Category: Manuscripts

Chapter titles in the first printed edition of Tertullian’s Apologeticum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still turning photocopies into PDF’s.  Today I reached a photocopy of an incunabulum of Tertullian’s Apologeticum, which I scanned and have uploaded to Archive.org here.

Very early printed books, produced before 1500, are known as incunabula from the Latin “in the cradle.”  Early ones are essentially facsimiles of the manuscripts from which they were copied.  The first printers simply did what the scribes were doing, but did it with moveable type.  In fact some early printed texts were mistaken for manuscripts written by a very regular scribe.

These early books can be very useful, since the manuscript — usually just one! — that the printer had often no longer exists.  On the other hand, they usually just used whatever copy was to hand and easy to read.  This was usually a late copy, made recently, and cheaply available, so the quality could be poor.

As we all know, manuscripts tended to have decorated initial letters at the start of chapters.  These were works of art, added after the text was written, and the copyists left room for them, indicating what letter of the alphabet was required.  Not a few manuscripts failed to get the initial added.  Early printed books did the same, and a few were even illuminated.  This Tertullian was not:

Extract from Tertullian incunabulum with chapter title and missing initial

The medieval chapter divisions and titles were faithfully copied also.  Here we have one of them — “De Saturno & Iove” — for chapter 10.  But the text does not give chapter titles for chapters 2, 3, 6 and 8 (as you can see if you look at it).  This means, I  think, that they are not the product of the work of the printer, but copied from the manuscript he used, where some of the titles (but not the division) had dropped out.  These would be written in red in a manuscript, but of course in a printed book are just in ordinary black text.

The incunabulum also has a “table of contents” at the front, listing the chapters.  It would be most interesting to know whether the printer compiled this or copied it.  I have never seen a manuscript with such a table, myself.  My guess would be that he compiled it from the chapter titles in the text as it was.  The fact that it lists the titles, and simply gives “De ignorantia   caput primum, ii & iii.” suggests to me that he knew titles were missing, didn’t invent some — he was little more than a glorified copyist — and just gave what was there.

Later medieval Latin texts often have these short “capituli” inserted into spaces, just as we see above.  The editions rarely record them, so it is difficult for us to know which manuscripts have them, and whether they vary.  Until this work is done — a work that will get easier as manuscripts come online — then it is hard to say whether they are medieval additions, as has always been presumed, or more ancient.

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Bergk (1872) on chapter titles and divisions in ancient writers

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Bergk is the second author quoted as an authority on the history of scholarship in this area.  He writes so long ago that he uses “Capiteln” rather than “Kapiteln”!  But I think it is interesting to see what this foundational author on the subject actually says.

I have scanned and corrected his text.  Since I did not understand some of the German (and didn’t understand ‘Musterstürke’!), I will give that first, and then my English translation.  I have omitted the Greek text of Polybius quoted, purely because I cannot bring myself to type it in.

After a discussion of writers who give the number of lines of their works (Theopompus, Josephus), Bergk begins p.132 with the heading “Inhaltsangaben” (“Content information”) and proceeds as follows:

Später war es ganz gewöhnlich, einer  Schrift oder jedem einzelnen Buche eines grösseren Werkes eine summarische Uebersicht vorauszuschicken oder auch den Inhalt der einzelnen Abschnitte in Randbemerkungen oder Ueberschriften kurz zusammenzufassen und so für die Bequemlichkeit der Leser zu sorgen.  Polybius hatte dies im Anfange seines Geschichtswerkes regelmässig getan, später, weil er wahrnahm, dass die Abschreiber  diese Summarien geringschätzig behandelten und aus Bequemlichkeit meist wegliessen, zog er es vor, die einleitende Uebersicht mit der Darstellung selbst zu verbinden, um sie so gegen die Willkür der Schreiber zu schützen. [124] So hat auch Diodor solche Inhaltsangaben selbst hinzugefügt, die für die Kritik nicht unwichtig sind, wahrscheinlich auch Athenäus, während sie anderwärts von fremder Hand herrühren mögen; bei nachgelassenen Schriften mag der Herausgeber dafür Sorge getragen haben. [125] Wie gedankenlos und nachlässig die Abschreiber mit der Ueberlieferung verfuhren, erkennt man aus der kleinen, gewöhnlich dem Aristoteles zugeschriebenen Abhandlung über die Eleatischen Philosophen; hier war offenbar in der Ueberschrift jedes Abschnittes der Name des betreffenden Philosophen von dem Verfasser selbst hinzugefügt; diese Ueberschriften wurden später als entbehrlich weggelassen, und da der Verfasser die Gewohnheit hat, der Kürze halber im Texte selbst niemals den Namen des Philosophen, dessen System er kritisirt, zu nennen, entstand eine heillose Verwirrung, indem spätere Abschreiber nach Gutdünken die unentbehrlichen Ueberschriften ergänzten. Indem man den Inhalt der einzelnen Abschnitte kurz angab, bildete sich ganz von selbst die Eintheilung der Bücher in Capitel, [126] die wir besonders in gelehrten Arbeiten und Sammelwerken antreffen, wo die einzelnen Abschnitte lose an einander gereiht waren. Auch pflegte man wohl die Quellen, die man benutzt hatte, anzugeben, wie z. B. Parthenius in seinen erotischen Erzählungen, wo die neuere Kritik mit Unrecht Anstoss genommen hat, und Antoninus Liberalis in seinen Metamorphosen.

