Theocritus quique feruntur bucolici Graeci by Carolus Gallavotti

Review by: W. C. Helmbold

Classical Philology, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jan., 1949), pp. 56-58
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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56 BOOK REVIEWS
the poet of the Iliad. He thinks that the
Odyssey is the work of a later poet who was in-
spired with a desire to imitate the achievement
of Homer in the Iliad but whose talents were
not really equal to the task. Here, too, Howald
feels confidence in his ability to distinguish
this poet's original contributions and his bor-
rowings from predecessors. The analytical
criticism which Howald finds a mere Spuk in
the study of the Iliad he thinks has a real place
in the study of the Odyssey. This attitude and
his relative lack of enthusiasm for the merits
of the Odyssey not only compared with the
Iliad but even compared with the old Odyssey
which it supplanted make it hard to regret
greatly that he saw no need to give it detailed
consideration.
The book has the neat, accurate printing
and the attractive format which we have
learned to expect from Swiss publications.
FREDERICK M. COMBELLACK
University of Oregon
Theocritus quique feruntur bucolici Graeci.
Edited by CAROLUS GALLAVOTTI. ("Scrip-
tores Graeci et Latini consilio Academiae
Lynceorum editi.") Rome: Typis [Regiael
Officinae Polygraphicae (La Libreria dello
Stato), 1946. Pp. lxx+331. L. 1000; bound,
L. 1200.
It is, of course, a hopeful sign that books
are beginning to come out of the chaos in which
we found-and left-Italy; the volume at
hand is well designed, beautifully printed, and
most of it adequately proofread.' The series,
which so far includes Sabbadini's Vergil, Bel-
trami's Seneca, and scarcely anything in
Greek, has produced a worthy continuation-
worthy, at least, in appearance. It would be a
pleasure to add that the book is as solid as it is
expensive and attractive; this is not, however,
the case.
Gallavotti has expended an enormous
amount of time and energy (having spared
neither "oculis vel cruribus" [p. lxiv]) in amass-
ing the readings and testimonia to adorn his
1But my copy has a bad hiatus in the apparatus
at 1. 123, and the misprint on p. lx is misleading
(VIII. 103 for V. 103). The forms "Cronertius" and
"Frankelius" look odd and would not, perhaps,. be
tolerated by many Latinists.
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apparatus; nor have his fifteen years of effort
been wasted. This Theocritus has the most
complete apparatus in print;2 yet the editor's
long years of sedentary toil among the manu-
scripts have induced a degree of confidence in
his own judgment which is almost frightening,
though, alas, it has had no terrors for him. He
tells us (p. lxviii) that few or none of his pred-
ecessors' efforts to emend the text have es-
caped his industrious vigilance; this may be
true, but the proof of it is not easy to discern,
for the degree of light-hearted independence
with which he complacently rejects so much as
a mention of dozens of the more brilliant sur-
mises of Ahrens and Valckenaer, Heinsius and
Hermann, to say nothing of a host of lesser
men, is a little disturbing.3 And in a good many
other places, though the discoveries of the cor-
rect readings in papyri or more carefully in-
vestigated manuscripts had been anticipated
in the illustrious past,4 often no mention is
made of this significant fact.
The discovery of the great papyri has revo-
lutionized the text of Theocritus, but not as
yet the judgment of his editors. Scholars, how-
ever, are not to be blamed for falling into the
trap which the ancient scrolls have neatly, as
it were, prepared for them. The dialects of
Theocritus and the other bucolic poets, since
they could never have been spoken in the pre-
cise form that our authorities give, cannot be
accurately restored (any more than we can
2 Yet one must still go to Ahrens for a number of
things which cannot be found in Gallavotti. I under-
stand that A. S. F. Gow's forthcoming commentary
(now being printed by the Cambridge University
Press) is based on the Gallavotti apparatus, which is
itself no small compliment.
3 Thus we flnd that the following interesting con-
jectures, among many others, have been ignored:
2. 11 Kiessling; 4. 34 Naber; 5. 28 Heinsius, 36 Her-
mann; 6. 38 Meineke; 7. 70 Valckenaer; 8. 56 Graefe
and Meineke; 9. 24 Adert; 11. 39 Edmonds, 49 and
60 Ahrens; 13. 69 Edmonds; 15. 30 Schwartz, 55
Ahrens, 85 Kaibel; 16. 77 Kuiper; 19. 8 Porson;
20. 39 Wilamowitz; Europa 48 Hermann. I do not
say that all these are right, not by any means; but
nearly every one of them is at least as dazzling as
most of the editor's own, which he proudly inserts
in the text. It is unfair to deceive the reader by sup-
pressing the best intellects of the past while flaunting
the somewhat inferior productions of the present,
induced, beyond a doubt, by the fortuitous plethora
of papyri recovered rather than by a superior com-
mand of the Greek language or a more inspiring fa-
miliarity with the speech of Theocritus.
4 As at 2. 10 Toup, 159 Ahrens; 10. 45 Brunck.
 BOOK REVIEWS 57
deal in complete assurance with the language thought that inspires blind confidence. A num-
of Homer or Hesiod): anomaly is as likely as ber of his other notions are of such a disarming
analogy, and neither is a certain method of re- simple-mindedness that one would not be an-
covery either as a general principle or as a noyed if the edition were either inexpensive or
touchstone in any given instance. So Gallavot- unpretentious.
ti correctly asks: "Sed quem finem huic ME,ya)Xo,qavLa OEoKprELa is not a new mala-
divinandi generi statuemus?" He continues: dy: it has broken out often in the last century.
"Rursus igitur atque rursus edico, in dialecticis Ziegler had a severe case; Wilamowitz, Cholme-
ut in ceteris rebus, quae nostra est ignorantia, ley, Edmonds, and Legrand developed more
deberi maximam manu scriptis reverentiam. than a touch; and it appears to be catching.
Neque enim omnia, quae servaverunt illi, Only Ahrens and those few humble souls who
quaeque intellegere nequimus, corrupta ha- have realized that their true duty was to their
benda sunt" (pp. li, lii). But when we turn to author, not to themselves, have escaped un-
the text, we find Gallavotti blithely printing contaminated.
his own either trifling or incredible conjectures Of recent work, which our editor either ig-
at 2. 70, 82, 153; 21. 38, 66; 23. 42, and a score nores or does not know (some of it he could not
of other places. Quae nostra est ignorantia, have seen), one must mention 1. 13: Fonten-
indeed !I rose's spirited defense of es (Calif. Stud. Class.
He tells us (p. lxix): "meas coniecturas cum Phil., XII, 217 if.); 1. 30: Hermes, LXV, 476,
raro in apparatu laudavi tum perraro in tex- is still worth considering; 1. 51: the echoes of
tum recepi." But this seems unduly modest for CQ, XXV, 90 if., 205, XXVI, 55, have appar-
an editor who has printed at least (I do not ently died away, but may be re-read with
claim more than a minimum count, and that pleasure, amazement, and profit; 2. 59 Bf.:CR,
only of the 178 pages of the Theocritus text) LVI, 109; 7. 111: CQ,XXXIV, 54; 9.3: Mnem.,
46 in the text and 33 more in the apparatus; I, 86; 13. 10: CQ, XXIV, 32; 22: CR, LVI, 11
the words raro and perraro here take on a new if.; 23. 41: CQ, VIII, 87; 24. 15: CQ, XXXVI,
and sinister significance. Not only do we have 107; 25. 164: CQ, XXXVII, 99; 26. 28: Mnem.,
one on an average of nearly every other page LIX, 316; Ep. 18. 6: CR, XLI, 168.6
(which not even Wilamowitz committed); but There is generally affectation about a pre-
of the quality I leave the reader to judge. At tense of omniscience or even at final judgment:
4.46 he prints: oLrr'W3, KvuaLa, irorl rov X6o4fov. sciolists are mountebanks. The present re-
"Post c1," he explains, "quasi exclamantis viewer must confess that he has not reflected
vocem, non appellantis, distinxit Gall.," and with equal thoroughness upon all pages of the
supports this astonishing procedure by emend- Gallavotti text; but it may, perhaps, be sig-
ing Eur. Cycl. and PSI, 1214, but adduces no nificant that he has been least satisfied where
passage which is at all parallel in sense. he was most at home.7
The climax is reached in the IIaL5LKa (29 and Yet, finally, it is not to be held against an
30), where in 72 lines our editor prints in the Italian editor that in the fearful confusion of
text no less than 15 conjectures of his own, these times he has made so many slips; the
with several further suggestions in the appa- wonder is that he has done so well.
ratus. One, and one only, of these appears to
non equidem invideo, miror magis; undique totis
merit serious attention-not a flattering per-
usque adeo turbatur agris.
centage. "Cruces autem," he says (p. lxix),
"quae dicuntur philologorum, in dubiis vel But, had he approached his bewildering task
erratis locis adpingere puduit; nam et ipsa in- with a good deal more self-distrust and a modi-
compta verba vitium declarant, et coniecturae 6 The editor's
monograph on the text tradition of
in apparatu proditae legitimam suspicionem the epigrams appeared in Riv. fil., N.S. XVIII
indicant." In less polished words, the abbrevi- (1941), 241-55; in it he has attempted to refute CP,
37-62. I am not at all satisfied that his effort
ation "Gall." is to be regarded as a signpost isXXXIII,
successful, but this is not the occasion to discuss
pointing to incompta verba; which is not a a complicated subject.
