The Oxford Avianus the Fables of Avianus Edited, with Prolegomena
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The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here The Oxford Avianus The fables of Avianus edited, with prolegomena, critical apparatus, commentary, excursus, and index by Robinson Ellis, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, University Reader in Latin. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. 1887. 8vo. pp. xliv, 151. 8s. 6d. John E. B. Mayor The Classical Review / Volume 1 / Issue 07 / July 1887, pp 188 - 193 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00182332, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00182332 How to cite this article: John E. B. Mayor (1887). Review of L. Frazier, and J. De Villiers 'Language processing and language acquisition' The Classical Review, 1, pp 188-193 doi:10.1017/ S0009840X00182332 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 132.239.1.230 on 13 Apr 2015 188 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 16, e.g. irwppw and vurja-eoiv would not bethat mentioned by Mr. Scott on p. 41, likely to occur in inscriptions earlier than which is an odd combination of both systems 100 A.D. But et for i and vice versd is a (pap. 1414). On pp. 29, 30, Mr. Scott is common interchange from 100 B.C. onwards. surely right in reading (in what seems to be The peculiar substitution of i?a for «a in the conclusion of a lecture by Philodemus) words like eTT(/j.e\rja, eva-eftr/a, which became KOI T?I% KaXyjs M(i)A.i^TOD fj.r/ aTroaravTi SiairavTO'; extremely common in Augustan times (circa Eip^iwo), and in translating ' Irenaeus, who B-c. 35-A.D. 50) all through Greece, and after- has never abandoned fair Miletus.' Why, wards entirely ceased, has been often however, he should conjecture the phrase accounted for by the influence of the Latin ' to abandon fair Miletus' to have been a e (in Medea, <fec.,) upon Greek orthography : proverb is not so clear. Why not suppose see Meisterhans, p. 23. I have sought in Irenaeus to be a philosophic friend of the vain for an instance of this kind in Mr. lecturer, whose home was at Miletus and Scott's papyri (airqpov for airnpov, p. 15, is not who had declined a pressing invitation to exactly typical). This may confirm the Italy 1 The name Eipjji/aios and its cognates opinion that they belong to the age of occur often in that neighbourhood; e.g. C.I.G. Cicero rather than of Augustus. Forms 2885 (Miletus), Eip^nas, LeBas-Waddington, like lyfiaWeiv, iyXoyrjs, afi fir), fiiy yap are Asie 1568 bis (Miletus); Eip-qi/tas^rEipijnos?) interesting survivals of older Greek spelling, in the Milesian award about Messene (Ditten- such as meet us occasionally in the MSS. of berger, Sylloge, 240); Elprjvio's (sic) in the the New Testament; but the more frequent Hellenic Journal, 1886, p. 144 (Samos); and avoidance of such assimilations, e.g. ivxariX- the Christian Father Irenaeus is another Trev, avavKaios, tvyeiov (= eyyiov), exemplifieinstancs e connecting the name (though not a tendency which becomes increasingly uncommon elsewhere, e.g. at Athens) with noticeable in the last two centuries B.C. Ionia. Mr. Scott has very properly adopted Mr. Gow, in the Journal of Philology (vii. Professor Gomperz's system of brackets and 1883, p. 278), has already called attention other signs to indicate doubtful or restored to the mixed employment in these papyri letters and words ; it is a pity, however, that of the alphabetical ciphers and of the this system; is quite different from the initial or ' Attic ' numeral system. The method which has been so admirably devised stichometric marks are all but invariably by the Berlin editors of the Corpus Inscrip- given by means of ' initial' notation; tionurn Atticarum. indeed, the only exception appears to be E. L. HICKS. THE OXFORD AVIANUS. The fables of AVIANUS edited, with prolego- others have analysed the mosaic of Ammi- mena, critical apparatus, commentary, ex- anus, need condensation in one exhaustive cursus, and index by ROBINSON ELLIS, commentary, and that current texts may M.A., LL.D., Fellow of Trinity College, gain by the aid of Madvig and other recent Oxford, University Reader in Latin. Oxford critics. at the Clarendon Press. 1887. 8vo. pp. Ellis has but one predecessor as an inter- xliv, 151. 8«. 