Persius III. 39–43

‘The ghastly inward paleness, which is a mystery, even to the wife of the bosom’ Conington. I can imagine no worse nonsense than inward paleness. What is paleness? It is one among the outward symptoms of inward disorder: it exists in the complexion, nowhere else in the frame of a living man. When a man is dissected, then his inward parts may have this colour or that: till then they have none at all. And if we are to talk about this inconceivable malady, it will be superfluous and yet at the same time inadequate to say that it is unguessed by the wife of the bosom. It doubtless is: much more than that, it is and must be unguessed by the invalid himself: he cannot possibly know that there is anything the matter with him. I need only mention and dismiss the idea that palleat can mean merely fears: that sense, if wanted, must be introduced by the emendation infelix paueat. Conington in his commentary explains with natural hesitation ‘intus palleat, not a very intelligible expression at first sight, appears to include the notions of depth and secrecy’; but as those notions are included in the perfectly intelligible expression quod proxima nesciat uxor, the other becomes more wonderful than ever.

uenis in 9, which has no tolerable sense, is given by P and G and the overwhelming majority of other MSS. Three or four have uelit, which Heinsius and all modern editors adopt. βροτοισιν οὐδέν ἐστ' ἀπώμοτον, but it is improbable almost to the last degree that any scribe would alter uelit into uenis here, with ille standing close by to protect the 3rd pers., and two other uelit's hovering like guardian angels overhead.

The sentence ‘cui nox una non tanti fuit, ut tantus conciperere’ is the purest nonsense, and editors who deliberately retain it are merely professing their ignorance of what the Latin phrase ‘non tanti fuit’ means. ‘Nam, si priore significatione uti uelis, quid hoc est, noluisse Iouem unam noctem accipere ea condicione, ut tantus fieret Hercules? sin altera, non minus absurdum erit, noluisse Iouem unam noctem subire, ut Hercules tantus efficeretur. praeterea utraque ratione Iuppiter dicitur noluisse Herculem magnum fieri, cum sententia poetae sit, uoluisse’ Madvig opusc. II 194. Therefore some write with a few MSS ‘non tanta’; but the change by a copyist of tanta to tanti in this context is as nearly impossible as the change of one letter can ever be; and tanta after all will only mean ‘tam longa’, while it appears to me that the sense demands ‘sat longa’.

Carm. I 6

That vv. 13–16 of this ode should be among the hundreds of lines which Peerlkamp reckons spurious is in itself a matter to disquiet no one. But that Meineke Haupt and Mueller should expel them at his bidding is a sign of more than usual cogency in his objections; and indeed the case against the verses as they stand is to my mind invincible. Horace says to Agrippa: ‘Varius will record your victories, for he is a swan of Homer's strain: I could as soon write an Iliad, an Odyssey, an Oresteia: conscious weakness forbids me to mar your deeds and Caesar's in the telling.’ So far speaks a sane man; but now what Tisiphone impels him to subvert his own position by the following ejaculation? Who is worthy to record the deeds of Mars Meriones and Diomed? To a question cast in this form the only answer is No one: ‘quis digne scripserit’ in fact is simply the rhetorical equivalent for ‘nemo digne scripserit’. But he said a moment ago that Varius was ‘Maeonii carminis ales’: well then, if Maeonides was worthy to record the deeds of Mars Meriones and Diomed, as he unquestionably was, so is Varius. In a poem designed to prove all living men unfit to sing Agrippa's praises this interrogation would have its place: in this poem which asserts Varius' fitness for that task and the unfitness merely of Horace it turns everything upside down.

Since the annus mirabilis 1880 there has appeared no edition of Propertius but Mr Vahlen's insignificant revision of Haupt in 1885. So long ago however as 1881 Dr Postgate in his Select Elegies furnished one fourth of the poems with the best explanatory commentary they yet possess; and among the many critics who have handled this author in the last fifteen years he has been one of the busiest. He now issues, as part of his Corpus Poetarum and simultaneously in a separate form, this recension and apparatus: a work full as important for the criticism of the text as any edition of the century after Lachmann's, Baehrens' and Palmer's.

