οὐκ εὐθὺς οὕτως ὥσπερ νῦν ἔχοντα κατέλαβον, ἀλλὰ κατὰ μικρὸν αὐτοὶ συνεπορίσαντο. τίνας οὖν χρὴ μᾶλλον νομίζειν ἢ δωρεὰν παρὰ τῶν θεῶν λαβεῖν ἢ ζητοῦντας αὐτοὺς λαβεῖν; κ.τ.λ. It is possible that Isocrates had Xenophanes in mind. But even in Isocrates there is no probability of rationalistic polemic. The alternative is merely one of his devices for amplification-Tepißoλn of style. He goes on to say that on either supposition those most likely to succeed are τοὺς πρὸς τὰ τῶν θεῶν εὐσεβέστατα διακειμένους. In the Epicureans and in the fifth book of Lucretius we do find this rationalistic opposition of unaided human discovery to divine bestowal. But the presumptions are strongly against attributing it to an early Greek writer. Professor Gomperz, then, is I think misled by his well-known partiality for the pre-Socratics when he says of our passage (Greek Thinkers I, 162): “Here a note of strict scientific reason is unmistakably struck; and it invests the sage of Colophon with a new and by no means insignificant feature." And as often happens, the fanciful interpretation is supported by a slight infidelity in the translation. He is so intent upon the desired meaning that he unconsciously translates as if Isocrates' avro or autóvs were in the text (the English translation substantially reproduces his German; italics mine): "Never the Gods showed mortals everything from the beginning, But they search for themselves until they discover the better." I make the point with no captious intention. The temptation to read into the pre-Socratics just a little more than the evidence warrants is very strong. Yet we must resist it if we are to have not only interesting and "suggestive" but true histories of early Greek thought. Professor Gomperz seems to me to yield to the temptation again when on p. 164 he makes Xenophanes say (fr. 34 Diels; italics mine): "No one has attained complete certainty in respect to the gods and to that which I call universal nature, nor will anyone ever attain it. Nay, even if a man happened to light on the truth, he would not know that he did so, for appearance is spread over all things." The attempt to represent the pre-Socratics as systematic skeptics was long ago disposed of in the sensible words of Cicero's Academica ii. 14 (Reid): "isti physici raro admodum cum haerent aliquo loco, exclamant quasi mente incitati . . . . abstrusa esse omnia." There is still less warrant I think for trying to make out that Xenophanes was a conscious precursor of positivism and that he anticipated the modern scientists' insistence on "verification." Professor Gomperz, however, salutes Xenophanes' skeptical ejaculation as an "immortal maxim," and later (p. 305) compares it as a treasure of science" with the attack on hypotheses in the Hippocratic treatise on Ancient Medicine ii. 1. 3, finding in both an emphasis on the "significance of verification" which I cannnot discover in either. PAUL SHOREY APULEIUS METAMORPHOSES II. 29 In the course of Thelyphron's story the narrator describes the return to life of a corpse: . . . cuncta curiosis oculis arbitrabar, iam tumore pectus extolli, iam salubris vena pulsari, iam spiritu corpus impleri" (p. 48. 25 Helm). The commentators offer no parallels to the phrase salubris vena, but Oudendorp explains it as "arteria,' quod eius pulsu totius corporis salubris vel insalubris dispositio exploretur." Elsewhere (x. 2=p. 237. 25 H.) Apuleius is content to say: "heu medicorum ignarae mentes, quid venae pulsus, quid coloris intemperantia," etc. To anybody who is familiar with the author's excessive fondness for symmetry it will seem strange that a rather obvious correction has not, so far as I can discover, been suggested. Should not the passage read: "iam tumore pectus extolli, iam salebris1 vena pulsari, iam spiritu corpus impleri"? For salebra in Apuleius, cf. Metam. i. 26 ("incerta verborum salebra balbuttire," p. 24. 