SVF I.219

Original — Ancient Greek

καὶ ὁ Ζήνων ἐπανορθούμενος τὸ τοῦ Σοφοκλέους· “ὅστις δὲ πρὸς τύραννον ἐμπορεύεται, κείνου ᾽στὶ δοῦλος, κἂν ἐλεύθερος μόλῃ”, μετέγραφεν· “οὐκ ἔστι δοῦλος, ἢν ἐλεύθερος μόλῃ.”

StoicOs Translation

And Zeno, correcting the lines of Sophocles — “Whoever makes his way to a tyrant becomes his slave, even if he goes there free” — rewrote them: “He is not a slave, if he goes there free.”

Context

Plutarch, teaching how to read the poets philosophically, gives Zeno's boldest example: correcting Sophocles himself with a one-word surgery on the verse.

Source notes:Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 219, pp. 53–54 (OCR of the scanned edition). The Sophocles lines are fr. trag. p. 253 Nauck; Plutarch quotes Zeno's rewriting verbatim (“metegraphen”).

What the source actually tells us

A verbatim quotation of Zeno's rewritten verse, from the same tradition of verse-corrections as SVF I.235; Plutarch's verb “metegraphen” (“he rewrote”) marks it as Zeno's deliberate act.

Philosophical meaning

Sophocles made freedom depend on where you stand; Zeno makes it depend on what you are. If freedom is a state of soul (SVF I.218), no tyrant's court can revoke it — the free man remains free in the palace, the slave remains a slave on the open road. One negative particle overturns a whole politics of fear.

Scholarly uncertainty

Plutarch is our only witness for this correction, writing four centuries later; the anecdotal frame is his, and in which work or lecture Zeno made the change is unknown. The one-word rewriting itself is quoted, not paraphrased.

Go deeper

• Read SVF I.218 — the good man cannot be compelled →
• Read SVF I.235 — Zeno rewrites Hesiod →