at least as we tend to think of it. It was a job like any other, the same as carpentry, masonry, or pottery. Except what got made was poetry.

Poetry was born a few centuries after Homer and Hesiod, when the Muses clammed up, quit dictating from Helicon, and forced the Greeks to invent a new genre with which to describe their world in verse.

Homer and Hesiod made epics, not poetry. Which is to say, they adopted meter to tell stories (Ἔπος). In the seventh century BC, the world changed. We went from a universal culture, which suited the epic’s ability to encompass everything about being Greek, about an “us,” to a culture of individuals, which demanded stories about the feelings, passions, grief, and moods of an “I.”

There were two main genres of Greek poetry, monodic (for soloists) and choral (for choruses), and two main subjects, gods and men.

Each genre had its own dialect. Choral poetry was written in Doric, monody in Aeolic. That’s the Greeks for you: they tend to file everything into neat categories. When the poet opened their mouth and out came Doric, listeners knew what to expect from their verses. It didn’t matter if the poet was born in Sparta or on Lesbos. The choice of dialect was a poetic—meaning practical—choice, made to be understood.

And the poets?

The scholars of Alexandria, who decided what we should read—not that we ever asked them to—by creating a canon, passed down to us nine poets almost intact: Alcaeus, Anacreon, Alcman, Bacchylides, Ibycus, Pindar, Sappho, Simonides, and Stesichorus. All we have of all the other poets are just fragments, “fallen leaves, windblown,” as the heartbreaking Mimnermus would have put it.

And how did the Greek poets fare economically? Like craftsmen.

Today, if your family’s wealthy, you can amuse yourself making whatever kind of tables and chairs you’re into, like Archilocus, who says that if the battle takes a bad turn, he’d willingly give up his shield; he’d rather save his own skin. Or, like Sappho, you’re lovesick. Or, like Alcaeus, you sing about being a raging alcoholic.

But if you’re poor, you make the chairs that your benefactors tell you to, as Pindar did. Some poets sang at weddings for money. Back then, some poets wrote on commission. Dario Del Corno, author of a popular guide to Greek literature, calls Pindar an occasional poet. Pindar did write occasional poetry, and he was the most famous and brilliant practitioner in the field. Give him a couple of dates, names, and cities, and he could mold anybody into a hero or demigod and reach back ten generations to exhume their mythological roots. In short, he was a total professional when it came to occasional poetry. And there was never any shortage of occasions for him. Pindar mainly wrote in honor of the winners of Panhellenic games, the oldest sports festivals in the world. (Besides the famous Olympics, there were the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games).

Why was Pindar hailed as the high priest of poetic purity but his occasional poetry and particular profession ignored?

I have my own personal theory about this: because, despite the indisputable beauty of every word, no one understood a thing he wrote. What are Pindar’s most famous flights of fancy if not the lines we least understand? I’ve never met anybody who really got Pindar. Voltaire, who shares my opinion, once wrote, “Pindar, whom everyone praises and no one comprehends.”

To give you an example, and to dispel any doubts a reader may have by letting them judge for themselves (I’m not trashing Pindar, whom I love despite not understanding him), here is “The Nemean Ode II,” for Timodemus of Acharnae, winner of the pankration.

Just as the sons of Homer, those singers

of verses stitched together,

most often begin with a prelude to Zeus,

so has this man received his first installment of victory

in the sacred games at the much-hymned

sanctuary of Nemean Zeus.

But Timonoös’ son is still indebted—if indeed his life,

while guiding him straight on the path of his fathers,

has given him as an adornment for great Athens—

to pluck again and again the fairest prize

of the Isthmian festivals and to be victorious

in the Pythian games; and it is likely

that Orion is traveling not far behind

the mountain Pleiades.17

And indeed Salamis is certainly capable of rearing

a fighter. At Troy Hector heard

from Ajax; but you, O Timodemus, the stout-hearted

strength of the pancratium exalts.

Acharnae is famous of old

for brave men, and in all that pertains to athletic games

the Timodemidae are proclaimed foremost.

From the games beside lofty-ruling Parnassus

they have carried off four victories,

whereas by the men of Corinth

in the valleys of noble Pelops

they have so far been joined to eight crowns;

there are seven at Nemea in Zeus’ contest, and at home

too many to count. Celebrate him, O citizens,

in honor of Timodemus upon his glorious return,

and lead off with a sweetly melodious voice.18

The survival of the optative in Greek, the one Indo-European language to safeguard it tenaciously, is proof of Greek’s unmistakable, extraordinarily durable verb system. Verbs, not nouns, dominate ancient Greek. Through aspect and mood, Greek verbs indicate ideas from the point of view of their process, their development, and the way a speaker perceives them. They don’t express mere things but the actions from which those things spring into being.

