Concordance interpolations

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Qimmik
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Concordance interpolations

Post by Qimmik »

I thought I would get something off my chest that I've been wanting to write about since Paul Derouda raised the issue towards the end of this discussion:

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=61591

Verses that are repeated in two or more places--but not in all manuscripts--are assumed to be "concordance interpolations" and rejected as spurious by many specialists: at some point, the theory runs, they found their way into some of the manuscripts in the places where they are not fully attested because someone copied them from the places where they are fully attested. Paul explains concordance interpolations as follows:
once there is no obvious ground for mechanical omission (homoeoarchon/homoeoteleuton etc.) AND there is an obvious reason to account for the interpolation, it is likely to be an interpolation, more so of course if it's lacking from several manuscripts. Here, the fact that there seemed to be one verse missing compared to other similar passages would have led to some copyist adding it, either consciously or, especially if he was very well acquainted with the Odyssey, unconsciously. Other such grounds for interpolation are supplying speech introductions to where one was felt missing or if it was felt some clarification was needed.
It strikes me that the urge to condemn and bracket so-called concordance interpolations, exemplified by West and Janko (as well as Apthorp) has to be based on the assumption that, as Paul wrote, "although the pre-Vulgate papyri had a lot of variation, there was a 'core' shared by all manuscripts, more or less identical with our "vulgate", and in addition highly variable, volatile "plus" verses, which were different from text to text."

This is explicitly the view not only of West and Janko, but also of van Thiel. This assumption allows van Thiel to ignore (or at least to not pay much attention to) alternative readings mentioned in the scholia, in ancient quotations, and in papyri; it allows West, and even more so Janko, to condemn suspected concordance interpolations and other material they believe to not to belong to the "core"; and it allows West to "restore" presumed spellings that are not found in any of the manuscripts, ancient or medieval, on the basis of the orthography of eastern Ionian epigraphy of the seventh or sixth centuries BCE.

But apparently the ancient quotations (those before--and some after--150 BCE, when the "vulgate" seems to have emerged) and the pre-150 papyri don't bear out this "optimistic" view (and there is no consensus on whether the Alexandrian scholars were engaging in collating manuscripts or just making things up as they went along--at any rate, Aristarchus' readings often as not didn't make their way into the vulgate). There doesn't seem to be any discernible pre-vulgate "core" Iliad or Odyssey in evidence, as the article on the papyri in A New Companion to Homer notes.

And the "vulgate" itself is by no means uniform, either in the ancient papyri or the medieval manuscripts. Not only that, but no one has ever been able to plot out even a crude representation of the relationships among the medieval manuscripts--and it's highly unlikely that anyone will ever be able to do so. So there is no certainty that a single "vulgate" text that is the ancestor of all the subsequent papyri and medieval manuscripts ever existed.

In these circumstances, it seems to me that there are really no reliable criteria for rejecting lines as concordance interpolations in passages where they are not obviously out of place (as is true of many of these repeated lines). In such cases, there is no way to know whether they were interpolated after the vulgate emerged or before that period (if indeed these verses were interpolated). That these verses are not attested in some of the post-150 papyri or medieval manuscripts may be due to their having been interpolated after the vulgate emerged, but it may just as well due to differences in pre-vulgate texts that were carried over into different papyrus and medieval textual traditions. And if these verses were interpolated before the emergence of the vulgate, there is no real ground for rejecting them, because, pace van Thiel, Janko and West, there's no basis for claiming to be able to reconstruct a "core" pre-vulgate text.
Last edited by Qimmik on Wed May 28, 2014 10:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Qimmik »

Even if you believe that the Iliad and the Odyssey were each composed by a single individual, moreover, we have no knowledge of how the process of composition occurred, and this is further grounds for avoiding excessive bracketing. West insists that the Iliad must have been "textualized" just once, but is this necessarily true?

