SOPHOCLES, SEDUCTION AND SHRIVELLING: ICHNEUTAI FR. 316 RADT*

Sophocles, fr. 316 comprises matching entries in Photius, Lex. p. 489 Porson and the Suda ρ166, which are thought to derive from Pausanias the Atticist's dictionary. Erbse presents the following text (ρ5): ῥικνοῦσθαι: τὸ διέλκεσθαι καὶ παντοδαπῶς διαστρέφεσθαι κατ' εἶδος. λέγεται δὲ καὶ τὸ καμπύλον γίγνεσθαι ἀσχημόνως καὶ κατὰ συνουσίαν καὶ ὄρχησιν, κάμπτοντα τὴν ὀσφῦν. Σοφοκλῆς Ἰχνευταῖς.

How the verb fitted in to the Ichneutai has gone unanswered. Radt ad loc. merely comments 'vix ad F 314.302 referendum'. 3 I agree: the lexicographers cannot be trying to gloss that description, also from Ichneutai, of the tortoise from which Hermes has fashioned a lyre: βραχύς, χυτροίδης, ποικίληι δορᾶι κατερρικνωμένος.
It is short, pot-shaped and shrivelled up with a spotted skin.
Nevertheless, when the tragedians use a rare stem twice in the same play, the recurrence often forms an intratext to which one can attach some interpretative weight. Can one conjecture a significance-bearing reason why Sophocles might have used the extremely rare ῥικνόομαι and καταρρικνόομαι in very different senses within the same play? 4 I believe we can. The key is the remarkable 'coincidence' that the Homeric Hymn to Hermesa text with much the same plot as Ichneutai and widely regarded as a source for Sophoclesalso employs a phrase for 'to sway the lower spine sexily'. 5 As Hermes first leaves his cave the narrator, giving Hermes' focalization, describes a tortoise σαῦλα ποσὶν βαίνουσα (28). Aristophanes' use of σαυλοπρωκτιάω (Vesp.
Feminine movements and airs and luxuries must be completely curtailed: for pampered practices in one's gait and "σαῦλα βαίνειν", in Anacreon's words, are utterly meretricious, in my humble opinion.
That σαῦλα connotes sensuality in the Hymn to Hermes is confirmed just a few lines later, with Hermes' remarkable greeting (31): χαῖρε φυὴν ἐρόεσσα, χοροιτύπε, δαιτὸς ἑταίρη. 6 Be kindly, you gorgeous-bodied girl, who stamps in the chorus, who is a companion of the feast.
The Hymn to Hermes poses us a puzzle: how can Hermes see a sexy strut in the lumbering gait of a tortoise? This is not the place to discuss how that puzzle is gradually resolved. 7 For our purposes, it is enough that the hymnist took an apparently unalluring specimen, and redescribed its walk in such terms.
Putting the lexicographers' entries together with σαῦλα βαίνειν in the Hymn to Hermes produces a plausible account of fr. 316 and its relationship to Ichn. 302. Ῥικνοῦσθαι could describe the 'sexy dance' of the tortoiseor, perhaps, of the satyrs imitating a tortoise as they come to terms with its delightful music in the latter portion of the play. 8 But the verb would also recall the preceding, accurate description of the tortoise as κατερρικνωμένος ('shrivelled'). This leaves us with an interesting new case of how satyr-plays pick up on and rework themes from epic, visible most obviously in Euripides' use of Odyssey 9 in his Cyclops. 9 I submit that Sophocles not only took over the Hymn to Hermes' paradoxically sexy tortoise, but gave her a further 'twist in the tail', by encapsulating both sexiness and unsexiness intratextually into a single verb.