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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2012
In 1993 Michael Winterbottom remarked that we have reached ‘what may be the last decades of the systematic editing of classical texts’. If he was right, what has been dwindling: capacity, interest, scope, or confidence?
When editors' prefaces include such Latin as ‘ad huius operis finem … longdudum exspectatum’ (1983), ‘non solum hominibus, sed ne libris quidem non pepercit’ (1991, of the War), ‘ex Italia, ut Munk Olsen videtur, ortus’ (1997), or ‘latet uel peritus’ (1997, of an untraced manuscript), it is tempting to blame incapacity, and to blame that in turn on a decline of interest in Latin and more narrowly in textual criticism. Not just a laudator temporis acti se puero could document the decline by looking at statistics and syllabuses; but there would be widespread agreement that in so far as textual criticism has given way to greater concern with content its proportional decline is no bad thing. Relevant too, some would say, is the decline of composition; but I am not convinced by either the obvious or the deeper reason that they give. Obviously, a preface should not be the first thing, or the first thing for thirty years, that the editor composes in Latin. Need it be, though? Lloyd-Jones and Wilson chose English in their O.C.T. of Sophocles (1990), and Green has now followed their example in a Latin O.C.T., his very handy editio minor of Ausonius (1999). Anyone who takes the view expressed to me by a distinguished German Latinist, that by abandoning Latin in prefaces one cuts off the branch that one is sitting on, should answer Merkelbach's charge that the policy of writing the notes in Latin has held up Inscriptiones Graecae. At a deeper level, composing in a language is said to be the best way of learning it; but surely reading large amounts of it observantly is just as good or better, unless the distinction between active and passive knowledge of a language holds only for the modern languages that one reads comfortably and sometimes makes a pitiful attempt to speak. Even without mystical claims for the value of composition, declining knowledge of Latin is quite enough of a threat to editing.
1 CR 107 (1993), 431Google Scholar.
2 These examples come from editions published since Reynolds, L. D. (ed.), Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar, which I take as my starting point. I shall dispense with details of works mentioned there, and I have not aimed at completeness. Works that I cite without title are all reviews.
3 ‘Quinquennalia der neuen Inscriptiones Graecae’, ZPE 114 (1996), 299–300Google Scholar; ‘Überlegungen zur Fortführung der Inscriptiones Graecae’, ZPE 117 (1997), 297–303Google Scholar, at 297.
4 Reynolds, L. D. and Wilson, N. G., Scribes & Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek & Latin Literature (Oxford, 1st edn, 1968Google Scholar; 2nd edn, 1974; 3rd edn, 1991).
5 Lunelli, A. (trans.), Testo e metodo (Rome, 1995)Google Scholar.
6 ‘L'édition de la littérature latine classique’, in Hamesse, J. (ed.), Les problèmes posés par l'édition critique des textes anciens et médiévaux (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1992), 1–56Google Scholar = ‘Classical Latin literature’, in Greetham, D. C. (ed.), Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research (New York, 1995), 95–148Google Scholar; ‘Textkritik und Editionstechnik’, in Graf, F. (ed.), Einleitung in die lateinische Philologie (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1997), 51–73Google Scholar. West, M. L., Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique Applicable to Greek and Latin Texts (Stuttgart, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, remains the latest manual in English; Timpanaro, S., ‘Recentiores e deteriores, codices descripti e codices inutiles’, Filologia e Critica 10 (1985), 164–92Google Scholar, at 171 n. 6, says that it ‘alterna idee originali e formulazioni didatticamente molto efficaci a parti deboli e molto discutibili’, but so far as I know he has not elaborated.
7 Editing Texts / Texte edieren (Göttingen, 1998)Google Scholar; Filologia classica e filologia romanza: esperienze ecdotiche a confronto (Spoleto, 1998)Google Scholar.
8 Robinson, P. M. W., ‘Collate: a program for interactive collation of large textual traditions’, Research in Humanities Computing 3 (1995), 32–45Google Scholar, and ‘Redefining critical editions’, in Landow, G. P. and Delany, P. (eds), The Digital Word: Text-based Computing in the Humanities (Cambridge Mass., 1993), 271–91Google Scholar; Greetham, D. C., Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (New York & London, 1994), 357–61Google Scholar. Besides Research in Humanities Computing (1991–), articles on editing can be found in Literary and Linguistic Computing (1986–).
9 L'étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles (Paris, 1982–1989Google Scholar), supplemented in RHT 21 (1990, 37–76Google Scholar; 24 (1994), 199–249; 27 (1997), 29–85.
10 Bravo, B. and Griffin, M. T., ‘Un frammento del libro XI di Tito Livio?’, Athenaeum 66 (1988), 447–521Google Scholar.
11 ‘From Ausonius' schooldays? A schoolbook and its relatives’, JRS 72 (1982), 83–125Google Scholar.
12 ‘Un nuovo testo di Marziano Capella: la metrica’, RFIC 118 (1990), 129–44Google Scholar.
13 ‘Tiberius Claudius Donatus on Virgil Aen. 6.1–157’, Manuscripta 37 (1993), 3–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 M. D. Reeve, ‘Shared innovations, dichotomies, and evolution’, in Esperienze ecdotiche, op. cit. (n. 7), 445–505, at 450–69.
