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Review: The De lineis insecabilibus Author(s): D. Bargrave-Weaver Review by: D. Bargrave-Weaver Source: The Classical Review, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Dec., 1973), pp. 153-155Published by: on behalf of Cambridge University Press The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/707823Accessed: 21-04-2015 12:48 UTC

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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 153

possible to identify the particular passages (partly with the help of Schneider, p. I8; note that euechia refers to the variant EvEtla at 61a28 cited on p. 52), and it would appear that it includes Greek words absent from the Rq translation. It has philocrimati and euieren (= E'ycpwgs) but, p. 40, Rq has only the Latin gloss (Tx has both it and the Greek transliteration). If so, the glossary is in- dependent of Rq, offering a very occasional extra source for V and confirming Schneider's theory of marginal or interlinear glosses in V. Such a gloss has intruded into the text at 9Ib2 also, where the manuscripts have philothei id est amici deorum (p. 18), the glossary has philotei: amici deorum. Again, at 73a30 one might already suspect from the manuscript evidence (p. 46), nutrimenta Tx Rq; nutrimenta dodira Ck, that V originally read edodima, but this suspicion is con- firmed by the appearance of edodima in the glossary-puzzlingly glossed bene odorabilia (? confusion with E1d8Ea). P. 73: the Epicharmus quotation, omitted by V (p. 21), was probably corrupt already in Guilelmus' sources. But since he translates word for word and seems not to have recognized the preposition 6v, could perhaps 'v r -vwv have producedfel by confusion with epic &dv3vwv, 'entrails' (Hom. II. xxiii. 806), or alternatively with

E-vrpa and the

idea of 'inner' things generally? St. Hilda's College, Oxford D. C. INNES

THE DE LINEIS INSECABILIBUS

MARIA TIMPANARO CARDINI: Pseudo-Aristotele, De lineis insecabilibus. (Testi e Documenti, xxxii.) Pp. io8. Milan: Instituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1970. Cloth, L. 3,000.

DIETER HARLFINGER: Die Textgeschichte der pseudo-aristotelischen Schrift lEpl dCrTdUWV ypauL-Zv. Pp. 445; 26 plates. Amsterdam: Hakkert, I97I. Paper. THESE two books are of very different character. Cardini's aim is to provide a standard text and Italian translation of De Lin., with introduction and com- mentary. For readers having no Italian it can provide an easily accessible copy of Apelt's text. For Italian readers it provides a well-reasoned reinter- pretation of this difficult treatise. Cardini prints (perhaps unfortunately) Apelt's text, giving her own readings only in the apparatus criticus, but trans- lates her own version. This could confuse one using the book only for help in translating the Greek. It is a pity that her publication preceded Harlfinger's discussion of the text.

After a historical account of Ps.-Aristotle's predecessors in the field, the introduction analyses the treatise. The opening five arguments for indivisible lines are, as usual, ascribed to Xenocrates' school, with the proviso that the first four show Platonic or Zenonian influence while the fifth may not ac- curately represent Xenocrates' views. The counter-arguments are ascribed to some Peripatetic contemporary or follower of Theophrastus. The commentary discusses the arguments and, where necessary, the text in well-documented detail; and affords a valuable addition to our understanding. Textual con- jectures aim at improving intelligibility. The book is well worth the interest of one who has even only little knowledge of Italian.

Harlfinger's book, a product of typically Germanic scholarship, deals with 4598.2 M

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154 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

the manuscript tradition of Aristotle in general and De Lin. in particular. A co-worker of P. Moraux, the author has studied Aristotelian manuscripts in most major European libraries. The first, shorter, part of the book gives the cultural background and history of the production of our thousand or so manuscripts of the Aristotelian Corpus of the ninth and tenth centuries, when uncial forerunners were transliterated into a large number of minuscule manu- scripts, often containing a number of treatises in almost standardized groups. This Byzantine 'Second Hellenismus' associated with Photius and Leon, wherein secular institutions rather than monasteries took the greatest interest in Aristotle, was followed by the spread of knowledge to the West in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially through Latin translations like that of Grosse- teste. By the early fifteenth century Magna Graecia had over forty manuscripts, while renaissance Humanists and Greek refugees from the Turks brought many more to Italy and copied them. The fifteenth century saw a huge output of

manuscripts that were rather critical editions than mere copies, with annota- tions by scholars like Bessarion. The advent of printing reduced the sixteenth-

century output except for the productions of an 'Aristotelian Academy' (1545-7) associated with the Council of Trent and attended by the Spaniards Piez and Mendoza. Some of these sixteenth-century manuscripts were of high critical quality. One can but admire the great erudition with which Harl-

finger in this section amasses a vast amount of cultural and historical data and documentation.

