Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T04:18:50.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3. Survival and Rediscovery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2019

Get access

Extract

Roughly three centuries lie between our youngest ancient manuscript and oldest medieval manuscript of Sophocles: Laurentianus 32.9 (abbreviated as L), from the middle of the tenth century, which also contains our earliest extensive text of the surviving plays of Aeschylus, and of Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica. This manuscript provides several unique readings likely to be true, and overall the best text of the dramas. However, it is not the case that all other medieval manuscripts were descended from L, and can thus be set aside by editors. Many manuscripts, or manuscript groups, are unique witnesses to parts of the tradition. A manuscript contemporary with L, Leiden B.P.G. (Λ), survives only as a palimpsest – it was reused by having another text written on top of the Sophoclean text, which can now be read only partially. Its readings are especially useful where L's are obscure or illegible. The next-oldest, Laurentianus 31.10 (K), dates from the last third of the twelfth century; it contains some unique correct readings and in general a good text, usually close to that of L(Λ).

Type
I Transmission
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For the transmission see Avezzù 2012; Finglass 2012c; also Finglass in press 4 on Euripides.

2 Finglass 2008.

3 Cuomo 2017; Finglass in press 2; and pp. 19, 61, 65 below.

4 Laurentianus conv. sopp. 71; Easterling 2003: 321.

5 For the development of editorial technique over the centuries see Timpanaro 1963 ≈ 2005.

6 Finglass 2009d, 2011d.

7 Finglass 2007a; see further Mancuso 2018.

8 See Housman 1925 = 1972 iii.1093–8; for Housman's engagement with Sophocles see Diggle 2007.

9 Dawe's text (Dawe 1975, 1979) later appeared in a second edition (Dawe 1984, 1985) and then a third (Dawe 1996); each corrects errors and includes changes of mind. It is important to use the corrected reprint of the Oxford Classical Text (Lloyd-Jones and Wilson 1992), not the original printing (Lloyd-Jones and Wilson 1990a) which contains many misprints (so rightly Buxton 1995: 41 n. 3). Both impressions are unreliable in the attribution of conjectures to their proposers (Dawe 2002–3 = 2007: 347–65). For discussion of individual textual choices in the Oxford Classical Text see Lloyd-Jones and Wilson 1990b, 1997.

10 Dawe 1973, 1978; see M. L. West 1977, 1980.

11 M. L. West 1978, 1981.

12 M. L. West 1991; Bremer and Van Erp Taalman Kip 1994; Renehan 1992 (includes a list of all passages where the OCT and Teubner differ).

13 Buxton 1995: 37.

14 Lloyd-Jones 1997, 1998, 2003.

15 Dawe 1982, 2006 (see Finglass 2007c); Easterling 199282; Griffith 1999; Schein 2013 (see Finglass 2013b).

16 Manuwald 2012, 2018; Schmitz 2016. See Finglass 2013a, 2017f, 2018a.

17 Avezzù, Guidorizzi, and Cerri 2008; Avezzù, Pucci, and Cerri 2003.

18 Published by Grenfell and Hunt 1897a: 14; identified as from Sophocles’ Niobe by Blass 1897: 333–4.

19 Grenfell and Hunt 1906: 40–1, 44.

20 Hunt 1912b; more fragments of the same papyrus in 1927b: 74–7.

21 Hunt 1912a; more in 1927b: 72–3.

22 Hunt 1927a.

23 Hunt and Smyly 1933; Lobel 1956.

24 Turner 1962a.

25 Turner 1962b.

26 Published by Lobel 1971; identified as from Sophocles’ Niobe by W. Barrett 1974.

27 Haslam 1976.

28 Mülke 2007.

29 Slattery 2016.

30 M. L. West 1999.

31 Bell 1921.

32 Parsons 1974.

33 Cockle 1984.

34 Finglass 2013c, in press 1.

35 Pearson 1917, 1924. Lloyd-Jones came close, but his edition of the fragments (1996, revised 2003) does not include the smallest ones.

36 Polyidus: Carrara 2014. Tereus: Milo 2008. Several plays: Sommerstein, Fitzpatrick, and Talboy 2006; Sommerstein and Talboy 2012.

37 Xenis 2010a, 2010b, 2018 (with Finglass 2011a, 2018b); Christodoulou 1977; Janz 2005.

38 Papageorgius 1888.

39 Longo 1971.

40 Jebb 1900b; Pearson 1924. See Finglass 2017d.

41 Finglass 2014c: 444.

42 See further Currie 2012: 340–1.

43 Reiske 1747: 727: ‘Quasi vero pulvis possit metere. Ferremus hoc in Euripide. Tales nugae in Sophoclem non cadunt.’

44 Cairns 2014: 39; also Battezzato 2012: 317.

45 Bocksberger and Meccariello 2016: 56.