Dr Postgate's own emendations are over a hundred in number. The best in the book is at IV i 93 ‘quippe Lupercus, aui (equi MSS) dum saucia protegit ora, ∣ heu sibi prolapso non bene cauit equo’, which is admirably neat: now at length one can form a picture of what happened, and Lupercus has something sensible to die for, like his brother Gallus who ‘in castris dum credita signa tuetur ∣ concidit ante aquilae rostra cruenta suae’: auis is corrupted to equis at iv xi 102.

Alike Lambinus' ‘abditae’ and Bentley's the only rational elucidation of the MS reading compel the words ‘auaris terris’ to mean the miser's coffers: now when Horace says carm. III 3 49 sqq. ‘aurum inrepertum et sic melius situm, Cum terra celat, spernere fortior Quam cogere humanos in usus’ he is to be sure taking the other side as a poet may, but the parallel does seem to show that ‘auaris terris’ here must have its natural sense of the mine, ‘in her own loins She hutcht the all-worshipt ore’ as Comus says. And is not ‘inimice lamnae, nisi temperato splendeat usu’ or ‘auaris abditae terris inimice lamnae’ a most dark and helpless way of saying ‘open-handed Sallust’? And then how ‘inimice’ and its train of dependants encumber and overbalance the sentence. If then as seems likely it is in ‘inimice’ the corruption lies, this is what I would suggest:

‘Silver in the mine has no lustre at all, nay even when coined it has next to none, without it is burnished by changing hands.’ This at least does away with the obscurity and redresses the || balance of the sentence.

CARDINAL MANUSCRIPTS

N. Codex Neapolitans, no. 224 inter Gudianos in the ducal library at Wolfen-buettel, first collated by N. Heinsius at Naples, assigned to the 13th century by Lachmann and Hertzberg, to the 13th or 12th by Keil, to the 14th or rather the 15th by Lucian Mueller, and by Baehrens to a date not earlier than 1430. It wants the leaf which contained the verses IV xi 17–76.

A. Codex Vossianus Latinus no. 38 at Leyden, collated in Burmann's edition as Vossianus secundus, assigned by Baehrens to a date near 1360. It contains only the first book and the first 63 verses of the second.

F. Codex Laurentianus plut. 36 49 at Florence, first collated by Baehrens for his edition of 1880 and assigned by him ∥ to the beginning of the 15th century. It is complete. It contains many corrections by

f, a hand a little later than the first.

D. Codex Dauentriensis, no. 1792 in the public library at Deventer, collated in Burmann's edition as alter codex meus, assigned by Baehrens to a date between 1410 and 1420. It wants the first elegy and the first 13 verses of the second.

V. Codex Ottoboniano-Vatic anus no. 1514 at Rome, first collated by Baehrens for his edition of 1880 and assigned by him to the end of the 14th century but to a date near 1450 by Messrs Stevenson fils Maurice Faucon and Pierre de Nolhac (Plessis, études critiques sur Properce p. 21). It is complete.

This edition gives proof of many virtues: common sense, alert perception, lucidity of thought, impatience of absurdity, a rational distrust of MS tradition, and a masculine taste in things poetical. The learner who attacks the play with this commentary will find unfailing help by the way and acquire much information before his journey's end. The old miserable experiences of the classical student who wants to understand what he reads, his lonely fights with difficulties whose presence the editor has never apprehended, his fruitless quest of a meaning in notes where the editor has rendered Greek nonsense into English nonsense and gone on his way rejoicing, are not repeated here. Here on the contrary is a commentator who shares the reader's difficulties, rescues him from some of them, warns him of some existing unperceived, and to tell the truth invents a good many where none exist.