To take an example of a very large modern work that we know was composed by a single individual, Proust composed his masterwork A la recherche du temps perdu in various forms over his lifetime--earlier, aborted versions were entitled Jean Santeuil and Contre Saint-Beuve. After he got his wind and began composing the final version, as he went over his own notebooks and the galley-proofs, he added material in the margins, and then, when the margins didn't provide enough room, in attachments that were pasted onto the pages of the notebooks and proofs. The result was that after his death, his literary executors had to assemble the remaining unpublished volumes out of what he left behind. The process of distilling all of the material Proust left was repeated twice--when the first Pléiade edition was published in 1954 and when the second was published in 1987. The two Pléiade editions are quite different from one another, especially in the later volumes.

The example of Proust illustrates how, even if you believe--in the absence of any reliable evidence--that the Iliad and the Odyssey each had a single composer and were somehow "textualized" around the middle of the seventh century BCE, the poems could well have had a much more complex history than one in which a stabilized "core" text was in existence at all times. This is true, I think, even without considering the variability that any such texts would have been subject to in a largely oral culture, where most people experienced them in performances, not by reading written texts.

in my view, editors should be hesitant to mechanically reject verses as concordance interpolations.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by cb »

hi, my view is that it's good to have editors taking different approaches, since the right approach on this is unknown. the arguments i've read on this can always be turned on their head -- e.g. when people say, copyists most likely inserted these extra lines because they recalled the previous passages so well containing them -- who's to say that this only occurred at the copying phase and not at the poem generation stage?

similar arguments apply no matter which position you take -- it reminds me of what bertrand russell says about philosophers talking about ethics, they usually assume they already know what is ethical and what isn't and then build a system that reflects it. similarly here, do we believe that the poem generation stage (however that happened and whoever was involved and however long it lasted) was on the wordier repetitive end or on the racier swiftly-moving less repetitive end? i have no idea which, and like having editions that cater to both biases, e.g. as i've mentioned before i really like bolling's iliad because it strips out a lot of lines, but i don't believe it's more authentic than any of my other editions, i use them all. i'm not trying to belittle the exercise of trying to better the text at all, which would be lazy or apathetic -- what i'm saying is that i like that different people have taken different approaches, and i like trying to figure out why zenodotus didn't like that line, etc etc, it brings you closer to the other minds over a span of thousands of years who have pored over the same text -- the conflict of positions generates real learning even if neither contestant gets demonstrably closer to the true position which remains unknown, something which any learner of a dead language has to face.

so, i agree with qimmik that the approach of several editors is based on certain assumptions which are not at all proven or necessarily right. the last line though, "in my view, editors should be hesitant to mechanically reject verses as concordance interpolations" is the bit i don't adhere to personally -- i say let them do so, reality is irrelevant here as in most places -- their approach will inspire fire in others in the field who want to prove themselves by taking a different approach. spectators like me on the outside of the classics world benefit from the lack of a central censorship engine within it muffling out discordance. i don't like dogma but i like learning from watching editors and others take positions and defend them as they enter the arena and try to stand their ground (my main interest is dialectic, perhaps this explains my bias).

i should add, when i speak about people taking fixed positions, i'm talking about the editors coming up with texts, not qimmik or paul! it's reading posts by posters like them that keep me coming back to this site on a daily basis.

cheers, chad

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by mwh »

Qimmik
That these verses are not attested in some of the post-150 papyri or medieval manuscripts may be due to their having been interpolated after the vulgate emerged, but it may just as well due to differences in pre-vulgate texts that were carried over into different papyrus and medieval textual traditions.
The thing is, the plus-verses of the pre-vulgate manuscripts do not get “carried over” into the subsequent tradition, nor are their minus-verses any longer absent. The post-Aristarchan tradition is astonishingly uniform in this respect, the Alexandrian stabilization being particularly pronounced on its “vertical” axis, i.e. the number and sequence of verses. This being so, it’s hardly likely that a potential “concordance interpolation” (not to beg the question) unevenly attested in the post-Aristarchan tradition somehow originates in a divergent pre-vulgate text. A responsible editor’s choice, confronted with such a discrepancy in the post-Aristarchan tradition, is between viewing it as an an inadvertent omission which has not yet been made good and viewing it as an accession which did not manage to spread through the entire tradition. In most cases the latter is normally deemed more probable, and with good reason. Most textual traditions pick up material as they go along. Think of tragedy, for instance; even Pindar was not immune. There was no special exemption for Homer, where partially repeated passages especially invited it.
in my view, editors should be hesitant to mechanically reject verses as concordance interpolations.
I agree, as who would not? (well, chad, I now see), but I think editors already are, at least the good ones, such as West. There’s nothing mechanical about his editing.


chad
i like trying to figure out why zenodotus didn't like that line
First we have to consider whether he was actually acquainted with that line, no?

There’s no “central censorship engine,” but there is evidence, which makes some positions more reasonable than others.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by cb »

hi mwh, agreed on both points. also agreed on what you said above on west not editing mechanically -- in fact i remember he says this himself in that famous BMCR review-and-replies series on his iliad -- he says near the end of one of his replies that an editor of course is basing his choice on what he thinks is right based on all the evidence, and isn't just a mechanical puller of levers, or something like that. cheers, chad

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Qimmik »

Well, then, I guess I have to abandon Od. 2.4.

εἵματα ἑσσάμενος, περὶ δὲ ξίφος ὀξὺ θέτ᾽ ὤμῳ,
ποσσὶ δ᾽ ὑπὸ λιπαροῖσιν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα,
βῆ δ᾽ ἴμεν ἐκ θαλάμοιο θεῷ ἐναλίγκιος ἄντην

But how can Telemachus go anywhere without putting his shoes on?

When Hector dies, do I really have to give up Il. 22.363, which is quite weakly attested but is the third in the series of verses that concluded the death of Patroclus in 16.855-7?

ὣς ἄρα μιν εἰπόντα τέλος θανάτοιο κάλυψε,
ψυχὴ δ᾽ ἐκ ῥεθέων πταμένη Ἄϊδος δὲ βεβήκει
ὃν πότμον γοόωσα λιποῦσ᾽ ἀνδροτῆτα καὶ ἥβην.

It's clear (to me at least) that Hector's death scene intentionally echos that of Patroclus (though I recognize that "intentionally" is a loaded word). The formula τέλος θανάτοιο κάλυψε is also used in 16.502 at Sarpedon's death, which sets up the sequence of heroic deaths Sarpedon -> Patroclus -> Hector (and the next in the series is outside the framework of the Iliad).

But maybe ὃν πότμον γοόωσα foreshadows Patroclus' return as a ghost/dream complaining to Achilles at 23.65 ff., underscoring Achilles' feelings of guilt and remorse for his friend's death, even after Achilles has killed Hector. If that's the case, there would be no reason for 16.857 at Hector's death.
West. There’s nothing mechanical about his editing.
I agree with this--my main objection to his Iliad (and maybe it's a trivial one) is his "restoration" of supposed 7th century Ionic forms in a text that really can't be pushed back further than 150 BCE with any degree of confidence (or so it seems to me). I find these reconstructed forms distracting and irritating. Perhaps this is partly the "mumpsimus" effect, but it strikes me that there is a very good reason to retain the traditional forms.

Apart from that, whenever I react with outrage to some horror he has inflicted on the text, I usually see from the apparatus that there is a compelling logic to his editorial choices. For example, κλῦθί μοι in Il. 1.37, which mwh persuaded me to accept. viewtopic.php?f=22&t=60917

Sometimes I think he is perhaps a little too subjective in bracketing passages that are well attested, e.g., at 16.158-165. In part, this is because he subscribes to the view that the vulgate essentially represents the Iliad that came directly from [Homer]'s pen, and that he can identify and strip away passages that were added subsequently (but before 150 BCE) by rhapsodes.

I have no idea what to do about Book 10, which West brackets in its entirety.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Paul Derouda »

I'm back home, but haven't had time to take a look at any books yet... Just a couple of little comments.
Qimmik wrote:as Paul wrote, "although the pre-Vulgate papyri had a lot of variation, there was a 'core' shared by all manuscripts, more or less identical with our "vulgate", and in addition highly variable, volatile "plus" verses, which were different from text to text."

[...]

pace van Thiel, Janko and West, there's no basis for claiming to be able to reconstruct a "core" pre-vulgate text.
I was trying to distance myself a bit from that assertion, and called it the "optimistic" view – because I don't really know where it's founded exactly. As far as I understand, rejecting unevenly attested lines in the medieval tradition will get us somewhere around 150 BCE in Alexandria, not further than that. This much seems rather clear to me, as much as these things can be clear to a dilettante like me. And since a given line could always be inadvertent omission (like mwh says) we can't condemn Od 2.4 with 100 % confidence. But the next logical step (or logical leap, depending on your view...) I don't fully understand: what evidence do we have that when the vulgate came about, it was based on an intelligent evaluation of different manuscripts? How can we be sure that the lines that were left out of the vulgate were specifically the "inauthentic" ones, while the "authentic" ones were kept? If indeed the vulgate was more or less the result of cleaning the tradition of weakly attested lines (leaving "horizontal" variants out of the discussion for the present), we could say that the editorial choices were the right ones, but how do we know that the process wasn't a much more subjective one? Now probably there is a good reason to believe this, since several great scholars have taken this view, but I don't know what this reason is.
Qimmik wrote:But maybe ὃν πότμον γοόωσα foreshadows Patroclus' return as a ghost/dream complaining to Achilles at 23.65 ff., underscoring Achilles' feelings of guilt and remorse for his friend's death, even after Achilles has killed Hector. If that's the case, there would be no reason for 16.857 at Hector's death.
You must mean "no reason for Il. 22.363"? I don't know if what you propose is true, but I like the idea. In general, I think removing concordance interpolations adds nuances to the text and makes it better (For this idea, see Janko's review of Thiel's Od.). I'll try to find examples when I have the time.
Qimmik wrote:I have no idea what to do about Book 10, which West brackets in its entirety.
I recently finished a book you recommended, J.S. Clay's Homer's Trojan Theater. I liked it and plan to have it around for a closer look when I finally get to my long-planned new reading of the Iliad. If Clay is correct that the author of book 10 had the same conception of the "trojan theater" and especially of the disposition of Achaean ships as the author of the rest of the Iliad, this is evidence that they had the same author. But I think the evidence that book 10 was put there afterwards is overwhelming. Perhaps book 10 was interpolated by "Homer" himself after he had written the rest of the Iliad? Answering this requires explaining linguistic problems that are way above my competence, but maybe the difference in language can indeed be explained at least partly by different substance matter, as argued by Dué & Ebbott's Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush?

Cb,
Basically you mean that you enjoy following a good debate without the need of taking a firm view yourself? I think that's a legitimate position, although I'm different: I'm looking for definite answers in my personal quest for the solution of the Homeric question! (Crazy and impossible, especially for an amateur like me, but I think that's precisely why it's so thrilling...)

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Qimmik »

no reason for Il. 22.363 -- no reason to repeat 16.857 at 22.363, and therefore no reason for Il. 22.363.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by mwh »

But how can Telemachus go anywhere without putting his shoes on?
That's a joke, right?

The point about the aptness of 16.857 at Pat's death as distinct from at H's seems to me right on the money.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Qimmik »

That's a joke, right?
Well, yes, but everyone else puts their shoes on when they get up and go somewhere in the passages I cited.
what evidence do we have that when the vulgate came about, it was based on an intelligent evaluation of different manuscripts? How can we be sure that the lines that were left out of the vulgate were specifically the "inauthentic" ones, while the "authentic" ones were kept? If indeed the vulgate was more or less the result of cleaning the tradition of weakly attested lines (leaving "horizontal" variants out of the discussion for the present), we could say that the editorial choices were the right ones, but how do we know that the process wasn't a much more subjective one?
That was exactly my point. As I understand it, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that any canonical version of the Iliad was in existence before the vulgate, and no one has been able to demonstrate how or on what basis the vulgate was produced.

