Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T07:46:44.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ONCE AGAIN ON EPICURUS’ LETTER TO HERODOTUS §§ 39–40

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2019

Francesco Verde
Francesco Verde*
Affiliation:
“Sapienza” Università di Roma, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In this short note I would like to reflect again upon paragraphs 39–40 of Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus and, more specifically, on the text printed in the last (superb and now indispensable) critical edition by Tiziano Dorandi, which I quote below together with the critical apparatus (758–9, lines 495–502):

495 ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ (τοῦτο καὶ ἐν τῇ Μεγάλῃ ἐπιτομῇ φησι κατ’

ἀρχήν καὶ ἐν τῇ α′ Περὶ φύσεως) τὸ πᾶν ἐστι <σώματα

καὶ κενόν>· σώματα μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔστιν, αὐτὴ ἡ αἴσθησις ἐπὶ

πάντων μαρτυρεῖ, καθ’ ἣν ἀναγκαῖον τὸ ἄδηλον τῷ

λογισμῷ τεκμαίρεσθαι, ὥσπερ προεῖπον. [40] τόπος δὲ εἰ

500 μὴ ἦν ὃ κενὸν καὶ χώραν καὶ ἀναφῆ φύσιν ὀνομάζομεν, οὐκ

ἂν εἶχε τὰ σώματα ὅπου ἦν οὐδὲ δι’ οὗ ἐκινεῖτο, καθάπερ

φαίνεται κινούμενα.

      495–496 de scholiis glossematibusque in tribus Epicuri epistulis et in RS i, vid. Dorandi, Epicuro 277–8 496–497 σώματα καὶ κενόν duce Gass. (πῇ μὲν σῶμα, πῇ δὲ κενόν) suppl. V. d. Muehll: σώματα καὶ τόπος Us. Traditam lectionem defendere conatur Arndt 26. Vid. K. Algra, Elenchos 15 (1994) 100 et D. Obbink, Philodemus On Piety. Part 1 (1996) 338–9 497 σώματα ΦFP4: σώμα· τὰ BP1498 πάντων om. Φ 499 τόπος δὲ Us.: τὸ πρόσθε B1: τὸ πρόσθεν B2PΦ: πρόσθεν F Cf. Lucr. 1.426–7 (locus) et vid. Sedley, Phronesis (1982) 183–4 εἰ δὲ Φ (coni. Gass.) 500 ὃ Φ: ὃ* B2: ὃν B1, ut vid.: ὂν PF ὃ post κενὸν traiecit Φ προεῖπον τὸ πρόσθεν· εἰ δὲ μὴ ἦν ὃ κενὸν Brieger, Seele 5 Vid. Dorandi, Epicuro 282–4 501 ἦν B: εἴη ΦFP4: ἔνι P1(Q) 502 οὐδ’ Us.: οὔτε B2PF: ὅτε B1503 περιληπτικῶς rec.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , December 2018 , pp. 736 - 739
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would particularly like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung for its very generous support, which made my research in Germany (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg / Institut für klassische Philologie) possible. My gratitude also goes to the anonymous reader for CQ for his/her suggestions.

References

1 See Tempesta, S. Martinelli, ‘La nuova edizione di Diogene Laerzio’, Elenchos 35 (2014), 157–89Google Scholar, and the reviews of Dorandi's critical edition by E. Spinelli (BMCR 08.39 [2014], http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014-08-39.html) and Trabattoni, F. (Méthexis 29 [2017], 215–19)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Dorandi, T. (ed.), Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Cambridge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Dorandi (n. 2), 49–52.

4 See Lapini, W., L’Epistola a Erodoto e il Bios di Epicuro in Diogene Laerzio: Note testuali, esegetiche e metodologiche (Rome, 2015), xv–xviGoogle Scholar.

5 See Sedley, D., ‘Two conceptions of vacuum’, Phronesis 27 (1982), 175–93, esp. 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See too Long, A.A. and Sedley, D.N. (edd.), The Hellenistic Philosophers. Volume 2: Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography (Cambridge, 1987), 20Google Scholar.

6 Sedley (n. 5), 183.

7 For the sigla and the information on the manuscripts I follow Dorandi (n. 2), 60–1.

8 Even if ‘el editor de Diógenes Laercio debe estar abierto a un texto griego no siempre impecable desde el punto de vista sintáctico y estilístico’, as the anonymous referee points out to me.

9 For a first overview of those concepts, see Verde, F., Epicuro (Rome, 2013), 103–6Google Scholar.

10 See Verde, F. (ed.), Epicuro: Epistola a Erodoto, Introduction by Spinelli, E. (Rome, 2010), 89–98Google Scholar.

11 See Brescia, C., Ricerche sulla lingua e sullo stile di Epicuro (Naples, 1955), 74Google Scholar.

12 See, however, Dorandi, T., ‘Diogene Laerzio, Epicuro e gli editori di Epicuro e di Diogene Laerzio’, Eikasmos 21 (2010), 273–301, esp. 282Google Scholar.