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Zur Kritik des Johannes von Antiocha, by Georgios Sotiriadis. Leipzig, 1887. 3 Mk. 20.

John B. Bury

The Classical Review / Volume 2 / Issue 07 / July 1888, pp 208 - 209 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00192972, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00192972

How to cite this article: John B. Bury (1888). The Classical Review, 2, pp 208-209 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00192972

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Theoricon. On Olynth. i. 19 we read 'After Apollo- again Dr. Holden has undertaken the work of dorus' condemnation Eubulus got a law passed enact- editor, giving us a companion volume to the Lives of ing capital punishment for any one proposing this the Gracchi and of Sulla. All students of Plutarch, in future (i.e. proposing to apply the surplus to war).' an increasing number as they bid fair to be under the The scholiast on Olynth. i. 1 is quoted as the authority stimulus of the Cambridge Board of Classical Studies, for this fact, but the editors embody the scholiast's will find all, more than all perhaps, that they require ; statement in their own summary of the case. On the besides the notes which are of course very full and other hand on Olyntk. iii. 12 we read, ' airoXiaSai of elaborate, we have an introduction which gives us a civil death, not physical. Any one who proposed the complete account of Plutarch himself and a discussion use of the theorie fund before the law was altered of the chief sources of information for his Life of would be indicted by a ypcupii iraparSiiuv, and if con- Nikias—next, we have a Chronological Table from demned would lose his civil rights till he had paid B.C. 460 to B.C. 413 of events in the life of Nicias. the fine imposed.' The latter interpretation is pro- To the text is appended a marginal summary after the bably the correct one, but it is directly at variance fashion now so commonly adopted by editors and so very with the former. A flaw, however, of this kind is helpful to the student. The book is well furnished altogether exceptional, for in all that concerns the with indices, one for the subject-matter, a second for subject-matter of the speeches—in the historical the author quoted, and a third for points of grammar. introduction, in the analysis prefixed to each speech, Last comes ' a complete Lexical 1 ndex'; here are noted, in archaeological details—singular exactness is ap- by means of numerals affixed, words peculiar to parent. Those who know the quality of Mr. Abbott's Plutarch or to late Greek authors, words which he previous work will be fully prepared for such an uses in a sense other than classical, and poetical words, exercise of independent judgment after a patient (such as oA/ci/ios, a/jtlavros) to which he seems to have sifting of materials. S. H. BUTOHEK. been rather partial. The word if>o$o8«j> ( 'highly nervous') is by an error here set down as peculiar to Veteris Testament! Graeci Codices Vaticanus later Greek, whereas it occurs in Plato's Phaedrus et Sinaiticus cum Textu Recepto collati ab (257 D), as indeed the editor himself observes on Eberardo Nestle. Supplementum editionum quae page 59. The notes are very copious and touch alike Sixtinam sequwatur omnium, in primis Tischen- on grammar, criticism and history, and every now ' dorfianarum. Editio altera rccognita et aucta. and then we find the errors of translators (which are Lipsiae : F. A. Brockhaus. 1887. 5 Mk. pretty numerous in the version of the Greek Lives in Bohn's Series ; let students be warned in time) SINCE Dr. E. Nestle published his .valuable Sup- exposed and corrected. In ch.l, 3, the not very plementum to Tischendorfs Septuagint in 1879, two clear expression uiroppeW eh rbv HeVopx<"/> rendered by important works have appeared ; the sixth and con- Liddell and Scott ' seeking shelter behind (the author- cluding volume of the Roman edition of the Vatican ity of) Xenarchos,' is very differently explained by Dr. MS. containing the Prolegomena and Commentarj : Holden as ' dribbling into conceits worthy of X,' and the autotype reproduction of the Alexandrian though he is rather doubtful. The context seems to MS. Of these Dr. Nestle has made full use in his favour his rendering ; something disparaging would new edition. When the former edition was published, seems to be implied. Tolerably proficient scholars it was only possible to give the corrections in the in the Greek of the classical period will often stumble Vatican MS. generally, without distinguishing the at passages in Plutarch, and we should suppose that different hands to which they appear to be due : now the Previous Examination as to its Greek subjects will he has entirely revised his collation by the help of the be a trial to a good many men. Prolegomena and Commentary, following the judg- ment of the Roman editor H. Fabiani in distinguish- As in his edition of the Lives of the Gracchi and of ing the different hands, or rather classes, of correc- Sulla, so here Dr. Holden has overloaded his notes tions, found in the MS. It was impossible to do with long extracts in illustration of the history of otherwise : but the imperfections of the Roman edi- the time. Was it necessary to quote so largely from tion, valuable as it is, are well known, and the editor's such an accessible book as Grote s history of Greece ? account of the various hands is generally acknow- This objection does not apply to extracts from Boeekh's ledged to be more than doubtful. Dr. Nestle warns Economy o/ Athens, a work with which an ordinary the student that Fabiani's confident identification of student is hardly likely to be familiar. Dr. Holden, the scribe who retraced the text with the monk we suppose, was determined to make his edition com- Clement in the fourteenth or fifteenth century is in plete at all points, as it is to be hoped he will follow opposition to the general opinion which has hitherto up his work with the result of Plutarch's Lives taking assigned that corrector to the tenth or eleventh cen- their place at the side of Thucydides and Xenophon tury. Would he not have done well to point out in our schools and universities. further that the account of the corrections given by W. J. BRODRIBB. the Vatican editors must be accepted as provisional only, until better information can be obtained ? Zur Kritik des Johannes von Antiocha, by In the collation of the Alexandrian MS. Dr. GEORGIOS SOTIRIADIS. Leipzig, 1887. 