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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
People are beginning to think of Manilius as the spoilt child of Latin Scholarship. In England alone there have appeared editions of, or works upon, Manilius, in the seventeenth century by Sherburne and Creech, in the eighteenth by Bentley and Burton, in the nineteenth by Ellis and Postgate, and in the current century by Housman. The contribution of France also has been considerable in quality, if not in quantity—Scaliger, Huetius, Pingré: though to-day there is no eminent French student of Manilius. Of the German editors we might say what Aristophanes says of the Athenian generals:
only that Prof. Breiter, whose recent recension of the text of Manilius lies before me, has rendered services to the student of the Astronomica which entitle him to be mentioned only with respect. He is mentioned with something approaching respect even by Mr. Housman, who respects few scholars save Bentley and never fails to lay ‘significant stress upon the difference between himself and a jackass’—by which he usually means a German.
page 123 note 2 Sherburne deserves more credit than he commonly gets. His translation is mostly readable: its mistakes are made again by Pingré: it is an honest attempt to make his author's meaning intelligible. His wealth of illustrative passages is really remarkable: and he had read most of the modem literature that could help him. His note on i. 646 is an example of his good judgment. His sense of humour is delightfully illustrated by his apology to Charles II. for not ‘adding his name to the Constellations’: ‘who by your excellent virtues justly deserve and without question shall in due time obtain a most eminent place among them.’
page 123 note 3 Cf. Manil. Introd. xiv.
page 124 note 1 What to say of in poenas dignata suas=indignata suas poenas (355) I know not. Or is it done ‘iocose’?
page 125 note 1 There are, however, some notable omissions: e.g. the important variant of M is not recorded at i. 431.
page 126 note 1 The MS. problem is everywhere clearing up. Only three MSS. count, GLM. All the others (V included) are derived mediately or immediately from L or M (C's dependence on L is very clearly shewn in the lemmata: see Breiter's note on 3- 399). M is the sole representative of a recension quite distinct from that represented by GL. On the other hand both families have a common parent in a now lost MS. (A), which can be shewn to have contained 44 lines to a page, written, I fancy, in double columns, and in which the recto and verso of fol. 5 had become inverted. GL again go back to a parent MS. containing 38 lines to a page: cf. iii. 399; iv. 10–313; also iii. 1–37; and compare iv. 312 and iv. 731–2, where in each case we observe the number of the intervening lines is divisible by 38. Between A and M, once more, there seems to lie a MS. containing 35 lines to the page: cf. iii. 175–6, 370: 404–6: 615–616.
page 127 note 1 I call him unhappy because it is enough to make man or ghost unhappy to be spoken of as Mr. Housman speaks of him on pp. xix-xx. Mr. Housman never carries the bludgeon in vain. But I think Stoeber should be glad that there is the river Styx and a good part of two centuries between him and his critic.
page 129 note 1 In Statius Siluae I. 6. 15·16 gratuǐtum is probably as corrupt as Aebusīa. It may originally have stood at the end of 15.
