Aristophanis Fabulae, vol. I

32 Pages·2007·0.3 MB·Greek

by  Nigel G. Wilson

SCRIPTORVM CLASSICORVM
BIBLIOTHECA OXONIENSIS
OXONII
E TYPOGRAPHEO CLARENDONIANO
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ARISTOPHANIS
FABVLAE
RECOGNOVIT
BREVIQVE ADNOTATIONE CRITICA INSTRVXIT
N. G. WILSON
COLLEGII LINCOLNIENSIS APVD OXONIENSES SOCIVS
TOMVS I
ACHARNENSES EQVITES NVBES
VESPAE PAX AVES
OXONII
E TYPOGRAPHEO CLARENDONIANO
MMVII
3
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PREFACE
This edition does not aspire to be the definitive text of Aristophanes.
There are in fact very few classical authors of whom it can be said that a
definitive edition exists or may be expected. But I am confident that
what is now offered to Hellenists is a useful step forward.
For a somewhat more detailed account of the manuscript tradition
than I give here the reader is referred to the introduction of the volume
which is being issued in conjunction with this edition, Aristophanea
(Oxford, 2007), 1–14; I summarize here what seems to me to be the
essential information.
There are quite a large number of fragments surviving from papyrus
and parchment copies made in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial
periods. Although a few of them have produced an occasional good
reading, none of them is of truly outstanding importance for the consti-
tution of the text. Of the medieval manuscripts only R (Ravenna,
Biblioteca Classense 429), from the middle of the tenth century, pre-
serves all eleven plays. Despite many slips by the copyist it offers a text of
high quality. Next to it in importance is V (Venice, Biblioteca Marciana
gr. 474), from the end of the eleventh century. Though its text is
excellent it lacks Acharnians, Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, and
Ecclesiazusae. The only other surviving witnesses of any note from the
period that was brought to an end by the sack of Constantinople by the
Crusaders in 1204 are K (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana C 222 inf.),
written c.1180–86, which includes only Plutus,Clouds, and Frogs(the so-
called triad), and Md1 (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional 4683), probably of
much the same date, which offers an incomplete text of the same three
plays and part of Knights, the latter not written by the original scribe.
Neither is as important as the relatively early date might suggest. From
the fourteenth century there are a few manuscripts that contain at least
Θ
one play from outside the triad and are usually cited by editors:
(Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Conventi Soppressi 140,
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PREFACE
triad and Knights), U (Vaticanus Urbinas gr. 141, triad and Birds), M
(Biblioteca Ambrosiana L 39 sup., triad and Knights), E (Modena, Biblio-
teca Estense, 127 = α.U.5.10, triad, Knights, Birds and Acharnians), Γ
(Florence, Laurentianus 31.15+Leiden, Vossianus gr. F 52,Knights,Birds,
Acharnians,Ecclesiazusae,Lysistrata, and Peace), and A (Paris, Bibliothèque
nationale de France, grec 2712, triad, Knights, Birds, Acharnians, and
Ecclesiazusae 1–444). However, if these manuscripts had not come down
to us, the editor’s task would not have been significantly more difficult.
The medieval editor Demetrius Triclinius, active c.1320, produced his
own recension of eight plays, in which he was able to effect numerous
minor corrections of metrical faults in the text. His work is best repre-
sented in the fifteenth-century copy L (Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Holkham gr. 88). Other manuscripts need to be cited occasionally for
interesting readings. Most notable is B (Paris, grec 2715), now known to
have been written by an intelligent Greek refugee, Andronicus Callistus,
who lived in Italy from 1441. Its good readings are quite likely to be his
own conjectures.
The principles on which this edition is based can be indicated briefly as
follows.
(i) As far as the papyri are concerned I have accepted the reports of
their readings from the original publications and have not made my
own fresh collation.
(ii) With regard to the medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, I
have usually accepted published reports of their readings as valid; but it
did seem worth while to verify a considerable number of variants that
aroused suspicion or curiosity. In a number of cases I have been able to
give a more accurate statement; even the Ravenna manuscript, which
can be easily consulted in the facsimile and is not written in a difficult
hand, had not been correctly reported in all passages. One should also
note that there is no modern edition of the Plutus based on a full
examination of the manuscript tradition, which is richer for that play
than for any other. It is therefore possible that further investigations into
the manuscripts would reveal that late Byzantine or Italian humanists
anticipated some of the simpler conjectures made by later scholars. I
