[Meaning] put a stop to, change course [from].[1]
Aristophanes in
Clouds [says]: "giving up the horse-racing."[2] Meaning stopping the horse-racing. Or [it can mean] retreating and withdrawing from the current pursuit; [it comes] from a metaphor of rowers; for 'to ease off' [is] as if the rowing oar separates and divides the water. And
Pindar [says]: "he will soon have eased off the oar".[3] Also [sc. attested is the phrase] "relaxing your thought[s]".[4] That is, stopping, checking, being still.[5] And elsewhere [sc. there occurs the phrase] "easing off an oar".[6] Meaning putting a stop to the rowing. But some [say that] 'relaxing' stands for 'unfolding'.
*sxa/son: kata/pauson, meta/bale. *)aristofa/nhs *nefe/lais: sxasa/menos th\n i(ppikh/n. a)nti\ tou= pausa/menos th=s i(ppikh=s. h)\ a)poxwrh/sas kai\ a)posta\s tou= paro/ntos e)pithdeu/matos: a)po\ metafora=s tw=n e)resso/ntwn: sxa/sai ga\r dh\ kai\ w(/sper diastei=lai kai\ diasxi/sai to\ u(/dwr th\n kw/phn e)re/ssousan. kai\ *pi/ndaros: kw/pan h)/dh e)/stai moi sxa/sais. kai/, sxa/sas th\n fronti/da. toute/sti pau/sas, sth/sas, a)tremh/sas. kai\ au)=qis: kw/phn sxa/sas. a)nti\ tou= th\n ei)resi/an katapau/sas. e)/nioi de\ sxa/sas, a)nti\ tou= a(plw/sas.
The headword is the aorist active imperative of the verb
sxa/zw [LSJ at web address 1]; cf.
sigma 1767. It is evidently quoted from somewhere; perhaps
Pindar (see n. 6 below); another possibility, to judge from the
scholia thereto, is
Euripides,
Phoenician Women 454.
[1] Same or similar glossing in other lexica; references at
Photius sigma892 Theodoridis.
[2]
Aristophanes,
Clouds 107 [web address 2].
[3] The Greek here does not make immediate sense. The translation given assumes
e)/stai ... sxa/sais is a sort of periphrastic future perfect (cf. Goodwin,
Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb p.81), and
moi an ethic dative. The quotation does not appear as a Pindaric fragment in Snell-Maehler. It is also claimed to be Pindaric by the
scholia to
Aristophanes,
Clouds 107d
b6-7. But in these
scholia at 107d
a5 this line appears as
kw/pan h)/dh moi sxa/son, "ease off/relax the oar now for me", which is much more natural, though this too may be a misquotation of
Pindar, Pythian 10.51, also (mis)quoted later in the present entry (see n.6). Can
e)/stai have crept in from a marginal note into the misquoted version of Pythian 10.51?
[4]
Aristophanes,
Clouds 740 [web address 3].
[5] "Stopping" is not a correct paraphrase of "relaxing" at
Clouds740, where Socrates wants Strepsiades to "open his mind".
[6] This seems to be a misquotation of
Pindar,
Pythian 10.51 (80)
kw/pan sxa/son, "ease off/relax an oar" [web address 4].
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