Aristophanis Plutus: Annotatione Critica, Commentario Exegetico, Et Scholiis Graecis Instruxit Fredericus H. M. Blaydes: Halis S

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Aristophanis Plutus: annotatione critica, commentario exegetico, et scholiis graecis instruxit Fredericus H. M. Blaydes: Halis Saxonum, in Orphanotrophei Libraria: 1886. 9 Mk.Aristophanis Acharnenses: annotatione critica, commentario exegetico, et scholiis graecis instruxit Fredericus H. M. Blaydes: Halis Saxonum, in Orphanotrophei Libraria: 1887. 10 Mk.

R. A. Neil

The Classical Review / Volume 2 / Issue 10 / December 1888, pp 317 - 318 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00193680, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00193680

How to cite this article: R. A. Neil (1888). The Classical Review, 2, pp 317-318 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00193680

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Aristophanis Plutus: annotatione critica, com- Blaydes' own notes are generally full and excellent. mentario exegetico, et scholiis graecis instruxit In especial he gives us here, as in former plays, moat FBEDERICUS H. M. BLAYDES : Halis Saxonum, in valuable collections of parallel passages illustrative of Orphanotrophei Libraria : 1886. 9 Mk. usage. Such are his notes on 314, 322, 402, 470, Aristophanis Acharnenses : annotatione critica, 486, 546, 785 : these can only be received with much commentario exegetico, et scholiis graecis instruxit respect and gratitude. The chief fault that can be FBEDEEICTTS H. M. BLATDES : Halis Saxonum, in found with this part of the work is a neglect of more Orphanotrophei Libraria : 1887. 10 Mk. recent work done by other scholars, and in the lines of scholarship other than the purely verbal. On points ME. BLAYDES in 1886 reached the Plutus in the some- of Attic orthography, it is a little irritating to be what arbitrary order he has followed in his edition of referred merely to Elmsley and Lobeck and the old the separate plays of Aristophanes —almost the first generations, while the evidence of epigraphy is en- edition of the comedian which is at the same time tirely overlooked. On such good old questions as the complete and original. The Plutus is undoubtedly augment of verbs beginning with ev- no account is the easiest of the plays to edit as to read: if the taken even of Rutherford's New Phrynichus. Meis- editor comes into direct comparison with Hemsterhuis terhans' Grammatik der attisehen Inschriften is three and Porson, he has their collections, critical and ex- years old (a second edition has just appeared) : and egetical, to aid him : and Mr. Blaydes on the whole a glance at it settles once for all many points that follows the lines laid down by the schools whose Elmsley and Lobeck could only discuss with erudite greatest representatives are those famous critics. indecision. This book of course presents the well-known Again we miss in Mr. Blaydes' work an appreciation features of Mr. Blaydes' editions. In the critical notes of the more refined points of Attic style. There is he gives us a most laborious collation of MSS.—far no mention of the difference between aicokou$u or fuller, if less systematic, than Von Velsen's. For cVojua: with the dative and with fieri TWOS, of the trt this play Von Velsen used only four manuscripts : Mr. in threats as in 64, of the ' pathetic ' use of 8<& Blaydes often gives the readings of more than thirty Xp&vov (' for old times') as in 1055. On 114 we have on a single passage. Completeness in the control of such a marvellous collection of cases parallel to the repe- an enormous mass of minute material can hardly be tition oT/uu y&p, ol/xai, but the note on avv Beats ought looked for: we naturally find that Von Velsen's col- to contain a reference to Tycho Mommsen's investiga- lation, as far as it goes, is the more careful. Mr. tions on the use of a\iv '. these results are at last made Blaydes gives no opinion on the merits or the inter- accessible and we may perhaps hope to see them connexion of his MSS. : R, the recognised authority noticed even in English editions. since Invernizzi worked on it (illotis manibus as A Porsonian is apt to interest himself in verbal Cobet says) is simply classed with all the rest from V scholarship to the neglect of realia : and we ought to to the poorest. The collations given will supply have more information than Mr. Blaydes gives us on valuable and indeed indispensable material for con- such passages as 277 (where Dindorf s mention of the clusions as to the kinship of the MSS. of Aristophanes find of three dicasts ' tickets in Attic tombs should be such as Schnee and Bamberg have already given. supplemented at all events by a reference to Hicks' On the merits of Mr. Blaydes' conjectures opinions Inscriptions p. 202), 408 (on state-paid physicians), will be divided as usual. His critics have agreed only 733 (where only Bergler's note is given on the snakes in attributing to him in this respect the one quality of Aesculapius), 1132 (the mixed libation to Hermes). of a certain gaiety of heart—not a sufficient, and hard- The Plutus