Book 4
Book 4 (δ)
Commentary on line 1
*lakedai/mona. Buttmann insists that here Λακεδαίμων signifies the name of the district of which the chief town was Sparta, as in Il.2. 581οἳ δ' εἶχον κοίλην Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσαν
Φᾶρίν τε Σπάρτην τε, κ.τ.λ. The epithets moreover are suitable to a district but not to a town. koi/lhn is distinct in meaning from khtw/essan. The valley of Sparta is a deep depression between Taygetus and Parnon, 18 miles in length, by 4 or 5 in breadth, and intersected by the Eurotas, which flows down to it from the uplands of Arcadia, and its southern end passes through a narrow defile to the sea. This was the hollow Lacedaemon of Homer, Tozer, Classical Geogr. 87. Similarly, parts of Syria and of Elis, and Argos (Soph. O. C.378) have the epithet κοῖλος=mountain-pent. Strabo (8. 563) quotes the Cresphontes of Eurip. (Frag. 1. Dind.) τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἔχων
πολλὴν μὲν ἄροτον ἐκπονεῖν δ' οὐ ῥᾴδιον,
κοίλη γὰρ, ὄρεσι περίδρομος, τραχεῖά τε.
khtw/essa, by the regular rule of the composition of adjectives in -εις, must come from κῆτος, a gulf; root καf, Lat. cav-us; and thus means cavernous. Ameis quotes from Plutarch, Cim.16ἡ τε χώρα τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων χάσμασιν ἐνώλισθε πολλοῖς, and Strabo 8. 367 ὅτι οἱ ἀπὸ τῶν σεισμῶν ῥωχμοὶ καιετοὶ λέγονται . . εὔσειστος δὲ ἡ Λακωνική.
Zenodotus' emendation καιετάεσσαν (which Buttmann thinks never existed as a real variant) would have this meaning equally, from καῖαρ, akin to which is the name of the best-known of those hollows, the Καιάδας, into which malefactors were thrown, Thuc.1. 134.Others again see in κητώεσσα merely a reference to the deep valley between Taygetus and Parthenius, in which Lacedaemon lies. Strabo also mentions mega/lh, as one interpretation of the word, and calls this rendering πιθανώτερον. But without doubt the epithet refers to the numerous rifts and fissures in the undulating ground. Tozer, ib.
3-19. The criticism given in Athenaeus (5. 180) on this place, is to the effect that Diodorus, ὁ Ἀριστοφάνειος, expunged the whole passage (ὅλον τὸν γάμον περιέγραψε), which we are told he did on the supposition that the scene intended to be described was the full height of the festivity (τοπάζων πρώτας ἡμέρας εἶναι). Hennings (Die Telem. p. 178 foll.) adopts this view, and regards the passage as a later interpolation. But it must be remarked that the excision of vv. 3-19 makes the connection between v. 2 and 20 very awkward.