6d. preter of Avianus, Hendrik Cannegieter The publication in 1883 of Mr. Rutherford's (24 Febr. 1691—21 Aug. 1770). He is not, Bahrius determined the present edition of I think, ungenerous, when he says : Ariaaus. Judged by modern standards, Cannegieter per- FOB several years Mr. Ellis, in the study of formed his task only tolerably well. His Maximianus and Orientius, has been led to notes are cumbrous and loaded with useless citations, as well as unnecessary or improbable the neglected writers of the decline. He conjectures. justly complains that interpretation has not kept pace with criticism even in Germany. Yet, having carefully studied Cannegieter's 'No adequate edition of Ammianus exists.' book from the first page to the last, I wish With due gratitude to the excellent editors to say a word on his behalf. Avianus was Lindenbrog and the two De Valois (to say his first publication, and he continued to nothing of James Gronov), we must allow publish for thirty-five years after its appear- that the monographs in which Hertz and ance. I learn from the Dutch Biographical THE CLASSICAL EEVIEW. 189 Dictionary of Van der Aa that thirty years dispares offeruntur. qui fieri potest ut on ago his papers, including additions to his unum contrariis adfectionibus iuduamus ?) he published works, were in the hands of the has in mind the traveller blowing hot and family Burghgraaf at Franeker. Will some cold (fab. 29 22 tarn diversa duo qui simul Dutch correspondent make inquiries on the ora ferat). Indeed the language of Sym- spot? machus more nearly resembles St. James Ellis quotes the criticisms of Wopkens, 3 9-12. Again, when Ellis, after Unrein, and his reply to Cannegieter's defence, and makes Macrobius (Conim. I 2 § 7 fabulae, also the notes of that master of Latin quarum nomen indicat falsi professionem. poetry, Fr. Guyet.1 In the same volume cl. §§ 9, 10) allude to the words in our with the two latter pieces (Misc. obss. crit. fabulist's dedication fabularum lextus oc- VIII, Amst. 1737, pp. 1-20) appeared Canne- currit, quod in his urbane concepta falsitas gieter's defence, where he points out e.g. deceat et non incumbat necessitas veritatis, that fab. 7 4 and fab. 25 6 both end with I doubt whether Clinton would have built the words rictibus ora trahens. These notes a chronological argument on such a founda- have apparently escaped Ellis. Indeed I have tion. To me both writers suggest the school found in the older commentary not a few illus- definition of fiWostfabula, Xoyoi i/reuSi)? EIKOM- trations which I had searched for in vain in £w ak-qduav (Aphthon. progymn. 1), fabula the new ; some of these I give below, marked est, in qua nee verae nee veri similes res with an asterisk. Cannegieter was a grateful continentv/r (Cic. inv. I § 27. cf. Philostr. disciple of the great Perizonius (see p. 159 in Ellis p. 50). ' cuius me disciplinis formatum esse, in With regard to sins of prosody Avianus prima felicitatis parte pono, nee merita is here successfully cleared from not a few. obliviscar unquam') and bequeathed his Possibly he allowed a syllable, short by interest in the later Latin to his pupils, position, at the end of the first half of the the elder and younger Arntzenius, as may pentameter; but no great violence need be be seen in their successive prefaces. His done in order to correct the ten examples own preface to Avianus displays to the life which occur. Of other faults we may get. the busy hive of that Dutch school, which it rid of velis in one place 23 10 (Lachmann's is now the fashion to disparage, but which conjecture is wrongly given on p. xxiv.) by has rendered lasting service to accurate reading: scholarship. sice deurn, busti seu decus esse velis. In his Prolegomena Ellis treats of the age of Avianus (or Avienus, for he identifies The chapter on the diction and syntax of him with one of the company in Macr.), the Avianus will be of service to grammarians prosody of the fables, diction and syntax, and lexicographers. Of mss. eleven have the mss. been collated throughout by the editor (one With many recent critics he holds that Paris, three Oxford, two Peter house, four the Theodosius of the dedication is the British Museum, one Treves, one St. Gallen author JYlacrobius, and proves (as Canne- fragment) and others examined. The Gale gieter had done most convincingly) that ms. was collated by Munro for Bahrens. he cannot have been either of the emperors Various readings are given at the foot of Theodosius. So far Ellis is on solid ground. the page. A strict adherence to Cobet's Going on, he is wise beyond what is written. rules might perhaps have lightened the For I cannot think that Ausonius (Grat. margin so far as to make room for auctores Act. § 41 habes ergo consiliatorem et metuis et imitatores, which a sound tradition (as e.g. proditorem) alludes to fab. 26 11 12 : in Schenkl's Calpurnius) now places imme- diately under the text. In the commentary nam quamvis rectis constet sententia verbis, Bodleian mss.