Agamemnon, Volume I Prolegomena, Text, and Translation 9780199271702; 9780191849688 [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

AESCHYLUS

AGAMEMNON EDITED WITH A COMMENTARY BY

EDU ARD FRAE.NKEL

VOLUME I PR.OLEGOMENA, TEXT TRANSLATION

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

Oxford University Press, Amen Hous,, !Andon E.C.4 Ot..UOOW Kl:W YORK TORONTO N&UOUJUfl: W&LUllOTON BONIAY CALCUTTA .NADllAS XAIL\CHI LAHORI: DACCA CAr& TOWN SAUIBURY IBADAK NAIXOBI AC:CXA XUALA LUMPUR KONO KOKO

PllllST PUBLISlll:D 19j0 urRlltT&D l.ITHOORArHICAl.1.Y IH ORl:AT BRITAIN BY D. X. HILLMAN & SONS LTD, l'JlON CORRll:CTl:D SH&&TS or Tint PIRST .l:DITION

1962

TO

J. B. BEAZLEY AND

RUTH FRAENKEL

PREFACE THE man who is unwise enough to add still another commentary on the Agamemnon to the many already in existence must expect first of all to be asked what type of reader he had in mind when planning his book. Faced with this embanassing g,ut!Stion I should like to borrow my answer from Lucilius~ who, -;.,e are told, dicere solebat neque se ab ituloctissimis neque a doctissimis legi vdle, qtecd alteri 1iihil i.nkllege,-ent, alteri. plus jortasse quam ipse. In other words, I have written neither for those who have only a rudimentary knowledge of Greek nor for the specialists. My favourite reader, whose kindly and patient face would sometimes comfort me during the endless hours of drudgery, looked surprisingly like some of the students who worked with me for many years at Oxford in our happy seminar classes on the Agamemnon. Without the inspiring, and often correcting, co-operation of those young men and women I should not have been able to complete the commentary. If they thought a passage to be particularly difficult, that was sufficient reason for me to examine and discuss it as fully as I could; and more than once it was their careful preparation, their inquisitiveness, and their persistent efforts that made it possible to reach what seemed to us a satisfactory solution. Thus, a€i yap .qpiU. Tots y6povu'v €Vp.o.8€w, I was fortunate enough late in life to profit from the high standard of work in the classics at many schools in England and Scotland. If this standard can be maintained in years to come, my commentary will for a generation or two find the readers for whom it is primarily meant, and then, I trust, be replaced by a better one. When, about twenty-five years ago, I first came to grips with some of the major problems of the Agatnetmion, I thought that I could deal with them in a series of articles. But soon it became clear that such treatment would involve the danger of not being wholly honest, since there would be a strong temptation to dwell on certain fascinating aspects of the play and to neglect many thorny issues which, though perhaps less exciting, yet have an equal claim to be properly investigated. It therefore proved necessary to expound the play at full length. About one fundamental point I made up my mind at an early stage (cf. C.R. Ii, 1937, 63): if the commentary was to serve th~ purpose which I had in mind, it would have to follow, though of course in a modernized form, the e.'Cample of the old editiones oum 11otis variomm. The arrangement resulting from that decision is bound to be repulsive to many readers, but I do not want to apologize for it. I will, however, try to expJain briefly my main reasons for preferring vii

PREFACE this ·clumsy scheme ·to the shorter and perhaps more attractive presentation of my own views only. . One of my motives may or may not be called sentimental, but in any case it is a strong.one: I should hate the idea of being forced to take over from others a great deal of the most valuable matenal a:ad the most decisive statements in my commentary without acknowledging my debt in detail. I think it wiser to adopt the method of the ancient commentator who, when confronted with the same problem, decided thus : cum ... liceret usguequaque nostra interponere, maluimus optima fide quorum. res fuerant eorum etiam verba servare (Aelius Donatus in the letter dedicating his commentary on Virgil to L. Munatius). But it is not for the sake of moral satisfaction alone that substantial quotations, or paraphrases, from the commentaries of earlier scholars seem to be desirable. On many controversial points of the Agamemnoti the arguments in favour of, or against, any particular view have been put forward with great lucidity and force by eminent scholars. If I were to try to summarize their reasoning I should merely blunt the edge of their arguments. In the discussion of a text such as that of the Agamemmm the antagonism of two, and sometimes more, contrasting views is not due, as the inexperienced might think, to the obscr1ra diligetitia of classical scholars, but is the true expression of the complexity of the object itself. For a moment it may be possible by ingenious dialectical manreuvres to concentrate the light on one possible interpretation of a passage and darken the opposite one, but the apparently defeated side will in course of time come to life again and take its revenge on those who have neglected it. In these circumstances it is far better for the student to have each aspect of a controversial question put to him, even to the point of one-sided exaggeration, in the words of its most capable and energetic champions rather than in the diluted summary of a latecomer. I hope I have in most cases put the reader in a position to reject my own interpretation, if he chooses to do so, with the help of my excerpts from, or references to, other scholars' comments. It is for this reason above all that I have given so much space to the reproduction of what has been said before. It is neither likely nor desirable that in the near future another scholar should feel tempted to plod once more through so many commentaries, translations, books, and articles in order to bring together a representative selection of his forerunners' views. In reading recent commentaries and papers on the Agatnetmum I have often found that the writer puts forward as brand-new an opinion whieh has more than once been recommended and then subsequently been refuted. This is pardon~ble enough, for a good deal of the relevant literature is not easily accessible, especially after the last war. Even at Oxford there exist, so far as I know, only two copies of Philpl.-Bd. I (x86o), I

•

viii

PREFACE which contains Ahrens's indispensable comments (seep. 55f. below). I have always 'f?ome in mind this state of affairs. In many cases I have also tried to give some idea of the extent to which a particular interpretation was followed in modern times; sometimes I may have overdone it and adduced more names than was absolutely necessary, but if this is a mistake I do not think it will unduly delay the reader. As regards the discussion of controversial passages, I must make one further observation. It is a widespread belief that in the case of a so-called crux only one of two roads is open to the conscientious scholar: either he feels capable of understanding the disputed passage as it stands or he has to assume a corruption of the text. To me this belief seems to be based on a fallacy. We have only to pause for a moment and consider, :first, the enormous gulf between our ways of life and thought and those of ancient Greece, then the sadly fragmentary nature of our whole tradition, and, :finally, the solitary boldness of Aeschylus, to realize that it would be a sign of megalomania if we fancied it to be possible for us fully to understand the words of this poet wherever we have them in their original form. More than once, therefore, I have had to state that I regard the text of a certain line as probably sound but am nevertheless unable to grasp its meanjng. This conviction must not, of course, serve as a pretext for slackening in our exertions. Every possible effort should be made to understand a difficult passage; but when a careful examination of the language and the style has produced no indication of a corruption and yet the sense remains obscure, then there may be a case, not for putting a dagger against the passage, but for ach:nitting the limits of our comprehension. The commentary includes a n~ber of discussions on points of grammar, syntax, semasiology, word-order, and the like, and on prosody and metre. These sections may at first sight look like mere digressions, especially those which contain a larger number of examples than would have been required to decide the point in hand. It might be argued that I ought to have taken them out of the commentary and published them separately. It was after careful consideration that I decided to leave them where they are. Not only does the starting-point (and in most cases a great deal more) of these apparent digressions form an important part of my argument, but it seems to me that the interest of the reader who cares for such problems at all is best served by my way of presenting the material. In this I have been following the model of Bentley, Porson, Ebnsley, Lachmann, Madvig, Wilamowitz (especially in his commentary on the Herakks), Housman, and others. It is my experience, and probably that of others as well, that it is far easier to remember 'X or Y has discussed such and such a phenomenon in connexion with that vexed ix

PREFACE passage in that play' than to have present in one's mind the precise .number of the volume of one of the far too many periodicals in which X or Y may have dealt with the matter. If the discussion of a linguistic or metrical problem is intimately interwoven into the investigation of a passage which bas often wonied you, then you will easily recall the two things together. The commentary is not preceded by an introduction. A book of this kind does not seem to me the proper place for a recapitulation of what can be found elsewhere about the story of Agamemnon and his house, or the life and work of Aeschylus, or any other of the many important topics connected in one way or another with this play. Everything that I regard as the commentator's immediate concern, such as the apprecia#on of a scene or a song as a whole, an attempt to grasp the essential features of the characters, remarks on the relation of the play to the epic versions of the story, illustrations of the traits linking up this drama with contemporary events, and so forth, has been incorporated into the commentary. My account of the readings of the MSS is based in the case of the Mediceus on the facsimile published in 18¢ (seep. I below), and in the case of the other MSS on photostats [now in the Bodleian Library). When in x940 we were cut off from communications with Italy, I had photostats of F only, which had kindly been sent me by Dottoressa Teresa Lodi, Librarian of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. At that juncture I should have been most seriously hampered in my work had not the generosity of Professor Alexander Tuxyn and of the authorities of Harvard University Library come to my assistance: they provided me with photostats of the other MSS. In the critical apparatus I have in many cases adopted 'la methode de l'apparat negatif' (see the pamphlet Enr.pm des signes criti.q11es, etc., published for the 'Union academique internationale' first by J. Bidez and A. B. Drachmann, then, 2nd ed., Brussels and Paris 1938, by A. Delatte and A. Severyns, p. 40 f.); so, for instance, the note on 12, vuK7'lTT'Aa.KTov Tr, means that the other MSS have the reading of my text, vuK7'lTT'Aa.yK7'ov; the note on 29, brop8pul.{~w MV, means that the other MSS have the lTTop8'4{~w of the text, etc. But I have given up this method whenever I thought that a different notation would be clearer or more convenient, e.g. on 23, 4>&.os MV: tf>a.[ pap.: .vvv 4'ws FTr. I may therefore be guilty of inconsistency, but I hope there is nowhere a real ambiguity. I now regret that I have included in the apparatus certain minutiae of spelling and accentuation, i.e. things which have little, if anything, to do with the ancient 11ap~ou&s. I am, of course, in full agreement with the principle of a condensed apparatus which nowadays is generally accepted. But I thought that this was a good opportunity of reminding young students of the fact that many forms which they x

