My recent commentary on the Sententiae Menandri has had the good fortune of receiving a meticulous, balanced, and learned review by Mr Antonis Petrides. I can only be extremely grateful to the reviewer for his remarks, but I should like to clarify a few points of detail, in which he seems not to do justice to my work. I hasten to stress, however, that my objections are of relatively minor importance, and do not in the least diminish my admiration for the care and sound judgement Petrides has displayed in his review.
Writes Petrides: “A number of fresh papyrus finds unknown to Jaekel have enriched our material considerably. These papyri were included in the Spanish edition of Sánchez-Elvira and García Romero (pp.426-436), but, although used as a comparative source, they are curiously and without adequate justification excluded from L.’s main text.” This may (unintentionally) give the false impression that I have not taken into account the Monostichoi papyri that have been published after Jaekel’s edition. However, it is obvious from my list of abbreviations (pp.15-26) and my commentary and Addenda (pp. 243-496, passim) that I have made full use of all papyrus finds available. It is true that my main text contains only the monostichoi transmitted in the medieval Greek manuscripts, but this is neither curious nor inadequately justified: as I explain on p. 81 of my book, had I decided to produce a comprehensive edition containing the papyrus fragments, I should have also included the monostichoi that can be reconstructed from the Arabic and Slavic translations. This would have required a much more extensive book, for which I simply did not have the stomach.
Petrides also complains (in his note 5) that I have not cited Carlo Pernigotti’s “Raccolte e varietà redazionali nei papiri dei ‘Monostici di Menandro'” (published in Papiri Filosofici: Miscellanea di Studi III, Florence 2000). This is an inaccuracy: on p. 495 I state that I got hold of this important paper when my book had already been typeset (the same holds for Pernigotti’s “Appunti per una nuova edizione dei Monostici di Menandro”, published in Papiri filosofici: Miscellanea di studi I, Florence 1997).
My final objection regards Monostichos 684 (=693 Jaekel): ῥᾷον παραινεῖν ἢ παθόντα καρτερεῖν (= Eur. Alc. 1078). My statement (misunderstood by Petrides) that I have not found a satisfactory Modern Greek equivalent for the parison παραινεῖν – καρτερεῖν simply means that the parison (not “the conjunction”, as Petrides translates it) is not easy to reproduce in the Modern Greek translation. As for the content of the sententia, the Modern Greek parallel provided by Petrides (“he who is not partaking in the dance, has many songs to sing”) is indeed a very useful and enlightening one.