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 Quotation from Genesis in the De sublimitate (IX. 9) W. Rhys Roberts The Classical Review / Volume 11 / Issue 09 / December 1897, pp 431 - 436 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00051878, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00051878 How to cite this article: W. Rhys Roberts (1897). The Quotation from Genesis in the De sublimitate (IX. 9). The Classical Review, 11, pp 431-436 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00051878 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 128.122.253.228 on 02 May 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 431 XXI 205, 206. Mart, ii 8 7 'quasi si manifesta negemus' HeinsiuSj quae si some MSS, quasi nos Si mihi lingua foret, tu nostra iustius others. ira, qui mihi tendebas retia, dignus eras. VI 139, 140. Cydippe has been telling Acontius how coldly and rudely she treats his rival: then Lemniadum facinus culpo, non miror, come these lines, 'locus corruptus', as Iason. Heinsius says: ' si mihi lingua foret' is a quamlibet iratis ipse dat arma dolor. truly amazing irrelevancy ; and besides, she has a tongue. Gronovius proposed ' si me iratis is not in P, which has nothing dignaforem', and van Lennep ' si mens aequa between quamlibet and ipse: it is added by foret': the latter is just the sense required the second hand and occurs also in a few but the words are these : other MSS. G and most MSS have quam- libet (or quaelibet or quodlibet) ad facinus, mens nisi iniqua foret, tu nostra cet. which is unmetrical and evidently interpo- msnisi is much like mihisi, and iniqua is lated from the hexameter. iratis gives almost the same as lingua. almost the reverse of the sense required, but for that very reason is probably a relic of the truth and no interpolation. Bentley XXI 237, 238. and J. F. Heusinger proposed infirmis, com- paring am i 7 66 'quamlibet infirmas ad- Vnde tibi fauor hie? nisi quod nous, iuuat ira manus'; and this is accepted by Sedlmayer Ehwald and Palmer. Then, when forte reperta est ipse has been altered with Madvig to iste or quae capiat magnos littera lecta deos. ilk, the sense is altogether satisfactory. Cydippe is not saying that such a ' littera' But there is another word which has as has really been invented : she mentions the good a sense, as good a parallel, and more notion as barely conceivable; so ' quod likeness to iratis: reperta est' is wrong. Two of our scanty quamlibet ignauis iste dat arma dolor. authorities give nisi forte noua reperta est. Write See Cato monostich. 23 (P.L.M. Baehr. iii p. 237) quoted by Heinsius: ' quamlibet nisi <si> noua forte reperta est cet: ignauum facit indignatio fortem'. Compare iv 111 ' nisi si manifesta negamus' A. E. HOUSMAN. Heinsius, nisi P, nisi nos the other MSS; THE QUOTATION FROM GENESIS IN THE DE SUBLIMITATE (IX. 9). IN the ninth chapter of the Be Sublimitate fore, to require, and it will certainly repay, the following passage occurs : Tavrg KO.1 6 iw a brief discussion with special reference to 'IOVSGUCOV Oea/xoOirrj';, ofy 6 TV^WV avrjp, iireiSr/the doubts which scholars have at various ripr TOV Oeiov Svva/uv Kara ryv a£iav c^copijtre times .cast upon its authenticity. Among the Ka£e<f>r)vev, t&Ovs ev TQ flafioXrj ypctyas T5Vdoubters have been Franciscus Portus in the vofntiiv ' ftirtv 6 6c6s ' <f>r)<rr ri; ' ytvicrOm <j>S>s,sixteenth century, Daniel Wy ttenbach in the Kal tyhitro- yevecrOio yq, KCLI eyevero.' Similarly,eighteenth, and Leonhard Spengel1 and Louis the legislator of the Jews, no ordinary man, Vaucher 2 in our own century. The views having formed and expressed a worthy concep- of the two last critics invite particular tion of the might of the Godhead, writes at the attention, and it will be convenient to con- very beginning of his book of laws, ' God said' sider those of Vaucher first. —what? ' Let light be, and it was: let earth Vaucher's judgment, upon this point as be, and it was.' 1 Specimen Emendationum in Cornelium Taciturn. The passage is at once a celebrated and Monachii, 1852. (like the treatise in which it is found) a 2 Etudes Critiques sur le TraiU du Sublime et sur somewhat neglected one. It seems, there^ Us Merits de Longin. Genfeve, 1864. 