It is Prof. Tucker's main concern, as it must be for an editor of this play, to find ∥ out what Aeschylus wrote; and his administration of this province will decide the value of the book as an original contribution to learning. He has introduced into the text, I reckon roughly, about 200 conjectures of his own. It is the critic's chief duty, and should be his chief pleasure, to commend what is good; so I begin with four emendations which I should call quite certain.

Except that the codices vary between ‘conditor’ and ‘cognitor’, ‘tardae’ and ‘tardus’, this is the MS reading: modern editors however, Merkel Riese and Ellis, adopt the conjecture of Leopardus ‘conditor ut tardae, Blaesus cognomine, Cyrae’, that is, may you be a wanderer on the face of the earth as Battus the stammerer was in the years before he founded Cyrene. Such a curse strikes me as strangely tame amidst the wounds mutilation and violent death which the context imprecates; and I feel too another objection: the meaning of the pentameter is surely fixed by trist. III 9 28 ‘atque ita diuellit diuulsaque membra per agros Dissipat in multis inuenienda locis’, and thus our passage must refer to some one who perished by being torn in pieces.

I propose then to interpret the text above given as follows: may you be torn in pieces like the author of the Zmyrna that was nine years in writing, brought to grief by his cognomen of Cinna. True, Virgil's words ecl. IX 35 suffice to show that C. Heluius Cinna the poet of the Zmyrna or Myrrha ‘nonam post denique messem Quam coepta est nonamque edita post hiemem’ some years outlived his namesake the tribune murdered in 709/44 by mistake for the conspirator L. Cornelius Cinna. Still I think the plain sense of the words is that which I give them.

Professor Nettleship's notes on this glossary in vol. XIX of the Journal of Philology, pp. 113–28, 184–92, 290–5, contain many certain corrections: the following are a few places where I dissent from his proposals and have suggestions of my own to offer in their stead. What oftenest dissatisfies me with Mr Nettleship's conjectures is their failure to bring about a correspondence in meaning between the explanation and the word explained: here and there too I grudge the rather profuse hospitality with which new words are made welcome to the lexicons.

4 44 absono absurdum uel prospero. ‘Read perhaps absurdo uel aspero’ N. For prospero rather praepostero.

12 18 aepas horientalis. ‘Read eons’ N. Yes; but aepas is aetas, and these are the remnants of two glosses, 〈aeon〉 aetas and 〈eons〉 orientalis: compare 63 39 aeon, aetas uel tempus, followed by 40 eous, lucifer.

17 40 angiportum androna uiformium uel callem. ‘Perhaps angiportum callem. androna uirorum [aedes]’ N., rightly no doubt: uiformium however is not a corruption of uirorum but part of a third gloss, 〈ancipitium〉 biformium.

21 8 aruas demonas. ‘Read heroas9’ N. Read laruas, comparing 105 5 larualis demoniosus.

22 22 aufertice ablatiuus. ‘I can find no other instance of this bastard Greek term’ N. It seems to be a mistake for aferetice = ἀφαιρετική.

29 37 camba cauis. ‘Perhaps cumba nauis’ N. One might also propose gambae, calcis; but nearer than either to the ductus litterarum is corbula, corbis.

This reading of the great majority of MSS seems to admit only the punctuation given above: ‘sit licet hoc, Cerinthe, tuum’ must be a parenthesis. But the relevance or even the meaning of the parenthesis is not discoverable. Reisig and others say ‘haec tua res sit, hoc tibi relinquo’; but what is ‘hoc’ and ‘haec res’? Not a predilection for bejewelled matrons: that meaning, as Bentley says and Kiessling the latest editor agrees, ‘ex uerbis auctoris nullis tormentis elici nulloque iure subintellegi potest’. A passion for wearing jewellery? of this Bentley says the same, I think with equal justice; but even if the sense be possible it is ludicrously irrelevant: ‘a common woman is as good as a matron who wears jewels, although ∥ Cerinthus, who is neither a matron nor a common woman, wears jewels too’! Let us therefore try next the reading found in a few MSS, attested by Cruquius’ commentator and approved by Bentley: