Manili Astronomicon Liber II

>^ B^'^i. LIBRARY OF THE University of California. 7 ^^1 ni Class MANILI ASTRONOMICON LIBER II EDIDIT H. W. GARROD COLLEGII MERTONENSIS SOCIVS OXONII E TYPOGRAPHEO ACADEMICO M DCCCC XI HENRY FROWDE PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK TORONTO AND MELBOURNE ROBINSONI ELLIS VIRO DE POETIS ASTRONOMICIS INSIGNITE MERITO ET 'NOSTRAE MVLTVM QVI PROFVIT VRBI' 226340 : PREFACE The second book of the Astronomica is at once the longest and the most difficult. In this book Manilius passes from the popular astronomy with which he is occupied in Book I to the proper business of the maike- maticus—to an astrology based on geometrical and arith- metical calculations. He passes, that is, from a subject moderately diverting to one difficult and repellent. Many students of Latin poetry make their way through the first book. A moderate scholar can understand it, and it has recently been well edited. But few, probably, of those who read the first achieve also the second book. The ' — signorum lucentes undique flammae ', the aa-rpcuv ofiriyvpis all that is picturesque and inviting. But when we come on to triangles, quadrangles, hexagons, dodecatemories, and the dodecatemories of dodecatemories—then our faith in a Providence which has made the beautiful so hard begins to fail us. And not only is the second book hard, but the commentaries upon it are hard too. No one commentary suffices ; and even when he has all the commentaries before him, the student will still be in want of a means of approach to them—for none of them furnishes a real Introduction to Manilius. Some ot them, indeed, are often not very honestly put together. Even Scaliger, with his encyclopaedic learning, is not above dissembling in a base silence his occasional ignorance—though mostly he is unwilling rather than unable to help the mere beginner for he is a great man writing for his peers. Du Fay, who alone of editors sets out to simplify Manilius, brought to some capacity for teaching not only a loose conscience but a very limited knowledge and a faulty scholarship. :,',:.:,' PREFACE •,«>•,' The present Text, Commentary, and Translation, together with the Introductions prefixed to them, are designed to carry the casual student over Book II into clearer regions (though Book III might be clearer than it is) with less cost to his time and patience than he must ordinarily incur. The Translation attempts to give an accurate rendering of the Latin, and makes little pretension to literary quality. Indeed, the character of Manilius' Latin is such that the helpfulness of a translation is not unlikely to be in inverse proportion to its readableness. The temptation to para- phrase is very strong. Yet any one who has constantly used Pingre will be aware of the disadvantages of this kind of rendering, and will perhaps be tolerant of a version in which literary form is deliberately subordinated to utility. Even when Manilius is not employing technical language his sentences are often strangely intractable. Any one who will trouble to make for himself a rendering of the first nine lines of this book will know at once what I mean. His technicalities, moreover, are perhaps more embarrassing than those of any other author who has tried to versify a scientific terminology. What skill and sympathy can achieve in the translation of Lucretius Mr. Cyril Bailey has recently taught us. But we have yet to learn how to deal with a poet who versifies the multiplication-table and sets to the measure of Vergil the reasonings of Euclid, One particular difficulty I may be allowed here to mention, towards which I have not attempted to take up a consistent attitude. Qiiarta signa in Manilius are, in accordance with an inclusive method of reckoning common in Roman writers, signs separated from one another by two inter- vening signs. The clear sense of such a phrase can only be hit by a rigmarole. But I have found it in practice not possible to maintain throughout a single rigmarole for each such phrase as it recurs in a variety of contexts. In my Commentary I have made it my first object to interpret Manilius by himself—to find out what he wrote and to explain that. The understanding of him has, I think, recently been somewhat retarded by an over-anxiety vi PREFACE to compare him with, and make him conform to, His sup- posed sources. And my notes are to some extent a protest against the modern KaKotjO^s of Quellenforschung. At the same time I have tried to give the reader some notion of the relation in which, in perplexed passages, Manilius stands to our other authorities. This has occasionally compelled me to notes of a length so considerable that an Excursus might be thought to have been more desirable. On the whole, however, I have thought it well to deal with difficulties as they arose. The practical discomfort of a Commentary in which the principal difficulties are always waiting round the corner seems to me greater than the moderate annoyance of a disproportion in the notes. And in this matter I am in agreement with the practice of previous editors of Manilius. Those passages, I may add, from other authors, whether Greek or Latin, by which I have tried to illustrate either the thought or the language of Manilius, are in the main my own collection. Where I have cited a passage already adduced by some previous editor I have usually noted that fact. In interpretation it will be found that I have in a great many passages been compelled to take a different view from that commonly received. I have not done this rashly ; and I do not need to be told that one should think twice before one disagrees with Scaliger. But it would, I think, argue an inert mind if after four years' study of an author whose subject and style are alike so difficult, I had not found in several passages something to offer which I thought was truer than what had been said upon them previously. Haupt^ has remarked truly that the text of Manilius is more corrupt than that of almost any ancient author. Owing to the fact that my text is accompanied by a translation I have been obliged constantly, in framing it, to come to a definite decision at places where, if I were not translating, I should have preferred to place an obelus. In my Apparatus Criticus I have recorded only the readings of * Opuscula, iii, p. 43. vii PREFACE the MSS., together with such emendations as I have placed in the text. Only so could I achieve clearness, for there is hardly a line in Manilius which has not been harassed by conjecture. Yet this method was bound to do injustice to the many scholars who have exercised brilliant talents upon the emendation of the Astronomica, Accordingly I have added an Appendix, consisting of two parts. In the first part will be found select lections from the editions prior to Scaliger^, and in the second the principal conjectures from Scaliger onwards. The first part has cost me much labour, and has brought me little reward. Yet I have, I think, exhibited the interrelation of the edd, vett. as it has not been exhibited before; and I have restored a good many emendations to their first authors—a service for which I shall perhaps not be thanked by scholars who, looking for their conjectures in Part II, find them in Part I against the symbol E ( = editores omnes ante Scaligerum). I have not attempted a complete collation of the edd, vett. But I have cited those readings which seemed to me to possess interest, making it a rule, wherever I cited a given reading, to cite all the editions at that point. For lines 1-500 I have quoted all the editions wherever Jacob cites -^ Molinius : for the rest I have made my own selection. The chief value of my citations consists, I fancy, in their revelation of the greatness of Scaliger. Scaliger had before him, when he produced his first edition, merely some one or other of these miserable editiones ueteres. It needs some familiarity with the older texts before one realizes with what justice he speaks of Manilius (to Henri III) as of an author— Quem recenter a nigris leti tenebris imminentis, a dirae obliuionis uindicauimus fato. ' All save the folio sine loco et anno {pi which there is no copy in England, and, so far as I know, only one in Europe ; the second Neapolitan (a mere reprint of the first) ; and the second edition of Prttckner (substantially the same as the first). 2 For the readings of Molinius I depend upon Jacob, occasionally verifying him where I had a doubt, and once or twice correcting him. viii PREFACE If he had said plainly that he had brought Cosmos out of Chaos it would not have been far from the truth. The second part of my Appendix does not pretend, any more than the first, to be exhaustive. The editors whom I have cited most often are naturally Scaliger and Bentley. These two names are so important in the history of the text that an editor owes it to his readers to cite rather freely the emendations which attach to them, even when these are not prima facie particularly attractive. From other editors or annotators I have cited sparingly. I have occasionally noticed in my Commentary suggestions to which, for reasons of economy, I have not given a place in the Appendix. I had at one time designed an Appendix —somewhat on the model of the second volume of Weck- lein's Aeschyhis—which should include all the emendations known to me.

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