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Kai For Et
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
The late Sir Roger Mynors, in a letter to Sebastiano Timpanaro quoted in the latter's Contributi difilologia e di storia della lingua latina (Rome, 1978), p. 543 n. 15, states that he had wondered ‘whether it might be a habit of Latin writers, when they were putting only one or two “parolette” between two pieces of Greek’, to use Greek rather than Latin: he invents as an example ‘ἦθος κα πθος where logic demanded ἦθος et πθος’. The answer is that they sometimes did: the present paper will concentrate on the type instantiated by his imaginary example, the use of κα for et. I do not claim to have recorded every case, but those I have observed are the following.
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References
1 So Lundström, and so no doubt Columella.
2 When, in discussing the relationship between z/ζ and σδ, he calls the digraph σγμα κα δ (GLK vii.51, lines 6, 12), this may count as a ready-made phrase.
3 The point is lost on Gellius' editors, who punctuate ‘tertium quartumque’.
4 Concinnity would be served by reducing the three adjectives of the middle group to two; I suggest deleting et molestos as a gloss.
5 In the same section we read ‘σεληνοβλτονς et Άρτεμιδοβλτονς uocant’; manuscripts offer ετ in Greek letters, cf. Timpanaro, op. cit., pp. 542–3.
6 These are the five Pythagorean consonances, generated respectively by the superparticular ratios 4:3 3:2 and by the multiple ratios 2:1 3:1 4:1. Macrobius is following the Pythagorean doctrine that rejected the eleventh for being produced by the superpartient ratio 8:3 (Ptol. Harm. 1.6).
7 Bisdiapason is the normal term in medieval Latin for ‘double octave’ or ‘fifteenth’.
8 As if, say, from C 2 to 
, but in Pythagorean tuning, so that 
is the 81:64 ditone (407.8 cents), not the syntonic 5:4 major third (386.3 cents) or the equal-tempered interval of 400 cents.
9 Cf. Cleonides 8 (pp. 194.21–195.2 Jan), Porphyry, In Ptol. Harm. 118.26–8, 163.31–2 Düring, and passages cited in n. 11.
10 Reinach, Th., ‘La musique des spheres’, REG 13 (1900), 432–49 at 446CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Flamant, J., Macrobe et le néoplatonisme latin á la fin du IVe siècle (Leiden, 1977), p. 360CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (So W. H. Stahl in his translation, p. 189 n. 14, but in the delusion that the 27½ tones of the interval matched the 27 of the world-soul.)
11 See Plato, Timaeus 35b–36d with his commentators: the range is expressly stated by Ps.- Tim. 212.19 Marg, Theon 63.25–64.1 Hiller, Porphyry, In Ptol. Harm. 115.29–30, and Proclus, In Timaeum ii. 187.16–17, 192.12–22, 207.22–3 Diehl; cf. Calcidius 96 (Saturn 27 times as far as the moon from earth). Handschin, J., ‘The “Timaeus” Scale’, Musica disciplina, 4 (1950), 3–42Google Scholar at 13 argues that four octaves and a fifth may be compatible with Plato's formula; but no ancient writer did so.
12 Reinach (n. 10), 447; W. D. Ross, ad loc. Arist.; Handschin, loc. cit.
13 Macr. claims in § 15 to derive his exposition from Porph. In Tim. (fr. 72 Sodano); one may more easily suppose misunderstanding than ascribe such a doctrine to the author of In Ptol. Harm. 115.29–30, but even if Macrobius is correct, he is still uncritical.