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Studies in the later manuscript tradition of Aristophanes' Peace*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. Douglas Olson
S. Douglas Olson
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
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Extract

Aristophanes' Peace is preserved in ten manuscripts, the oldest and most complete of which are the tenth-century Ravennas 429 (R) and the eleventh-century Venetus Marcianus 474 (V). A third manuscript, Venetus Marcianus 475 (G), is almost certainly a direct copy of V and can therefore be eliminated. The seven remaining manuscripts of the play, along with the Aldine edition of 1498, share numerous variant readings, as well as lacunae at 948–1011 and 1076b, and can accordingly be described as a family. As I will argue in detail below, the stemmatic relationship among the members of this family can be most economically represented as shown in Figure 1.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 62 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

1 Thus already Dindorf at vol. IV.l.iv of his 1835 Oxford edition, followed by Konrad, Zacher, ‘Die Schreibung der Aristophanesscholien im Cod. Ven. 474’, Philologus 41 (1881), 15–16; ‘Die Handschriften und Classen der Aristophanesscholien’, Jahrbucher fur classische Philologie Suppl. 16 (Leipzig, 1888), p. 545;Google Scholar and White, J. W.‘The manuscripts of Aristophanes. I’, CP 1 (1906), 4.Google Scholar

2 The Suda contains citations from Pax 948–1011 (e.g. 951–3 at χ 171; 959 at δ 31; 981–5 at π 366; 991–2 at κ 2095; 993–8 at π 1185, σ 1154), and the text it preserves cannot therefore necessarily be identified as a member of this family, although it does occasionally share readings with it. Verses 948–1011 were first added to modern editions of Peace in the second Juntine of 1525, apparently from a manuscript (now lost) closely related to R; cf. J. W. White, ‘The manuscripts of Aristophanes. II’, CP 1 (1906), 256–7.

3 No assertions made in this paper about the textual history of Peace should necessarily be taken to imply anything about any other play.

4 The most complete and most frequently relied-on report of the readings of the manuscripts in this family is that in the apparatus of K. Zacher, Aristophanis Pax (Leipzig, 1909). (Platnauer in particular seems merely to have taken over information contained in Zacher's apparatus for hisown, as also, apparently, did Sommerstein for RV.TPCB.) Unfortunately, as Bachmann's preface to Zacher's edition makes clear, Zacher himself collated only R, V, C, B, and (presumably, although this is never said explicitly) the Aldine, and relied on von Velsen for F and the first 131 lines in P, and on Wilmanns (‘cuius collatio non semper satis accurata videtur’, as Bachmann delicately puts it) for P in Pax 132ff. As a result, the information Zacher provides frequently requires amplification or correction. Coulon also collated R and V (from the photographic facsimiles), as well as B and the Aldine, for himself, but relied on von Velsen's collations of F, and omits any mention of P and C. The readings in L (whose existence was first announced to the scholarly world by Barbour, R., ‘Summary description of the Greek manuscripts from the library at Holkham Hall’, Bodleian Library Record 6 [1957–61], 609)Google Scholar and Vv17 were both described for the first time in 1962, by Wilson, N. G., ‘The Triclinian edition of Aristophanes’, CQ n s 12 (1962), 32–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Benardette, S., ‘Vat. Gr. 2181: An unknown Aristophanes manuscript’, HSCP 66 (1962), 241–8, respectively. Both Wilson and Benardette relied on Zacher's reports of the readings in the other Triklinian and post-Triklinian versions of the play (i.e. in B and the Aldine) and, because of chronological coincidence, were unacquainted with one another's work. The readings in H have never been systematically reported. Useful basic descriptions of R, V, P, C, H, L, Vv17, and the Aldine are given by C. N. Eberline, Studies in the Manuscript Tradition of the Ranae of Aristophanes (Beitrage zur klassischen Philologie Heft 119) (Meisenheim am Glan, 1980), pp. 27–8,41–2, 52–3, 37–8, 5–6,21, 34, and 45–6, respectively.Google Scholar

