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Notes on the Christian Poems of Dracontius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. Williams-Hudson
Affiliation:
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Extract

Readers of the poems of Dracontius as edited and expounded by F. Vollmer (Monum. Germ. Hist., Auct. Ant., vol. xiv, 1905, and Poet. Lat. Min., vol. v, 1914) may well receive the impression that the poet was incapable of the Latin tongue and was given to turns and expressions intelligible only to himself and such painstaking students as his editor. The language of the true Drac., though often stiff and artificial, does not, however, call for superhuman powers of interpretation, and the bewilderment of his readers is occasioned largely by the faulty tradition of the text and the conservatism of an editor who either refuses to recognize the corruptions which confront him, or is content with superficial corrections sufficient to restore some semblance of grammar whether or not accompanied by sense. To the text of Drac. Vollm. certainly made a valuable contribution, but his unshakable faith in the integrity of scribes led to a frequent acceptance of the false as the true; that the transmission of the text may have been left to the heedless or the ignorant is not a possibility which appears to have occurred to him. There can be no doubt that the manuscripts on which the text depends are full of corruptions, and many of these have received either inadequate attention or none at all; where convincing remedies have been proposed by previous scholars, Vollm. has shown all too often a blind indifference. The poems of Drac. deserve, indeed, more sympathetic treatment, for they are by no means without merit. The Christian works at least, written during his imprisonment, contain flashes of real poetry and are characterized by a warmth of feeling inspired by the poet's personal miseries and genuine belief in the goodness of God; that they were read and imitated in the most diverse lands of the Christian world is not surprising. The following notes represent for the most part an attempt to improve on Vollm.'s text of the De laudibus dei and the Satisfactio in certain passages where the manuscript reading appears to me to have been either improperly retained or imperfectly emended. I have already dealt with a number of other unsatisfactory passages in C.Q., vol. xxxiii, pp. 157–62, and vol. xl, pp. 92–100. The text quoted is in each case that of Vollm.'s P.L.M. edition.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1947

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References

page 96 note 1 Cf. Verg, . Aen. 1. 148Google Scholarac ueluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est | seditio, ib. 8. 353, etc.; see Munro on Lucr. 5. 1231.

page 96 note 2 adsumit, R2's correction (so Arev.) of B's adsumat, which Vollm. retains, seems necessary.

page 97 note 1 1 See Rossberg, K., Archiv f. lat. Lex. u. Gramm. iv (1887), 44 ff.Google Scholar

page 97 note 2 Cf. Luc. 4.109 (mundi pars ima) glacie medios signorum temperat ignes.

page 97 note 3 So codd. We should, I think, read gemitus; gemitus suspiria represents a type of asyndeton, of which Drac. shows several exx. (cf. Laud, dei 1. 549 otia delicias perdunt discuntque labores, Romul. 8. 33s diadema tiaram | qui tulit, etc.); for gemitus rumpere cf. Sil. 4.456 gemitumque sidera rupit, Coripp, . Ioh. 8. 331Google Scholargemitus populi rupere dolentes.

page 97 note 4 ‘Die Ausgabe d. ersten Buches d. Laudes dei u. d. Satisfactio d. Drac. durch Eugenius von Toledo’, Gymn.-Progr. Speyer, 1913. This pupil of Vollm. accepts without question the readings of his preceptor, however intractable.

page 98 note 1 An early (1651) editor of Laud, dei 1 and Satisfactio (according to Eug.'s text), to whose reading Arev. here refers.

page 98 note 2 medantur B Vollm. possibly rightly (cf. Neue-Wag, ., Form, iii, pp. 264 ff.)Google Scholar, but medentur (M2) represents only a small correction.

page 100 note 1 I suggested petra as a possible solution in a brief footnote to my article in C.Q. xl. 94, but have felt that fuller discussion was called for.

page 101 note 1 See my note on these passages in C.Q. xl. 98.

page 104 note 1 . uidens (RU Arev.) seems a necessary correction of uides (B Vollm.).

page 104 note 2 So B, perhaps rightly (cf. Hor, . Sat. 1Google Scholar. 3. 75 peccatis ueniam poscentem, etc.), celerem C; Vollm, . unnecessarily emends to sceleris, comparing 1. 533Google Scholaruoce reatus…fatetur and 2. 730 (above); the editor seems obsessed by the strange notion that a genitive dependent on uoce required both in 2. 666 and 730.