offers a tempting opportunity for a ly even a necessary, condition of success. The very treatment of the purely literary questions arising out number (perhaps a little smaller than of old) and of it. The development of the story before and since variety of his proposals on many single passages Aristophanes must be full of interest. The change make it hard to take them quite seriously, and really from the Equites to the Plutus in spirit and language imply the negation of a critical method of conjecture : is really comparable to the change from Rabelais to surely the supporters of such a procedure can never Montaigne, or from Twelfth Night to the Way be in the majority. It seems the superfluity of wan- of the World. This is merely hinted at in Ritter's tonness to make such conjectures as Qliaeal)' for (fyaeiv dissertation on the date of our version of the play in 263 (was tfco/uu ever used in good Attic ?), KOI (reprinted here from Dindorf s abridgment). But a fiiiv Spa ye B\eifii$rifiov in 332 (it is exactly in cases satisfactory treatment of such points is probably im- where KO.1 /ity introduces a new character that ye possible in Latin notes : criticism has advanced with cannot follow), iravaai in 505 (after Rutherford's dis- literary performance, and it is too far a cry from cussion of such optatives), ^jxifey in 681 (an obvious Quintilian to Coleridge. Mr. Blaydes belongs to a and commonplace word for the witty ?iyi(ev). It is school of critics who preferred to leave such questions all the more surprising after this to find Mr. Blaydes implicit, and to let each reader work his own salvation giving the MS. reading where it is surely wrong, as in such matters : and his edition is not likely to be in 368. And in the chief cruces of the play, such as used by any who have not already come to con- 119 and 885, it cannot be said that Mr. Blaydes has clusions for themselves. done much towards a solution. The critical notes were printed seven years ago : this explains the fact THE 170 pages of Mr. Blaydes' Acharnians of that we have 32 pages of 'Addenda and Corrigenda' 1845 have grown to 500 in the edition of 1887 : the at the end of the volume. fifteen pages of 'Addenda et Corrigenda' in the old In the exegetical Commentary Mr. Blaydes prints edition have been incorporated in the body of the the scholia in full, without much attempt to graduate new, and are replaced now by sixty pages of new their importance or disengage their meaning when 'Addenda and Corrigenda.' The editor says he has it is obscure (in the September number, 1887, of the spent more time and work on this play than on any Review Dr. Rutherford has given a specimen which other : ' scatet enim, plus fortasse quam reliquae, shows both the difficulty and the importance of such a corruptelis plurimis ac gravissimis quas pro virili parte work). He prints also the notes of Bergler—nearly emendare studui.' His proposals to amend those always sensible and short, as well as most of Bak- corruptions will not carry conviction to the ordinary huyzen's remarks on the lines containing parodies: mind. Favourable specimens of them are rovaSe it would be difficult to treat those lines better. Mr. £evl(eiv! in 170 and aA\b fir)v Ktucelvos %v in 428. 318 THE CLASSICAL EEVIEW. But for the most part in Mr. Blaydes' case, as indeed 79 ff.) ; and also that the letters used by Kirchhoff to in Von Velsen's, a most valuable collection of mate- designate the Palatine and the Laurentian MSS. are rials to form a text has not been supplemented or wrongly printed as B and C at p. 6 of the Introduc- controlled by a sound judgment. In 823 the tion and wherever else they occur. quotations given support a reading which Mr. Blaydes In the metrical discussion on 1196 it is difficult rejects: in 869 a conjecture of airiFi^av is supported to see how the sounding of 10 ' as yah' would produce by the statement, ' ab antiquo verbo FIKU unde the requisite long syllable. There is an inconsistency Latina ico, ictus, jacio. Hesych. Fl(,av x«("i«'i too between the Introduction, p. 12, 1. 7, where the where the plain gloss of Hesychius might surely have Chorus is spoken of as the widows of the fallen saved us the heresy of Fixu jacio: in 879 who will chiefs, and the notes on 42, 100, 940, 944 and 949, make a selection out of the menagerie set before us where they are spoken of as their mothers. in the critical note ? Mr. Blaydes aims laudably at E. B. ENGLAND. completeness even at the risk of being superfluous : but on several occasions he fails to give a reference to important authorities which might have saved much Polybii Bistoriae. F. HULTSCH. 2nd Ed. Vol. I. trouble. On 318 we have a critical note a page long Berlin : Weidmann. 