All Greek dialects from antiquity make clear distinctions between the subjunctive and optative, between probability and possibility.

But during the first century AD, the optative was gradually being eclipsed. The verbal mood was already experiencing a crisis and being swapped for simpler words like “maybe” and “perhaps.” And all crises, linguistic or otherwise, get worse; the nuance that the optative encapsulates couldn’t withstand the implosion of dialects into one single imperial language, Koine. For one, the verbal mood rarely appears in the Greek translation of the New Testament; you can find a few examples in later scrolls, but it is always employed in vows and prayers. In any case, that is the optative in little more than survival mode, and we can picture it languidly slipping away from the free, normal language that the Greeks chose to speak. All evidence points to the optative’s having first been dropped from phrases in which it was used to express possibility, then from subordinate oblique clauses; the last written examples of the optative are prayers to divinities. Desire, yes, but of the religious variety.

If Roman authors like Strabo, Polybius, or Diodorus Siculus rarely used the optative (compared with Plato and Xenophon), it must have been even more rarely used in casual contexts.

In short, the subtleties of the optative were too delicate to endure for long without becoming confused and diminished, without losing intensity. Modern Greek only has the subjunctive. The optative has vanished for good.

No current language bears a trace of the optative. That stands to reason, since in Latin only a hint of it, the orphaned relics of its meaning, survives in the subjunctive, which is derived from an ancient desiderative form (sit, “let there be,” velit, “want to”).

The story of every modern language demonstrates how the optative and subjunctive couldn’t inhabit the same space for long; the line separating them was both too thin and too thick. Therefore, the distinction between the subjunctive and optative was variously and independently erased from all Indo-European languages. From the outset, it was clear that sooner or later the optative would be the one to perish. The subjunctive has been spared because many subordinating clauses in Latin, as in Italian and French, call for it; it is seldom used in main clauses. Though it expressed certain nuances, as a verbal form the optative was not essential to understanding and making yourself understood. It embodied a graceful way of expressing your desires and coming to terms with your life (and words) without imposing your will on others or overwhelming their lives (and words).

About the disappearance of this verbal mood, the incomparable Antoine Meillet once remarked, “The loss of the optative reflects a decline in Greek refinement; it’s the loss of an aristocratic elegance.”

For that matter, every language is democratic, a “social fact” subject to the whims of time and how those who speak it see the world. Whatever you might say in the age of Twitter and WhatsApp, people change before the language changes, not the other way around. Every word of every language is exposed to the democratic use it is put to by those who speak it; like a sculpture, it is exposed to the winds of democracy, which continue to worry away at its contours.

Medea, one of Euripides’ most harrowing tragedies, begins with a nurse lamenting what she may have been and never became—with a desire that can no longer be fulfilled. Life has taken a different course. Instead, the Argo has landed, and everything has already happened.

Would that the Argo had never winged its way to the land of Colchis through the dark blue Symplegades! Would that pine trees had never been felled in the glens of Mount Pelion and furnished oars for the hands of the heroes who at Pelias’ command set forth in quest of the Golden Fleece! For then my lady Medea would not have sailed to the towers of Iolcus.19

The Greek optative is, for this reason, the perfect measure of the distance between the effort required to take stock of what we desire and the strength needed to express it—to ourselves most of all; in the conviction that, no matter the situation, elegance is what gives us a slight but sure advantage, especially when it comes to language.

12 Archilochus, Semonides, Hipponax, Greek Iambic Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC., ed. and trans. Douglas E. Gerber, Loeb Classical Library 259 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), Fragments 118, 199, 158–159.

13 Aristophanes, Frogs. Assemblywomen. Wealth, ed. and trans. Jeffrey Henderson, Loeb Classical Library 180 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 44–45.

14 Homer, Odyssey, Volume I: Book 2, vv. 33–34, trans. A. T. Murray, rev. George E. Dimock, Loeb Classical Library 104 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), 48–49.

15 Homer, Odyssey, Volume II: Book 14, trans. A. T. Murray, rev. George E. Dimock, Loeb Classical Library 105 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), 70–71.

18 Pindar, Nemeans Odes, ed. and trans. H. Race, Loeb Classical Library 485 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)

19 Euripides, Cyclops. Alcestis. Medea, ed. and trans. David Kovacs, Loeb Classical Library 12 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 284–285.