In the late nineteenth century J.L.G. Mowat published a short note in the Journal of Philology pointing out that in the Bodleian's MS of the Dissertationes of Epictetus there is an ink smudge (on fol. 25r) where all the other MSS have lacunae in several lines, leading to the conclusion that the Bodleian MS is the archetype for all other surviving copies.Footnote ¹

The MS in question (Auct. T.4.13; Graec. Misc. 251)Footnote ² was acquired by the Bodleian as one of a group of fifty bought in 1820 for £500.Footnote ³ These all came from the collection of Giovanni Saibante. Little is known about Giovanni Saibante but in the early eighteenth century Scipio Maffei described Saibante's library in his Verona Illustrata, reporting that it contained 1,300 manuscripts.Footnote ⁴ Among these were eighty Greek manuscripts, out of which came the fifty purchased by the Bodleian.Footnote ⁵ We do not know where the Epictetus MS was before then.Footnote ⁶

Mowat's observation was built upon by H. Schenkl in his editio maior of Epictetus, first published in 1894 and revised in 1916.Footnote ⁷ Schenkl took the Bodleian MS as the foundation for his edition and included a facsimile of the page with the ink smudge.Footnote ⁸ Schenkl claimed to have identified the Bodleian MS as the archetype of the surviving tradition, although one of his reviewers thought this was grossly unfair to Mowat.Footnote ⁹ When a little later J. Souilhé turned to prepare the Budé edition of Epictetus, the first volume of which was published in 1943, he took the Bodleian MS to be foundational, to the point of printing its foliation in the margins (as had Schenkl in his 1916 editions).Footnote ¹⁰

Since the days of Schenkl and Souilhé the study of MSS has benefitted from the rise of digital imaging. It is now possible to produce a wide range of images of texts such as high-resolution enlargements and infrared images. Recently there arose the opportunity to look again at the ink smudge in Epictetus and to see if, with the help of modern digital imaging, it might be possible to recover a few more words or to confirm or reject some of the conjectures that editors have made.Footnote ¹¹

While the ink smudge on fol. 25r extends over approximately 15 lines, there are just four lines with letters that have proved completely illegible to previous editors (lines 11–14 = Diss. 1.18.10). Mowat, W.A. Oldfather (using Schenkl's text as a base for his Loeb edition)Footnote ¹² and Souilhé have all proposed different ways of reconstructing those four lines, while Schenkl simply marked the gaps without printing any conjectures in his text. Readers of Epictetus have had little independent evidence against which to assess the competing reconstructions. These four lines of fol. 25r, as printed by Mowat, Schenkl, Oldfather and Souilhé are as follows:

On the basis of a fresh examination of prints of high-resolution digital photographs of the MS the following points may be made about each line.Footnote ¹³

The lacuna on line 11 remains illegible. Schenkl was probably correct to print π̣ῃς afterwards and this accords with Souilhé's reading too. The κῃς required for Mowat's proposal of εἰσενέγκῃς adopted by Oldfather seems doubtful.

In line 12, again the lacuna remains illegible. Schenkl's τῶν after πολλοὶ seems right and this may well be followed by φιλ (this is plausible but not certain), making Oldfather's proposal of φιλοψογούντων certainly possible. This counts against Souilhé's εἰώ.

In line 13 Schenkl's μιαροὺς and ἔστω both look secure. It is not possible to discern the word in between. Oldfather and Souilhé offer different conjectures here, neither of which can be confirmed.

In line 14 Schenkl and Souilhé both print ἄφνω, which looks secure. However, Souilhé's suggestion <καὶ νῦν> does not look right, for there is space for punctuation immediately after ἄφνω. However, Souilhé's ἄλλοις looks to be correct, against Schenkl's ἀ̣λ̣λ̣ω̣ς. On the basis of what can be discerned, the most plausible reading here might be ἄφνω· τί τοῖς ἄλλοις χαλεπὸς εἶ; There is no room on the line for the μωροῖς added by Oldfather.Footnote ¹⁴

Taking all of these observations into account, it is possible to discern the following text:

Oldfather's version of this passage, which is probably the most widely read, now looks somewhat harsh. If there is one word that stands out in his text of Diss. 1.18.10, it is the repeated μωροί. But there are no secure grounds for accepting the first instance and simply no room on the line for the second. The context of the passage as a whole makes Oldfather's μωρούς (supplied by Capps) in line 13 quite reasonable, if this was meant to be the exclamation of an imaginary interlocutor angry at others. However, the insertion of μωροῖς in line 14 not only does not fit in the space of the line but also seems contextually inappropriate, for here Epictetus is referring in his own voice to people to whom he has been arguing we ought to display understanding (they may be acting wrongly, but all wrongdoing is the product of unintentional error). Where Oldfather translates the final section as ‘but how is it that you have so suddenly been converted to wisdom that you are angry at fools?’, we might instead put ‘but how is it that you have so suddenly been converted to wisdom; why are you so severe to everybody else?’.