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A NEW READING AND A PROBABLE INTERPOLATION IN LACTANTIUS PLACIDUS’ COMMENTARY ON STATIUS, THEBAID 5.16

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2024

Baruch Martínez Zepeda
Baruch Martínez Zepeda*
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
*
baruch.martinez@hotmail.com
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Abstract

This paper analyses the probability of a reading so far neglected by editors in Lactantius Placidus’ late antique commentary on Stat. Theb. 5.16. Next, the article argues that, regardless of the accepted reading, this part of the scholium is likely an interpolation.

Keywords

Lactantius PlacidusStatiusThebaidtextual criticismancient exegesis
Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , December 2023 , pp. 962 - 965
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

The Argives, on their way to Thebes, are in the woods of Nemea, where they are afflicted with a terrible thirst, caused by Bacchus, who wants to stop the enemy marching against his birthplace. They encounter Hypsipyle, a stranger, who takes them to the fountain of Langia, where they can finally satisfy their thirst. Once they have refreshed themselves, the Argives leave the spring and are compared to flocks of cranes (Theb. 5.11–16):Footnote 1

qualia trans pontum Phariis defensa serenis
rauca Paraetonio decedunt agmina Nilo
cum fera ponit hiemps: illae clangore fugaci
umbra fretis aruisque uolant, sonat auius aether.
iam Borean imbresque pati, iam nare solutis
amnibus et nudo iuuat aestiuare sub Haemo.

11–16 B D G M O P Q R S T

11 defensa Gul cett.: deprensa G P b (Barthius) 13 cum … ponit Gul cett., Schol.: cum … cogit (et M4ul) G P, unde quo … cogit Vollmer Footnote 2

Even as the noisy swarms sheltered overseas by Pharian calm leave Paraetonian Nile when wild winter subsides; they fly with fleeing clamour, a shadow over sea and land, the pathless ether resounds; now they are fain to suffer North Wind and rains, swim in melted rivers, and pass summer under naked Haemus (transl. Shackleton Bailey).

Besides the textual problem I have discussed elsewhereFootnote 3—namely, the choice between defensa and deprensa with cogit and Vollmer's correction of cum into quo—I would like to analyse in more detail here the interpretation of Lactantius Placidus’ late antique commentary on nudo.

As I argued indirectly in my previously mentioned note, the manuscript reading nudo is satisfactory in many respects. In fact, the explanation for nudo given by Sgloss. niue, the unpublished Scholae privatae in Publii Papinii Statii Thebaida by Gronovius (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek-Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. lat. 4° 522) ‘non amplius tecto nivibus’ (cf. Barth's ‘Vetera Scholia’, ‘Soluto nivibus’; Amar-Lemaire: ‘detecto nivibus’; Shackleton Bailey [n. ad loc.]: ‘free of snow’; Micozzi: ‘l'Emo che ha perso il suo manto di neve’),Footnote 4 is convincing because it is semantically linked with solutis amnibus, and because the image of the thawing of Haemus is mirrored in Theb. 11.193–5 ueluti cum uere reuerso | Bistoniae tepuere niues submittitur ingens | Haemus [‘Haemus is reduced’, since the snowy layer melts] et angustos Rhodope descendit in amnes; cf. also 3.672 exuti concreto frigore montes, Prudent. Apoth. 428–9 ut exutus glacie iam mollior amnis | Caucasea de cote fluat Rhodopeius Hebrus. It is perhaps easier to grasp Statius’ meaning if one thinks of Haemus as being conventionally covered with snow and/or ice: cf., for example, Hor. Carm. 1.12.6 gelidoue in Haemo, Verg. G. 2.488 gelidis conuallibus Haemi, Claud. 20.565 Haemoque niuali, 21.131 Haemi gelidae ualles. Furthermore, Haemus is devoid of vegetation in winter and free of snow in summer: Claud. 26.166–8 frigida ter deciens nudatum frondibus Haemum | tendit hiemps uestire gelu totiensque solutis | uer niuibus uiridem monti reparauit amictum, ‘[t]hrice ten times has chill winter cast her snowy mantle over leafless Haemus’ (transl. Platnauer).Footnote 5

However, according to the vulgate text, Lactantius Placidus’ interpretation is different:Footnote 6

ET NVDO (… SVB HAEMO) <nudo> sine honore siluarum. Haemus est autem mons Thraciae. et bene nudo: uestiuntur enim arboribus. ut Sallustius <Iug. 48.3>: ‘[quasi collis] uestitus oleastro ac myrtetis aliisque generibus arborum’.

That is to say, nudus would mean sine honore (‘that which gives grace or dignity to a person or thing’, OLD s.v. 6b) siluarum, a use of honos that is well attested: cf. Verg. G. 2.404 frigidus et siluis Aquilo decussit honorem, Hor. Epod. 11.6 [December] siluis honorem decutit.Footnote 7 Of course, this interpretation is wrong, because in summer the mountain cannot be ‘devoid of leaves’ but only ‘devoid of snow’, but not for the scholiast's imagination.

