Jan Kochanowski's "A frigid tube"

The main aim of the paper is to urge a correction in Jan Kochanowski’s translation Euripides’s Alcestis (v. 67), edited posthumously by Jan Januszowski in the volume Fragmenta albo pozostałe pisma (1590). In the Greek text (Prologue, l. 67) Apollo prophesizes that a man on the way back from wintry Thrace (Θρῄκης ἐκ τόπων δυσχειμέρων) (the reference to King Eurystheus’ horses enables us to identify him as Heracles) will snatch Alcestis from the hands of Death. In the Polish version of Apollo’s prophesy we fi nd the phrase ‘do zimnej Trąby’ (‘cold Tube’). The philological investigation undertaken in this paper has two goals to achieve. Firstly, it reconstructs the literary tradition of presenting Thrace as a land of severely cold climate (Homer, Livy, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Statius). And secondly, it takes into consideration the meaning of this poetical landscape in Kochanowski’s Latin poetry and proposes the emendation of what must have been a printer’s error.