124. Vielleicht fügte er aber auch hier noch die prographai\ hinzu, denn die Worte des Polybius XI, I sind nicht ganz klar: … hin ist entweder ou) mo/non prographaj zu lesen, oder kai\ hinter a)lla\ zu tilgen. Dass die Sitte der prographai\ bei den Historikern vor Polybius allgemein üblich war, geht alls diesen Worten klar hervor; Polybius hatte dies Verfahren in den ersten fünf (zehn!) Büchern, wie er sagt, beobachtet, aber seine Klage über die Nachlässigkeit der Abschreiber ist nur zu begründet, es hat sich davon keine Spur erhalten. Die Neueren behandeln diese für das Verständniss sehr dienlichen Summarien und Randschriften meist zu geringschätzig, ja aus Hyperkritik hat man dieselben sogar da, wo sie handschriftlich erhalten sind, getilgt.

125. So rühren im Lucrez die Randschriften wahrscheinlich von Cicero her.

126. Denn kephalaion bedeutet ja eben die summarische Angabe des Inhaltes, welche am Rande vermerkt war. Kephalaia oder tmh/mata werden namentlich bei den Erklärern des Aristoteles sowie des Hippokrates (Schol. Hippocr. Dietz 11, 3), dann auch bei Photius in der Bibliothek erwähnt. Ebenso bei den Lateinern, Symmach. Ep. X, 27 citirt: Seneca lib. IV de benef. cap. XI. Cassiodor Arithm. I: Josephus in libro I antiquitatum titulo IX. In der alten c1assischen Zeit sind dagegen kephalaia Musterstürke, die man aus den classischen Schriftstellern auswählt, Plato Leg. VII, 810.

Which I render as:

Later, it was quite common to precede a text, or any single book of a larger work, with a summary overview, or also to summarise briefly the contents of each section in marginal notes or headings, and thus to provide for the convenience of the reader.  Polybius did this systematically at the beginning of his historical work, but later, because he perceived that the copyist of these summaries treated them with disdain and often omitted them for convenience, he preferred to link the introductory overview with the full text itself, thereby to protect against the whims of the transcriber. [124] So likewise Diodorus added himself such content information, which is not unimportant for critical studies, and probably Athenaeus also, although these may also derive from a alien hand; in posthumous works the editors may have taken on this task. [125] How thoughtlessly and carelessly the copyist proceeded with the transmission, is evident from the small treatise, usually attributed to Aristotle, on the Eleatic philosophers; here there was obviously in the heading of each section, the name of the philosopher, added by the author himself; these titles were later dropped as unnecessary, and since the author has the habit of brevity, half the time the name of the philosopher whose system he criticizes is not named, leaving a hopeless confusion, which was supplemented at will by later copyists with the indispensable headings. By indicating the contents of each section, the division of books into chapters arose automatically, [126] which we find especially in scholarly works and compilations, where the individual sections were loosely linked to one another. Also they were probably used to indicate the sources that had been used, as in e.g. Parthenius in his erotic stories, where more recent critical studies have wrongly objected to them, and Antoninus Liberalis in his Metamorphoses.

