tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post445569448543180596..comments2023-04-05T08:04:07.514-04:00Comments on Bryn Mawr Classical Review: 2010.02.40Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post-69278017529899703892010-02-16T13:55:41.027-05:002010-02-16T13:55:41.027-05:00ERRATA : in the first part of my comment, 1) "...ERRATA : in the first part of my comment, 1) "FilologikÇj SÎllogoj Pàrnassoj,!Epethr°" is to be read as "Philologikos syllogos Parnassos, Epetêris", and 2) "his manuscript conjectures" should be "his conjectures".Jean-Fabrice Nardelli (jnardellis36@numericable.fr)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post-30503456111030486192010-02-16T13:41:44.418-05:002010-02-16T13:41:44.418-05:00Since Dr Redondo envisions the first Teubner Moral...Since Dr Redondo envisions the first Teubner Moralia as a stop-gap, viz. no failure or missed opportunity on the editor’s part, his insistence on the scale of the collations behind Bernardakis maior is only natural. Natural but crude : the value of an edition cannot be assessed by weighing down the codicological materials that went into it, and it is grossly misleading to equate « more accurate methodology » with the well-worn tag ‘many more manuscripts than in any previous edition’. We should have been told instead how, if at all, the new Plutarch supersedes the second Teubner in the inseparable departments of recensio and emendatio. But all we are treated to in the Redondo piece are trivia on the material appearance of Bernardakis maior, antiquated or scattered references to the secondary literature, undistinguished (though not uninteresting) discussion of a few textual lections, and lots of rhetoric. Let the reader decide whether the words Bernardakis directed at Wilamowitz’ paper in Hermes apply more to the Redondo review : « ipsi quoque lector argumenta quam praua inania leuia sint facile intellegit ; sed cum eorum auctor magni ea faciat, necessarium mihi uidetur pauca dicere » (IV, p. XII).Jean-Fabrice Nardelli (jnardellis36@numericable.fr)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post-33799513865333948062010-02-16T13:40:38.875-05:002010-02-16T13:40:38.875-05:00Dr Redondo also endorses the notion that Bernardak...Dr Redondo also endorses the notion that Bernardakis’ Teubner Moralia were meant from the start to be a minor edition, something which takes ammunition from p. VIII of the preface to the first volume (« iam diu est, cum Moralium libris deditus aut cum codicibus comparandis aut corrigendis copias ad editionem criticam apparandum quam maximas conquirere institui. Nunc igitur negotio, ut editionem minorem constituerem, mandato, magna laetitia afficior me ab iis praesidiis munitum publici iuris facere posse partem saltem apparatus mei, sperans me alio tempore, si minor approbata fuerit »). Whatever this underscoring of the work, rehearsed and amplified by Bernardakis in the preface of the second volume, pp. X-XI (in a transparent attempt to silence or placate his critics in general, particularly Wilamowitz : « nihilo minus etiam in Praefatione non semel indicaui hand editionem minorem esse... Denique ex pacto quoque cum bibliopola honestissimo conuento me in minorem editionem ad exemplum Hercherianae adornandam obstrinxi »), actually means, is unclear. In effect, the sheer length and degree of attention to details of the general preface (I, pp. V-XCIII, whose contents are usefully sketched in II, p. IX) was certainly designed to compensate for the terseness of the critical apparatus (we are told, in I pp. XCI-XCII, that « in adnotationes textui subiectas codicum corruptas lectiones reieci, quarum loco emendationes in textum recepi, ut quid codicum quidue ingenii esset facile intellegerentur. In iisdem adnotationibus emendationes selectas aut aliorum aut meas rettuli » ; however the way many faults are either tacitly corrected or allowed to stand without a critical note rather suggests an absence of editorial rationale, while the conspicuous lack of codicological abbreviations in each of the seven volumes hints at the editor’s preference for Conjekturalkritik). The fact remains that Bernardakis promised his reader an in-depth revision of the text based on both recensio and emendatio, witness I, p. XC : « relinquitur, ut de textu, quem uocant, constituendo pauca exponam. Cum autem quos me codices et quare secutum fuisse supra dexirim, hoc loco addendum est me in uerborum ordine, ubi nihil offensioni esset, optimis codicibus aeque atque in aliis obtemperasse. Emendationes autem aut meas aut aliorum plerumque recepi ubi non modo mihi sed etiam aliis persuasum erat textum esse corruptum ; et eas, quae certae indubitataeque ac scriptoris usu — nam suus quisque scriptor certissimus est et emendator et testis — confirmatae mihi uiderentur, ad seueriorem legem meas quas aliorum exigenti. Emendationem autem certam dico eam, qua et codicum corrupta lectio explicetur et animus ita acquiescat confirmeturque, ut nihil praeter eam desideret ». The most severe reviewers of Bernardakis were thus certainly right to demur at the disproportion between what had been announced and the lightweight scholarly character of each instalment of the work. Such disproportion informs Wilamowitz’s identification of the Teubner Moralia