ORALITY and TEXTUAL CRITICISM: the HOMERIC HYMNS Franco

ORALITY AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM: THE HOMERIC HYMNS Franco Ferrari The problem In origin a continuous stream never wholly solidified in a final “text”, an old epic tale cannot take irreversible shape until the creative stage is over. Equivalent double readings, luxuriant ornamentation, free digres- sions, flexible catalogues are organic parts of rhapsodic workmanship. When dealing with such a technique of textual reshaping classical scholars cannot resort to the tools commonly used in evaluating liter- ary works. It would be fanciful, therefore, to attempt to construct a critical edition in terms of a fully accomplished text. The Homeric Hymns,or what have been referred to as such since the first century BCE,1 and later a larger compilation, are a very promising field in this respect, because these hymns remained in the hands of the rhapsodes for so long without receiving the kind of editorial treatment Alexandrian scholars reserved for the monumental Homeric poems. Our Medieval manuscripts hold several doublets, but since the ar- chetype of our tradition goes back to the late Middle Ages, the copies circulating through the ancient world certainly contained a very much greater number of double readings. In the manuscripts belonging to the rhapsodes2 such doublets were probably juxtaposed without any 1 We do not know at which time this collection was arranged. The quotations such as “Homer says in the Hymns” begin only in the first century BCE, so that only for this period can we be sure that our collection, or at least a very similar one, was known in learned circles. Later on, it joined a larger compilation, which perhaps goes back to Proclus (fifth century CE) and which contained also the hymns of Callimachus, of the Orphics and of Proclus himself and the Orphic Argonautica. About the origin and history of our collection a good summary is given by Càssola 1975: lvii–lxvi. 2 On rhapsodic MSS two precious witnesses are Xen. Mem. 4.2.10,whereSocrates asks Euthydemos, who is thought to have purchased all the works of Homer, whether he wants to become a rhapsode, and Pl. Phdr. 252b, who mentions “stored away verses” (*κ τFν 3π των *πFν) of the Homeridai. 54 franco ferrari notation. Only in editions influenced by Alexandrian editorial practice were they distinguished by a dotted antisigma, of which we detect one interesting trace in our Medieval MSS at ll. 136–138 of the Hymn to Apollo. In fact, even a glance at the surviving double readings recorded in the Medieval tradition or known to us from the papyri and the indirect tradition can bring into focus one of the most interesting aspects of the work of the rhapsodes: their skill in adapting a mythic tale to the context and the requirements of a new performance. In his 1975 edition Filippo Càssola recorded the alternative readings in a separate section of his apparatus, while Bruno Gentili3 has explained them as adiaphoroi, that is equivalent readings which do not compromise the formal correctness of poetic diction. On the other hand, in his Loeb edition (2003), Martin West has selected what in each case he thought, on the basis of his personal judgement, to be the better text even in the case of the doublets from the Hymn to Apollo reported by Thucydides. Anyway, let us attempt to establish the classes into which such doublets could be arranged. False doublets First of all we must exclude readings which may seem to be but are not true doublets. To my view a typical example is Ap. 95–98. Before begetting her wonderful son, Leto is pierced for nine days and nine nights by strong pangs. The goddesses of highest degree are with her on Delos: Dione, Rhea, Themis, Amphitrite: 95 )λλαι τ’ 3ναται, νσ6ιν λευκωλν υ @Ηρης0 στ γρ *ν μεγρ ισι Δι2ς νε6εληγερτα . μ /νη δ’ 9κ *ππυστ μ γ στκ ς Ε8λε υια0 στ γρ )κρ#ω >λ/μπ#ω -π2 .ρυσ ισι ν6εσσιν. 95 … and the other goddessess apart from white-armed Hera, for she was seated in the halls of Zeus the cloud-gatherer; and only the goddess of birth pangs, Eileithyia, had not learned of it, for she was seated on the peak of Olympus under golden clouds. Departing from his usual habit of confining variae lectiones to the apparatus Càssola followed David Ruhnken in deleting l. 96, which in his 3 See Gentili 1984: 305..

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