124.  Perhaps he also added the prographai, for the words of Polybius XI, 1, are not quite clear: … either we should read ou) mo/non prographaj or place kai\ behind a)lla\. That the custom of prographai was common among the historians before Polybius is clear from these words; Polybius had observed the custom in his first five (ten!) books, as he says, but his complaint about the negligence of the copyists is only too well founded, and his manuscripts retain no trace of them.  Modern writers mostly disdain these summaries and marginal notes, which are very important for understanding, indeed treated them with hypercriticism, even when they are preserved in the manuscripts.

125.  Thus the marginal notes in Lucretius are probably due to Cicero.

126.  Because kephalaion means equally the summary indication of contents, which were noted in the margin.  Kephalaia or tmh/mata were mentioned in the commentators on Aristotle and Hippocrates (Schol. Hippoc. ed. Dietz, 11, 3), and also by Photius in the Bibliotheca. Likewise among the Latin writers, Symmach.  Ep.  X, 27 cites:  Seneca lib.  IV  de benef. cap.  XI.  Cassiodorus  Arithm.  I:  Josephus in libro I  antiquitatum titulo IX.  In earlier classical times ‘Musterstürke’ (?) are against kephalaia, which are selected from classical writers, Plato Leg. VII, 810.

Bergk then goes on to discuss paragraphs as an aid to understanding.  And that is all he says about capituli.

The point about marginal headings to indicate content brought to mind the Medici manuscript of Tacitus’ Annals.  This I know contains one or two words in the margin against various bits.  Famously there is such a note against Annals 15:44, reading simply ‘Christianos’.  This would be a medieval example of an ancient practice.  I doubt that Tacitus composed that note, however!  But it could be ancient, if Bergk is right.

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Cyril of Alexandria and chapter divisions in the “Glaphyra”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Matthew Crawford has kindly pointed out a passage by Cyril of Alexandria discussing chapter divisions.  This passage is new to me.  It may be found in his commentary on the Old Testament, in the preface to the Glaphyra in Genesim.  This is online in PG 69, col. 16.  I don’t know a lot of Greek, and find Migne’s Greek difficult to use.  But the Latin translation he supplies says:

Sciendum vero etiam hoc, quod cum De adoratione et cultu in spiritu et veritate XVII libros scripserimus, multamque in illis contemplationem copiam complexi simus, capita huic operi inserta certo consilio praetermisimus, et inexaminata reliquimus: tamenetsi interdum accidit ut alicuius eorum necessaria de causa meminerimus. 

My not very good stab at translating it (but better than nothing) is:

But also know this, that since we wrote 17 books On adoration and worship in spirit and in truth, and we included a great quantity of thinking in them, we deliberately omitted chapters inserted in this work, and left them unexamined: although sometimes it happens that we may refer to some of them out of necessity.

UPDATE: Matt wrote to me with his translation of these words, and I had misunderstood them as referring to chapter titles rather than chapters.  The point is that both the Glaphyra and the De adoratione are Old Testament commentaries, and Cyril was omitting discussion of those chapters he had already discussed.  The De adoratione is  in PG68, complete with chapter divisions.  He writes:

The chapter divisions Cyril is referring to are in his OT commentary called De Adoratione. However, in the preface to his other OT commentary called Glaphyra, he makes reference to the chapter divisions in De Adoratione. If you look at PG 68 you can see the chapter divisions there with their titles.

Also, I translated the passage from the preface to Glaphyra a bit different than you did, though I could be mistaken! Cyril’s Greek is tough and I often find myself struggling. If it wasn’t for the Latin translation in PG, I would be completely lost on a number of passages. Nonetheless, here’s what I got:

‘And one should see that since we have composed 17 books in De adoratione et cultu in spiritu et veritate and gathered together much fullness of thoughts in them, we have intentionally passed over those chapters in the present writing, and we have kept what is unexamined.’

So as I read it, Cyril is saying that he is not including in the Glaphyra those topics he covered in the De Adoratione. But as I said, I could be mistaken. Please let me know what you think.

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Early opinions on chapter divisions

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been reading an article about the history of scholarship on the subject of chapter titles, from 1962-3, by Diana Albino.(1)  It begins with some interesting remarks.