Harlfinger next reviews the editions of De Lin. by Bekker and Apelt (which rely only on manuscripts L, N, P, Q, Ha, Ua, Wa, and Za), the conjectures of

Hayduck, the collation of i, 1, and Par. 1851 by Hirsch (I953), and the con- tributions ofJoachim, Schramm, and Cardini-already known to Harlfinger- towards establishing our still very faulty text.

The bulk of the book investigates the family tree of all the twenty-seven extant manuscripts. From, probably, one archetype come three families. The

fourteenth-century MS. i is stem-father of family a and has an apographon 1: both have variants derived by Kalekas from Grosseteste's translation. A lost MS. P fathered N and V, both fourteenth century. V has excellent corrections

including anticipations of Apelt. y had a lost apographon 8 that fathered the

corrupt Za and Grosseteste's translation, and another, E, that via a lost -

produced L, Ha (with seven descendants of its own including Ga, Q, Qa, and

Ua), and Pachymeres' paraphrase, and via 0 a group of four including P. A group of nine manuscripts, including Wa and Na, have readings derived from two or all three families. Manuscripts with high quality corrections unused by Apelt include i, 1, V, Ga, Vind. 231, Matr. 4563, and Ambr. D 124 i: P, Q, Wa, and Za of Apelt's list are corrupt or over-rated.

Harlfinger shows how the three stem-fathers can be almost completely re-

constructed, and that the y-copyist switched from an a-like to a /3-like original at

97iaio-i2 where the topic changes from lines to points, perhaps because

a (= MS. i) breaks off at 972a24. After detailed study of the mutual relation-

ships of the three he shows how the archetype may be reconstructed, and that it was itself already corrupt.

All the above is very fully documented with lists of variants and corrections in all twenty-seven manuscripts and with discussion of the identity of their copyists and annotators and of their historical and cultural background- often also of the text of other treatises contained in a given manuscript.

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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 155

Harlfinger demonstrates that a viable apparatus criticus need only contain the readings for a, P, and y, with readings of N, V, and reconstructed 8 and E

where the reading of f or y is uncertain. Many modern conjectures will now be found to have been present in manuscripts other than Apelt's eight, and often we can name the manuscript-era scholar who first made the correction. We must also mention in the apparatus and excise from the text twelve inter-

polations originating in Pachymeres' paraphrase, and about forty other Apelt readings (listed) have to be corrected. The archetype thus established, conjec- ture must then deal with its corruptions.

The flow of argument about De Lin. is occasionally disrupted by longish discussion of other treatises contained in a manuscript, which might better have been placed elsewhere. Otherwise the book is very clearly written and

accurately printed (photo-copied typescript). It concludes with a long list of identifiable scribes and the Aristotelian manuscripts that each produced, and with twenty-six photographs of important manuscripts. It is a sine qua non for all future work on De Lin. and for all who are interested in the Aristotelian

manuscript tradition.

University of Durham D. BARGRAVE-WEAVER

SOCRATES' DAIMONION

ANDRE CORLU: Plutarque, Le Dimon de Socrate. Text et traduction. (Etudes et Commentaires, 1xxiii.) Pp. 200. Paris: Klincksieck, 1970. Paper, 48 fr. THIS is the first separate critical edition of Plutarch's De genio Socratis, with an introduction (of one hundred pages, but with unnecessarily extensive para- phrases of the argument), complementary notes, and a French translation. The text and apparatus are based on a new collation of the two manuscripts, but

apart from removing a few errors and inaccuracies of previous editions, Pro- fessor Corlu makes no significant advance upon his competent predecessors Sieveking (Teubner, 1929) and de Lacy and Einarson (Loeb, 1959), except that the apparatus includes a representative, up-to-date selection of emenda- tions and conjectures. (There are many lacunae in the manuscripts, but Corlu generally follows a predecessor rather than ventures a novel suggestion. Cf., however, 577 F r.) The short complementary notes give little more informa- tion than de Lacy's and Einarson's admirable notes, upon which Corlu draws heavily, especially for the astronomical background of the Timarchus myth (590-2).

The title of De gen. is superficially misleading: the dramatic date of the dis- cussions on the nature of Socrates' Saqldv6ov, and on demonology in general, is the day of the liberation of Thebes from Spartan domination in 379 B.c., and considerable space is given to the conspirators' plans and actions, more so than in Plutarch's other account in his Life of Pelopidas. The editor of De gen. must discuss the relationship of these two versions to each other, and to the other brief ancient versions. Here Corlu is commendably sceptical. Plutarch's two accounts complement each other, but there is no evidence for the re- lative order of their composition (p. 27). They are more usefully compared to reveal Plutarch's dramatic purpose, with its strong patriotic undertones,

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