Babriuseditedwitoobabruoft SCRIPTORES FABULARUM GRAECI
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
wsm^^ "^ -d^ ' yyA/?/z/o cm —-K "/> )^.9^^e/:/yv'y t Cl€4^ vitoLt4^uJli>ti^ y^ Yfr wmsm^mS' ^r^:^:. •-'.'.' ---'-i» i^'^*~ -v ' ; ':. :f^^ t< iiji.,^ -*•>.:..•' (f-'.'v:' Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive . in 2008 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/babriuseditedwitOObabruoft SCRIPTORES FABULARUM GRAECI VOLUME FIRST CONTAINING THE MYTHIAMBICS OF BABEIUS BABEIUS EDITED WITH INTRODUCTOEY DISSEETATIONS, CEITICAL NOTES, COMMENTAEY, AND LEXICON BY W. GUNION EUTHEEFOED, M.A., OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD; AUTHOR OF ' THE NEW PHRYNICHUS.' iraiBeia Kal ?} irachid. MACMILLAN AND CO. 1883 31 PA ffl ;»/ -i Pi 2. DEDICATED THE REV.H. A. J. MUNRO, THE EDITOR OF LUCRETIUS PKEFACE. Feom a sclioolmaster's lips the least considerate of readers will take the confession indulgently that the main attraction to re-edit these mythiambics lay in the belief that Babrius was one of the first to make schoolbooks interesting, and that the trim simplicity of his style and the careful regularity of his scazon have not only a literary value, but deserve a place in the history of educational methods. But besides this there were other reasons which tempted me to bring together into a connected whole the jots and tittles of illustration and correc- tion which had accumulated during many pleasant hours of leisurely study, when other work had palled, and Babrius was taken up for recreation and amusement. The only manuscript of the larger parcel of the fables was easy of access, and had never been collated with accuracy, some of the readings given in previous editions not being found at all in the Codex itself, and some excellent emendations being the actual words of the manuscript. Moreover, the text at its best, notwithstanding the many important corrections which have been already made by different scholars, was still so manifestly corrupt as to court alteration; while the rigid rules of the choliambic metre as used by Babrius made the part of criticism unusually easy, not only by betraying the hand of the interpolating versifier and letting out the secret of corruption, but also by suggesting the means of restoration. In fact, I offer my text with some little confidence to the judgment of scholars. Altliough differing vi PREFACE. more than that of previous editors from the manuscript author- ities, it differs in a different way. It is to be regretted that in textual criticism the re^vtraL are so few, the avToa-^eSiaa-rai so many. Let a man's sagacity be as great as Beutley's, with- out laboriously acquired special knowledge it can do no better than produce a text of Milton that is the laughing-stock of Europe. ^w/Dts Be fSXajSeprj Kal KaKorr^ra (jiepei. Accordingly I have passed by unnoticed such conjectures as were either unnecessary or impossible, so as to give greater prominence to certain or probable corrections of corrupt passages. Had the choliambics passed through the fire of Cobet's criticism, the list of noteworthy emendations would have been much larger than it is ; but for the present an editor can only hope that the late date of Babrius may not always deprive him of the Critic's countenance. Slight errors in transcription, due to careless reading or late pronunciation, I have not mentioned in the critical notes, contenting myself with classifying them in the chapter of the Introduction which treats of the text. Of the other prefatory dissertations, that on the history of Greek Fable was written as much in the hope of supplying materials for students of folk lore as of illustrating Babrius. The facts have never, as far as I know, been accurately stated, and owing to this omission too easy credence has been yielded to the assumption of an oriental origin for the apologue. The Lexicon Graecitatis Babrianae, with which this edition closes, I owe in great part to tlie kind assistance of my friend Mr. H. Duff, Fellow of All Souls College, who has found time in the intervals of an exacting profession to undertake so laborious and irksome a task. To another friend, also a Fellow of All Souls, Mr. W. P. Ker, I am indebted for a scholarly and accurate perusal of the revised sheets. The Lexicon is PREFACE. vii intended as an aid to tlie work which sooner or later must be undertaken, and to which so little has yet been done — the scientific lexicography of the Greek language. Towards that object my own favourite work on the Attic verb is primarily directed ; and perhaps the interest which I take in the chol- iambics of Babrius has been augmented by the consciousness that an excursion into the regions of decaying Greek might bring in treasure for the Attic exchequer. W. GUNION EUTHERFOKD. 1 King's Bench Walk, Temple, January 1883. EERATA. Page xxxiv, uote 2, for cKbpiriou read ffKopwiov, 5", note on 1, 6, for eirX^^w re(cd iin\T^do}. 