In modern printed editions the surviving works of the Graeco-Latin civilization are published divided into books and in chapters.  But the scholar who wants to restore the original reading and that therefore examines the manuscript tradition, finds that in the codices few works are distributed in chapters, differing among themselves in various ways and very rarely supplied with titles and numeration. The problem arises therefore as to whether the ancients used the system of division into chapters and whether, therefore, they cited literary works in the way we are accustomed to for modern works, or whether instead such a method was introduced only in a more recent age.

The first scholars who addressed themselves to this issue (1) asserted that the distribution into chapters of literary works was unknown to the ancients, that they would have only known the use of summaries, and they attributed them to later editing; above all to the librari of the Middle Ages. In fact they were of the opinion that the division documented for some works from manuscripts and incunabuli also need not  necessarily be thought to be derived from the author.  This was because many were often clearly in contrast to the general design of the work or quite were made in an awkward and approximate way; that the titles of the chapters, they found, did not perform the function of indicating the content with sufficient clarity and precision.

(1) V.I. Matthaeus GESNER: Scriptores rei rusticae veteres Latini, Biponti, 1787, vol. 1°, pp. 48-53.

Interesting stuff.  But in these blessed days, we can wonder whether Gesner’s book is online.  And thanks to the generosity of the Americans, who have placed their libraries online and made them freely available to those of us living in less liberal lands, we find that it is!  In fact I find that Albino got the page number wrong.  It is, in fact, p.xlviii-liii!

 The remarks of Gesner quote various authors.  It is too late tonight for me to work on this much, but I see at a glance on p.xlix a discussion of indexes or summaries.

XXI. Sed exortum tamen mature est genus quoddam, unde gradus ad capitum, quae vocant divisiones factus est. Nimirum qui de rebus diversis scriberent, quas non omnes omnis palati esse praeviderent, ii solebant indices quosdam, lemmata, summaria (his enim utuntur unius ejusdemque rei nominibus auctores idonei) apponere libris suis, sed non partibus eorum, quas ita distrahere & lacerare nolebant, verum uno in loco sub conspectum legentis ponebant uniuscujusque argumentum libri. Hoc Valerius Soranus fecerat, cujus se exemplum secutum ait Plinius in ipso praefationis fine, cui indicem illum subjungit, quo liber totus primus impletur. Hoc Gellius, hoc Solinus fecit, de quorum summariis plenissime, ut solet, disputat in praefatione ad opus magnum Claudius Salmasius. Quod vero ait, ab initio tantum operis, & post praefationem positos id genus indices, oblitus est credo Columellae nostri, qui diserte docet in ipso fine libri, qui undecimus nobis est, se illo loco “omnium librorum suorum argumenta subjecisse, ut, cum res exegisset, facile reperiri possit, quid in quoque quaerendum, & qualiter quidque faciendum sit.” & habet in eo ipso loco lemmata Lipsiensis Codex & Goesianus, nec ipsa tamen multum editis meliora, aut talia, qualia a Columella scripta jure putes. Quin Martialis quibusdam epigrammatibus, v. g. Xeniis, nisi tamen aenigmata voluit scribere, plerisque, apposita lemmata fuisse, nec aliter potuisse, res ipsa loquitur. Alia quaestio est, utrum ea, quae habemus, sint Martialis, quod de toto hoc genere merito negat Sanctius Minervae 3, 14, p. 507. Sed illud plane diversum scriptionis genus est, & a nostro proposito alienum.

A very hasty translation, mostly wrong in detail but getting the message over:

XXI. But we have entered prematurely on the subject of how chapters, which they call “divisions” were made.  Obviously anyone who writes on diverse subject, which not everyone has foreseen, will be accustomed to prefix to his books some indices, lemmata, summaria (both terms are used by competent authors), but not in bits, which they were unwilling to tear into chunks, but in one place as the argument of the book.  This Valerius Solanus did, whose example was followed by Pliny at the end of his preface, who added an index to it, filling the entirety of book 1.  This Gellius, this Solanus did, whose summaries Claudius Salmasius discusses very fully, as it is his custom, at the start of his great work.  …??… I think he forgot Columella, who eloquently teaches at the very end of the book which is our book 11, that in that place he “appended the arguments of all his books, so that, at need, it would be easy to discover what was also being sought, and to do so.”  And in that place the Lipsiensis and Goesianus manuscripts have lemmata, which …??… you may think written by Columella.  In fact Martial in some epigrams, i.e. the Xeniis (=’Gifts’) unless he was writing riddles, has added lemmata to many of them, which talk about the gift itself.  The other question is whether the ones we have are by Martial, which is denied by the most holy of Minerva (?), 3, 14, p.507.   But this is a different kind of writing and obviously alien to our subject. 