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PREFACE
decided that it was worth while collating the text of this play in K
(Biblioteca Ambrosiana C 222 inf.) but I did not feel it appropriate to
invest the large amount of time needed for a full inquiry into other,
much more recent, witnesses. The likelihood of obtaining significant
results was small and the inevitable further delay in publishing this
edition seemed a high price to pay. In the matter of sigla there is one
point I should draw attention to: I use P to refer to papyri, and so
some of the lesser manuscripts in the Paris collection are indicated by
Par.
(iii) I have been sparing in my citations of the secondary tradition.
Apart from the Suda lexicon, which contains a very large number of
quotations from the plays and demonstrates by its variant readings that
it drew on a copy extremely similar to the Ravenna manuscript, there
are not many ancient or medieval citations that help the editor. Many
testimonia to single words or phrases are of dubious value, because
they merely confirm that the words in question had become tags for
writers of Atticist Kunstprosain late antiquity or the Byzantine period,
and one cannot feel much confidence that these writers were con-
scious in every case of the identity of the source they were drawing
on.
(iv) Questions of orthography cause editors difficulty. When the
evidence of inscriptions seems particularly compelling I have accepted
it. I am not sure how much weight to give to rules stated by Atticist
lexicographers such as Moeris. It may be that attempts to formulate
rules for every word are doomed to failure. In particular I note Sir
Kenneth Dover’s remark on Clouds92‘Possibly Attic was not consist-
ent.’ It is notorious that English orthography was far from fixed in early
times.
(v) A kindred question concerns usage. A prima facie example of
inconsistency or at least of fluidity of usage, is seen at Thesmophoriazusae
570. There Aristophanes appears to use the strong aorist of χ(cid:5)ζω,
whereas at Ecclesiazusae 808 we find the weak form. I think it unwise to
assume that inconsistency or gradual and perhaps conscious change of
usage cannot have occurred. This does of course conflict with the
(cid:9)Οµηρον (cid:14)ξ (cid:16)Οµ(cid:17)ρου (cid:19)αφην(cid:21)ζειν
well-known and valuable maxim .
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PREFACE
(vi) The apparatus criticus deliberately excludes mention of the
way in which the manuscripts attribute lines to speakers. Commenta-
tors are still far too inclined to give weight to the evidence of the
manuscripts in these matters. Ratio et res ipsa must be the basis for
decisions.
(vii) The apparatus records a fair number of conjectures because I
believe that there are many places where the text is not quite as certain
as is generally assumed. Since no one has taken the trouble to compile
a repertory of conjectures on the text of this author, it is almost
inevitable that some good ideas have escaped my notice, and that
some which I do record were made earlier than is stated in this
edition. As in the Oxford Classical Text of Sophocles the name of
Blaydes appears surprisingly often. Although I was brought up to
despise him, in recent years I have been obliged to recant; there is no
doubt in my mind that a modest percentage of his suggestions are
correct and many others deserve consideration. There is one other
respect in which my experience of editing the text of tragedy has been
repeated. When Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones and I set out to edit Sophocles
our intention was to offer a better choice of readings in difficult
passages and we did not expect to make many fresh conjectures. That
was my original plan for Aristophanes; but the reader will find a
number of my own proposals, some in the text itself. I have tried to
strike a balance between the conservatism that attributes inexcusably
careless writing to great authors and the opposite extreme of believing
that texts need surgery every few lines. Critics who adopt a conserva-
tive approach do not allow for the deterioration of texts that was
inevitable in the period of almost two thousand years when all copies
had to be made by hand; such critics underestimate the difficulty of
producing truly accurate copies and consequently run the risk of
imputing to the leading writers of antiquity a mediocrity of intel-
lectual and stylistic standards which cannot be reconciled with their
status as classics. But I recognise that when so many textual matters
have to be discussed it is impossible to achieve consensus on all
points.
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PREFACE
It is a pleasure to acknowledge extremely valuable help of various
kinds that I have received from Professor Colin Austin, Dr Leofranc
Holford-Strevens, Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Dr Christos Simelidis, and
Professor Alan Sommerstein.
N.G.W.
Oxford
December2005
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