432 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. upon others, is somewhat warped by his pre- although he was the first editor to place possessions. His object, throughout his textual criticism of the Be Sublimitate on ingenious but unconvincing book, is to prove satisfactory footing by recognising the that Plutarch is the author of the Be eminence of P, Spengel does not reject Sublimitate. And with this theory the words on the ground of insufficient di quotation from Genesis but ill accords, in mentary support. It is not the external, bi view of Plutarch's general attitude towards the internal evidence, that causes him the Jews and of the absence of any direct regard the section as an interpolation. Thfl reference to the Jewish scriptures in his words do not seem to him to be at home in accepted works. This preoccupation led their surroundings. He would no doubt; Vaucher to emphasize unduly the fact that have agreed with F. A. Wolf, whom howevfflr the passage is not found in the Paris MS. he does not quote, that they seem to have 2036. The Codex Parisinus (P) belongs to 'fallen from the skies.'2 the tenth century and is, beyond comparison, But a glance at the context will show that the best of the existing manuscripts of the the degree of abruptness with which the Hept "Yi^ovs. But it has suffered mutilation, passage is introduced has been greatly not in this part only, but unfortunately in exaggerated, and certainly need awaken several others. It is here, however, that little surprise when found in a work which the largest gap occurs, one which marks the is by no means free from digression and loss of as much as one quaternion (that parenthesis. And in truth the abruptness signed KE) out of a total of seven. But of would in some respects be greater if the the eight leaves thus missing from P, two passage were away. The general subject of (the first and the last) have been preserved the ninth chapter is nobility of nature as a in the remaining MSS., which are usually source of lofty diction. Quoting one of his held to be copies derived, directly or indi- own best things in a rather off-hand manner, rectly, from P at a time when it still retained like a true critic, the author says at the the two leaves. The first leaf is represented, beginning of the chapter: ' In some other in all the editions of the De Sublimitate, by place I have written to this effect: " Sub- the words a>s K&V TOIS irtpl lB,evo<pu>VToq iyio limity is the echo of a great soul." ' (yeypcuftd TTOV /cat irepwOi TO TOIOSTOV VI/^OS (i€yako<f>po- fj.ev rjpicio-Oriv (viii. 1-ix. 4), and the eighth by 1 lx the words TO eir' ovpavbv 6<j>6aXfi6tiriv <rvvt]<s dir^xnt" ' - 2.) This train of thought ISeaOai (ix. 4-ix. 10). Now it is in ix. 9 that he illustrates chiefly, but not entirely, from the passage in question occurs ; or to speak Homer. Outside Homer, there is in the more correctly, the short section 9 consists sections we possess -(and it must be remem- of- it and of it alone. bered that six leaves are missing) a reference I have said that the two leaves, thus pre- to a celebrated saying of Alexander, and served, appear in all the editions of the Be another to a poem attributed to Hesiod. It Sublimitate. This is true of that of Vaucher is important to notice these particulars himself. He prints the words they contain because the critics have sometimes spoken as in full. Section 9, however, he places in if the whole chapter were filled with Homer. brackets. And yet, as far as manuscript And when the Homeric passages come, they authority goes, that section stands or falls have a certain unity; they all speak of with those other sections which rest upon the manifestations of the divine power under same evidence. And all these are so charac- various shapes; they end with a reference to teristic in themselves, and fit so perfectly the divine greatness and purity, and the into their context, that it is impossible to divine control.over the elements. Into this doubt their authenticity. They begin with unity the passage from Genesis enters an enumeration of the five sources of that naturally, and after it there comes, by a elevated style which is the theme of the similarly natural transition, a reference to treatise, and they end by giving the larger the deeds of heroic men as depicted in Homer. half of an extract from Homer of which the ' In his poem, the battle of the Greeks is concluding words (ev 8e 0a« K<U oAecrcrov) suddenly veiled by mist and baffling night. appear duly at the point where P resumes.1 Then Ajax, at his wits' end, cries : ' Father Zeus, do thou deliver us, the sons of the Spengel's attitude is more consistent. He Achaeans, from the gloom, and make clear too brackets the passage (Rhetores Graeci, i.