抄録
Callimachus' Epigram 28 is generally taken as showing an early encroachment of vulgar pronunciation in Hellenistic literary Greek. If the poet made the Echo resound 'αλλο&b.sigmav; εχει' in answer to his own 'ναιχι καλο&b.sigmav;', then inevitably the sound of αι was already identical with that of e. This way of interpreting ep. 28, though current ever since Bentley, entails many difficulties, for(i)no other evidence for αι=ε is so early,(ii)no true parallel can be found in Call, for so complicated a punning, (iii)the 'περιφοιτο&b.sigmav;' appears too early(v. 3)to become itself the core of the pointe at the end, (iv)the pointe is not clearly articulated, making vv. 1-4 and vv. 5-6 utterly disjunct, (v)the Echo inverting the word-order is a complication not attested elsewhere, and(vi)Lysanies remains, on this assumption, a mere name without the least connection with the grammarian of that name. None of the many attempts at emendation and explanation have ever succeeded in escaping them all. If, on the contrary, we take the whole epigram at its face value, without any such preconceptions as of αι=ε, all these difficulties disappear. That which the Echo 'imitates' in answering 'καλλο&b.sigmav; εχει' (K following Giangrande) must surely be something equivalent in sound to it and in sense to 'συ δε ναιχι καλο&b.sigmav;, καλο&b.sigmav;'. Only 'καλο&b.sigmav; εχει(&b.sigmav;)' meets the requirements, the recognition of which(at the very end of the poem)appropriately makes a pointe. Moreover, the solution of such ambivalent cases as ΚΑΛΛΟΣΕΧΕΙ was the chief concern of those λυτικοι like Lysanias. Thus ep. 28 is no evidence at all for colloquialism in pronunciation, but hints rather at the discrepancy between the literary and the everyday language.
