Sound of a cithara. For they say that
Philoxenus the dithyramb poet or tragedian wrote
The Love of the Cyclops for Galatea; and then that he said the word
threttanelo in the epigram[1] in imitation of a sound of the cithara. For there he brings on the Cyclops playing the cithara and making Galatea blush. So when the chorus said, "How happy I am!"[2] the slave also said, "I also will want to dance, and to accompany that music with my voice."[3] For the cithara when played with a plectrum makes a noise like this,
threttanelo, threttanelo.
*qrettanelw/: h)=xos kiqa/ras. *filo/cenon ga\r to\n diqurambopoio\n h)\ tragw|diodida/skalo/n fasi gra/yai to\n e)/rwta tou= *ku/klwpos, to\n e)pi\ th=| *galatei/a|. ei)=ta kiqa/ras h)=xon mimou/menon e)n tw=| e)pigra/mmati tou=to ei)pei=n to\ r(h=ma, qrettanelw/. e)kei= ga\r ei)sa/gei to\n *ku/klwpa kiqari/zonta kai\ e)reqi/zonta th\n *gala/teian. e)pei\ ou)=n e)/fh o( xoro/s, w(s h(/domai, e)/fh kai\ o( oi)ke/ths, ka)gw\ boulh/somai xoreu/ein: kai\ a(/ma a)nafwnei=n to\ me/los e)kei=no. h( ga\r kiqa/ra krouome/nh toiou=ton me/los poiei=, qrettanelw/, qrettanelw/.
The mimetic word
qrettanelo/ (sic: with a final omicron; only here with omega) imitates the sound made by the cithara (
kappa 1590) played with the plectrum. For similar mimetic or mimic words see
tau 518 (
th/nella) and
epsilon 2807; and cf. English
tantara for a flourish of the trumpet or bugle.
The entry follows the
scholia to
Aristophanes,
Plutus [
Wealth] 290. At that point in the comedy
Aristophanes appears to be parodying a dithyramb by
Philoxenus of Cythera (
phi 393, cf.
sigma 1192) in the "new style", often subject to pastiche and parody by
Aristophanes and other comic poets (
delta 1029,
kappa 2647,
alpha 1810,
phi 761,
delta 1650,
beta 488, with notes, references and bibliography). The citations here attributed to a chorus and to a house-slave, are probably from the dithyramb (see notes 2 and 3) and are discussed as fragments of
Philoxenus'
Cyclops by D.L. Page,
Poetae Melici Graeci frs. 819-20, and D.A. Campbell,
Greek Lyrics (Loeb edn.), vol.5 pp.160-63.
[1] The phrase 'in the epigram' seems here to have an unusual sense, perhaps describing the word's position outside the grammatical structure of the sentence, "in parenthesis", or a short poem within the dithyramb. Otherwise, it is simply in error.
[2] This exclamation begins
Aristophanes,
Plutus [
Wealth] 288 (see web address 1), where the Chorus expresses their joy at news announced by Carion, Chremylus's slave, and their wish to dance for joy. Carion responds at 290 with the first words of the Suda's quotation, but continues quite differently. Carion says he wants to copy the Cyclops dancing (a notoriously indecent dance: cf.
Euripides'
Cyclops) and (as in
Philoxenus) playing the cithara,
qrettanelo/. The text in
Aristophanes is therefore probably a parody (or, in
Eustathius' happier term, a
paralalia 'writing alongside') of lines written by
Philoxenus in his dithyramb
Cyclops, from which the Suda entry gives these extracts.
[3] The phrase containing the infinitive
a(/ma a)nafwnei=n, 'to accompany that melody with my voice', corresponds to nothing in the
scholia or in the comedy, and is probably based on the text of
Philoxenus. Its sequences of short syllables resemble the unusual degree of metrical resolution in the other fragment of his
Galatea (on whom see
gamma 22) from the
scholia here (see fr. 819 Page and Campbell).
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