A Textual Note on Epim. Hom. α 268 Dyck (Vol. II)

ἔχει δὲ διαφορὰς ὀκτὼ μόνον τῶν μονοπροσώπων· (1) ἔστι μόνον ἀναφορικὸν τῶν ἄλλων καὶ δεικτικῶν οὐσῶν καὶ ἀναφορικῶν· οὗτος ἐκεῖνος {καὶ δεῖξις καὶ ἀναφορά}· καὶ πίστις τούτου, ὅτι οὐκ ἀνεδέξατο τὴν διὰ τοῦ ι ἐπέκτασιν· (2) μόνη τῶν μονοπροσώπων ὀξύνεται· (3) μόνη δὲ τῶν ἀντωνυμιῶν ἀπὸ μακρᾶς ἀρχομένη ψιλοῦται· (4) μόνη ἐξ ἀντωνυμιῶν δεδιπλασίασται· αὐτὸς αὐτός· (5) μόνη καὶ κωμῳδίᾳ ἐπιτέτακται· αὐτότερος αὐτότατος.

Alone among the personal pronouns, (αὐτός) has eight peculiarities.
(1) It is only anaphoric, whereas the others are both deictic and anaphoric, (such as) οὗτος and ἐκεῖνος. And the proof of this is that αὐτός did not admit of the suffixation -ι. (2) Only this among the personal pronouns is oxytone. (3) Only this among the pronouns, though beginning with a long first syllable, does not have the aspiration. (4) Only this among the pronouns is duplicated: αὐτὸς αὐτός. (5) Only this is imposed to comedy: αὐτότερος αὐτότατος.
The fifth peculiarity poses some textual problems.2 The manuscripts of the Epimerismi Homerici unanimously transmit the text above. Dyck does not 1 Dyck 1995, 153-154. 2

Favi
Mnemosyne 73 (2020) 497-500 emend κωμῳδίᾳ ἐπιτέτακται, but the paradosis makes little sense.3 Schneider suggested emending ἐπιτέτακται into ἐπιτέταται4 (ἐπιτείνω 'intensify' being common grammatical vocabulary),5 in which case the reference would be to the comparative αὐτότερος and superlative αὐτότατος. Schneider's conjecture is very reasonable and should be accepted without further ado (thus also K-A ad Epich. fr. 1). Ludwich's emendation κἀν <τῇ> κωμῳδίᾳ6 for transmitted καὶ κωμῳδίᾳ would make sense of the isolated dative, but 'also in comedy' remains puzzling, especially since forms like αὐτότερος and αὐτότατος are admittedly only attested in comedy (see below; K-A ad Epich. fr. 1 do not accept this emendation either). The position of καί after μόνη at the beginning of the sentence makes it unlikely that καί may be linking this section of the gloss with the preceding one, and therefore καί is more likely to be taken with what follows.7 Besides, all entries in the Epimerismi gloss are introduced by a bare μόνη (except the third one, which is connected to the preceding one with δέ), and only the subsections within the sixth and ninth peculiarity are linked to one another with connectives. Another possibility would be to emend the paradosis into εἰ καὶ ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ. Together with Schneider's ἐπιτέταται, the resulting text would be: μόνη, εἰ καὶ ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ, ἐπιτέταται· αὐτότερος αὐτότατος.
The implication of the concessive clause εἰ καὶ ἐν κωμῳδίᾳ8 would be to say that αὐτός is indeed peculiar, in that this is the only pronoun which has a comparative (αὐτότερος) and a superlative (αὐτότατος), but that these forms should not be taken at face value, since they are only used in comedy, where they serve a comic purpose. Such an observation is well paralleled in the other grammatical sources discussing αὐτότερος and αὐτότατος, see Apollonius Dyscolus, Pronouns (ed. Schneider, Grammatici Graeci vol. II.I p. 64.11 = Brandenburg 2005, 400-401): ἕνεκα γελοίου ἡ κωμῳδία σχήματά τινα ἔπλασεν, ὥστε οὐ κριτήριον τῆς λέξεως τὸ αὐτότερος, ἐπεὶ καὶ Δαναώτατος ὑπερτίθεται παρὰ Ἀριστοφάνει, τῶν κυρίων οὐ συγκρινομένων ('comedy created some forms for comic purpose, so that αὐτότερος is not a means to judge to which part of speech the form (sc. αὐτός) belongs,9 since Δαναώτατος too is created as a superlative in Aristophanes, though proper names do not have degrees of comparison'); Afranius. The poet used this form for a comic purpose. In Greek too αὐτότατος is such. These are comic forms, and do not pertain to the grammar').11