15 Two complementary studies: Hutchinson, G. O., ‘Rhythm, style, and meaning in Cicero's prose’, CQ 89 (1995), 485–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Orlandi, G., ‘Le statistiche sulle clausole della prosa. Problemi e proposte’, Filologia Mediolatina 5 (1998), 1–35Google Scholar.
16 ‘Further on editing Rabbinic texts’, forthcoming in the Jewish Quarterly Review 90.
17 See M. De Nonno, ‘Testi greci e latini in movimento: riflessi nella tradizione manoscritta e nella prassi editoriale’, in Esperienze ecdotiche, op. cit. (n. 7), 221–39.
18 La genesi del metodo del Lachmann (1st edn, Florence, 1963; 2nd edn, Padua 1981, ‘corretta con alcune aggiunte’, 1985), ch. VIII.
19 ‘A problem of method in the history of texts and its implications for the manuscript tradition of Terence’, RHT 26 (1996), 269–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 I have long been saying, for instance, that my worst contribution to Texts and Transmission, op. cit. (n. 2), was my talk of an archetype for Terence (p. 413).
21 Reeve, M. D., ‘Eliminatio codicum descriptorum: a methodological problem’, in Grant, J. N. (ed.), Editing Greek and Latin Texts (New York, 1989), 1–35Google Scholar.
22 Besides many of the contributions to Esperienze ecdotiche, op. cit. (n. 7), see three acute and well documented articles by Orlandi, G.: ‘Problemi di ecdotica alto-medioevale’, in Simonetti, M. (ed.), La cultura in Italia fra tardo antico e alto medioevo (Rome, 1981), I, 333–56Google Scholar; ‘Perché non possiamo non dirci lachmanniani’, Filologia Mediolatina 2 (1995), 1–42Google Scholar; ‘Recensio e apparato critico’, ibid. 4 (1997), 1–41.
23 See the footnotes on her list of manuscripts in ‘La transmission du De astronomia d'Hygin jusqu'au XIIIe siècle’, RHT 11 (1981), 159–276Google Scholar, at 163–77.
24 Informatique et classement des manuscrits: essai méthodologique sur le de astronomia d'Hygin (Brussels, 1986), for instance pp. 18, 53, 93Google Scholar.
25 Hübner, W., Gnomon 67 (1995), 322Google Scholar (‘Es sollte nicht zur Regel werden, daß Kenntnisse in Informatik auf Kosten der Beherrschung der lateinischen Sprache erworben werden’). Though directed at her preface, the comment might equally well have been directed at her text, as I intend to show elsewhere.
26 ‘Redefining critical editions’, op. cit. (n. 8), 283; with O'Hara, R. J., ‘Cladistic analysis of an Old Norse manuscript tradition’, Research in Humanities Computing 4 (1996), 115–37Google Scholar.
27 Barbrook, A. C., Howe, C. J., Blake, N., and Robinson, P., ‘The phylogeny of The Canterbury Tales’, Nature 394 (1998), 839CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Evolutionary biology unlocks the secrets of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales’, University of Cambridge press releases 26 August 1998; Der Spiegel 53 (1998), 151Google Scholar; The Times 27 August 1998, p. 6.
28 Reeve, op. cit. (n. 14), at 450–73. On the previous point see 474–83.
29 I learn from the University of Cambridge Newsletter for February–March 2000, p. 13, that the same team has received a grant of £ 102,000 from the Leverhulme Trust for extending its work to the Divina commedia and the Greek New Testament.
30 C.Phil. 81 (1986), 62–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 76, 78.
31 In late Antiquity the editorial problems become more serious. See for instance Orlandi, G., ‘Un dilemma editoriale: ortografia e morfologia nelle Historiae di Gregorio di Tours’, Filologia Mediolatina 3 (1996), 35–71Google Scholar; Coleman, R., ‘Vulgarism and normalization in the text of Regula Sancti Benedicti’, in Petersmann, H. and Kettemann, R. (eds), Latin vulgaire — latin tardif V (Heidelberg, 1999), 345–56Google Scholar.
32 Davies, M. C., ‘Humanism in script and print in the fifteenth century’, in Kraye, Jill (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge, 1996), 47–62, at 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 The contributors to Most, G. W. (ed.), Collecting Fragments / Fragmente sammeln (Göttingen, 1997)Google Scholar, largely discuss Greek topics.
34 Lapidge, M., ‘The edition of medieval Latin texts in the English-speaking world’, Sacris Erudiri 38 (1998–1999), 199–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 219.
35 ‘The transmission of Florus and the Periochae again’, CQ 85 (1991), 453–83Google Scholar. I concluded that the four-book tradition, carried by all the direct witnesses except B, is adequately represented by N, P, and a choice of three others, which might even be reduced to one.
36 I share the reactions of Ehlers, W.-W., Gnomon 68 (1996), 120–3Google Scholar.
37 Schmidt, P. L., ‘Die Überlieferungsgeschichte von Claudians Carmina maiora’, ICS 14 (1989), 391–415Google Scholar, reinstates genealogy.
