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Theodoret of Cyrus and the Speakers in Greek Dialogues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Richard Lim
Richard Lim
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

The modern convention for printing dialogues includes printing the names of the speakers on the margin at the beginning of their statements. But this practice was virtually unknown in ancient Greek dialogues. Instead, the most common convention for showing the shift from one speaker to another is through punctuation such as the colon, the παραγράφος or a horizontal stroke. Recently, N. G. Wilson has attributed the inclusion of the names of the speakers at the transitional points in Greek dialogues to Theodoret of Cyrus (mid-fifth century CE; composed Eranistes in 447) who, in this view, ‘deserves the credit for devising a literary convention that is now regarded as essential’.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 111 , November 1991 , pp. 181 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1991

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References

1 Andrieu, J., Le dialogue antique. Structure et présentation (Paris: 1954) 214–15, 263–66Google Scholar.

2 ‘Indications of speakers in Greek dialogue texts’, CQ xx (1970) 305.

3 Scherer, J. ed., Entretien d'Origène avec Héraclide et les évêques ses collègues sur le père, le fils, et l'âme (Cairo 1949Google Scholar). On the use of the plural of διάλεκτος, see Scherer, , ed., Entretien d'Origène avec Héraclide (Sources chrétiennes lxvii, Paris 1960) 5Google Scholar, n.3. It is useful to keep in mind the fact that Origen held a good number of such ‘discussions’ with many important personages and that these were gathered together into a collection of dialogues in Palestinian Caesarea.

4 See Scherer, ed., Entretien (1949) 82Google Scholar and especially plate 1.

5 W. H. Van de Sande Bakhuyzen ed., Der Dialog des Adamantius ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΕΙΣ θΕΟΝ ΟΡθΗΣ ΠΙΣΤΕΩΣ GCS iv (Leipzig 1901) xviii. See also Hammond, C. P., ‘A product of a fifth-century scriptorium preserving conventions used by Rufinus of Aquileia. Part I: Rufinus and western monastic libraries and scriptoria’, first of a series of three articles, JTS n.s. xxix (1978) 366–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This evidence, however, is not at all certain, as the acute anonymous reader of this note points out, because of some amount of confusion in the manuscript tradition itself about the attribution of names. Yet the types of deviations which resulted suggest that some might have come from conflicting interpretations of the sharply-abbreviated indications of speakers contained in the earliest MSS, see Van de Sande Bakhuyzen, xvi–xviii, n.4. In addition, the de autexusio of Methodius of Olympus is another (late) third-century dialogue in which the three protagonists, an orthodox Christian = ΟΡΘΟ(ΔΟΞΟΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΟΣ), a Valentinian Christian = ΟΥΑΛ(ΕΝΤΙΝΙΑΝΟΣ) and his companion = ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ, were named in abbreviation probably from early on in the tradition; see Greek text in G. N. Bonwetsch, ed., GCS xxvii (Leipzig 1917): the F MS (Cod. Laurent. Plut. IX, 23, 10th century) consistently has ΟΡθ for ΟΡΘΟΔ.

6 Hirzel, R., Der Dialog. Ein literarhistorischer Versuch (Leipzig 1895) ii 265Google Scholar.