PREFACE rightly expect to find in modem editions of classical texts are not based on direct evidence in every single case but have been restored from our general knowledge of the typical changes taking place in the course of the transmission. I think now that it might have been better to mention these things in the Prolegomena. However, no great harm has been done, for when the MS tradition is so slender as in the case of the Ag'amemtmi., the reader is in no danger of having his attention diverted from the main points in the apparatus by the occasional insertion of some less important items. The 'testimonia' for the te."d of this play are so few that it seemed hardly worth while to place them in a separate section and thus encumber the pages. . In the text I have in the lyric parts followed Wilamowitz's example and adopted the ancient system of notation as modified by Triclinius {for his metrical signs see p. 17 below). Whereas ancient manuscripts, as is shown by the papyri, put the nap&:ypatf>os, the 1eopwvls, etc. on the left-hand side of the text column, Triclinius puts them on the right-hand side. In my te."d - signifies the end of a strophe, = the end of an antistrophe, and -c (a modification, for typographical convenience, of Triclinius' already greatly simplified form of the Kof""vls) the end of an epode. The translation opposite the Greek text is to be regarded as part of the commentary and nothing more. It makes no literary claim whatsoever. For one who only recently learned a modest amount of English it would be a piece of stark impertinence to try his hand at such a task if he undertook it for its own sake. I wish I conld have done without the translation. But since not even the fullest commentary can be exhaustive, I consider it the commentator's duty to supplement his detailed exegesis by an attempt to render the whole text in prose as accurately as possible. About the severe limitations of any translation, let alone a translation from Aeschylus into a modem language, there can be no disagreement among sensible people. But in the present instance the thorny question of how far a translation, standing by itself, can be expected to reproduce its original does not arise at all. Our issue is a much simpler one. My version fills a few, though by no means all, of the gaps in my commentary, and that is its justification. It may also every now and then serve as a pointer to some of my notes. For in certain cases my translation deliberately over-emphasizes a meaning or a shade of meaning that seems to me to be important, but not to have been sufficiently noticed. Several printed English translations have done a good deal to facilitate my task ; nevertheless, this part of my work would have come to nothing if some of my friends had not been at pains to polish and re-polish my drafts over and over again. The styliStic unevenness of the commentary is a consequence of xi

PREFACE its history. When I began to work on it, and for many years after, I bad no choice but to write in German. Therefore the bulk of the commentary had subsequently to be translated into English. Othe:parts of the book, viz. the Prolegomena, the general surveys in the commentary and some special notes, and the Appendixes, were written directly in English. Although I have spent much time in trying to remove the resultant inequalities, I have achieved but little. I hope the reader will forgive the chequered form, or rather the formlessness, of the whole thing and also put up with some minor inconsistencies such as the changes between 'colon' and 'kolon', 'Iphigeneia' and 'Iphigenia', and:the like. After the manuscript of the commentary had been delivered to the Press in the summer of 1946, no major additions or alterations could be made. Consequently it has not been possible (except in a few particular cases) to take into account anything published after that date. But far worse is the curtailment of my literary resources caused by the war ~d by the conditions in the years immediately after the war, when only a small portion of the output of foreign scholarship reached this country (even now some of the gaps ill our sets of continental periodicals have not b~en filled). In these circumstances anything like complete information proved impossible. I especially regret that Dr. P. Groeneboom's' oommentary on the Agamemnon (Groningen 1944) came into my hands too late. · From the tale of my shortcomings I now tum to the more agreeable task of thanking my many benefactors. There was a period during the war when I thought that I should have to give up all hope of having the commentary translated within any foreseeable time, for the scholars who might have been. b9th able and willing to take part in such a work were then either servfug in the forces or engaged in some important war work or overburdened with teaching. At that juncture Professor Roge(MYJl.ors took the initiative and convinced me by his own generous action that my gloom was not justified. For several months he sacrificed, after the day's heavy duties at the Treasury, many· night hours and tran_slated a large and particularly tricky piece, thus getting my book out of the worst of the deadlocks ~t has had to pass through. It was with equal spontaneity and unselfishness that a few years later Professor T. B. L. Webster and Mrs: Webster (Miss A. M. :Pale) gave up for my sake the precious spare time left over by their exacting work for the Foreign Office; they made it possible, under exceedingly unfavourable circumstances, to produce a translation of some extensive sections. No less great is the service done to my book by Miss Christina Barratt's readiness, in the face of serious obstacles, to render some long and difficult xii

