The Fragments of Pindar have not, so far as I know, been adequately discussed since the great editions of Boeckh and Dissen, and as many of them are extremely important, the following remarks are offered in the hope of turning the attention of scholars in their direction.

As the plan of the Oxford Bibliotheca does not allow an editor to justify his treatment of a text in detail, it is inevitable that misunderstandings should arise, and I see that even a competent Platonic scholar like C. Ritter has missed the point more than once in his recent Bericht (Jahresber. für Altertumsw., Vol. CLVII., 1912, 1). I make no complaint of that–it was inevitable–but I feel bound to put on record my views on at least the more important problems suggested by the text. First, however, I must say something about the MSS. and the use which I have made of them.

The germ of the following paper is as old as the previous century, when in the year 1898 my attention was accidentally drawn to one of the passages discussed below. But progress was impossible until the facts of the MS.tradition of the Stromateis were properly presented–a service for which we are indebted to the excellent edition of Clement by Dr. O. Stählin (Leipzig 1906–1909).

I Examined this MS. at Bamberg in the Christmas vacation of 1912-13 for the purposes of the forthcoming critical edition of Livy by Professor Conway and Professor Walters. In 1856 H. W. Heerwagen described it, and published a collation of the first book. Apart from that it has been until now neglected. Bekker had it sent to him at Leipzig about 1830 for the purposes of his text: on its way back it fell into Kreyssig's hands (see the latter's preface to his edition of Book XXXIII.), but neither of them seems to have made any use of it. It was collated by J. G. Seebode in 1835–8 (as is recorded on the flyleaf); but no results were published. It is, however, curious that Weissenborn in his second edition (1859), though quoting Heerwagen as his sole source of information about the MS., which he calls B, cites its readings regularly not only in Book I., but in Book II. also, up to c. 22; after this I only four or five scattered readings are cited. The source from which he ascertained these are not known; in any case, they are few and unimportant. Conway and Walterś apparatus will contain the first account of the MS. I ever given which approaches completeness. It has now been examined at every point where any of the other MSS. show any variation of the least importance from one another, or where the text has been for any other reason the subject of discussion.

IBIS 131-132

quam dolor hie umquam spatio euanescere possit,

leniat aut odium tempus et hora meum.

Here “spatio” means “lapse of time” : it is illustrated by A. A. II. 113

forma bonum fragile est, quantumque accedit ad annos,

fit minor et spatio carpitur ipsa suo.

As regards the whole couplet, besides at this place, it is found also after line 40 in all the MSS. except the Galeanus Vaticanus and Phillipps MS. There, though it fits in with the context, it is not required: here (after 130) it is indispensable. It should therefore be omitted from the text after line 40, where its presence is due to that species of interpolation which consisted in the insertion of other portions of a writer's work kindred in meaning, on which see Mr. Hall's Companion to Classical Texts, p. 198.

A New text of the Naturales Quaestiones, prepared by A. Gercke, was issued by the Teubner Press in 1907. Thirteen years earlier Gercke had, in his Seneca-Studien, prepared the way for a new recension by an elaborate classification of the MSS. An Appendix to the Seneca-Studien is the Studia Annaeana (1900), now unfortunately out of print. These works are an indispensable introduction to the study of the text; and they have cost their author an amount of labour which it would be ungracious to utilize, as I propose to utilize it, without very ample recognition. In what follows I shall be largely occupied in criticizing Gercke. I wish, therefore, to begin by allowing the immense debt under which he has put all students of the Naturales Quaestiones.His classification of the MSS. is in itself a fine achievement, and not, I conceive, likely to be challenged. Gercke has, moreover, a very fair perception of the relative merits of his numerous MSS. He has, for example, done excellent service in exposing the inferior character of what used to be regarded as our primary authority for the text, the Berlin MS. E. He cherishes, again, no delusions about the rather perplexing Geneva MS. Z. He has rightly called attention to the paramount importance of the Paris MS. H. I fancy, indeed, that if he and I were to place the codices which he enumerates in an order of merit there would not be any great disagreement between us. I differ from Gercke, in fact, not upon the question which MSS. are the best, but upon the hardly less important question which are essential for criticism.

In the April number of the Classical Quarterly, Mr. H. J. Cunningham calls in question my interpretation of a passage in the speech of Claudius on the claims of the Gallic chieftains, which I will follow his good example by quoting in full. It forms the first legible sentence of Column II.

Lines 53 to 56 stand thus in Weil, Bulletin de Corr. Hell. xix. 393 sqq., and Weir Smyth's Greek Melic Poets, p. 525: