This volume derives from a conference celebrating the seventieth birthday of Michael Reeve, who held the Kennedy Chair of Latin at Cambridge with great distinction for more than two decades (1984–2007), exercising a tolerant and conscientious leadership (both local and national), which made him respected by all parties in a then sometimes fissiparous faculty and subject, while publishing a stream of outstanding scholarly work (documented here in a full bibliography), which has made him the doyen of those who study the transmission of Latin texts. Contributors are all students, friends and colleagues, and many chapters bear explicit witness to the honorand's scholarly example and personal generosity (expertus ipse scribo).
A. Barchiesi (pp. 1–9) focuses on the moment in the Aeneid (1.267–8) where Jupiter modifies the name of Aeneas’ son from Ilus to Iulus, appropriately (as he argues) given the occasional play made between Iulus and Iolus (‘little Jupiter’), which may go back to Cato; he plausibly suggests that the speech reflects the historical links of the gens Iulia with Jupiter, and neatly points out that Aeneas is the only major character with a living son and heir at the end of the poem.
D. Berry (pp. 10–21) examines some neglected and unnoticed interpolations in some of Cicero's speeches, including the Pro Quinctio edited by the honorand, with Reeve-style clear and rational textual arguments; the proposals at Verr. 2.5.53 and 2.5.143 are especially attractive.
D. Butterfield (pp. 22–53) discusses a good range of textual problems in Lucretius, a propaedeutic for his forthcoming OCT; he (rightly) retains the almost complete repetition of 1.926–50 at 4.1–25, pointing out how the lines are mildly tweaked in their second, more general context (though it is surprising not to see a reference to Conte's ‘proem in the middle’ here), while his proposals at 2.930 and 2.356 are also attractive.
G.B. Conte (pp. 54–67) reflects on his experiences in editing the Aeneid (see also now his 2016 book Critical Notes on Virgil); suggestions here include an excellent repunctuation of 9.463–4, a defence of the transmitted text of 10.366 (where the final and heavily postponed quando now troubles the reviewer; try tandem [cf. 3.205–6]?), the more select deictic ille for ipse at 7.110 (excellent and from too often neglected indirect tradition) and suggested interpolations (a particular feature of his edition) at 1.380 (interesting), 4.126 (a shame to lose Juno's brazen lie?) and 9.151 (convincing).
Interpolation is the theme of M. Deufert (pp. 68–87), author of the forthcoming Teubner text of Lucretius (again, appropriately given the honorand's outstanding contribution to that author's transmission); he argues intriguingly that the rubricated lines found in the Oblongus of Lucretius reflect ancient critical signs indicating doubts about their authenticity, and also perhaps original segmentation of paragraphs. His edition will clearly reject many more lines than Butterfield's (e.g. a good case is made here for ejecting 3.949 as a gloss).
M. Gale (pp. 88–107) looks at networks of writers and critics in the poetry of Catullus, arguing that the poet's literary self-presentation is less self-confident than often thought, with several poems, especially the preface to Nepos, suggesting their own hostile or complex reception by implied future readers and showing consciousness of their own powerlessness.
E. Gee (pp. 108–41) adds to her work in her fine recent book on Aratus in convincingly demonstrating the close and oppositional engagement in Lucretius with Cicero's Aratea, which she plausibly argues centres on elements of hybridism, impossibility and rationalising; a particular good example is the link between Aratea 450–3 and DRN 3.1–4, which neatly explains Lucretius’ astral language in the latter passage.
S. Heyworth (pp. 142–70) discusses Ovid's paired Heroides 16–21, rightly supporting Reeve's post-exilic dating and splendidly suggesting that the poet's return to erotic elegy here is figured in the Cupid of Ex Ponto 3.3; while agreeing with most moderns that these poems are genuine (and the Epistula Sapphus too, p. 153 n. 37), he points with justified suspicion to the tenuous transmission of 16.39–144 and 21.145–248 from a single printed source (again classic Reeve territory), with much detailed argument and a series of interesting conjectures.
L. Houghton (pp. 171–93) considers the fascinating reception of Eclogue 4 in the art and neo-Latin poetry of the territories of the Venetian republic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, usually in encomia of Doges, including some (very decent) pieces supposedly by boy-poets of six and nine years old.
M. Leigh (pp. 194–224) offers a rich and probing reading of the poem(s) known as Catullus 68 (A+B in Mynors’ OCT), with many valuable points, rightly concluding that what we have is ‘a dedicatory epistle followed directly by the work proper’ (p. 217); that 68A is written by an older and wiser poet than the narrator of 68B could be questioned, but that the capsula of 68A contains 68B seems very likely, and the full exploration of the names of the two addressees is very helpful (pp. 217–24).
S. Malloch (pp. 225–44) looks at the valuable notes on Tacitus’ Annals of the German scholar Acidalius, a prolific and convincing contributor to Tacitean emendation despite his death at the age of 28 in 1595, and provides a fascinating context for them in the Tacitean scholarship of the time; a typically economical but brilliant correction is 13.32.2, where ovasse … rettuli is plainly right for ovans se … rettulit.
L. Morgan (pp. 245–62) presents an attractive account of Ovid, Tristia 1.10, arguing that it strongly stresses the continuing ingenium of the poet as he travels into exile, acting as ‘a powerful assertion of Ovid's personal integrity in the face of all attempts to make him a non-person’ (p. 260). He well points out that the poem is unusual in its book for providing detailed geographical information and being free of complaint; excellent links are made with Cicero's use of Minerva as the protecting deity of his parallel exile, and with the similar stress on poetic ingenium in Tristia 3.7 to Perilla.
S.P. Oakley (pp. 263–90) provides a splendidly detailed investigation of the editio princeps of Priscian's Periegesis and its relatives, in true Reevian manner both untangling elements of a complex tradition and showing the close relationships between particular MSS and printed editions (no fewer than ten MSS in this tradition are copied from books).
In the final chapter (pp. 291–321) R. Tarrant provides a manifesto for his new OCT edition of Horace. The undoubted inadequacies of current texts are made clear (hyperconservatism for E.C. Wickham and I. Borzśak, neglect of MSS and quirky over-conjecture for D.R. Shackleton Bailey, though the latter is right to be sceptical and have a clear apparatus). Tarrant argues that new and closer examination of Carolingian MSS such as R can add to our appreciation of the tradition (e.g. that R is copied from a late-antique exemplar in scripta continua) and help to cast doubt on F. Klingner's over-rigid three-fold grouping, and that neglected later MSS such as the Q group might yield further insights. He suggests that a new edition of Horace (contrast his Ovid, Met.) is unlikely to propose more interpolations in the text, but rightly envisages a larger apparatus with more conjectures and a text with Horace's works in chronological order to reflect his poetic development.
This is an offering fully worthy of its honorand. The standard of papers is appropriately high, and their range suitably wide within Latin scholarship, from Lucretius to neo-Latin and from manuscript studies to mildly theoretical literary analysis, while naturally weighted towards the editing and transmission of Latin texts. It only remains to wish Michael Reeve many more years of health and scholarship, or as he would himself say, εὖ πράττειν.
