Πόνος πόνῳ πόνον φέρει
toil brings toil to toil
Translated by William Hutton20 Jan 2013Vetting: high3 revisions
Translation
The [preposition] pro/s ['in addition'] is missing, so that it would be 'toil brings toil in addition to toil.' Also the 'toil to toil' is archaic, like 'work upon work',1 but the second 'toil' is used colloquially, in the sense of 'weariness'. And Homer [writes]: "everywhere evil is affixed to evil."2 The same Aristophanes in Trachiniae [writes]: "for night brings on and night banishes the received toil."3
Greek original · Adler’s text
Πόνος πόνῳ πόνον φέρει· λείπει ἡ πρός, ἵν' ᾖ, ὁ πόνος πρὸς τῷ πόνῳ πόνον φέρει. καί ἐστι τὸ μὲν πόνος πόνῳ ἀρχαϊκόν, ὡς ἔργον ἐπ' ἔργῳ, τὸ δὲ δεύτερον πόνον κοινῶς, οἷον κάματον. καὶ Ὅμηρος· πάντη δὲ κακὸν κακῷ ἐστήρικται. ὁ αὐτὸς Ἀριστοφάνης ἐν Τραχινίαις· νὺξ γὰρ εἰσάγει, καὶ νὺξ ἀπωθεῖται δεδεγμένον πόνον.
Betacode
*po/nos po/nw| po/non fe/rei: lei/pei h( pro/s, i(/n' h)=|, o( po/nos pro\s tw=| po/nw| po/non fe/rei. kai/ e)sti to\ me\n po/nos po/nw| a)rxai+ko/n, w(s e)/rgon e)p' e)/rgw|, to\ de\ deu/teron po/non koinw=s, oi(=on ka/maton. kai\ *(/omhros: pa/nth de\ kako\n kakw=| e)sth/riktai. o( au)to\s *)aristofa/nhs e)n *traxini/ais: nu\c ga\r ei)sa/gei, kai\ nu\c a)pwqei=tai dedegme/non po/non.
Notes (3)
- Sophocles, Ajax 866, with comments from the scholia.
- 1Hesiod, Works and Days 382 (missed by Adler). ↩
- 2Homer, Iliad 16.111, with some variant readings. ↩
- 3An approximation of Sophocles, Trachiniae 29-30. The Suda's ascription of the quotation to Aristophanes is not present in the Sophoclean scholia from which the rest of the entry is drawn. This might suggest that the entry's composer was unaware of the origin of both the headword phrase and the material used to gloss it. Nevertheless mss M and G do, Adler reports, have the name Sophocles. Bernhardy conjectured
o( au)to/s 'the same' without a proper name, so that different scribes might have supplied the name differently. ↩
Linked from1 entry
Neighbouring entries
Revision history3 revisions · last 10 Oct 2013
- another keyword; tweaking — David Whitehead
- cosmetics — David Whitehead
- cosmetics, expanded note, set status — Catharine Roth
- Translated — William Hutton