Nevertheless, Lactantius Placidus’ MS E, which occupies an important place in the textual tradition, has another reading which has been so far neglected by the editors, but deserves attention: sine (h)umore siluarum.Footnote 8 Indeed, in this way nudus would mean ‘devoid of vegetation moisture’ (in fact, winter with its rains and snow causes the vegetation to be almost always wet), a more plausible interpretation.Footnote 9 So, nudus could have three interpretative possibilities: ‘free of snow’, ‘devoid of vegetation moisture’ or, less likely, ‘devoid of vegetation’.

According to Sweeney,Footnote 10 Lactantius Placidus’ commentary was originally composed in the form of a separate commentary, then broken into marginal scholia, whereupon ‘the text was probably again reconstituted as a commentary and then dispersed, sometimes as marginal scholia, sometimes as a commentary …’.Footnote 11 For Hall,Footnote 12 ‘what we now have in the surviving manuscripts is for the most part the variously mangled remains of an autonomous composition. First written apart from the text of the epic, it only later began to be added in the margins of Statius’ text.’ In any case, in this complex process, we can suppose that at some point Lactantius Placidus’ commentary circulated as a conglomerate of glosses, some of which were interlinear (the shorter ones), in a smaller size, just as in the case of the gloss sine humore siluarum in MS E; others, instead, were in the margin of the copy (the longer ones), in a larger size. The confusion between sine (h)umore siluarum and sine honore siluarum, therefore, could have arisen precisely from a transcription error caused by the reduced size of the writing of this gloss in an interlinear position,Footnote 13 or perhaps as an attempt by a scribe to adjust it to the subsequent explanation.Footnote 14

I would conclude adding that, regardless of whether we accept sine (h)umore siluarum or sine honore siluarum, a further problem may arise. If we accept the scholium in the present state, the gloss would first explain the adjective nudo (sine honore/(h)umore siluarum), then Haemus (Haemus est autem mons Thraciae), and then again the adjective (et bene nudo …), which is a rather contorted reasoning. All this, together with what has been said above, namely that in MS E this part of the scholium is in an interlinear position and not together with the rest of the explanation which is in the margin, and that not all manuscripts read it, leads one to think that it is likely an interpolation and that it should be excluded from the text.

Footnotes

I wish to thank Professor Sergio Casali for his constant support. I also thank Professors Luca Cardinali, Stephen J. Harrison, Nicola Lanzarone and Luis Rivero García, and my friends Bernardo Berruecos Frank, Ulises Bravo López, Vicente Flores Militello, Claudio García Ehrenfeld and Ana Laura Zavala Díaz, as well as CQ's anonymous reader, for their many useful comments and suggestions.

References

1 The simile of cranes has Homeric origins: Il. 3.2–6 (the screaming Trojans before entering the battlefield are compared to the noisy flocks of cranes fleeing the winter and its rains to wage war on the Pygmies) αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ κόσμηθεν ἅμ’ ἡγεμόνεσσιν ἕκαστοι, | Τρῶες μὲν κλαγγῇ τ’ ἐνοπῇ τ’ ἴσαν ὄρνιθες ὣς | ἠΰτε περ κλαγγὴ γεράνων πέλει οὐρανόθι πρό·| αἵ τ’ ἐπεὶ οὖν χειμῶνα φύγον καὶ ἀθέσφατον ὄμβρον | κλαγγῇ ταί γε πέτονται ἐπ’ ὠκεανοῖο ῥοάων | ἀνδράσι Πυγμαίοισι φόνον καὶ κῆρα φέρουσαι, ‘[n]ow when they were marshaled, the several companies with their leaders, the Trojans came on with clamor and a cry, like birds, like the clamor of cranes that arises before the face of heaven when they flee from wintry storms and boundless rain, and with clamor fly toward the streams of Ocean, bringing slaughter and death to Pygmy men’ (transl. G. Murray). Statius refers to the cranes only by means of a periphrasis, rauca … agmina (raucus is later applied to the crane by Corippus, Ioh. 4.389), a periphrasis taken up by an imprecise illae with which it is necessary to imply aues or grues (in fact, in pursuit of clarity, some manuscripts add a gloss: scilicet gruum [ad rauca agmina] R T S, grues [ad illae] R T g). For the history of crane similes in Latin literature, see Bejarano, M. Castillo, ‘El símil de las grullas en la épica clásica’, CFC(L) 18 (2000), 137–62Google Scholar; Monno, O., ‘Migrazioni della gru: da Omero ai simboli medievali’, VetChr 45 (2008), 91–111Google Scholar; for the Statian reworking of the simile, see McNelis, C., Statius’ Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War (Cambridge, 2007), 88–90Google Scholar.

2 Text and apparatus criticus are my own. I use the sigla and abbreviations of J.B. Hall in collaboration with A.L. Ritchie and M.J. Edwards, P. Papinius Statius: Thebaid and Achilleid, 3 vols. (Newcastle, 2007–2008).

