He is speaking of bees because of the[ir] orderliness.[1] "May you make the order-producing chorus boundless."[2]
Thesmotokon: tas melissas phêsi dia to eutakton. theiês thesmotokon choron apleton.
The accusative singular masculine/neuter (or nominative singular neuter) headword, transmitted twice as
qesmoto/kon, literally means 'law-producing' or 'order-producing'. It is attested elsewhere only in
Nonnus,
Paraphrase of the Gospel of John 9.145 (genitive case there), where it refers to
Moses. However, assuming it is extracted from the quotation that follows here, it seems to be a mistake (made twice) for
e(smoto/kon ('swarm-producing'); so LSJ s.v. See n. 2 below for more on the textual issue.
[1] It is uncertain whether "he" in this case refers to the author of the quotation which follows, and whether the commentator is explaining the headword as printed ('order-producing') or the alternative 'swarm-producing' (see preceding note). The gloss fits either.
[2]
Greek Anthology 6.239.5 (
Apollonides), addressed to an unnamed divinity; different parts of the same poem appear at
sigma 734,
tau 500 and
theta 6. The headword
qesmoto/kon appears both in the Suda mss and in the Palatine ms of the epigram. Gow-Page, following Salmasius, emend to
e(smoto/kon ('swarm-producing'), which is unattested elsewhere but arguably makes better sense. Reiske suggested
d' e(smoto/kon ('but may you make the swarm-producing...'), evidently to provide a letter (
d) that could be misread into the initial
q of the present headword, but as Gow-Page point out the conjunction is not appropriate in the context; instead, the corruption can be explained as a repetition of the initial letter of the previous word in the line
qei/hs ('may you make').
William Hutton (tweaked translation, augmented and rearranged notes, added keywords, raised status) on 22 February 2008@07:42:25.
David Whitehead (another keyword; tweaks and cosmetics) on 22 February 2008@07:57:55.
William Hutton (altered headword, translation and notes, set status) on 22 February 2008@08:07:32.
William Hutton on 22 February 2008@08:08:13.
David Whitehead (adjustments) on 1 January 2013@09:31:02.
Catharine Roth (coding) on 21 November 2018@01:14:25.
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