As for Book 10, it seems to have always been part of the vulgate, and it was almost certainly part of Vergil's Iliad (the Nisus and Euryalus episode seems clearly based on Book 10), so if the best we can do is go back to 150, is there really any basis for bracketing it?

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by mwh »

everyone else puts their shoes on when they get up and go somewhere in the passages I cited.
If we can trust the manuscripts. -- But if 2.4 is absent only in a single MS (I don't have a critical edition to hand, so can't check) that could of course be due to the copyist, as you suggested.

As to the larger questions, they’d take many pages to address. I wouldn’t be quite so negative as the two of you, but the uncertainties are admittedly huge and the unknowns many. And it is all so horrendously complicated.

On the Doloneia, Danek’s book seems to me very good. Dué&Ebbott’s treatment is predetermined; as if one can nullify the oddities by chanting the "Parry&Lord" mantra or waving the “multiform” wand.

It surely is possible to go back beyond 150 with the Doloneia. Quite apart from its language usage, which has to be early, not just Vergil but the author of the Rhesus appear to have been familiar with it. For all its manifest peculiarity, it was evidently included in the Iliad from way back when. Which is not quite to say it should not be bracketed, even if one doesn’t buy into West’s conception of the original composition (and I don’t know anyone who does).

-- If you want the "traditional" (i.e. the transmitted) forms retained you have van Thiel. If you want (which you don't) attempted restoration of the older ("original"?) forms, you have West, whose justificatory praefatio is much admired by historical linguists. I think it's great to have both.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Qimmik »

mwh: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You certainly know much more than I about these things, and your reactions are enormously helpful to me and, I think, others, too. Just a few clarifications--I don't mean to be argumentative.

"It surely is possible to go back beyond 150 with the Doloneia." I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. My point was just that bracketing the entirety of the Doloneia seems pointless, given that it appears that there's no basis for restoring any earlier version of the Iliad earlier than the vulgate, cir. 150 BCE, when the Doloneia's place in the Iliad was clearly well-established. But West and others think that something like the vulgate has always been in existence, and, I guess, if that is his view and if he thinks that the Doloneia is somehow not organic to the original Iliad, he's entitled to bracket it.

I do have enormous respect for West even though I'm not sure he's always right about everything. I should apologize for my sometimes intemperate language about his edition. As I mentioned, whenever I stumble across something that particularly shocks me, I'm usually able to see from the critical notes how he got there. As I mentioned earlier, you set me straight on κλῦθί μοι. A number of years ago I worked my way through his Works and Days and Theogony, which are essential reading for anyone interested in archaic Greek poetry or ancient Greek literature generally.

I don't deny that concordance interpolations have occurred throughout the poems. But what makes me uncomfortable is automatically rejecting any verse where (1) the verse is repeated somewhere else, (2) the verse is not fully attested in all the manuscripts, and (3) its omission can't be explained by typical mechanical copying errors--even where the verse is not somehow inappropriate or otiose in the context where it occurs.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Paul Derouda »

