Pliny Letters, Fragment

42 18. The spellings Karet and Karitas, whether Pliny’s or not, are a sign of antiquity. In the first century A.D., as we see from Velius Longus (p. 53, 12 K) and Quintilian (I, 7, 10), certain old-timers clung to the use of k for c when the vowel a followed. By the fourth century, theorists of the opposite tendency proposed the abandonment of k and q as superfluous letters, since their functions were performed by c. Donatus (p. 368, 7 K) and Diomedes, too, according to Keil (p. 423, 11), still believed in the rule of ka for ca, but these rigid critics had passed away in the time of Servius, who, in his commentary on Donatus (p. 422, 35 K), remarks k vero et q aliter nos utimur, aliter usi sunt maiores nostri. Namque illi, quotienscumque a sequebatur, k praeponebant in omni parte orationis, ut Kaput et similia; nos vero non usurpamus k litteram nisi in Kalendarum nomine scribendo. See also Cledonius (p. 28, 5K); W. Brambach, Latein. Orthog. 1868, pp. 210 ff.; W. M. Lindsay, The Latin Language, 1894, pp. 6 f. There would thus be no temptation for a scribe at the end of the fifth century or the beginning of the sixth to adopt ka for ca as a habit. The writer of our fragment was copying faithfully from his original a spelling that he apparently would not have used himself. There are various other cases of ca in our text (e.g., calceos, III, i, 4; canere, 11), but there we find the usual spelling. On traces of ka in the Bellovacensis, see below, p. 57. I should not be surprised if Pliny himself employed the spelling ka, which was gradually modified in the successive copies of his work; it may be, however, that our manuscript represents a text which had passed through the hand of some archaeologizing scholar of a later age, like Donatus. At any rate, this feature of our fragment is an indication of genuineness and of antiquity.

44 19. C.P. X (1915), pp. 8 ff. A classified list of the manuscripts of the Letters is given by Miss Dora Johnson in C.P. VII (1912), pp. 66 ff.

20. Pal. des Class. Lat. pl. CXLIII. See our plates XIII and XIV. At least as early as the thirteenth century, the manuscript was at Beauvais. The ancient press-mark S. Petri Beluacensis, in writing perhaps of the twelfth century, may still be discerned on the recto of the first folio. See Merrill, C.P. X, p. 16. If the book was written at Beauvais, as Chatelain thinks (Journal des Savants, 1900, p. 48), then something like what I call the mid-century style of Fleury was also cultivated, possibly a bit later, in the north. The Beauvais Horace, Leidensis lat. 28 saec. IX (Chatelain, pl. LXXVIII), shows a certain similarity in the script to that of B. If both were done at Beauvais, the Horace would seem to be the later book. It belongs, we may observe, to a group of manuscripts of which a Floriacensis (Paris lat. 7971) is a conspicuous member. To settle the case of B, we need a study of all the books of Beauvais. For this, a valuable preliminary survey is given by Omont in Mém. de l’Acad. des Ins. et Belles Lettres XL (1914), pp. 1 ff.

21. Specimina Cod. Lat. Vatic. 1912, pl. 30. See also H. M. Bannister, Paleografia Musicale Vaticana 1913, p. 30, No. 109.

22. See the preface to his edition, p. xi.

45 23. For the script of F, see plates XV and XVI. Bern. 136, s. XIII (Merrill, C.P. X, p. 18) is a copy of F.

24. Cod. Med. LXVIII, 1. See Rostagno in the preface to his edition of this manuscript in the Leyden series, and for the Pliny, Chatelain, Pal. des Class. Lat., pl. CXLV. Keil (edition, p. vi), followed by Kukula (edition, p. iv), incorrectly assigns the manuscript to the tenth century. The latest treatment is by Paul Lehmann in his “Corveyer Studien,” in Abhandl. der Bayer. Akad. der Wiss. Philos.-philol. u. hist. Klasse, XXX, 5 (1919), p. 38. He assigns it to the middle or the last half of the ninth century.

25. Chatelain calls the page of Pliny that he reproduces (pl. CXLIV) tenth century, but attributes the Sallust portion of the manuscript, although this seems of a piece with the style of the Pliny, to the ninth; see pl. LIV. Hauler, who has given the most complete account of the manuscript, thinks it “saec. IX/X” (Wiener Studien XVII (1895), p. 124). He shows, as others had done before him, the close association of the book with Bernensis 357, and of that codex with Fleury.