62, Fab. 62, line 5, for iiravue read eiravcre. 72, Fab. 74, line 11, for -tj/xCiv read iifiwv. 73*, line 2S,for pd^eiv read pi^fetv. 90, Fab. 95, line 32, for Trapedpeveiv ' read ivapedpeveiv 102, Fab. 106, line 18, for ^dprjs read ^opijs. 112, Fab, 116, line l,for rjot read ^de. FOUR DISSERTATIONS INTRODUCTORY TO THE STUDY OF BABRIUS. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTEE I. BABKIUS. Feom the beginning of tlie second century after Christ it be- came the practice of Italian writers to use either the _..-_,,, From the second Latm or the Cxreek language, according as personal century after t;hrist Italian . , . 11- ^ 1 mclmation prompted, or the imperial court lent a authors often more willing ear to the one or the other. Marcus write their works Aurelius, Claudius Aelianus, and Dion Cassius were all of Italian descent ; but all preferred to express them- selves in Greek. It is to this usage of the time that we owe a Greek Babrius, and had Bentley but given a little more Babrius followed ti^'^ practice, attention to the Aesopic problem, it is credible that his rare sagacity would have tracked out the Eoman versifier in his Greek guise, and proved, if not to the cul- tured admirers of literary impostures, at all events to men capable of reasoning, that the prose fables to which so much importance was attached, far from being the works of Aesop, were not even derived from a purely Greek source, but were the garbled paraphrases of an Italian versifier whom accident had brought to write in Greek. Wliether the Child Branchus to whom the first preface of Babrius is addressed, and who is mentioned again wrote In the 1 1 n ^ i> ^ n 1 1 • • 1 • 1 ^^^ m the close oi the seventy-fourth table, is identical time of Aiex- with the son of the Emperor Alexander, to whom, as the second preface tells us, the fabidist dedicated a fresh parcel of his mythiambics, there is no evidence to show. But xii INTRODUCTION. information so trivial is of no consequence when we know tliat one book at all events of the Babrian Fables was written in the tunes of Alexander Severus. The paltry Lampridius,^ who has left a biography of Alex- ander, takes unusual care to record that that Tins Emiieror hiiuseifpreferred cmpcror sliowed much morc favour to the Greek -^ Greek to Latin. -^. i-r-> /-<• than to the Latin language. The Eoman Cassms, a Greek writer of Italian history, held high office under Severus, and Babrius was in good company when he followed the example of Dion, and chose the better approach to the ear of the court. In the dissertation on the diction of Babrius I shall discuss The Latinisms of ^^ length the characteristics of that late literary Babrius. dialcct which has so confused and perverted our notions of the Greek language. It will there be shown that altliough certain Latinisms of vocabulary and syntax in the Babrian choliambics may perhaps best be ascribed to the Italian origin of the writer, yet any one familiar with the mixo-barbarism of decaying Greek would readily account for them even in an author of acknowledged Greek parentage and education. But if there is little or perhaps nothing in the diction or style of Babrius which would be out of keeping in The choliambic / .. „ ^ , o i • metre as used by i- the vvTitmgs 01 any Greek of his age, the case is Italian partiaii- different with his versification. As employed by Babrius the choliambic metre displays partialities markedly Italian. In other words, the Babrian scazon takes a place in the history of Latin metres and not of Greek. This point has been carefully and effectively treated by Otto Crusius ^ Aelius Lampridius, 3, 2, ' in prima majorem dabat de Republica libros pueritia literatorcs liabiiit Valerium Platonis legens. Latina cum lc<Teret, Cordum . gi'ammaticum in patria non alia magis legebat quam de Otticiis Graeciim Nehonem, rhetorem Sera- Ciceronis et de Rcpuljlica, iionminqnam pioucm . Scd in Latinis non mul- ct orationes et poetas in ([uis Seronum turn profccit ut ex ejnsdcm orationibns Sammonicnm, ([ucm ijiso novorat ct apparet, quas in Senatu habuit vel in dilexerat, et Horatium.' Id. 3-1, 7, contionibus quas apud militcs vel apud ' Habcbat cum {irivatim convivaretur ct populum, nee valdc miiavit Latinam librum in niensa et Icgebat, sed Graccc facimdiam,' etc. Id. 27, 5, 'Facundiac magis.' Id. 38, 5, 'Hos versus cum Graccac magis quam Latinac nee vcrsu ad cum (piidam ex amicis detulissct invenustus et ad musicam i)ronus.' rcspondissc illo dicitur Graccis ver- Id. 30, 1, 'Lectioni Graccac opcram sibus.' — — ; BABRIUS. xiii in his learned monograph on the Date of Babriiis ; and such results of his patient investigation as are connected with this subject I shall reproduce as faithfully as I can, A striking peculiarity of the Babrian choliambic is the manner in which the ictus of resolved feet is managed.