I’d like to get all those paragraphs of Gesner in English.  If this really is the start of all the thinking on the subject, it would be good to understand the argument clearly.

1. Diana Albino, La divisione in capitoli nelle opere delle antichi, Annali della facoltà di lettere e filosofia, Napoli, vol. 10 (1962-3) pp. 219-234

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Some notes on chapter divisions in ancient books

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve always been interested in the question of when chapter divisions and chapter titles arrived in ancient books.  Various articles on the subject have passed through my hands in recent days as I converted photocopies to PDF’s, and again I found them interesting.  But in those days the German sources, Birt and Bergk, were inaccessible to me, being large books in large libraries, not to be borrowed and scarcely to be photocopied.  I wonder if they have made it onto the web?

Quite by chance I found this material online in V. H. Stanton’s The Gospels as Historical Documents, Cambridge, 1903, p.22f (here). 

THE FORM OF ANCIENT BOOKS AS AFFECTING HABITS OF QUOTATION.

I. The only kind of division of the subject-matter which was ever common in Greek and Roman Literature even to the sixth century A.D. was “the book,” in the sense of a portion of a larger work. The book in this sense, as the names for it in Greek and Latin (bi/bloj and bi/blion, volumen, also later and more rarely to/moj) imply, corresponded originally and normally with the contents of a roll. (See Birt, Antike Buckwesen esp. chh. 3, 5 and 7, comparing Bergk, Griechische Literaturgeschichte I. p. 226 f.) For the most part works which could be comprised within a roll of moderate proportions — as for example most of Plato’s Dialogues and even the longer writings of the New Testament could be — had no divisions, and larger works no lesser ones.

Only in the case of works of a few authors do we hear of chapters or headings (kefa/laia, capita, also called ti/tloi) which served to break up the text into portions. The scholiasts and commentators upon Aristotle speak of such in his treatises. In the main this evidence belongs to the third and following centuries A.D.; but the divisions in question may, at least in some instances, have been early introduced and traditionally preserved.

Yet they do not seem to have been employed in all his works. The Constitution of Athens, in the recently recovered papyrus MS. of it, is without them (see Kenyon’s ed. p. xviii.). Moreover, so far as I have observed, the scholiasts and commentators themselves, though they mention chapters when discussing the question how a treatise should be analysed, rarely refer to statements, opinions or words as contained in such and such a chapter. Commonly they give only the philosopher’s name, or the treatise, or book of the treatise, with an indication sometimes that the passage will be found near the beginning, or the end, of a treatise, or book. In writers earlier than the fourth century A.D. this vague mode of reference is, I believe, universal.

Moreover, the works other than those of Aristotle, which were divided into chapters, seem to have been chiefly those which consisted of a series of articles, such as collections of marvellous stories, books on Natural History and Botany, medical, and probably also legal, books. Clement of Alexandria (circ. A.D. 200) also seems to have divided his Miscellanies into chapters. “Let this second Miscellany,” he writes at the close of the second book, “here terminate on account of the length and number of the chapters.”

The only instance of a reference to a numbered chapter appears to be that in Cassiodorus (Lib. Lit. ch. 3, Migne, voL LXX. col. 1204) to “the ninth chapter of the first book of the Antiquities of Josephus.” These numbers may have been inserted in the Latin translation which Cassiodorus himself caused to be made (Div. Lit. ch. 17, Migne, ib. col. 1133). [For the instances given, see Bergk, ib. p. 233, Birt, ib. p. 157.

To the examples of works with headings quoted by these writers, Dioscorides on Plants and Roots may be added, see Palaeographical Society’s Publications, I. plate 177. On the other hand, they are both, I believe, in error when they state that Symmachus’ copy of Seneca had chapters. The reference to Seneca by Migne (ap. Symm. Ep. x. 27), or some other editor, introduced within a bracket, has, it would seem, been mistaken for part of Symmachus’ text. Of the employment of any subdivisions of chapters there is no trace whatever. The word tmh~ma (section) is indeed used, but only as an equivalent for kefa/laion].