26. See Merrill C.P. X, p. 23. The catalogue (G. Becker, Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui, p. 282) was prepared about 1200, and is of Corbie, not as Merrill has it, Corvey. Chatelain (on plate LIV) regards the book as “provenant du monastère de Corbie.” At my request, Mr. H. J. Leon, Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University, recently examined the manuscript, and neither he nor Monsignore Mercati, the Prefect of the Vatican Library, could discover any note or library-mark to indicate that the book is a Corbeiensis. In a recent article, Philol. Quart. I (1922), pp. 17 ff.), Professor Ullman is inclined, after a careful analysis of the evidence, to assign the manuscript to Corbie, but allows for the possibility that it was written in Tours or the neighborhood and thence sent to Corbie.

27. C.P. X, p. 23.

46 28. See Paul Lehmann, “Aufgaben und Anregungen der lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters,” in Sitzungsberichte der Bayer. Akad. der Wiss. Philos.-philol. u. hist. Klasse, 1918, 8, pp. 14 ff. I am indebted to Professor Lehmann for the facts on the basis of which I have made the statement above. To quote his exact words, the contents of the manuscript are as follows: “Fol. 1-31^v Briefe des Hierononymus u. Gregorius Magnus + fol. 46^v-47^v, Briefe des Plinius an Tacitus u. Albinus, in kontinentaler, wohl Regensburger Minuskel etwa der Mitte des 9^ten Jahrhunderts, unter starken insularen (angelsächsischen) Einfluss in Buchstabenformen, Abkürzungen, etc. Fol. 32^r saec. IX^ex vel X^in. fol. 32^v-46^r in der Hauptsache direkt insular mit historischen Notizen in festländischer Style. Fol. 48^v-128 Ambrosius saec. Xⁱⁿ.”

29. Commentatiuncula de C. Plinii Caecilii Secundi epistularum fragmento Vossiano notis tironianis descripto (in Exercitationes Palaeog. in Bibl. Univ. Lugduno-Bat., 1890). De Vries ascribes the fragment to the ninth century and is sure that the writing is French (p. 12). His reproduction, though not photographic, gives an essentially correct idea of the script. The text of the fragment is inferior to that of MV, with which manuscripts it is undoubtedly associated. In one error it agrees with V against M. Chatelain (Introduction à la Lecture des Notes Tironiennes, 1900), though citing De Vries’s publication in his bibliography (p. xv), does not discuss the character of the notes in this fragment. I must leave it for experts in tachygraphy to decide whether the style of the Tironian notes is that of the school of Orléans.

30. See Merrill’s discussion of the different possibilities, C.P. X, p. 14.

47 31. C.P. X, p. 20.

48 32. I have not always followed Dr. Lowe in distinguishing first and second hands in the various alterations discussed here (pp. 48-50).

33. See above, p. 42.

34. See above, pp. 11 f.

49 35. See plates XIII-XIV.

50 37. There are one or two divergencies in spelling hardly worth mention. The most important are 63, 10 caret B KARET Π; caritas B KARITAS Π. Yet see below, p. 57, where it is shown that the ancient spelling is found in B elsewhere than in the portion of text included in Π.

51 38. C.P. V, pp. 467 ff. and 476 ff., and for the supposed lack of indices in P, p. 485.

39. I venture to disagree with Dr. Lowe’s view (above, p. 25) that the addition is by the first hand.

40. See above, p. 11.

52 42. See above, pp. 48 f.

53 43. See above, p. 44, n. 2.

44. “Zur frühen Ueberlieferungsgeschichte des Briefwechsels zwischen Plinius und Trajan,” in Wiener Studien XXXI (1909), p. 258.

45. See above, pp. 21, 41.

54 46. See above, p. 22.

47. The Descent of Manuscripts, 1918, p. 16. Professor Clark counts on two pages chosen at random, 23-31 letters in the line. My count for Π includes the nine and a third pages on which full lines occur. If I had taken only foll. 52^r, 52^v, 53^r and 53^v, I should have found no lines of 32 or 33 letters. On the other hand, the first page to which I turned in the Vindobonensis of Livy (133^v) has a line of 32 letters, and so has 135^v, while 136^v has one of 33. The lines of Π are a shade longer than those of the Vindobonensis, but only a shade.

55 48. Ibidem, pp. vi, 9-18. There is some danger of pushing Professor Clark’s method too far, particularly when it is applied to New Testament problems. For a well-considered criticism of the book, see Merrill’s review in the Classical Journal XIV (1919), pp. 395 ff.