4 Mk. 50. full of conjectures (three or four more are thrown out in the Addenda); but no mention is made of AFTER an interval of twenty years since the com- Wilamowitz' confident defence of the MS. reading mencement of his first edition, Hultsch has given to (Isyllos von Epidauros p. 8). On 541-2 no notice is the world the first volume of a second edition of the taken of Dr. Reid's explanation of the MS. reading Histories of Polybius. His labours have been mainly (given in Merry's edition). On 1093 Prof. Tyrrell's devoted to the establishment of a sound text, and he brilliant conjecture is rh (piAtad'' ApfioSi' oi! is ignored. enters on questions of interpretation only incidentally. Would Mr. Blaydes have written on 722 'vulgata As a monument of textual learning the book is worthy soloeca est' if he had quoted Shilleto on Thucyd. ii. of the place it now holds, as the standard edition of 24, 2? Polybius. Hultsch has mainly based this part of "We have always to thank Mr. Bkydes for most his work on a careful study of the Vatican MS. of extensive collections of parallel passages, and in this Books I.—V., the pre-eminent authority of which he volume these collections are more numerous and more fully establishes. He gives however at the foot of full than ever : witness those given on 396, 421, 533 each page an elaborate apparatus criticus, including (critical note), 753, 1146, and many other lines. not only all deviations of any importance in the MS. Perhaps we hardly ought to complain that these authority, but the history of the attempts towards collections are sometimes given both in the critical amending the text which have been made by modern notes and again in the commentary, as on 150, 234, scholars from Casanbon downwards. A critic * were 475, 850. as good go a mile on his errand' as dare to approach We may regret that Mr. Blaydes has failed to grasp Hultseh with an emendation which is already in his and to illustrate such things as the crocks in 401, the notebook. He visits on the head of the unconscious aviip both of praise and blame in 707, the exact force plagiarist all the annoyance which he feels—' taedium of rrpbs ravra as in 659 (Cobet, novae led,, p. 271): illud molestissimum, quod tanquam in cibis coctis we miss any reference to the historical difficulties recoquendis, ita in conjeeturis lectis iterum iterumque raised by Miiller-Strubing on 590 foil, and the mass legendis non sine suspiriis percepi.' The scholars of recent literature on this passage: and we might who contribute to the Dutch Mnemosyne come in expect some notice to be taken of Zielinski's views on. for the largest share of his wrath, and certainly in the construction of Comedy. some of the instances he quotes we cannot but feel But with all drawbacks Mr. Blaydes' edition of that he does well to be angry. Aristophanes will remain a monument of wide know- While all students of Polybius owe a debt of ledge and wonderful labour. It is satisfactory to gratitude to Hultsch for his labours on the text, it is see that the Frogs has appeared, and that the Clouds very doubtful whether they have reason to bless him is in the press. for the re-arrangement of the fragments and the con- R. A. NEIL. sequent change in the notation. Hitherto the order adopted by Schweighauser at the beginning of the century has been universally accepted. His books The Suppliant Women of Euripides. A revised and chapters have been taken as the basis of nota- Text with brief English Notes, for the use of tion, and the extracts discovered since his time have Schools. By F. A. PALEY, M.A., LL.D. Cam- been inserted as supplemental chapters (la, lb, &c), bridge. Deighton, Bell, and Co. Is. 6d. each in its supposed place. All this traditional order is now swept away. The change makes no difference THIS edition is furnished with a useful historical in Books I.—V., but in the later volumes consisting introduction and helpful explanatory notes, and thus of fragments and excerpts great confusion is caused. makes it more possible than it was before to add to Hultsch gave us indeed even in the first edition a the list of plays read in schools one which, as Mr. reference at the head of each chapter to the corre- Paley says, contains 'some splendid passages,' and sponding notation of Bekker, and in this edition he ' has a direct reference to events of the period.' As inserts a further reference to Bekker's pages. Any regards the constitution of the text, all students of one leading Polybius in Hultsch's edition will have Euripides must be grateful to Dr. Paley for every no difficulty in finding the corresponding passage in fresh expression of his judgment, whether he is Bekker or Schweighauser. But this is not the want deciding between the views of earlier editors or for which it is most necessary to provide. What we making fresh suggestions of his own. Of the latter really require is a facility for the reverse process. this edition contains sixty. It is however surprising, Many students will wish to read Polybius and to read that in an edition in which more than half the notes it in the best text, without burdening themselves deal with critical questions no reference is made to with the bulky volumes of Schweighauser's text, the latest published collation of the MSS. of the translation, and notes. These may be reserved for play—that, viz. in the critical edition of von occasional use in a library. But Schweighauser's Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (Analecta Euripidea, pp. Lexicon is a help with which no one can dispense