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The Vatican Codex of Livy's Third Decade and its Signatures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

F. W. Shipley
F. W. Shipley
Affiliation:
St. Louis, Mo.
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Extract

My apology for reverting to this subject is a recent article by Mr. W. C. F. Walters in the April number of the Classical Quarterly for 1910 on the signatures in the Vatican Codex (Vat. Reg. 762). Mr. Walters does not seem to have been aware that this manuscript, though not of direct value in the constitution of the text of Livy, is one whose interest from a palaeographical point of view has long been recognized. A number of articles have been written concerning it, most of which deal with the signatures, the subject of Mr. Walters' paper, more fully and more accurately than he has done. Beyond giving the signatures, two of them incorrectly, Walters does nothing more than to conclude that there were eight scribes, who copied 42 quaternions. But a great deal more than this is known about the scribes and the manuscript. In fact, thanks to the ingenious combinations of Chatelain and Traube in piecing together the hints suggested by the signatures, more is known about this particular manuscript and the circumstances under which it was made than is the case with any other manuscript of a classical author of so early a date. It may therefore be worth while to summarize the known data concerning the manuscript, with a brief account of how they were worked out, referring the reader for the details to the articles mentioned in the footnotes.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , October 1910, pp. 277 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1910

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References

1 Philologus, XXXIII, 1874, pp. 186–189.

2 The scribe Theogrimn who finished Nauto's portion makes an eighth, if he is not the same person as Theodegri. See below.

3 Revue de Philologie, vol. xiv., 1890.Google Scholar

page 278 note 1 Sitzungsberichte der Munchener Akademie, Heft 3, p. 425.

page 278 note 2 Ed. Piper, Mon. Germ. Hist.

page 278 note 3 Chatelain (Rev. dc Philologie, vol. xiv.), before the publication of Traube's article, supposed that Fredeg stood for Fredegus or Fredegarius. Later, in his Paléographie des Classiques Latins, 9e liwaison, 1895, he writes Fredegisus, and, by implication at least, identifies the scribe with Fredegisus, the abbot of the monastery and the successor of Alcuin, whose name is first in the list of the monks of Tours in the Lib. Confr. This identification, however, is improbable. I have carefully compared the work of this scribe with that of the others (see Certain Sources Corruption in Latin MSS., Macm., 1904, p. 12) It contains even more careless blunders than the average; and this part of the copy can hardly be the work of a man who had a reputation for learning. I agree, therefore, with Traube's identification, Fredegaudus.

page 279 note 1 I have given a classified list of the errors of these eight scribes in Certain Sources of Corruption in Latin MSS. with the purpose of illustrating the errors which crept into the texts of the Latin authors in this century in the process of copying majuscule, and particularly uncial, manuscripts.

page 279 note 2 This is particularly the case in connection with the corrections by erasure in P. These were made after R was copied, but earlier than, or contemporaneously with, the copying of C.