Qimmik wrote:My point was just that bracketing the entirety of the Doloneia seems pointless, given that it appears that there's no basis for restoring any earlier version of the Iliad earlier than the vulgate, cir. 150 BCE, when the Doloneia's place in the Iliad was clearly well-established. But West and others think that something like the vulgate has always been in existence, and, I guess, if that is his view and if he thinks that the Doloneia is somehow not organic to the original Iliad, he's entitled to bracket it.
Well, there is the commentary in T scholia, which says φασὶ τὴν ραψωιδίαν ὑφ᾽ Ὁμήρου ἰδίαι τετάχθαι καὶ μὴ εἶναι μέρος τῆς Ἰλιάδος, ὑπὸ δὲ Πεισιστράτου τετάχθαι εἰς τὴν ποίησιν. I think this is pretty good evidence that there was, for some time at least, copies of the Iliad that didn't have book 10. But as it seems that the Doloneia is very early too, I suppose they never had the time to attain wide circulation. Anyway, I don't really think that West et al. believe that anything quite like the vulgate ever existed before ca. 150 BCE, although apparently they think that the vulgate brought the manuscript tradition closer to the original Iliad than it was in the intervening period. I don't think that West thinks that the "original" Iliad (if there ever was one) had but a brief existence or that it was ever known by very many people, so in this sense it is almost an imaginary construction. It's an attempt to reconstruct the origin of the text, not to show how the Iliad known for over two and half millennia "should be".
Qimmik wrote:I should apologize for my sometimes intemperate language about his edition.
Nah, why? :)
mwh wrote:Dué&Ebbott’s treatment is predetermined; as if one can nullify the oddities by chanting the "Parry&Lord" mantra or waving the “multiform” wand.
I couldn't agree more on that! They made one good point though, the one about "poetics of ambush" being its own genre with own formulas. But the weaknesses on the more technical side are glaring.
mwh wrote:Which is not quite to say it should not be bracketed, even if one doesn’t buy into West’s conception of the original composition (and I don’t know anyone who does).
Well, I must confess I do, more or less. I mean I don't necessarily swallow it whole, but the general picture is very convincing to me – that the Iliad is the creation of one poet writing it over a long period of time and whose conception of the whole changed somewhat during the process. I'm skeptical that it's possible to reconstitute the creation process to the detail that West does – I think the exact scenario is beyond recovery, and here Qimmik's comparison to editions of Proust above is apt.

As to Od 2.4, I checked Janko: he would indeed bracket it.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by mwh »

Just to say that personally I think that that famous T-scholium (which I deliberately didn't mention) is extremely fragile evidence for copies of the Iliad without bk.10. It could merely reflect recognition of the book's peculiarities or its inorganic relation to the rest of the poem; that it got linked to the "Pisistratean recension" (over which there is great dissension, as you'll know) is no surprise.

Oh, and I'm with Paul on Qimmik's need to apologize!

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Re: Concordance interpolations

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Dué&Ebbott’s treatment is predetermined; as if one can nullify the oddities by chanting the "Parry&Lord" mantra or waving the “multiform” wand.
Oh my I actually laughed at that! That does seem to essentially boil down to what that and many other books are doing nowadays. How...lacklustre.

Fascinating thread by the way. As for my own view, well I'm very sort of "modern Philology" in that I do recognise the need to be a critical as possible and sensibly postulate stuff about origins and all that - I don't think there's anything too automatic and mechanical about West's edition - but I think the text has an equally valid history outside of its inception and as such I'm happy to take it as it is for later readings. If that makes sense, eloquence is not a gift I possess.
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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Qimmik »

By the way, I never meant to suggest that West is "mechanical" in his editing. I was originally defending Od. 2.4 against Janko, who wants to get rid of many more lines than West.

"the text has an equally valid history outside of its inception and as such I'm happy to take it as it is for later readings." I don't think the text of the Iliad at its inception is something that can be known, but what we have is good enough.

In my reading of Thucydides (my current project), I was struck by the two passages from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo quoted at the end of Book 3. One of the passages is quite similar to the text of the manuscript tradition (Thuc. 3.104.5 and Hymn to Apollo 165-172, but the other passage (Thuc. 3.104.4 and H. Ap. 146-150) offers some interesting variation.

