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Notes on the Natvrales Qvaestiones of Seneca

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. W. Garrod
H. W. Garrod
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford.
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Extract

A New text of the Naturales Quaestiones, prepared by A. Gercke, was issued by the Teubner Press in 1907. Thirteen years earlier Gercke had, in his Seneca-Studien, prepared the way for a new recension by an elaborate classification of the MSS. An Appendix to the Seneca-Studien is the Studia Annaeana (1900), now unfortunately out of print. These works are an indispensable introduction to the study of the text; and they have cost their author an amount of labour which it would be ungracious to utilize, as I propose to utilize it, without very ample recognition. In what follows I shall be largely occupied in criticizing Gercke. I wish, therefore, to begin by allowing the immense debt under which he has put all students of the Naturales Quaestiones.His classification of the MSS. is in itself a fine achievement, and not, I conceive, likely to be challenged. Gercke has, moreover, a very fair perception of the relative merits of his numerous MSS. He has, for example, done excellent service in exposing the inferior character of what used to be regarded as our primary authority for the text, the Berlin MS. E. He cherishes, again, no delusions about the rather perplexing Geneva MS. Z. He has rightly called attention to the paramount importance of the Paris MS. H. I fancy, indeed, that if he and I were to place the codices which he enumerates in an order of merit there would not be any great disagreement between us. I differ from Gercke, in fact, not upon the question which MSS. are the best, but upon the hardly less important question which are essential for criticism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , October 1914 , pp. 272 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1914

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References

1 I, I, 15 coire Λ, ire Φ; I, 5, 5 reddunt Λ, reddant Φ. ib. unaquaqueΛΛ, unaquaequeΦ.I, 5, 7 reliquΛ, aliquaΦ, I, 6, 1 quod Λ, quo Φ ib. poterunt Λ, potuerunt Φ. I, II, I quid eas uocem Λ, quid eas Φ. I, I3, I uera Λ, a uero Φ. I, I3, 3 autem Λ, enim Φ. I, I4, 4 transilit Λ, transtulit Φ. I, I5, 2 diminutionem Λ, re (-de corr.) minutionem Φ. I, I5, 7 speculis Λ, populis Φ (not unimpressive: the rest of the sentence re-written by an interpolator, however. in Λ !). ib. exciperentur Λ, erip(recip- corr.) erentur Φ. Praef. 8 and I, I5, 4 I omit since there the advantage lies wholly with Φ. (I, I5 4, indeed, Gercke must be supposed to have in-cluded by an accident.)

2 He cites nothing from Books ii.-vii.; but itwould not, I think, help him much if he did, though he could easily have found more con-vincing passages.

1 Mainly because the omissions in Φ look as though they might easily be explained as due to haplograohy.

1 At 258, 24 the symbol ⊙ = Sol has been lost before the first letter of obumbratur (Skutsch).