with a mercantile enterprise launched without proper preparation (his accusation of servile copying of Hercher by Bernardakis we can discard as an obvious instance of polemical excess). Consequently, whatever impression his long-delayed ‘major’ edition makes on present-day scholars, there is ground to suspect that Bernardakis did not properly pave the way for it in his Teubner, which looks like a premature achievement. Whence the eighty or so years it took his heirs and their adiutor to complete the work after his death.Jean-Fabrice Nardelli (jnardellis36@numericable.fr)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post-46067165393261041512010-02-16T13:38:03.810-05:002010-02-16T13:38:03.810-05:00Of course it is nice to finally have on our desks ...Of course it is nice to finally have on our desks the major Moralia by Bernardakis and others ; but let it not cloud our judgement on what the first Teubner editor wanted to do and what he was taken to task for not having done, lest we find ourselves condemned to repeat his errors. <br /><br />To begin with, a harmless mistake : the final volume of Bernardakis’ Moralia, containing the fragments, appeared in 1896 (not 1926). More substantially, to claim that the second Teubner edition of the Moralia « went a completely different direction » because of the strictures expressed by Wilamowitz and Pohlenz (also by Eduard Schwartz), and not due to the realisation that the editor’s codicological basis was strained and his critical policy inadequate (« il faut regretter qu’il ait attaché plus d’importance à la conjecture qu’à la collation des manuscrits et on a souvent jugé sévèrement la préférence qu’il a accordée aux leçons de D (Parisinus gr. 1956) » writes J. Irigoin in his magisterial history of the text in the Budé Moralia, I [Paris, 1987], CCXXVI-CCCIII, on CCCI), on top of the errors in his collations (on which e.g. H. F. Cherniss, Selected Papers [Leiden, 1977], 479, 498 notes 70 and 78), is to show either great bias or inadequate knowledge. This forms the basis for Dr Redondo’s parting shot about « the old unjust criticism » : Bernardakis himself used to claim that he had been harassed by the German critics, plus some Frenchmen — he could have added his countrymen as well, for J. Pantazidis criticised many of his manuscript conjectures and parts of his choice of variants in vol. 2 [1898] of the FilologikÇj SÎllogoj Pàrnassoj,!Epethr°j, and C. C. Charitonidis violently lashed out at him because of his attacks on Kontos (details in Revue critique d’histoire et de littérature, N.S. 59 [1905], 407-408) —, but, judging from his endless polemics with reviewers in the classical journals, his prefaces to the Moralia and the 47-page Epilogus which provides a closure to his seventh volume, he was a belligerent, difficult man prone to tart words and bouts of paranoia. A reference for this to J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, III (Cambridge, 1908), 373 top, backed up e.g. by H. Weil, Études sur le drame antique (Paris, 1908²), 170, especially note 1, may not suffice, so let us enter into some detail. At the beginning of his preface to the fourth volume of the Moralia (1892, V-LV), whereby he replies to the review by Wilamowitz in Hermes 25 (1890), 199-205, Bernardakis claims that « in illo libello Wilamowitzio propositum non erat ut de codicibus sibi prorsus ignotis dissereret..., sed potius ut se graece scire melius quam ego demonstraueram contenderet » (p. IX). More significantly still, in his letter to the Revue critique... 42 (1896), 286-289, he mounts an ad hominem attack against Paton, the rival editor of the Delphic dialogues, under the pretence of addressing two French reviewers, viz. ‘My’ (Mondry Beaudouin) on his separate edition of the De E apud Delphos, and Paul Couvreur on Paton’s ; on his inclination to suspect scholarly plots behind his back, I may quote p. 288 of this letter : « même je ne saurais pas assurer que M. My a pu lire l’édition de M. Paton sans faire des conjectures ou bien sans avoir une autre édition à côté. Mais pourquoi n’en a-t-il rien dit ? Est-ce pour faire plaisir à quelques philologues allemands qui ont de tout leur possible soutenu l’édition de M. Paton ? ou bien a-t-il été entraîné par les mêmes philologues intéressés, qui, ainsi qu’ils persécutent mon édition avec acharnement, élèvent celle de Paton jusqu’au troisième ciel... ? ». Last but not least, p. IX of the preface to his second volume (1889), Bernardakis accuses Wilamowitz, who had expressed his dissatisfaction with parts of the Teubner Moralia, I, in no mean terms within his ‘Commentariolum grammaticum, III’ (1889), 21-24 (see E. Nachmanson, Erotianstudien [Uppsala, 1917], 143-144), of nothing less than spreading baseless lies : « quae ut maxime calumniosa ita minime accurata sunt ».Jean-Fabrice Nardelli (jnardellis36@numericable.fr)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6588247216777605704.post-21446790592723305942010-02-15T16:20:41.385-05:002010-02-15T16:20:41.385-05:00This review contains more silly and superficial ob...This review contains more silly and superficial observations about the book than it does actual evaluations of its contents! The editors should have asked for a re-do.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com