Manuscript tradition:

ἀλλὰ σὺ Δήλῳ, Φοῖβε, μάλιστ᾽ ἐπιτέρπεαι ἦτορ,
ἔνθα τοι ἑλκεχίτωνες Ἰάονες ἠγερέθονται
αὐτοῖς σὺν παίδεσσι καὶ αἰδοίῃς ἀλόχοισιν.
οἱ δέ σε πυγμαχίῃ τε καὶ ὀρχηθμῷ καὶ ἀοιδῇ
μνησάμενοι τέρπουσιν, ὅτ᾽ ἄν στήσωνται ἀγῶνα

Thucydides:

ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε Δήλῳ, Φοῖβε, μάλιστά γε θυμὸν ἐτέρφθης,
ἔνθα τοι ἑλκεχίτωνες Ἰάονες ἠγερέθονται
σὺν σφοῖσιν τεκέεσσι γυναιξί τε σὴν ἐς ἀγυιάν:
ἔνθα σε πυγμαχίῃ τε καὶ ὀρχηστυῖ καὶ ἀοιδῇ
μνησάμενοι τέρπουσιν, ὅταν καθέσωσιν ἀγῶνα.

Of course, each of the Hymn, the Iliad and the Odyssey must have had their own unique histories which are more or less irrecoverable today. I suspect it's unlikely that the text of the Hymn to Apollo went through a process of recension similar to that which seems to have resulted in the vulgate texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey. But the juxtaposition of these two versions of essentially the same passage, transmitted through different paths, illustrates how a work circulating in a largely oral society, but which must already have been "textualized," could vary, especially when composed in the traditional Kunstsprache. These two versions of the same text suggest, to me at least, how widely the texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey could have varied, particularly in the earlier phases of their histories.

But the second passage quoted by Thucydides isn't very different from the manuscript tradition:

Mss:
χαίρετε δ᾽ ὑμεῖς πᾶσαι: ἐμεῖο δὲ καὶ μετόπισθεν
μνήσασθ᾽, ὁππότε κέν τις ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων
ἐθάδ᾽ ἁνείρηται ξεῖνος ταλαπείριος ἐλθών:
ὦ κοῦραι, τίς δ᾽ ὔμμιν ἀνὴρ ἥδιστος ἀοιδῶν
ἐνθάδε πωλεῖται, καὶ τέῳ τέρπεσθε μάλιστα;
ὑμεῖς δ᾽ εὖ μάλα πᾶσαι ὑποκρίνασθαι ἀφήμως
τυφλὸς ἀνήρ, οἰκεῖ δὲ Χίῳ ἔνι παιπαλοέσσῃ

Thuc.:

χαίρετε δ᾽ ὑμεῖς πᾶσαι. ἐμεῖο δὲ καὶ μετόπισθε
μνήσασθ᾽, ὁππότε κέν τις ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων
ἐνθάδ᾽ ἀνείρηται ταλαπείριος ἄλλος ἐπελθών:
‘ὦ κοῦραι, τίς δ᾽ ὔμμιν ἀνὴρ ἥδιστος ἀοιδῶν
ἐνθάδε πωλεῖται, καὶ τέῳ τέρπεσθε μάλιστα;’
ὑμεῖς δ᾽ εὖ μάλα πᾶσαι ὑποκρίνασθαι ἀφήμως:
‘τυφλὸς ἀνήρ, οἰκεῖ δὲ Χίῳ ἔνι παιπαλοέσσῃ.

Perhaps this passage was more familiar, and therefore more stabilized, because it's the origin of the idea that Homer was a blind man from Chios.

(I believe there are early quotations from the Iliad and the Odyssey that show similar differences from the vulgate text, but I happened to come across this in Thucydides.)
Last edited by Qimmik on Mon Jun 02, 2014 4:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Paul Derouda »

mwh wrote:Just to say that personally I think that that famous T-scholium (which I deliberately didn't mention) is extremely fragile evidence for copies of the Iliad without bk.10. It could merely reflect recognition of the book's peculiarities or its inorganic relation to the rest of the poem; that it got linked to the "Pisistratean recension" (over which there is great dissension, as you'll know) is no surprise.
I'm sure you know this stuff so I'm inclined to believe you in this.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

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Just venting myself about van Thiel's Odyssey... Od. 2.321 ff.:

ἦ ῥα, καὶ ἐκ χειρὸς χεῖρα σπάσατ' Ἀντινόοιο
ῥεῖα: μνηστῆρες δὲ δόμον κάτα δαῖτα πένοντο.
οἱ δ' ἐπελώβευον καὶ ἐκερτόμεον ἐπέεσσιν.
ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκε νέων ὑπερηνορεόντων:
ἦ μάλα Τηλέμαχος φόνον ἡμῖν μερμηρίζει.

