Iranian Evidence for Pindar's ‘Spurious San’?

• Published in: Antichthon 2003-11, Vol.37 (2003), p.52-61
• Main Author: Sheldon, John S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Affricates; Ancient history; Aristophanes (450?-388? BC); Classical literature; Dialects; Greek literature; Inscriptions; Language; Pindar; Pronunciation
• ISSN: 0066-4774; 2056-8819
• DOI: 10.1017/S0066477400001416

In a much discussed passage Pindar uses the expression when speaking of early performances of the dithyramb. The passage was famous in antiquity and before the discovery of a papyrus fragment early in the Twentieth Century, we owed our knowledge of it chiefly to citations in Athenaeus. In discussing it, Athenaeus explains the words in the context of asigmatic odes, i.e. odes in which for the sake of euphony the letter sigma was avoided or omitted altogether. This explanation remains the most commonly accepted one, though scholars continue to puzzle over it, as it is hard to see why Pindar would use the word which means ‘false’ or ‘counterfeit’ in such a context. A more natural interpretation, and one which would, I believe, have been readily accepted had it not been for the comments of Athenaeus, is that in early dithyrambic performances the ‘s’ sound was in some way impure or unauthentic when compared with current practice. In what follows, I will re-open the discussion, arguing that Athenaeus misunderstood the passage or based his explanation on a tradition which obscured its true meaning. It will be necessary in the first place to examine evidence for the pronunciation of Greek sibilants and it is here that some light may be cast upon the discussion from a rather unexpected source—the adaptation of the Greek alphabet for writing down the Middle Iranian language of Bactria.