INTRODUCTION
Caesar has never been an author in search of an editor. Witness the large number of printed texts of the Commentaries. 1 With this indisputable fact in mind, one wonders if anything more can be said about the textual transmission of an ancient writer who has enjoyed such popularity. The explanation and justification for this study are simply that the basic problems confronting any editor who approaches his task systematically are still unresolved for the Civil War. A brief survey of various editions from the Renaissance to the present will supply the background needed to make this clear, and may also be of interest to those concerned with the history of scholarship. The first phase in the editing of the Civil War belongs solely to Italian incunabula. Giovanni Andrea Bussi (Joannes Andreas Aleriensis) is responsible for the editio princeps which was printed in 1469 at Rome by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz 2 and contains the genuine as well as the spurious Wars. Born in 1417 at Vigevano, Bussi pursued a somewhat undistinguished career until 1451 when he became an acolyte to Pope Nicholas V. Hence forth his path lay in the service of pontiffs and cardinals, and he was named Bishop of Accia (Corsica) in 1462 by Pius II and trans ferred to the see of Aleria on that same island by Paul II in 1466. 3 Whether a matter of personal preference or whether he could not get away from more pressing duties, he appears never to have gone to Corsica. As an editor of classical works during a three-year association with Sweynheym and Pannartz (1469-71), he ranks among the most active scholars of the period: to him are due first editions of such authors as Apuleius, Aulus Gellius, Cicero (letters
1 There have been well over a hundred editions of the Civil War. For a chronological list of the early texts see the editio Bipontina (1782), vol. i, pp. xxiv-xxxv and the reprint of the Delphin Classic by A. J. Valpy (London, 1819), vol. v, pp. 2045-69 1 Catalogue ofBooks Printed in the XV th Century now in the British Museum, part iv (1916), p. 7. Sweynheym and Pannartz printed their first books in 1465 at Subiaco, but by 1467 had moved to Rome and were established in the house of the Massimo. 8 For the details of Bussi's life see Erich Meuthen, 'Briefe des Aleriensis an die Sforza', Romische Quartalschrift fur christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte 59 (1964), pp. 88-99. Suppl. to Mnemosyne XXIII 2 INTRODUCTION and speeches), Livy, Lucan, Pliny the Elder, and Silius Italicus. The edition of Caesar has a general praefatio in place of the usual dedicatory epistle to Pope Paul; it promises numerous benefits to the reader, but does not mention that any manuscripts have been consulted. The fact that Bussi put out four other texts during the same year may have some bearing on the quality of his Caesar. This 'edition' of the Civil War is seemingly nothing more than a reproduction of the more common branch of the vulgate.1 It contains a number of nonsensical readings and grammatical errors 2 which indicate that he did not exercise the editorial prero gatives of conjecture and correction as in his 1470 Pliny edition.3 Consequently his text would have developed, at best, only the reader's ingenuity. However, apart from the obvious advantage of the greater availability of the Commentaries, the editio princeps is notable for two reasons: this strain of the vulgate became the textus receptus for the next four centuries and is easily recognized; the precedent for the publication of the entire corpus in a single volume was thus established, and the Civil War was rarely, if ever, issued separately until the end of the nineteenth century. This convention has undoubtedly contributed to the overshadowing of the text by the more famous Gallic War. Two years passed before another edition appeared. In 1471 Nicholas Jenson, a native of Sommevoire near Troyes, published at Venice a text whose readings closely resemble those of the editio princeps. This edition, together with a reprint in 1472 by Sweynheym and Pannartz of Bussi's effort, seemed to satisfy the immediate demand for copies of the Commentaries, for it was not until 1477 that a third printer included Caesar among his titles - Antonius Zarotus at Milan. Having learned the trade as foreman to the Milanese printer Pamfilo Castaldi in 1471, Zarotus entered in 1472 into partnership with Gabriel de Orsonibus, Cola Montanus, and Gabriel Paveri-Fontana, but later struck out on his own. The edition of Caesar belongs to his period of indepen dent activity. Although his text may be merely a reprint of
1 Cf. pp. 48-49. 8 For example 1-4-4 Caesar, 15.5 Ulcillem, 18.2 Lucetio. 3 Cf. Adriana Marucchi, 'Note sul manoscritto [Vat. Lat. 5991] di cui e servito Giovanni Andrea Bussi per l'edizione di Plinio del 1470', BIRT 15 (1967-68), pp. 175-82. I have not succeeded in locating any manuscript of Caesar which belonged to or was corrected by Bussi.