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Pliny on Icarian Shores

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. M. Cook
Affiliation:
University of Bristol

Extract

SOME suggestions are here made for improvement of the text and understanding of Pliny's Eastern Aegean geography. The editions studied for the purpose are Detlefsen's special edition of the geographical books (Sieglin's Quellen und Forschungen, vol. ix, Berlin, 1904) and Mayhoff's Teubner vol. i (1906).

The citations of MSS. readings given below are normally taken from Mayhoff's apparatus, which (though not necessarily more accurate) gives a fuller coverage than Detlefsen's. The MSS. are cited by the letters given them in Mayhoff's edition and the Budé Pliny book i (1950), pp. 37 f. One further MS., hitherto not collated in the geographical books, is here cited. Following Campbell, who first drew attention to it, I cite it as c. This MS., formerly in the Phillipps collection in Cheltenham and now in the Pierpont Morgan Library (M. 871), is assigned to Lorsch and said to be of the first half of the ninth century. It seems thus to be somewhat older than A and E, and in that case is the oldest known surviving MS. of the geographical books.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1959

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References

1 A.J.P. lvii (1936), 113 ff. (the second MS. there discussed, in the Bodleian, is not relevant to the present study); Campbell, D. J., C. Plini Secundi Nat. Hist. Liber Secundus, pp. 92 ffGoogle Scholar. I am indebted to Mr. A. N. L. Munby, who informed me of the present whereabouts of c and of the date (c. 830–40) assigned by Prof. Bischoff.

2 Whose authorities kindly supplied a microfilm for my use. The MS., being very clear, and appearing in the photographs to be little encumbered in this part by later corrections, can generally be read without difficulty in this way.

3 It is not clear on what grounds Ernout decides that Campbell, ‘in the enthusiasm of his discovery’, overrated the importance of this MS. (Budé ed., book i, p. 32).

4 Campbell noted that it often agrees with Ea.

1 The corrections in F are fewer and seem sometimes more responsible than the others.

2 Urlichs, , Vindiciae Plinianae (1866), pp. 80Google Scholar f., would excise the name ‘Euthene’ (i.e. Etene)from the text. If the MSS. had actually read ‘Euthene’ the observation would be valid.

1 See Mayhoff’s apparatus ad locc. I have not been able to refer to Hermolaus’s Castigationes Plinianae.

2 ‘Troezene, Phorontis’, named after Ceramus at the end of a list of inland places 109), are new names in this context. Since Halicarnassus, Myndus, and Theangela all laimed Troezen as their mother-city, it is ikely that Ceramus did so too; and the pair of names cited here may owe its presence in this context to Pliny's misunderstanding of a source that named the origin of the Ceramietes. ‘Carice’ (before Myus) in 113, if it is a proper name (Mayhoff takes it as an adverb), must be equated with Strabo's four stades from Myus (14. 636) (the manuscripts' ‘oppido Carice’ (or -ite) in 2. 205 is perhaps also to be understood as a ).

1 The recurring argument that Mation is a place-name in the sense of ‘minute’ has been disposed of by Platon in the article cited below; it may also be noted that the Matium of 6. 10 (see below, p. 120) must have been a very considerable place if it incorporated the Pontic Comana (for which see Strabo's description, 12. 557–60).

2 i. 20 f.

3 It may be objected that is not in fact in apposition to here; but this can only be ascertained by research of a kind that was alien to Pliny, and in fact Klausen in his edition of 1831 still printed the words as being in apposition.

1 Cf. Robert, L., Rev. phil. 1936, p. 279.Google Scholar

2 For this Neapolis see Bean's and my remarks in B.S.A.l. 158. The name Naryandos is quite unknown in the Halicarnassus region, but are known in the region of Stratonicea (Ibid., p. 160, n. 315). The name seems out of place in Pliny's list here and may possibly have entered the text during dictation as a result of confusion in the author's mind over Mela's ‘Aruanda’.

1 See Bean's and my remarks in B.S.A. 1. 160 f., and (on the name Lampsimandus) B.S.A. lii. 133 f.

1 Lest it should appear that Hermolaus Barbarus was always wrong, I remark here that he read ‘Tragia’.

2 So too the little island of Kalolimno, used as a grazing ground by the Calymniots, is commonly called Gaidaronesi.

1 For in classical prose writers cf. Hdt. I. 174. 2 where the distinction is made between Cnidus in its sheltered gulf and Triopion standing out boldly into the high seas; Thuc. 4. 26. 7 , where it was a question of the swell coming in from the main and disorganizing the patrols off Sphacteria; Plato, Tim. 24e–25a, where the Atlantic, being bounded on the far side by Atlantis, is properly (and, I think, uniquely) called , but (in contrast to the puny Mediterranean and Pontus) is described as the True Main ; the third word for sea here, in 25 d, is simply the watery element in which Atlantis foundered. So too in prose usage the adjective means ‘out at sea’ in relation to the land or to a coasting route, whereas means ‘of the Deep’.

2 I should like to thank Mr. A. H. Coxon and Mr. H. Lloyd-Jones, both of whom have kindly helped me at points in this study.