Poem LVI: Oracular Issues and Concerns

I.

UPSILON MAY NOT BE ELIDED

EXCEPT IN THE ORACLE QUOTED BY HERODOTUS

AT 7.220.

P. Maas (trans. H. L-J., Oxford, 1962)

...but only because “the synizesis is intolerable."

H. Richards, Cl. Rev. xix. 345.

II.

SYNIZESIS, a sound-change or metaplasm

III.

If it is synizesis.

IV.

When the Spartans asked the oracle about this war when it broke out, the Pythia had foretold that either Lacedaemon would be destroyed by the barbarians or their king would be killed. She gave them this answer in hexameter verses running as follows:

“For you, inhabitants of wide-wayed Sparta,
Either your great and glorious city must be wasted by Persian men,
Or if not that, then the bound of Lacedaemon must mourn a dead king, from Heracles' line.
The might of bulls or lions will not restrain him with opposing strength; for he has the might of Zeus.
I declare that he will not be restrained until he utterly tears apart one of these.”

English translation by A. D. Godley. (Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.)