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284 Greek manuscripts online at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from here via here that Juan Garces, the go-ahead curator of Greek manuscripts at the British Library, has got 284 manuscripts online.  It’s well worth browsing the four pages of the list.  There’s a manuscript of Zosimus New History in there, for instance.  Despite pleas from Biblical people, it’s mostly classical or patristic or bits and pieces, which is all to the good.  Synesius is well-represented too.

Note that the short list in the browse is not everything.  If you click on one of the text links you get a break down of all that the manuscript contains.  Works in the TLG are given the TLG reference too.

Turning the pages is quick and easy, thankfully, unlike early and very clunky online interfaces.  This one is almost usable!

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Manuscripts of the history of John bar Penkaye

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The seventh century Syriac writer John bar Penkaye wrote various works, according to Ebed-Jesu, most of which have perished or are extant still only in manuscript.  One that has attracted attention is a chronicle in fifteen chapters.  The last of these deals with the rise of Islam, and, since it was written within the century, is nearly contemporaneous.

Today I had an email from a researcher working for the BBC asking about the manuscripts of the work.  I must say that I don’t know!

At BYU there is a copy of Mingana’s edition of the last 5 chapters, in Sources Syriaques.  From this I learn that Mingana edited the text with French translation from two manuscripts, one in his own collection, truncated at the end, which he labelled M; and one from the Chaldean Patriarchate in Mosul, written in 1840 but copied from a manuscript written in 1262.  

Searching for “John bar Penkaye” in vol. 1 of the catalogue of the Mingana collection, I find that his copy is now Mingana Syriac 179, completed 22nd September 1928 and written at Alkosh.  In the catalogue the text is called The beginning of words, but Mingana refers to the Sources Syriaques publication.

Apparently there is a review of the manuscripts in T. Jansma, “Projet d’edition du ktaba dres melle de Jean bar Penkaye”, OS 8 (1963) p.96-100.  (I would imagine that “OS” is “L’Orient Syrien”!) Sebastian Brock translated the end of book XIV and most of book XV into English.

Steven Ring has a list of manuscripts here:

  • Baghdad, formerly Moṣul Chaldean Patriarchate Ms 26 dated 1875 AD from an exemplar dated AG 1573 = 1261 or 1262 AD, [74], p. 13
  • Alqosh Ms 25 dated 1882, [66], p. 489
  • Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican Syr 497
  • Birmingham University Library, Mingana Ms 179 dated 1928
  • Manchester, Rylands 43, a fragment c. 1915, [56], p. 167 f.

He adds: “See also, Anton Baumstark 1922, pp. 210 – 211 who lists other Mss in note 14 on p. 210.”

kjhkhk

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How the works of the elder Seneca get to us

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Seneca the elder has left us two works, the Controversiae in 10 books and the Suasoriae in 2 books.  Both are textbooks on how to address a Roman court.  A supposed case is proposed: e.g. a priest is burned rescuing the image of Minerva from a burning temple.  Now because a priest must be whole in body, some say he cannot be a priest.   Seneca states the case, and then gives arguments that an orator might make, first for one side, then for the other.  He isn’t concerned with the “right” answer, so much as showing how to argue the case.  Each book of cases is given a preface, in which Seneca talks about orators of the past.

The works do not reach us intact, although they travelled down the centuries together.  In fact we have two kinds of manuscript.

Firstly there are manuscripts which contain the complete text of the Controversiae, plus the two books of the Suasoriae.  Unfortunately none of these manuscripts gives all ten books of the Controversiae.  They give books 1, 2, 7, 9 and 10, complete.  And they only include the prefaces to books 7, 9 and 10.

Three manuscripts are important for this form of the text.  First there is Antwerp 411 (=A), from the end of the 9th or start of the 10th century, and written in eastern France.  Brussels 9594 (=B) is slightly earlier, from the third quarter of the 9th century and north-eastern France.  Both manuscripts have suffered damage, and contain superficial corruptions but a basically sound text.  Then there is Vatican latin. 3872 (=V), of the same date as B and from Corbie, which is independent of A and B.  The text seems to be the result of ‘correction’, either in late antiquity or the middle ages.