PREFACE pieces. Other helpers to whom I am very much indebted for their share in Englishing the commentary are Mr. G. J. Boyden, Mr. F. C. Geary, and one who wants to remain unnamed. Mi5s Barbara Flower contributed some valuable suggestions to the translation of the Greek text. · In the last ten years the name of Miss Margaret Alford has appeared more than once in the prefaces of works of Greek scholarship published by the Clarendon Press ; the pr~ent preface is fortunately in a position to follow suit. An indefatigclble worker, Spartan in the austerity of her life, a rigid and accomplished grammarian, Miss Alford is at the same time the soul of gentleness. Of her genuine understanding of great poetry I have ample proof. She spent a long time going through the English version of my commentary, correcting errors of the translators and blunders of my own, and giving me, always with disarming modesty, all sorts of invaluable advice. As for the reading of the proofs, I have been particularly lucky in enjoying therein the persistent support of two friends, Professor Rudolf Pfeiffer and Mr. W. S. Barrett. Their efforts were by no means con£ned to the correcting of misprints and the ironing out of inconsistencies. Pfeiffer, whom I used to consult long before it came to printing, has put all his learning and judgement ungrudgingly at my disposal; what that means will be clear to all classical scholars. One point at least I must mention specially. But for Pfeiffer's perfect familiarity with the Greek lexicographers, etymologists, paroemiographers, and so forth, I should never have been able to find my way through those mazes. Barrett, for his part. worked his way into the commentary with such patience and zeal that he soon remembered all its minutiae far better than I did myself. But while tidying up countless minor inaccuracies, Barrett, being the kind of scholar he is, never lost sight of the major issues. His manner of tackling problems that bad baffi.ed me is shown by a few samples in the Addenda, but the instances in which his knowledge of Greek and his critical acumen came to my rescue are many more. His greatest contribution to my book, however, lies in his overhauling of the first volume, which he read, and corrected, in the manuscript ; the translation especially has been improved by him almost out of recognition. From other friends at Oxford I often had to $eek information on points of detail, and they never let me down. I am in various ways indebted to Dr. R. W. Hunt, Professor Paul Jacobsthal, Professor Felix Jacoby, Mr. Edgar Lobel, and Professor Paul Maas. Outside Oxford it is to two sons of that great mater studiOfum, Basle, that I owe a debt of profound gratitude. At the initial stage of my struggles with the problems of the Agamemmm Professor Peter Von der Miihll often discussed difficult passages with me, applying xiii

PREFACE to them his rich scholarship and his mellow wisdom. He confirmed me in the conviction that there was still a great deal to be done for. the interpretation of the play. Later on, when the commentary began to take shape, Jacob Wackernagel followed its growth with the most animating sympathy. By word of mouth as well as in letters and postcards (the last of them was written in February x938, a few months before his death) he urged me to persist in my efforts. He never tired in his willingness to reply to any question I might put to him; some of his answers will be found in the commentary. Several libraries have been most liberal in granting me every facility I could wish for. So my sincere thanks go to the authorities in charge of the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum, the Taylor Institution, Corpus Christi College (Oxford), New College, and Christ Church; moreover, to the librarians of Cambridge University Library, the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana at Florence, the Biblioteca Nazionale at Naples, the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, and the Bibliotheek der Rijks-Universiteit of Leyden (where Dr. H. ]. Drossaart Lulofs was a kind and efficient mediator). What Dr. Colin G. Fink, Head of the Division of Electrochemistry in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, New York, has done for me may be seen from p. 204 f. of the com:mentary. I am deeply indebted to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, who at a very difficult time did not hesitate to undertake the publication of this bulky book, and no less deeply to the Secretary to the Delegates and the staff of the Press, who have carried through an exceedingly troublesome piece of work with great patience and admirable skill. I am also very thankful to the Trustees of the Jowett Copyright Fund for making a generous grant towards the e.xpenses arising from the translating of some parts of my German manuscript. The dedication names those two who have made it possible for me to write the book. ProfessQr Sir J. D. Beazley began to take an interest in my work soon after I had settled down at Oxford; he has never failed me since. The encouragement given me by him and by Jacob Wackernagel determined me to persevere in what I believed to be a far too ambitious plan. For many years Beazley, with unchanging generosity and endurance, continued to read twice the draft of every section of the commentary and the translation of the Greek text. He would then write his criticisms and suggestions in the margin and afterwards discuss all the difficulties with me at great length, often returning to a point with which we had been dealing before. These talks alone were an abundant reward for all I was able to do. Beazley's name appears in the commentary in many places, but my debt to him goes far beyond anything I owe xiv

