Una congettura a Pseudo-Senofonte, Costituzione degli Ateniesi 2, 19

The paper argues that, in Pseudo-Xenophon’s Constitution of the Athenians 2, 19, the text of the manuscripts must be emended. The manuscript text reads ἔνιοι, ὄντες ὡς ἀληθῶς τοῦ δήμου, τὴν φύσιν οὐ δημοτικοί εἰσι, which means, as translated by Osborne 2004, « those who are in fact of the common people are not sympathetic to the common people by nature». However, many interpreters (e.g. Kalinka 1913, Frisch 1942, Marr e Rhodes 2008, Serra 2018) convincingly argue that this is not appropriate in the context, and that the text should mean, as translated by Bowersock 1968, «some persons are not by nature democratic although they are truly on the people’s side». This meaning, however, cannot be extracted from the Greek text. We should read ἔνιοι, ὄντες ὡς ἀληθῶς τοῦ δήμου, τὴν φύσιν οὐ δημοτικοί εἰσι «some persons are not by nature democratic although they are truly friends of the people». The mistake arose because of homoioteleuton (ἔνιοι ). The phrase φίλος τοῦ δήμου is commonly used in classical texts.