3 Mk. 20. Nestle has given some variations intentionally omitted THIS thorough-going examination of the fragments by Tischendorf, and corrected a number of errors due attributed to Johannes of Antioch, which were col- to oversight on Tischendorfs part, or mistakes in lected by Carl Miiller in the fourth and fifth volumes Baber's edition, which he followed. of his Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, throws a Dr. Nestle's name is a guarantee for the accuracy flood of light not only on the fragments themselves of the work, and the new edition of his Supple- but on other very important questions relating to mentum is indispensable to every scholar who uses Byzantine historiography, for example on the date of Tischendorfs edition of the LXX. Johannes Malalas. These historians, who were both A. F. KIKKPATRICK. natives of Antioch, have often been confounded, and many papers on them have appeared from time to Plutarch's Life of Nikias, edited by Rev. H. A. time in Hermes from the pens of Mommsen, Haupt, HOLDEN, D.C.L. Cambridge University Press. Neumann and de Boor, THE Nikias of Plutarch is the Greek subject for the Herr Sotiriadis proves elegantly and convincingly Previous Examination of the present year 1888, and that of all the so-called Salmasian excerpts (fragments THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 209 published from a Paris MS. by Salmasius), frag. 1 two days), %veJustin I., and thus formed a sort of link between that they are also from the hand of X., whose source Eustathios of Epiphania and Hesychios of Miletos. in this part of his work was John Malalas. He further identifies him with Johannes the historio- So far then the result is that the Salmasian excerpts grapher who is quoted several times by Evagrios. In are from the work of an anonymous author (X.), who favour of the date it must be admitted that details of used John Malalas for early history, and Cassius Dio the revolt of Vitalian in the reign of Anastasios, as for imperial history ; whereas Johannes of Antioch, described by Johannes, seem to point to the writer's as is well known, used Herodian largely for imperial having been alive at that time. It is possible, how- history, and whenever he drew from Dio followed him ever, that he may have derived his account from an much more closely than X. Johannes also used eye-witness, considerably older than himself. It may Eutropius. be noticed here that in his recent article on Boniface Sotiriadis then proceeds to identify X. with the and Aetius in the Englvsh Historical Review, Mr. author of the Constantinian excerpts repl yyajuav (first Freeman neglected some genuine fragments of published by Mai), which Mommsen wrongly attri- Johannes, which are important as they rest on a source buted to Johannes. These excerpts rest on Dio, where- independent of Prokopios. as corresponding passages among the fragments of It remains to say that Sotiriadis fixes the reign of Johannes rest ou Herodian or some other source. As Heraklios as the date of Malalas, but by no means X. had before him not only Prokopios but John convincingly. He certainly did not live before that Malalas, he cannot have lived earlier than the seventh time, but he may have lived at a later period. Special century, and from his style Sotiriadis would place him points in the eighteenth book of his abridged history in the latter half of the ninth century. The exact date are discussed, namely his accounts of the Nika revolt is not of much importance, but I cannot agree with and of the Persia war 528—532, as compared with the necessity of this conclusion. As far as his style is those of Prokopios. For this period Malalas is really concerned, there is no reason why he might not have valuable, as a correction to the Belisarianism of been a contemporary of Georgios Synkellos and Theo- Prokopios. phanes Confessor and lived about 800 ; or for that I may add one criticism, In Malalas, p. 97, 19 we matter there is no particular reason why he might not read the words TS>V Keyoniviev J/lvpfuSSvai' T 6re vvvl have been a younger contemporary of Malalas, whom Si Keyofiivaii ftovKy&puv. These words, it Sotiriadis afterwards places in the first half of the is said, could not have been written by Malalas, assum- seventh century. ing him to have lived before 650, because the Bul- Among the best and most striking parts of the garians vanish from history after the reign of treatise are the comparisons of the diction of Johannes Anastasios and do not reappear till the days of of Antioch with (1) that of X. and (2) that of Malalas. Constantine IV. ; this must therefore be an addition Johannes was imbued with a thorough Sprachgefiihl of the redactor of the original Malalas. This argument for the Hellenistic literary dialect, which maintained is not convincing, because (1) we cannot argue from itself from Polybius to Menander Protector, and was the silence of historians that the Bulgarians, as sub- renewed in the eleventh century by the renaissance jects of the Avars, had fallen into oblivion, and (2) movement of Psellos. X. on the other hand is out of Theophylaktos, a contemporary of Maurice, Phokas touch with this language, he cannot use the variety and Heraklios, actually mentions (vii. 4) the Bul- of particles and prepositions which are found in garians as playing a part in the wars, which in the writers like Dio or Johannes, he employs all sorts of reign of Maurice devastated the Balkan peninsula. Byzantine words and expressions, many of which have JOHN B. BURY. survived in modern Greek ; e.g. 46epavev0ri = ¥iaBri, KivhvvtioVTa ='sick unto death,' a^ivriv avrbv SeSaxep = affejj auxin/ 8«XP^ ^.euflepeus eA<4\r|Agathias. It is also the duction, thirty of text, and fifty-eight of notes and language of Malalas, whose pages bristle with ^j|, appendix, and is presumably meant for school use. jeafSi/cfAAta, iroftitras Tipepas iroWas, els Svoijfiepas ( = in The introduction gives a clear account of the con- MO. XVII. VOL. II. P