A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger: A Study of Six Leaves of an Uncial Manuscript Preserved; in the Pierpont Morgan Library New YorkRand, Edward Kennard
General
A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger: A Study of Six Leaves of an Uncial Manuscript Preserved; in the Pierpont Morgan Library New York
Rand, Edward Kennard
Manuscripts, Latin -- Facsimiles; Manuzio, Aldo, 1449 or 50-1515; Paleography, Latin; Pliny, the Younger -- Correspondence
There is only one case of possible emendation to note: 64, 29 questuri]
Π quaesturi _MVa_ Aldus’s reading, as I learn from Professor Merrill,
is in the anonymous edition ascribed to Roscius (Venice, 1492?), but not
in any of the editions cited by Keil. This may be a conscious
emendation, but it is just as possibly an error of hearing made by
either Aldus or his compositor in repeating the word to himself as he
wrote or set up the passage. Once in the text, _quaesturi_ gives no
offense, and is not corrected by Aldus in his edition of 1518. An
apparently more certain effort at emendation is reported by Keil on 62,
13, where Aldus is said to differ from all the manuscripts and the
editions in reading _agere_ for _facere_. So he does in his second
edition; but here he has _facere_ with everybody else. The changes in
the second edition are few and are largely confined to the correction
of obvious misprints. There is no point in substituting _agere_ for
_facere_. I should attribute this innovation to a careless compositor,
who tried to memorize too large a bit of text, rather than to an
emending editor. At all events, it has no bearing on our immediate
concern.
The striking similarity, therefore, between Aldus’s text and that of
our fragment confirms our surmise that the latter may be a part of that
ancient manuscript which he professes to have used in his edition.
Whatever his procedure may have been, he has produced a text that
differs from Π only in certain spellings, in the correction, with the
help of existing editions, of three obvious errors of Π and of three
of its readings that to Aldus might well have seemed erroneous, in two
misprints, and in one reading which is possibly an emendation but which
may just as well be another misprint. Thus the internal evidence of the
text offers no contradiction of what the script and the history of the
manuscript have suggested. I can not claim to have established an
irrefutable conclusion, but the signs all point in one direction. I see
enough evidence to warrant a working hypothesis, which we may use
circumspectly as a clue, submit to further tests, and abandon in case
these tests yield evidence with which it can not be reconciled.
[Sidenote: _Editorial methods of Aldus_]
Further, if we are justified in our assumption that Aldus used the
manuscript of which Π is a part, the fragment is instructive as to
his editorial methods. If he proceeded elsewhere as carefully as here,
he certainly did not perform his task with the high-handedness of the
traditional humanistic editor; rather, he treated his ancient witness
with respect, and abandoned it only when confronted with what seemed its
obvious mistakes. I will revert to this matter at a later stage of the
argument.
RELATION OF THE MORGAN FRAGMENT
TO THE OTHER MANUSCRIPTS OF THE LETTERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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