PREFACE him in detail. Of my wife it must suffice to say that she has made greater sacrifices for this book than anyone else, and, moreover, that at all stages of my work she has given me the kind of help which only she could give. E. F. CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD

z January x950

xv

CONTENTS VOLUME I PROLEGOMENA

x. The Manµscripts

I

Some Editions and Commentaries APPENDIX I. The Evidence for Casaubon's Work on Aeschylus II. John Pearson's Share in Stanley's Aeschylus

II.

SIGLA LXBRORUM

34 6z 78

86

•

87

TEXT ANI> TRANSLATION PLATES

x. MS Tr (Fames. Neap. ii. F. 31): Ag. x-14 } at n. MS F (Laur. xxxi. 8): end of hypothesis of Ag., Ag. I-13 end VOLUME II A SELECT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS COMMENT ARY ON

l-1055

vi I

VOLUME III COMMENTARY ON

xo56-:i:673 .

APPENDICES

On the Postponement of certain Important Details in Archaic Narrative . B. On the Weapon with which, according to the Oresteia, Agamemnon was murdered c. Cho. 991-xoo6 . . D. The Footprints in the Choephoroe . E. Short Syllables before Initial Mute and Liquid in the Lyrics of Aeschylus . F. The Word-order in Ag: 1434 oiJ f'O' #Pov µJ>.a8pov J>."'ls A.

805 806 80.9 815 826 827

lp.'11'G.TE'i , ADDENDA ET CORRIGEl{DA TO COMMENTARY INDEXES

xvi

PROLEGOMENA I

THE MANUSCRIPTS OuR oldest manuscript of the Agamemnota. is a very small fragment oh papyrus, Pap. Oxy. 2178, ascribed by Lobel to the second century

after Christ. It contains a few letters (varying from one to ten a line) of the beginnings of 11. 7-go. As one would expect, it agrees at 23 with MV (4>&os) against FTr (vGv cf>ws) and contains I. 7, an interpolation which is presumably pre-Alexandrian. Next comes M {the Med.iceus), codex Laurentianus xxxii. 9, parchment, written as it seems at the beginning of the eleventh century, one of the most illustrious of Greek manuscripts. There is no need to describe it again here or to outline its history. To peruse the splendid facsimile published by the Italian Ministero dell' Istruzione Pubblica in 18¢ is a continuous delight; any student of Aeschylus, however young and inexperienced, should attempt to make himself familiar with the cleat and easy script of this great book. A good guide to the part of the MS which contains the text of Aeschylus, the only part that concerns us here, is provided in Rostagno's succinct and learned introduction to the facsimile; to this should be added Wilamowitz's remarks in the prefate to his ~dition of Aeschylus. For further l.nformation on M cf. H. W. Smyth, Harva}>i/, Studies in Class. P/lilol. xliv, 1933, 17 ff., and A. Turyn, Tlie Matmscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Aesclryfas (Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, New York City 1943), 17 ff., and the books and articles quoted by him. As regards the corrections in the Mediceus, ,.;e are not concerned here with the several correctors of the Renaissance (14th or 15th century), who confined themselves almost entirely1 to the pl~ys of the 'Byzantine triad', i.e. Prom., Sept., and Pers. All that is relevant to our present purposes is the body of corrections made by the first 8iop8wnjs. These corrections are contemporary with the text of the codex.~ Here, as in many similar cases, the person responsible for 1 'quasi esclusivamentc' says Rostngno, op. cit. :r4 (in his select examples he quotes a. few corrections by Renaissance correctors Crom the Choephoroe, but none from the Agamernno11 and the Emnern'des). Perhaps this point should some time be examined afresh by another scholo.r, who ought to be no less experienced a palaeographer than was Rostagno. :a This would be the case, as far as the bulk of the text of Aeschylus (i.e. all save the .first eight leaves containing Pers. I-'TOS) is concerned, even if Rostagno was right when he assumed, though with noticeable hesitation, that the text of the first eight leaves was written in the second half of the xoth century and the rest in the nth century. On this point I cnnnot venture a judgement of my own, but for the reasons put forward by

x

PROLEGOMENA a fresh copy of a classical text intended from the outset that a s,op0con1s should join the copyists and supplement their work: the book would not have been regarded as complete until his corrections were entered. I have used the sign m for the corrections and additions of the 8wp8con1s. It was the opinion of Rostagno (op. cit., p. 12) that the 8wp8con1s of the Mediceus had access to another exemplar, with the help of which he emended his text and added the scholia and also variants and interlinear glosses. This idea was emphatically repudiated by Wilamowitz (Aescliyli tragoediae, p. xi f.). For a further discussion of the problem see H. W. Smyth, op. cit. 45 f., who on the whole seems inclined to agree with Wilamowitz. In a case like Ag. u27 it would be helpful if a clear answer to this question could be given. When, between 1421 and 1423, Giovanni Aurispa acquired the Mediceus, the codex had already suffered the damage which has had such serious consequences for the text of the Agamemnon and even worse consequences for the prologue of the Choej>lwroe. 1 'At a period which nothing in the book itself enables us to fix, the quires of Aeschylus became unsewn, and one whole one, and three quarters of the next were lost' (T. W. Allen,]. Phil. xxii, 1894, 183). This loss of the entire 18th quaternion (eight leaves, or sixteen pages) and six leaves of the 19th meant the disappearance- from M of Ag. 3u-xo66 and n6o-end, and of the -Vn&8t!o's of the Clwej>lioroe and the beginning of its prologue. The 'codex Bessarionis', Venetus Marcianus 468, paper, in the Biblioteca Nazionale di San Marco,:& was, as it seems, written in the thirteenth century. With Wilamowitz and others I call it V (in Weil's and Mazon's editions it is B). It contains the Byzantine triad with scholia, followed by a list of tl1e plays of Aeschylus, the w&Oeo's to the Agamemnon, and Ag. 1-348 (written in three columns to a page, whereas the text of the triad is written in two columns to a page ;-cf. Turyn, op. cit. 28). There are in V no scholia to the Agamemnon. 'Apparet scribae praeter triadis librum commentario instructum innotuisse codicem, e quo supplementa ilia [the list of plays, the -Vn&O"o's to Ag., and Ag. x-348) sumpsit' (Wilamowitz, p. xv). In the text of the Agamemnon the words are often rather crowded together (in consequence, apparently, of the arrangement in three columns); Wilamowit:z in the preface of his edition, p. xi, Rostagn.o's hypothesis seems to me im· probable. However, leaving aside this minor issue, we arc justified in regarding the whole pre-Renaissance Aeschylus matter in M, i.e. the text, the scholin, Md the corrcc· tions of the 81op91A>nfr, as a product 'ciusdem aetatis ct eiusdem scholne' (Wilamowitz, Joe. cit.); cf. also T. W. Allen,]. Phil. xxii, 1894, 168, and Turyn; op. cit. 18. 1 Sec the letter written by Ambrogio Travcrsari to Niccol~ de' Niccoli in May 14~ (reprinted by Rostugno, op. cit. 8 n. 2), from which it appears that the 14 leaves had already been lost at that date. s 'The number now used in the Library, but not published in any catalogue, is 6531 (H. W. Smyth, op. cit. 29 n. 1).

THE MANUSCRIPTS

they are, however, perfectly legible, except in the upper lines of the pages, where the ink has faded. The next MS in order of time is presumably Tr, 1 in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples, cod. II.F.31, formerly called Famesianus ;::r. paper. It is written by the hand of Demetrius Triclinius ;J consequently its date is about the first quarter of the fourteenth century.• It contains the Byzantine triad and Ag. (complete) and Eum. (with two large lacunae; see p. 7). There are rich scholia. These fall into two groups: (x) o-x&A,a. 11a.\a«l, 'introduced by capital letters (which, in the commentary, occur only for this purpose) and by the projection of their initial part from the rest of the column' ,s and (2) Triclinius' own scholia, marked as such by the note ~µ.1.-r~pov (or .J,µ.&~pa.) and 1 I sympathize with the point of view of D. S. Robertson, who declucs himself {C.R. lvii, x943,.n1) in favour of the symbol T instead of Tr; but there have already been so many embarrassing alterations in Acschylcan nomenclature that I prefer to

continue the practice introduced by Wilamowitz and accepted by Mazon, Murray, and G. Thomson. This has also the advantnge of reminding the reader of the fact that the editor of this book, Demetrius Triclinius, has a distinct individuality of his own. a For further details {such as size, etc.) of this and other MSS, and for modern publica· tions dealing with them, I refer once and !or all to H. W. $myth's thorough monograph, 'Co.talogue of the Manuscripts of Aeschylus', HaTtJOrd Studies in Cla.u. Philol. xliv, 1933, :x tr., and to Turyn's book quoted above. i This has been stated by scvera1 scholars; recently by Turyn, op. cit. 102 f. E. Lobel nnd P. Maas have examined with me many pages of the photostats of the Naples llS (Tr) of Aeschylus and compared them in th'c Bodlcinn Library with the original of MS New College 258, containing Aphthonius and Hcrmogenes, which bears the subscription Sul ;(CC~ s.,,p.TfTplou .,oo .,p11.. in Tr have C:,s (Uplf {w(r... (slightly misquoted by Wilamowitz). Here Wilamowitz admitted himself (Hermes, xxv, 189, 162 n. 11 where he also acknowledges his debt to Hcimsoeth) the possibility that the reading in Tr is the result of a Byzantine conjecture, and this is in fact very likely : no scribe who bad his eye on I. 1093 as a whole (and, perhaps, remembered the beginning of the Ajax) could fail to recover the original reading (UP'S (or &p,s) from the slight corruption (~p(o"°'

"*""'

8

THE MANUSCRIPTS

of them have come down to us in a rather attenuated form. We shall be in a slightly better position when we come to analyse the nonmetrical scholia in F (p. 24 f. below). For the moment I shall confine myseli to drawing attention to two remarkable pieces of evidence which provide a welcome confirmation of what bas been stated above. It is surprising that the strange 8uou1etSts (or 81JOU1eLvtSt~ as the MSS have it) in Ag. 87 is in M left without any.explanation; and when we then find in the uxo>.. '71'~. of Tr a variant {f.VP7]T.. w~. in Tr we read this: L1JuxP7JCTTos µ& 7j Mf,s, c:LU, J4.TT,~' ws y?J.p To plos 1ea2. 'TO ff>..lwos, oihw 1ea2. TO µ.48os 1eal b, 'TO 8{Aflos Ka~ 'TO {J>.&.{Jos 1eai TO 1e'M•.,,os. For similar comments cf. e.g. Prom. 400, where (on plos) M has the scholion pf.OJ.W.. wa,,O. TO plw plos ws 1e>.l.m-w 1e'A&ros 1CT'>..., and cf. also Schol. Ar. Pem:e s28 (on 7r'MKos). It is not of course inconceivable that a Byzantine scholar whose knowledge of the text o.nd scholia of Aeschylus was confined to what he found in the Mediceus or one of its descendants should have added at Ag. 177 o. note on µ.J.IJos which he compiled from the lexicographers, but this is most unlikely, especially as we do not find the words µ.J.Oos, 8{A/los, {JM.{Jos, 1a:rov, 123 ~oyo&z.tras, etc., r and on the other hand shares with FTr (against M) of the scholion in M. Again nt Eum. 541 where the last word of the line was corrupted Jn the Tro.pc{Boars, the scholion in M, oro,, alpo:rTJph (cf. Clio. 1058), would enable even o. poor scholar to elaborate it and write o.lpo."lpO>' crr~o.yl'&,, (crxd-\. "~· in Tr). The last Jtem in this group (for Ag. 1672, where Mis mming, is of no use here) is Eum. 56o; here ngnin Hcim.soeth and Wilamowitz have not proved their point, for Triclinius, as was his wont, changed the 8'pJJO'fY'IG>' of his exemplar's text to 8tpp6',, to square the metre with that of the antistrophe, and then added the fonncr word as a gloss, ifyow Q,pµ.oun{.)1. 1 At 198 V provides a typical example of accumulating corruption, for the starting·

9

PROLEGOMENA the genuine readings 79 ,,.oo. (cf. p. 6), u9 ~pt1Ws instead of rpaos, at 48 ~d.yfo.VTES instead of ~a,oVTES', to which we may add, e.g., 98 d'l'l'E'iv instead of o.lvE'iv, 286 VtrElp 1>.71s instead of VTrEP'f'EA~s, 1094 ltf>Evp{Jcm instead of ~v €Vp~crtJ (or civw~crtJ), 1095 µ.a.p1'1Jp{o,s ply yO.p instead of µo.p'T'Vplo,s yap (interesting because it shows a pre-Triclinian1 metrical interpolation in lyrics), uo6 {Joa., 'l'l'OAts instead of 11&>.,s {Jo&t (cf. 5). In some of these instances it would be very difficult to detect the mischief without the assistance of MV or M. At 340 (where M is not preserved) the civt°AOVT6 of V reproduces the archetype, and av y, ~AOVTEs in FTr is a metrical conjecture. Now that I have discussed the degree of reliability of our MSS of the AgatMmtwn, I will dwell on this question for a moment and will add an observation that takes us beyond the description, comparison, and valuation of the extant MSS. The precariousness of the authorities on which in the main our text of the Agamenmon rests comes out even more strikingly when we look at the quotations furnished by ancient writers, lexicographers, etc. In the case of this play they are not very numerous, but nevertheless are quite sufficient to give us a salutary warning. It is to the text of Aristophanes' Frogs that we owe at xo9 the genuine T;Pa.s and at III Kal XEP£ (which in the MSS of Aeschylus has been ousted by a gloss, and could hardly have been recovered by conjecture). At x41 the gap in our MSS has been filled with the help of the Et.ymol-Ogicum Magnf4m; at both 282 and 284 a rare word has been replaced by an ordinary one, which would have been accepted without hesitation if the lexicographers (and Athenaeus) had not enabled us to recover the original reading. At 448 the true form a,o.£, before it was found in the quotation of the point of its Ka-rdt(l'Ov was obviously the Ke&Tct(l'Ov which we find also in M.-Among the features which link :M and V together, the colometry should not be overlooked: in the ode 104 ff. the arrangement of the metrical Kv '1'(1$)(11

KcU 0'7Tooos

80µ.ous

,zs l Kdcrrov

ac/JucvEtTO.,,

A comparison of this form of the lines with the form in which they nppear in Tr (see p. I2) puts it beyond doubt that what we have in F, so far from being a Triclinian product, is in fact the foundation on which the metrician Triclinius erected theedificeofhisconjectures. Of the many passages by which the same point could be illustrated I will for a special reason mention xo15-17 = xo30-4. These lines appear in F and Tr in the following fonn : 1015 ff. in F : lOIS ff. in Tr: 1TO~cL TOL 8&a,s 8c.Os • 7To~,,}, 881 (&µ;O..A11s -rEJ\E'i'V '. In other words, we find in these F scholia the KME,v and p.IAo' of the text of Tr as against the KMwv and ~n of the text of F before its correction. That is precisely what we should expect : just as the interlinear corrections in F are derived from a text edited by Triclinius, so are the metrical scholia. It is the character of these metrical scholia in F that has been chiefly responsible for the assumption that this manuscript is in all respects Triclinian, and for Turyn's· view that it is a copy of 'Triclinius' first recension'. Now there can certainly be no doubt that the metrical system underlying these scholia is the system of Demetrius Triclinius, and (more particularly) that the metrical scholia in F are closely akin to the metrical scholia in Tr. But it seems to me no less obvious that the metrical notes in F, so far from belonging to an earlier recension, are in fact simply an abridged and simplifi.ed version, or rather rearrangement, of Triclinius' metrical commentary. Any section could serve to illustrate this; I select, on account of its comparative simplicity, the metrical analysis of the first st~imon (355-488). Opposite 1. 355 Tr has the following scholion, marked with the note ./iµbepa and a cross : wZtG {Jaac'AEG: E'tpryra' -,)µiv b 'T~ -r6lv llepawv 8p&.µa:r,,, 7r~pl -roG Ei'8ovs 'TO&r(l)v ('To&rov Tr) -r6lv xop(i')v· Jµoiov y&p Jcrr,v lKt(vo,s Ka! 'T'OVTO' lX" yup b &pxfi ,UV cnJCT'M'Jµa bruf>OeyµaT&KOV tls 800 8c71pYJµlvov 7rEp~vs, Kd>Awv &va11os. lwl OE 'T~ -rJ'>..n rijs brqJ8oiJ 1os. Then, opposite 1. 367, and marked in the same way : LI cos w'>..a.y&v: mEG8ev al KaTe fjs Te K@Aa. er]', Kal -rO. Tfjs aVTunpoifriis -roaaih-a.· rijs 8wrlpas ,,,, \ \ "" , ,La e-_ "" ' t ' y1 I ' ... > Kcu Ta. '1"1}S a.vrunpo't''ls Toaa.~a· '"JS -rpc7i1s ,oµo,ws '~ • Ka' Ta '"JS aVT'crrpoifriis -roaafrra· rijs 8€ br~o8oG cE', ~ Kal p.ETfY'laE'S Tots 'TTpOTlpo's br&JUVOs. Ewl yO.p 'Taµ& &.VTWTTao-ruecf'T'O. 8£ 'T'pox.," rijs br~Sou 1

,,, F 9poupot and & Then Tr has ru• cwl ci~a'TCU\LXWV 'TwV EV 'TOtS' €fLVLOLS TY]pov,.....vwv· ~tn'W yap ~I\& al11'£,v, 1 UTpot/xJ8woG11Ta.t. b &"Ay£at. -rwv '71'a~\ l ' J\ I ' I > _\ I \ • up'Ta.l\LX'TCU\LXw 'PJ1µou 1ea-rolcl/;9lnoS' -roO Op&vou -roO {klo&Al"'S', ~S' d1roa71µollrroS' c1e