38 ‘L'infraction et la norme’, in Esperienze ecdotiche, op, cit. (n. 7), 313–23, at 315.
39 ‘Congetturare sì, ma con cautela’, in Esperienze ecdotiche, op. cit. (n. 7), 267–80, at 275.
40 See Anon., , ‘Zitierfähigkeit der Ausgabe eines antiken Autors’, Gnomon 57 (1985), 495–6Google Scholar. Hübner, W., Gnomon 61 (1989), 591Google Scholar n. 6, identifies the author as D. Krömer of the Thesaurus.
41 Lapidge, op. cit. (n. 34), surveys the main series of medieval Latin texts published in the English-speaking world and goes on to discuss aims and audiences.
42 Courtney, E., CR 113 (1999), 399Google Scholar, speaks of ‘colossal incompetence’. In the same issue, p. 411, P. K. Marshall calls Boriaud's Fabulae of Hyginus (1997) ‘a disaster’.
43 Gnomon 69 (1997), 508–13Google Scholar.
44 ‘Liberman's edition’ say Delz, J. and Watt, W. S., Mus. Helv. 55 (1998), 131Google Scholar n. *, ‘marks an important advance both in the presentation of the manuscript evidence and in the establishment of the text; the notes appended to it constitute a valuable critical commentary’.
45 I ought to have checked it before repeating under ‘subscriptions’ in the OCD (3rd edn, 1996), 1450–1Google Scholar, that one Caecilius revised the text.
46 RFIC 117 (1989), 365–82Google Scholar, at 375.
47 Add, however, his article ‘Nuovi testimoni scriboniani tra tardo antico e medioevo’, RFIC 123 (1995), 278–319Google Scholar.
48 ‘Editorial opportunities and obligations’, RFIC 123 (1995), 479–99Google Scholar; ‘Notes on Vegetius’, PCPS n.s. 44 (1998), 182–218Google Scholar.
49 I could say more about recent editions of Livy, not all of them mentioned here, but I have discussed the transmission of Books 21–40 in four articles, of which the latest and simplest is ‘The Vetus Carnotensis unmasked’, in Diggle, J., Hall, J. B., and Jocelyn, H. D. (eds), Studies in Latin Literature and its Tradition in Honour of C. O. Brink, PCPS Suppl. 15 (1989), 97–112Google Scholar, and the transmission of Books 1–10 in four others, best used now as footnotes on Oakley's discussion (mentioned above). See also CR 102 (1988), 42–9Google Scholar, where he reviewed Walsh's Teubner edition of Books 28–30.
50 She prepared the ground with La tradizione manoscritta della Pro Cluentio di Cicerone (Genoa, 1979)Google Scholar and Catalogo dei codici della Pro Cluentio ciceroniana (Genoa, 1983)Google Scholar.
51 Winterbottom, M., CR 107 (1993), 177Google Scholar. His collected reviews would serve in themselves as a manual of editing.
52 See, for instance, De Nonno, M., ‘Nuovi apporti alla tradizione indiretta di Sallustio, Lucilio, Pacuvio e Ennio’, RFIC 121 (1993), 5–23Google Scholar.
53 ‘L'Anonymus Bobiensis e la riforma dell'edizione dei grammatici’, RFIC 113 (1985), 366–79Google Scholar.
54 ‘Latin grammar for Greeks and Goths’, JRS 74 (1984), 202–8Google Scholar.
55 ‘The manuscripts of Cicero's De oratore: E is a descendant of A’, CQ 90 (1996), 183–95Google Scholar.
56 His publications up to 1984 are listed by Mirella Ferrari in Avesani, R. et al. (eds), Vestigia: studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich (Rome, 1984), I, xxi–xxxvGoogle Scholar. Those more recent have mainly appeared in Italia Medioevale e Umanistica and Studi Petrarcheschi.
57 The most substantial of her many publications since The Handwriting of Italian Humanists I.i (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar is ‘New research on humanistic scribes in Florence’, in Garzelli, A., Miniatura fiorentina del Rinascimento 1440–1525: un primo censimento, Indici e cataloghi toscani 18–19 (1985), I, 393–600Google Scholar.
58 ‘Un'editio umanistica dei Panegyrici latini minores: il codice Vaticano lat. 1775 (W) e il suo correttore (w)’, in Belloni, L., Milanese, G., and Porro, A. (eds), Studia classica Iohanni Tarditi oblata (Milan, 1995), 1313–25Google Scholar.
59 Titel und Text: zur Entwicklung lateinischer Gedichtüberschriften, mit Untersuchungen zu lateinischen Buchtiteln, Inhaltsverzeichnissen und anderen Gliederungsmitteln (Berlin and New York, 1999)Google Scholar.
60 The latest contribution that I have seen is Brink, C. O., ‘A bipartite stemma of Tacitus's Dialogus de oratoribus and some transmitted variants’, ZPE 102 (1994), 131–52Google Scholar.
61 See Lapidge's, M. editorial ‘Foreword’ to the pieces assembled as Lindsay, W. M., Studies in Early Mediaeval Latin Glossaries (Aldershot, 1996)Google Scholar.