11 H.), Flor. 21 ("salebras orbitarum," p. 42.4 H.). For the phrase salebris vena pulsari cf. Ovid, Metam. x. 289 (the story of Pygmalion's animated statue): “corpus erat! saliunt temptatae pollice venae." THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO HENRY W. PRESCOTT 1 Salebris > salabris > salubris may indicate the process of corruption; cf. Helm's edition of the Florida, praefatio, p. xliii. The infinitives are interpreted by Helm as "historical"; earlier editors indicate this more clearly by printing a period after arbitrabar. BOOK REVIEWS Ammiani Marcellini Rerum Gestarum Libri Qui Supersunt. Recensuit rhythmiceque distinxit CAROLUS U. CLARK. Vol. I, Libri XIX-XXV. Accedunt tabulae quinque. Berolini apud Weidmannos 1910. Pp. xi+387. Eduard Norden in his well-known book Die antike Kunstprosa (II, 650) calls for eine genaue statistische Würdigung des Ammian, die ebenso wie eine gute Ausgabe ein dringendes Bedürfnis ist. The second of these desiderata is surely fulfilled in the present edition. Professor Clark has devoted some ten years to the task. His original plans so interested Traube and Mommsen that these scholars induced the Royal Academy of Berlin to grant a subsidy for the preparation of the edition. Traube, and after the latter's lamented death, Heraeus, assisted the editor in his work, and Mommsen, Novák, Petschenig, and others have contributed emendations, but the credit for the inception of the plan and its execution belongs to Professor Clark. Professor Clark has studied the sixteen MSS of Ammianus known to exist, collated the most important entirely and the less important in part; the all-essential Codex Fuldensis (Vatican 1873 s. ix=V) he collated twice and in some places several times, and photographed it entire. The problem of the relation of the MSS, a subject with which he dealt in his dissertation, The Text-Tradition of Ammianus Marcellinus (New Haven, 1904), is briefly sketched here, and will be set completely forth in Vol. II. Next to V, the oldest MS is, or rather was, the Hersfeldensis (= M) of which six sheets were found and published in 1876. It was not a copy of V, as some have thought, but descended independently from the one ancient MS of Ammianus which came down to the Middle Ages and which was transcribed in Germany, by a writer using the scriptura Scottica. From this latter MS, V and M were copied. A copy of M was used by Gelenius for his edition in 1533, but this copy is lost and, unfortunately, no other exists. As all the later MSS are descended directly from V, the editor rightly bases his text on V alone, except where the evidence of M may be inferred from Gelenius. After Clark's discussion, there can be no doubt that this is the correct method of procedure, or that the material on which a critical judgment must be based is accurately assembled in the present edition. This critical method is simple to describe, most difficult to apply. Restricted to only one sure MS source, and that disfigured by gaps and monstrous errors, an editor of Ammianus is driven to conjectural emendation if he would make a readable text. Here he must reckon with the many emendations in the later MSS and those of scholars from the Renaissance to the present day. Clark has followed the course prescribed by Gelenius, midway between the Scylla of rash alteration and the Charybdis of excessive conservatism, only with greater conscientiousness and skill and with a complete possession of the facts. Some 500 new emendations, nearly twofifths proposed by the editor himself, the rest by the scholars who assisted him, have been introduced into the text, and double the number appear in the apparatus. The apparatus is conveniently divided into two parts, the upper part giving the variants in the one real source, V, the lower part giving the variants in the inferior MSS and conjectures. The reader is warned by italics in the text when conjectures depart considerably from the evidence of V, but the page is not cluttered with these and other symbols of scrupulousness. Opinions are found to differ as to readings adopted in this passage or that, but the general excellence and uniformity of the text are obvious. Among notable conjectures introduced a very few may be mentioned: xiiii 6, 6: "per omnes tamen quotque sunt partesque terrarum ut domina [i.e., Roma] suscipitur." So V. Miss Seguine, a pupil of Professor Clark's, emended the unintelligible quotque for excellent paleographical reasons to quot orae, and thereby restored a phrase of Cicero's: "quot orae sunt partesque terrarum" (Balb.9). This admirable emendation appears on p. xi with the errata. xiiii 9, 3: "Gallus is prodded stimulis reginae [who was behind the curtain] exertantis ora" [Novák and Heraeus; cf. Aen. III 425 ora exsertantem; aura V, aurem vulg., which latter is certainly