Line 322 is bracketed by both Ameis-Hentze-Cauer and Merry, and S. West also notes the difficulties in her Oxford commentary. It was athetized by Aristarchus and Aristophanes; as Merry says, "The line also anticipates and so spoils the antithesis in οἱ δ᾽ ἐπελώβευον." The second argument especially seems a good one to me, the δ(έ) on line 323 seems quite pointless to me as it is. It is not a concordance interpolation, because the line doesn't occur elsewhere (although 22.199 is quite similar); as I understand it, the point of the interpolation (if it is one) is to make οἱ δ' on line 323 more explicit (and thus spoil its effect).

Anyway, however the editor interprets this, as an interpolation or not, I think the Alexandrian athesis should be at least mentioned in the apparatus. Van Thiel doesn't. Not a word.

EDIT: Corrected wrong line numbers in this incomprehensible post. Now this should be make at least some sense.
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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Paul Derouda »

Qimmik, a few words about those quotations in Thucydides.

Isn't it quite likely that Thucydides was quoting from memory, given how much his society relied on oral communication? Even if he actually had in his possession manuscripts that contained those passages (which I think is not very likely), finding the right passage was much more difficult in papyrus rolls than in a modern codex, so he might well have thought that it's not so important, especially as his audience would have been just as unlikely to go and check his sources. On the other hand I would suppose that for producing a new manuscript of Homer or of a Hymn, the scribe would (almost always) have an actual manuscript before his eyes.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

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"Anyway, however the editor interprets this, as an interpolation or not, I think the Alexandrian athesis should be at least mentioned in the apparatus. Van Thiel doesn't. Not a word."

That’s van Thiel for you. Only the paradosis counts, not the impertinencies of the Alexandrians, about which his views are unorthodox but very definite. “Meine Ausgabe sollte die letzte sein, in deren Apparat die Gelehrtennotizien wie mögliche Varianten aufgeführt werden" (Einleitung vi). (West evidently didn't agree.)

"Isn't it quite likely that Thucydides was quoting from memory, given how much his society relied on oral communication?"
Yes I agree that's probable. Mind you, that doesn’t necessarily mean his memory was faulty. Such quotations of earlier authors used to be routinely dismissed as misquotations until their variants started turning up in papyri. As Qimmik suggests, Thucydides’ versions are of a piece with pre-Alexandrian quotations of Il. & Od., as well as with the early papyri. Equally well, however, like the rhapsodes themselves, he could have internalized the diction so well as to deviate (unconsciously) from the precise words he had heard and/or read.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

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mwh wrote:That’s van Thiel for you. Only the paradosis counts, not the impertinencies of the Alexandrians, about which his views are unorthodox but very definite. “Meine Ausgabe sollte die letzte sein, in deren Apparat die Gelehrtennotizien wie mögliche Varianten aufgeführt werden" (Einleitung vi). (West evidently didn't agree.)
At a quick glance, I couldn't find this in van Thiel's introduction. Do you have the page number right? Or are you referring to his Iliad – because only have his Odyssey.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by mwh »

Sorry, yes, his Iliad. I don't have his Od. But he follows the same principle in both.

It's a very curious statement internally when you think about it. Not directly on atheteses, of course.

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Re: Concordance interpolations

Post by Paul Derouda »

mwh wrote:It's a very curious statement internally when you think about it. Not directly on atheteses, of course.
"Ok, so I'm giving you some of these old notes for just this one last time, not because I want to, but just to please you, because some of you will be asking for them..." Or is there some other way to interpret this?

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