The Greeks in Bactria and India c25.11

c25.11

I must however notice one further point. Renou actually supported the conjecture Εὐθυμηδία by an appeal to Nonnus xxvi, 338, not in his critical note, certainly, but in his index;³ a misleading statement which took in Przyluski⁴ and might take in others. Nonnus never mentions the word.⁵ The MSS of xxvi, 338 (see Ludwich’s edition of 1911 ad loc.) give the line as λαὸς εὐκρήδεμνον Ἐριστοβάρειαν ἐάσας. Of course Eristobareia is meaningless; Nonnus’ 26th book, the gathering of the Indian army, is full of meaningless names which he invented himself. But de Marcellus, in his edition (1856) of Nonnus for the Didot series, went steadily through book xxvi altering meaningless names into names he happened to have heard of, sometimes regardless of scansion, and among others he altered Ἐριστοβάρειαν into Εὐθυμήμειαν, producing the marvellous hexameter λαὸς εὐκρήδεμνον Εὐθυμήμειαν ἐάσας. He gave no reasons; his note⁶ merely says that Eristobareia, a meaningless word, ‘s’évapore devant l’Euthymédie de Ptolémée, qu’il faut lire Euthydémie’. It is a pity that such rubbish should have found a place in Ludwich’s apparatus,⁷ as well as in Renou.