57 49. See above, pp. 42, n. 1, and 50, n. 1.

58 50. See the introduction to his edition, p. xviii.

51. See below, pp. 60 ff.

52. Op. cit., p. xxv: illis potissimum Aldum usum esse vidi.

53. Op. cit., pp. xviii, xx.

54. Op. cit., p. 2: Ex ς pauca adscripta sunt.

55. Op. cit., p. xxxii.

59 56. See Ribbeck’s Virgil, Prolegomena, p. 152.

57. See plate XVIII.

58. Epist. III, i (plate IV).

59. See plate XVIII.

60 60. See above, p. 47.

61. The readings of manuscripts are taken from Merrill, those of the editions from Keil; in the latter case, I use parentheses if the reading is only implied, not stated.

61 62. I say “possible” because the reading is implied, not stated, in Keil’s edition. The reading of Beroaldus on 63, 23 I get from our photograph, not from Keil, who does not give it.

63. I have purposely omitted to treat Aldus’s use of the superscriptions in P, as that matter is best reserved for a consideration of the superscriptions in general.

64. See above, p. 58.

65. See above, pp. 47 f.

62 66. See Merrill, “Zur frühen Ueberlieferungsgeschichte des Briefwechsels zwischen Plinius und Trajan,” in Wiener Studien XXXI (1909), p. 257; C.P. II, p. 154; XIV, p. 30 f. Two examples (216, 23 and 227, 18) will be noted in plate XVII a.

67. Certain errors of the scribe who wrote the additional pages in the Bodleian book warrant the surmise that he was copying not the Parisinus itself, but some copy of it. Thus in 227, 14 (see plate XVII b) we find him writing Tamen for tum, Budaeus correcting this error in the margin. A scribe is of course capable of anything, but with an uncial tum to start from, tamen is not a natural mistake to commit; it would rather appear that the scribe falsely resolved a minuscule abbreviation.

63 68. “Die Ueberlieferung der Briefe des jüngeren Plinius,” in Hermes XXI (1886), pp. 287 ff.

70. See above, pp. 47 f.

71. See the prefatory letter in his edition of 1518.

72. C.P. XIV (1919), pp. 29 ff.

73. Op. cit., p. xxxvii: nam ea quae aliter in Aldina editione atque in illis (i.e., Avantius, Beroaldus, and Catanaeus) exhibentur ita comparata sunt omnia, ut coniectura potius inventa quam e codice profecta esse existimanda sint et plura quidem in pravis et temerariis interpolationibus versantur.

64 74. But see above, p. 62, n. 2.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES.

Nos. I-XII. New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, MS. M. 462. A fragment of 12 pages of an uncial manuscript of the early sixth century. The fragment contains Pliny’s Letters, Book II, xx. 13—Book III, v. 4. For a detailed description, see above, pp. 3 ff. The entire fragment is here given, very slightly reduced. The exact size of the script is shown in Plate XX.

XIII-XIV. Florence, Laurentian Library MS. Ashburnham R 98, known as Codex Bellovacensis (B) or Riccardianus (R), written in Caroline minuscule of the ninth century. See above, p. 44. Our plates reproduce fols. 9 and 9^v (slightly reduced), containing the end of Book II and the beginning of Book III.

XV-XVI. Florence, Laurentian Library MS. San Marco 284, written in Caroline minuscule of the tenth century. See above, pp. 44 f. Our plates reproduce fols. 56^v and 57^r, containing the end of Book II and the beginning of Book III.

XVII-XVIII. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. L 4. 3. See above, pp. 39 f. The lacuna in Book VIII (216, 27-227, 10 Keil) is indicated by a cross (+) on fol. 136^v (plate XVII^a). The missing text is supplied on added leaves by the hand shown on plate XVII^b (= fol. 144). The variants are in the hand of Budaeus. Plate XVIII contains fols. 32^v and 33, showing the end of Book II and the beginning of Book III.

thumbnail I	thumbnail II	thumbnail III	thumbnail IV
Plate I	Plate II	Plate III	Plate IV
thumbnail V	thumbnail VI	thumbnail VII	thumbnail VIII
Plate V	Plate VI	Plate VII	Plate VIII
thumbnail IX	thumbnail X	thumbnail XI	thumbnail XII
Plate IX	Plate X	Plate XI	Plate XII

thumbnail XIII	thumbnail XIV
Plate XIII	Plate XIV