3 Zepeda, B. Martínez, ‘Three notes on Statius, Thebaid 5 (11–16; 20–23; 29–32)’, Mnemosyne 76 (2023), 630–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 630–6.

4 Barth, C., P. Papinii Statii quae exstant, 4 vols. (Zwickau, 1664–1665)Google Scholar; Amar, J.A. and Lemaire, N.E., P. Papinii Statii quae exstant omnia opera, 4 vols. (Paris, 1825–1830)Google Scholar; Bailey, D.R. Shackleton, Statius: Thebaid and Achilleid, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA and London, 2003)Google Scholar; Micozzi, L., Stazio: Tebaide (Milan, 2010)Google Scholar.

5 Here nudatum … Haemum is, of course, a reworking of Statius’ nudo … Haemo: cf. tendit hiemps ~ ponit hiemps, solutis … niuibus ~ solutis | amnibus. Not only does nudatum … Haemum pick up nudo … Haemo, but the whole passage from Claudian is an expansion of the Statian idea of ‘naked Haemus’, in which, however, Claudian reverses the situation: his Haemus is ‘naked’, not in the summer as in Statius (‘naked of snow’), but ‘naked’ in the winter (‘naked of leaves’, nudatum frondibus)—but at the same time, paradoxically, ‘dressed in ice’ (cf. uestire gelu)—and ‘dressed’ in the summer (= ‘rich in leaves’), cf. uiridem … amictum. Cf. also Claud. Rapt. Pros. 2 praef. 21 ardua nudato descendit populus Haemo, where Haemus is devoid of frondes quia arbores ad citharam currebant (Parisinus lat. 8082 gloss.).

6 I have inspected the editions of Tiliobroga, F., P. Papinii Surculi Statii opera quae extant. Placidi Lactantii in Thebaida et Achilleida commentarius (Paris, 1600)Google Scholar; Jahnke, R., Lactantii Placidi qui dicitur commentarios in Statii Thebaida et commentarius in Achilleida (Leipzig, 1898)Google Scholar; and Sweeney, R.D., Lactantii Placidi in Statii Thebaida commentum, I (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1997)Google Scholar. The incunabula of Milan 1476–1477, Venice 1483, Venice 1490, Venice 1494 and Venice 1498–1499 do not have this first part of the scholium: see n. 8 below.

7 See Mankin, D., Horace Epodes (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar, ad loc. See also TLL 6.3.2929.45–52 (Mehmel) ‘distinctio apparet sensibus … fere i. q. ornamentum’, quoting Lactant. Plac. ad Stat. Theb. 6.98–106 quae nunquam exuitur honore foliorum. For this use of nudus = ‘devoid of vegetation or signs of fertility’, cf. OLD s.v. nudus 7b (quoting this passage). Cf. also Rgloss. sine arboribus, and perhaps J.H. Mozley, Statius with an English Translation, 2 vols. (London and New York, 1928), ‘naked Haemus’; G. Aricò (in A. Traglia and G. Aricò, Opere di Publio Papinio Stazio [Turin, 1983]; the Thebaid is edited and translated by G. Aricò): ‘l'Emo ormai spoglio’ (in these translations it is not specified what the mountain Haemus is ‘naked’ of).

8 For the manuscripts, I use Sweeney's sigla (n. 6). I have personally inspected A (the manuscript does not have the first part of the scholium), B (the digital reproduction offered by the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg is very poor), C (the manuscript does not have the whole scholium on line 16), f, K, k, M, m, p (the manuscript does not have the first part of the scholium), R and V (because some folios [perhaps two] are missing, the text skips from the scholium on 4.584 to the scholium on 5.237: see also Anderson, H., The Manuscripts of Statius. Revised Edition, 3 vols. [Arlington, VA, 2009], 1.388–9)Google Scholar. For the stemma of Lactantius Placidus’ commentary, cf. Sweeney (n. 6), LIV.

9 For (h)umor as a characteristic element of winter, cf. Isid. Nat. 7.4 uer … constat ex humore et igne, aestas ex igne et siccitate, autumnus ex siccitate et frigore, hiems ex frigore et humore.

10 Sweeney, R.D., Prolegomena to an Edition of the Scholia to Statius (Leiden, 1969), 84–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 G. Funaioli, ‘Da un codice di Valenciennes’, SIFC 21 (1915), 1–73, at 7 had already supposed that the scholia must have been in the margin: ‘gli scolii di Lattanzio, nel modo che li abbiamo attualmente, risalgono tutti ad una tradizione marginale’.

12 Hall (n. 2), 3.3.

13 The same confusion between honos and humor in an interlinear gloss occurs in the gloss on Theb. 5.526 pronus, where Rgloss. reads inclinatus ut aliquem humorem exciperet, while the gloss of Zurich, Zentralbibliothek C. 62 (282), saec. xi ex., which has the corrupt reading protinus instead of pronus, reads ut aliquem honorem exciperet.

14 This can be helped by the fact that perhaps this part of the scholium circulated in an autonomous manner, as evidenced by the fact that not all manuscripts have it. See nn. 6 and 8 above.