6 One asks one's self what on earth can be the 7 Meanwhile, we may take comfort in re-reading a
reason for deleting 3. 46-48. few pages of Paul Maas (Gnomon, VI, 561-64).

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58 BOOK REVIEWS
cum less pride in his achievement, he might
have accomplished far more. As it is, the text
of Theocritus is still a fertile field for the
humble, but discriminating, philologian; and
the chief merit of Gallavotti is the industry
with which he has presented new or little-
known material. The harvest may be rich, but
the workers are few.
W. C. HELMBOLD
University of California
Berkeley
Plato's Seventhand Eighth Letters. Edited with
Introduction and Notes by R. S. BLUCK.
("Pitt Press Series.") Cambridge: At the
University Press; New York: Macmillan
Co., 1947. Pp. viii+188+2 maps. $1.75.
In this book we have a notable addition to
the "Pitt Press Series" of classical texts for use
by undergraduates and sixth-form students in
British schools. In modern as in ancient times
there are some who begin the study of Plato
with the letters, but not, it seems safe to say,
if they study him in Greek; for in Plato's latest
prose there are mannerisms and difficulties that
make him anything but easy reading. This edi-
tion of the two most important epistles puts in
convenient form a mass of information and
interpretation that was formerly scattered and
not easily digested. The editor deals impartial-
ly with moot points and is well acquainted
with the historical and philosophical back-
grounds. Plato's life and the purpose and date
of the two letters are discussed in the Introduc-
tion. The notes on points of grammar call at-
tention to anomalies but presuppose more
knowledge of the rules of Greek and of specific
terminology than most American under-
graduates possess. The abbreviations 0.0. and
O.R. (oratio recta) are not explained.
In his text Bluck follows Burnet even when
a word in square brackets, or angular brackets
themselves, might well have been dropped, as
well as in a mistaken accent (rls 328c) and a
misplaced quotation mark (348c, read
"lX'arwv" with Novotny). His four pages of
critical apparatus discuss only the seventeen
places where he differs from Burnet. Of these, six
are concerned with punctuation or accent and
most of the others with the acceptance or re-
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jection of very slight emendations or variants.
At 335b 7 he and I have hit upon the same
idea of reading 71Vfor ijv, as he points out in
a footnote. I must confess that this makes the
rhythm limp. To cure the rhythm by putting
1V before aEL would be bold.
For the guidance of future editors, I am
moved to make some comments that must not
be construed as censure of Mr. Bluck, for the
editor of a school edition can hardly be ex-
pected to pursue textual questions to the bitter
end. For the marginalia of 0 it is necessary to
consult W. C. Greene's edition of the scholia
of Plato ("Philological Monographs of the
American Philological Association," No. 8:
Scholia Platonica), since they are not fully
recorded elsewhere. From my monograph, The
Vatican Plato and Its Relations, which is No. 4
in the same series, it appears that for the
Epistles 0 is a copy of A and that all other
manuscripts derive from A or 0. The correc-
tions and marginal notes, which are more nu-
merous in 0 than in A, prove that careful edi-
tors were at work at a time when other manu-
scripts were extant. Bluck is at fault in sup-
posing that a marginal reading so cited has less
authority than the reading of an extant manu-
script. An editor deliberately citing a manu-
script is not so likely to make a mistake as a
scribe. A good manuscript of an author like
Plato owes its excellence to the same causes that
make a modern printed text good. Both must
be the product of collation and careful editing.
Except for editing, scribal errors would ac-
cumulate indefinitely. At 328b 5 the omission
of 7Oosis a scribal error corrected in the mar-
gins of A and 0. At 332d 3 the reading of the
patriarch's manuscript as cited in 0 has the
best possible authority, though Bluck thinks
little of it. At 339b 7 Bluck rightly accepts the
reading of 0, though he could not know, since
no editor has told him, that there is at this
point an erasure in A, which must originally
have had the same reading as its copy 0. In
such cases 0 has authority, but not when A
shows no erasure, as at 347b 3. Here O's
uWro0alvovra, good as it seems, is a mere scribal
error. Bluck has missed the opportunity to be
the first to adopt the correct reading, airEjufa1-
voovra,from the correctors of A and 0. Lexi-