ridiculous in the situation]. xiiii 11, 11: "adulabili sermone periuriis admixto" (Clark, periis V, seriis vulg.). xv 4, 9: "Alamanni . . . ferocius incedentes [vulg., incidentes V] secuto die [Clark, se cotidie V, cotidie vulg.] adimente matutina nebula lucem . . . discurrebant." xx 4, 17: "maximoque contentionis fragore probrosis [Clark; probro, ro added in erasure by sec. hand, s being there before; probro <et> vulg.] conuiciis Caesar adsentire coactus est." Here is one of many instances where we learn for the first time what the evidence of V really is; the first hand, apparently, had probos. A decidedly new feature of the edition is the punctuation, commas indicating not pauses in the sense but rhythmical cadences. The rhythmical principles of Ammianus are, according to Professor Clark, very simple. His system, which is observed not only in the sentence but in the clause, is entirely accentual, does not reckon elision, and tallies essentially with the mediaeval cursus planus, tardus and velox. This account differs from the statement of Norden (op. cit. II, 649) who evidently gives quantity consideration and assumes the ditrochaeus as a possible ending, and from the state ment of A. C. Clark (The Cursus in Mediaeval and Vulgar Latin, Oxford, 1910, p. 11) who speaks of the "mixture of metre and rhythm" in Ammianus, though he finds his cadences more accentual than those of St. Jerome. Further proof of the editor's views would be interesting. One who is heartily converted to the method might push it farther still. Thus in xiiii 9, 3: "Proinde die funestis interrogationibus praestituto, imaginarius iudex equitum resedit magister," a comma after iudex seems possible, and is indeed an aid to the sense. The editor puts his theory into practice by emending certain final words cursus causa. Many of these changes are unnecessary if the ditrochaeus is permitted as an ending in itself besides its frequent appearance at the end of the cursus velox. And why should not Ammianus be allowed a bit of license here and there? In xx. 4, 22 after super salute principis Clark adds novi (~~). But just above, § 21, he puts a comma after minitantes nudatis gladiis, which surely ends a clause and surely is rhythmically the same as super salute principis. To be sure, in the list of errata (p. xi) the sign of corruption, †, is added after gladiis, but that will not checkmate a determined opponent of the theory. Both phrases might even be conformed to one of the varieties of the cursus velox which Professor Clark allows (+ ~ ~i~~ ~), if the accents of nudatis and salute are not too strong. On the next page (xx. 5, 7) a ditrochaeus is apparently recognized neque civilis quisquam iudex-but here as in other places the editor would presumably take the second u in quisquam as vocalic (see p. VII), a solution that does not tally with the ordinarily accepted views of the development of qu in later Latin. Greek names are sometimes accented in the Latin way (transmissis sollemniter Tigride, xx. 6, 1) but almost always, says the editor, in the Greek way (e.g., parta regna Persidis, xxiiii. 7.3). Still, one might class with the variety of the cursus velox already noticed xxiii, 6.73: in penitissima parte Persidos, and if so, find the latter part of this rhythm in regna Persidis. Nor is it difficult to discover appropriate clausulae, not recognized in the edition, which end in the ditrochaeus or in Cf. xx, 6.6: ad quam conversa plebe dimicabatur artissime. Many ablative absolutes as short as this one are reckoned as clausulae in the text, or if a longer one is desired, cf. xxiiii, 7.4: et tamquam funesta face Bellonae subiectis ignibus exuri cunctas iusserat naves. The reviewer will be pardoned for expressing skepticism on a subject about which we really know very little as yet, and for hoping that even a writer of the decadence may be credited with the rhythmic principles which Cicero professed (Or. 220): "nec tamen haec ita sunt arta et constricta ut ea cum velimus laxare nequeamus." But this is a question of details, which it is premature to consider now; the subject as a whole will be presented soon in the dissertation of Professor Clark's pupil, Mr. A. M. Harmon. At all events, future editors of rhythmical prose will have to give good reasons for not following the method adopted here. The new use of the comma does not interfere ~. |