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Livius Resartus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

R. M. Ogilvie
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford

Extract

In an earlier article (C.Q., N.S. vii [1957], 68–81) a reconstruction was proposed of the stemma of the primary manuscripts of Livy. If such a stemma has been correctly drawn up, it must work, that is, it must enable an editor to arrive by routine methods at the reading of the archetype. The archetype itself need not have good readings—it may have bad ones, emended by later manuscripts—but, good or bad, it gives the tradition from which all correction must start. If these readings make grammatical, linguistic, and contextual sense and if there is no external tradition such as citations in grammarians or scholia, they may be taken to constitute what Livy wrote; if they do not make sense, then the editor must resort to correction on the basis of them.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1959

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References

page 280 note 1 This conjecture owes much to discussion with Mr. D. M. Last.

page 281 note 1 Bayet's apparatus suggests that he places some confidence in the readings of R (e.g. at 1. 41. 1 he gratuitously accepts the present eicit for N's eiecit)—an inconsiderable manuscript although its fourteenth-century corrector (R2) was a scholar of genius. It has a slight historical interest in that it passed through the hands of Torquato Bembo and Fulvio Orsini and was lent by the Bembo family to supply the text for the Aldine edition of 1518 (Bembo ep. mcclix).

page 282 note 1 I owe the Milton reference to Mr. C. B. Ricks and the others to Mr. C. J. Riley and the kindness of the Thesaurus Latinae Linguae.

page 284 note 1 I am indebted to Dr. A. H. McDonald for his encouragement and his criticism of this paper, and to Prof. S. Billanovich for his willing generosity in disclosing the early history of the Mediceus and discussing the problems of the text.