5 Zacher (1888), pp. 549–54 offers a basic physical description of I, with particular attention to the text of Peace. See also Turyn, A., The Byzantine Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Euripides (Rome, 1970), pp. 335–7. I'was apparently known to VictoriusGoogle Scholar; Cary, cf. E., ‘Victorius and Codex F of Aristophanes’, TAPA 37 (1907), 199–216.Google Scholar

6 For the method, pioneered by Lachmann in his commentary on Lucretius, see Goold, G. P., ‘A lost manuscript of Lucretius’, Ada Classica 1 (1958), 21–30.Google Scholar

7 The fact that I' as well omits precisely 1301–67 argues decisively against the more complicated alternative reconstruction, which is that the.I'-copyist saw β in the same condition as the π-copyist did, and that the closing lines of the play were lost when τ was damaged.

8 The initial lemma represents what I take to be the correct reading in the line.

9 The lemma represents what I take to be the correct reading in the line.

10 For a complete catalogue and discussion of this aspect of the manuscript tradition of the play, Olson, cf. S. Douglas, ‘Manuscript indications of change of speaker in Aristophanes' Peace, ICS 21 (1996), 5–34.Google Scholar

11 The lemma represents what I take to be the correct reading in the line.

12 ,

13 The lemma represents what I take to be the correct reading in the line.

14 The L-scribe was apparently the same man who produced Marc. gr. 622 (Hesychius' lexicon); see Smith, O. L., ‘n Holkham Gr. 88 and Marc. Gr. 622’, Maia 11 (1975), 205Google Scholar. Some of the early history of L has been traced by Giannini, M. Amanda, ‘Holkham Hall 88: Cuarino's Aristophanes’, CRBS 12 (1971), 287–9.Google Scholar

15 For Triklinios' edition of Peace, see K. von Holzinger, Vorstudien zur Beurteilung der Erklärertätigkeit des Demetrios Triklinios zu den Komödien des Aristophanes (Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 217.4) (Wien und Leipzig, 1939), pp. 96–115.

16 Thus also Sicherl, M., ‘Die Editio Princeps des Aristophanes’, in Fuhlrott, R. and Hailer, B. (edd.), Das Bitch und sein Haws I (Wiesbaden, 1979), p. 201, n. 64.Google Scholar

17 Wilson (n. 4), p.34.

18 The initial lemma represents what I take to be the correct reading in the line.

19 The initial lemma represents what I take to be the correct reading in the line.

20 The initial lemma represents what I take to be the correct reading in the line. That B is not simply dependent on the Aldine (which is to say, that the readings B shares with the Aldine but not with the L are not simply to be attributed to Musurus rather than to another post-Triklinian editor) is apparent from the fact that B lacks Pax 1301ff., which the Aldine has.

21 Sicherl (n. 16), pp. 189–231, esp. 206–8.

22 Zacher (1888), p. 558; followed by White, J. W., The Scholia on the Aves of Aristophanes (Boston and London, 1914), p. xxxv; von Holzinger (n. 15), pp. 29–30; Wilson (n. 4), p. 35.Google Scholar

23 At this point, Musurus would have been unaware of the lacuna at 948–1011, which is not marked in LB.

24 Sicherl (n. 16), pp. 220–2. In fact, Bachmann, in his preface to Zacher (1909), p. xxv, argues expressly '‘Ex eodem illo codice a [i.e. μ] cum P ut videtur cognato Musurus supplevit extremam fabulae partem..., quae deest in B pariter atque in I'’.

25 Cf. the final catalogue in Section III above, as well as: 89

26 For the last point, cf. Bachmann in his preface to Zacher (1909), p. xxiv, and note in particular that the Aldine scholia include versions of Σ Pax 1261, 1286b, 1297a–d, 1300c, all of which are missing from the version of the scholia preserved in V but present in the version preserved in I, i.e. in the branch of the tradition accessible to Triklinios.

27 The initial lemma is the text in the Aldine.