"And our life [is] a sojourn [sc. in a strange place]."[1]
*parepi/dhmos. kai\ o( bi/os h(mw=n parepidhmi/a.
The headword, here unglossed, is glossed by
Hesychius s.v. with the noun
paroikos; for this conjunction cf.
pi 732 (end), an abridged quotation of
Psalm 38.13
LXX (cf.
Genesis 23.4). LSJ translates it as '
sojourning in a strange place, esp. as Subst.'; but the more mundane sense of foreign visitor as opposed to resident in conveyed in e.g.
Aristophanes of
Byzantium's definition of a
metoikos ('for so many days he is called parepidemos and is free of tax...'); see D. Whitehead,
The Ideology of the Athenian Metic (Cambridge 1977) 7-8.
[1] The quotation approximates Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations 2.17.2, although the latter uses
e)pidhmi/a,
a stay in a strange place. Adler's critical apparatus also refers to
Aeschines Socraticus,
Axiochus fr.3 Dittmar; cf.
alpha 2822. But in this work,
Aeschines (
alphaiota 346, cf.
alphaiota 349) marshals a broadside assault upon the moral character of Alkibiades (
alpha 1280), and the dialogue's few extant fragments appear unrelated to the present Suda passage. See rather a passage (quoted in
Stobaeus) from the pseudo-Platonic dialogue of the same name,
Axiochus 365B, where this image is already described as a cliche:
parepidhmi/a ti/s e)stin o( bi/os,
life is something of a sojourn [sc. in a strange place].
David Whitehead (tweaked headword and tr; modified and augmented notes; modified keywords; cosmetics) on 3 January 2008@03:45:37.
David Whitehead on 15 September 2013@06:45:01.
David Whitehead (codings) on 22 May 2016@05:28:21.
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