Fortunately we have another line of transmission.  At some point down the years, probably in the 5th century, someone made extracts from all ten books of the Controversiae, and included the prefaces.  We have manuscripts of this edited version, although once again prefaces have been lost.  But this gives us prefaces for books 1-4, 7 and 10, filling the gap for prefaces in the first family. 

The most important manuscript of this family is Montpellier 126 (=M), again written in the third quarter of the 9th century, partly in hands with the distinctive letter-forms of the abbey of Reims.  There are numerous later manuscripts, all derived from M.  But there are also four leaves of a manuscript written around 800 AD, Bamberg Msc. Class. 45m, which is close in type to M.

The end result is that we get the prefaces for books 1 and 2, which we have in the full text form, plus prefaces for books 3 and 4, where the text is extracts; books 5 and 6 and 8 just the extracts; and books 7, 9 and 10 complete.

When  thinking about how manuscripts reach us, it is  always useful to see what is normal.   Most of the general public are not familiar with this, and consequently invent their own imaginary standards of “reliable transmission of texts”.  It is unfortunate that a professional text critic, Bart Ehrman, has published several books which encourage this tendency to suppose that books do not reach us from antiquity.  Only this weekend I had to respond to a post by one of his idiot disciples, who had decided that the bible could not possibly reach us because … there are different textual families!  It is difficult not to feel that Ehrman deserves such an audience, the natural consequence of publishing books that lead the public to suppose that textual criticism is pointless.

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Downloading the Iliad

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve pointed some mirroring software at the Centre for Hellenic Studies site where they have online some high-resolution images of the Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad.  It’s been downloading images for the last three hours, and has managed a princely 37 files so far.   It might take a while, methinks!

The reason is that the images are around 17mb each.  They’re splendid, make no mistake.  I opened one using the Windows browser and zoomed in, and quite by accident got text reading “ILIADOS A” – the start of the Iliad.  The commentary in the margin is clearly visible, although a bit faded, but no doubt some graphics manipulations — perfectly possible with such high-resolution images — would make them all brilliantly clear.

But I doubt many people will download a copy.  Broadband technology just is not up to it yet. 

It reminds me of the late 90’s, when we all wanted to put images online but all we had was dial-up connections.  A few things did make their way online, but were painful to get hold of.  It required a step-change in internet access speeds before multimedia and PDF’s and such like could become commonplace.

Similarly mss photographed like this will remain limited in number for now.  But their time will come!

We can only congratulate the CHS for their foresight in making these available.   These are treasures, and signal the next stage of the development of the web.

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More on the ancient Greek and Latin at Google

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few days ago I gave a link to 500 ancient Greek and Latin texts at Google.  What I had not realised was that this list was not just a bunch of pointers, but a new set of scans, done at high resolution specifically to aid OCR.  A reader has emailed me a link to an article on the Inside Google Books blog — itself new to me. This states, after an intro:

I’m pleased to announce that Google Books is now assisting this work by sharing high-resolution digital scans of over 500 volumes of Ancient Greek and Latin, dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. (Of course, downloadable versions of over a million volumes in all fields are available from books.google.com, in a more compressed form.) Jon Orwant and I created this collection using a list of several thousand important Classics volumes identified by our collaborators Professor Gregory Crane and Alison Babeu of Tufts University. We are analyzing additional volumes and expect to be able to release more high-resolution scans in the future.

These scans will aid the development of accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) algorithms for Ancient Greek, and provide the basis for electronic versions of important editions of these Classics texts; but perhaps their greatest value will be for the development of new methods in this emerging field. We’re honored that Professor Crane called this donation “a major contribution to what scholars can do.”

It also mentions something equally interesting:

… scholars around the world can now consult a high-resolution digital scan of Venetus A, one of the best manuscripts of the Iliad, at the Center for Hellenic Studies.

Mind you, I find on linking to it that someone at the website decided to block people using Internet Explorer.  That’s strange, but a minor thing.  The great thing is to get the thing online.

Among the manuscripts of the Iliad, one of the oldest and most important is the manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, shelfmark gr. 822.  This is given the reference letter (=siglum) “A” in the editions.  It is not merely a very important copy, beautifully written, nor merely one of the oldest outside of the very extensive papyrus fragments.  It also contains the ancient scholia to the text, originating in the text critical school at the Museum in Alexandria ca. 150 BC.   I have yet to manage to see any of the pages, thanks to the quirk above, but it can only be a very good thing indeed!

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