Note 1216 — Chapter IV · THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY. (continued 3)

So far as I can discover, it is a solitary example of the use in Classical Greek; but I very strongly suspect that in Antiphon, p. 127 (init.), προστρέψομαι should be read instead of προστρίψομαι. A man accused of murder is saying, ἀδίκως μὲν γὰρ ἀπολυθεὶς, διὰ τὸ μὴ ὀρθῶς διδαχθῆναι ὑμᾶς ἀποφυγὼν, τοῦ μὴ διδάξαντος καὶ οὐχ ὑμέτερον τὸν προστρόπαιον τοῦ ἀποθανόντος καταστήσω· μὴ ὀρθῶς δὲ καταληφθεὶς ὑφ’ ὑμῶν, ὑμῖν καὶ οὐ τούτῳ τὸ μήνιμα τῶν ἀλιτηρίων προστρίψομαι. The sense is, ‘If I were really guilty of this murder and yet owing to the feeble case presented by the prosecutor I were acquitted by you, my escape would bring the Avenger of the dead man upon the prosecutor and not on you; whereas, if you condemn me wrongly when I am innocent, it will be on you and not on him that I, after death, shall turn the wrath of the Avengers.’ Clearly προστρέψομαι is required to answer προστρόπαιον, and it could have no more natural object than τὸ μήνιμα, the special word denoting the wrath which follows on bloodguilt.