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The Madrid Ms of Manilius and its Kindred

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. E. Housman
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Extract

That family of Manilius' MSS which is now usually called the second, and is designated by the letter β, made its first decisive entrance into criticism in the year 1739. The early vulgate had shaped itself out of hybrid copies in which the tradition of the two families α and β was indistinguishably blended; one good and ancient representative of α, the Gemblacensis, was brought into employment by Scaliger in 1600: but the testimony of β was never disengaged and isolated until Bentley's edition made public the readings of the Leyden codex Vossianus 390. The next member of the family to emerge was Matritensis M 31, discovered in 1879 by Gustav Loewe and brought to general notice in the middle of 1893 by the simultaneous publication of two papers,—one by Mr Breiter in the Neue Jahrbuecher vol. 147 pp. 417–423, one by Prof. Ellis in Hermathena no. xix pp. 261–286. Two other MSS closely akin to this, Vrbinates 667 and 668 in the Vatican library, containing the first 82 verses of the poem, which the Matritensis has lost, are employed in an edition of Book i which I published in 1903.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , October 1907, pp. 290 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1907

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References

page 293 note 1 caelum was conjectured by Scaliger and again by Bentley, and was adopted by the few rational editors: by Jacob and Bechert it was not only rejected but totally ignored. It is now seen to be the reading of the family β.

page 293 note 2 This reading, ‘hunc subeunt Haedi’, may be right: compare v 357 ‘hunc subit Arquitenens’. So may the next, i 540 ‘quantum … spatium, et quantis …finibus’ and the next after that, 544 ‘quantum terris atque aequore signa recedunt’.

page 293 note 3 uariast appears to be indicated.

page 294 note 1 Mr Ellis has allowed the printer to make it appear that M omits datus est ubi in this verse and alium in iv 53; tut the fact is not so.

page 294 note 2 As I conjectured in 1903.

page 295 note 1 Even the strangest-seeming of Mr Ellis's errors, if errors they are, are not inexplicable, hac gerilur is the reading of M at i 552, and Mr Ellis may have transferred to i 532 his note on that verse, possidet orbem ends an hexameter at Luc. i IIo and Claud, in Rufin. ii 451 and I daresay elsewhere, and some trick of memory may have caused Mr Ellis to write down this phrase instead of condidit orbem at iv 776. doceatque stands in the text at iv 918, and Mr Ellis, like the scribe of a, may have repeated it in iv 919 when he meant to write cogatque. Mr Ellis′s recently published edition of the appendix Vergiliana supplies a parallel. In u. 534 of the ciris the codex Arandelianus 133 has sidere according to the silence of Baehrens but munere according to the express statement of Mr Ellis. I have looked at the MS and I find that it has sidere: Mr Ellis′s eye has wandered to the line above, where munere occurs.

page 295 note 2 So Ellis: Loewe has imitated the ductus litterarum, and they look something like MANLLI.

page 296 note 1 One delusive example I will remove. At i 697 (Cassiepia petens super ipsum Persea transit) the 0 reading of M is given by Mr Ellis as Casi que pia e super ipsum persea tangit, U has Casiopia petens ipsum persea transit and R Casiope petens supra ipsum persea transit: whence did these two MSS get their petens and their transit if not from α? Well, Loewe, as I have recorded already, knows nothing of any tangit for transit in M; and as to petens he s t a t e s t h a t Cassiopeia petens is given by M man. 2.

page 296 note 2 Except of course that M′s first Page has now been torn away.