Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

in history and antiquities, are from the pen of Mr. Purser. I have enlarged considerably the essay on the style of the letters, which appears under Introd. ii. § 2.

*

It was gratifying to find that I. C. G. Boot, whose Observationes Criticae ad Cic. Epp. appeared (Amsterdam, 1880) not long after my first volume, adopts, in some cases, the views which I had ventured to put forward in contravention of the doctrine of that eminent critic. But I have no reason to believe that he has

ever seen my edition.

The great Madvig's Adversaria Critica, vol. iii., reached me just in time to allow me to record his conjectures in my Adnotatio Critica. These are all, of course, most interesting and instructive. There is, perhaps, only one (his conjecture on Att. iii. 15, 5) which one would have been disposed to adopt in the text.

The second volume of the Correspondence will appear very soon. I had begun to print when I was called on to prepare the second edition of this volume.

Boot

* E. g. Att. iii. 7, 2; iii. 15, 4. The places are referred to in the notes. also proposes the emendation of Att vi., 1. 17, which I proposed in Hermathena, vol. i., pp. 205-208.

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN,

December, 1884.

THE READER will kindly make the following CORRECTIONS. (Where a or b is added, the reference is to the first or second column of the notes; otherwise, the reference is to the text) :

[ocr errors]

:

Page 33, line 2 of note †, for Strachar-Davidson' read' Strachan

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

158, b, 5, for

169, 21, for

182, b, 1, for

197, b, 32, for

[ocr errors]

218,

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

'genlis' read 'gentis.'

'detulis set' read 'detulisset.'

sometime' read sometimes.'

'desterces' read' sesterces.'

16, for summam' read 'summum.'

223, 17, del full stop after 'sermone.'

223, a, 24, for 'requitem' read 'requietem.'

245, b, 3, for ‘negotiatiores' read ‘negotiatores.'

282, b, 5, for 'Epdo' read 'pdo.'

302, a, 23, for 'M' read 'In.'

302, 6, 13, for ' ὑποθῆκαις read “ ὑποθῆκαι.
306, a, 30, for 'See' read 'La.'

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

I KNOW that in attempting an edition of the whole correspondence of Cicero I am essaying a very large task. But it seems to me that a selection from a correspondence must always be eminently unsatisfactory. The editor must base his selection on some principle. Most editors will be guided, as Mr. Watson is, chiefly by considerations of historical importance and interest. But this principle will include compositions like the long letter to Lentulus (Fam. i. 9) and the first to Quintus, compositions which, except in outward form, resemble rather Cicero's speeches or his philosophical essays; and must exclude many of those charming little bits of causerie, the birth of a moment, which have stereotyped for us in a perfect phrase a passing smile or sigh of the writer; which have caught for us the 'flying blossom' of the forum or the triclinium; and which teem with interesting traits in the social life of the ancient Romans. Moreover, in these days of examinations the student must always view with uneasiness a book which, from its method, must often omit letters containing those cruxes which the correspondence so richly supplies, to be to the examinera joy, and to himself a casting down of the eyes'.

I think it is not necessary for me to use any arguments to defend the course I have taken in editing the letters in their

chronological order. It seems to me that this is the only fruitful manner of reading any correspondence, and that much confusion and some misapprehension must necessarily result from its neglect. To go no further than the first letter of the first book to Atticus (as given in the editions which are not founded on the chronological sequence), we find that in it the chances of Cicero in his candidature for the consulship are fully discussed. We pursue our reading till we come to the tenth letter of the same book, when we again find Cicero anxious about an election. Will not the reader naturally suppose this to be the election spoken of in the first letter? But no; in the tenth letter Cicero is discussing his election to the praetorship, which he held two years before he had written the letter which stands in the ordinary editions as the first letter of the first book to Atticus.

On pp. 302, 303, I have given a list of the editors whom I have consulted in the recension of the text. Many of these have also been available for the English Commentary. I acknowledge fully my large indebtedness to Mr. Watson, whose work has established for itself, both in England and on the Continent, a very high position among classical editions. I have frequently in my notes called attention to the brilliant renderings of Mr. Pretor.

The selections of Hofmann, Süpfle, Frey, Parry, Matthiae, and Pritchard and Bernard, have been often consulted; the first three have been constantly before me. For the Epp. ad Att. I have chiefly used Boot; and Schütz and Billerbeck for the ad Fam. and ad Q. Fr.

I have found M. Gaston Boissier's Cicéron et ses amis not only very attractive but most useful; not, perhaps, so much for the facts which he supplies, which are generally easy inferences from the standard books of reference, as for the method of his work, and his admirably just estimate of the character and position of Cicero.

The text I have given is not the text of this or that editor. Baiter has given what professes to be, and is allowed to be, a thoroughly accurate collation of M, and a thoroughly complete record of the other tributaries which go to complete our knowledge of the text. Baiter is a scholar of high eminence, and of his valuable contributions to the knowledge of the letters by far the most important undoubtedly is this-he has rendered superfluous any other collation of the mss which are the sources of our knowledge. If every subsequent editor

were bound to accept not only his testimony to the evidence of these mss, but also his inferences therefrom, then it would have been my duty to reproduce the text of Baiter. If, on the other hand, every editor who does not reproduce the text of Baiter must have himself collated the mss, then the work of Baiter has been thrown away. Scientific facts once ascertained do not call for repeated verification at the hands of each successive inquirer: why should not a collation once satisfactorily executed be regarded as final for the purposes of future editors? I conceive that an editor of the letters should accept without question the record which Baiter has given of the readings of M and the other mss of the letters, and should draw his own inferences therefrom. Accordingly, I have not been able to accept the text of Baiter as a whole. My text would, I think, more closely agree with that of Klotz (ed. 2nd). But from him I am obliged often to dissent. I believe I have adhered more closely than any other editor to M as reported by Baiter, and in this I follow Orelli, whose criticism, however, was unfortunately vitiated by a belief in the fabricated codices of Bosius, the fictitious character of which was discovered by Moriz Haupt in 1855. In many cases I have printed in my text the corrupt reading of M obelised, rather than acquiesce in a manifestly unsatisfactory conjecture. I have been very careful not to introduce, to the exclusion of the received conjecture, a conjecture of my own

« AnteriorContinuar »