Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T03:51:28.049Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Some Explanations and Emendations of Martial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Alan Ker
Affiliation:
Wellington College, Berks

Extract

The text of Martial is fairly good, though not as good as many editors seem to think. We have three separate sources from which our manuscripts are derived, which are called by Lindsay in the O.C.T. AA, BA and O.1 All three sources seem to have suffered from editing, AA less than the others. In A.D. 401 one Torquatus Gennadius seems to have emended the text (feliciter as the ‘puff’ in some of the BA MSS. puts it). We do not know whether all three sources were affected by this recension: all we know is that the BA family are the only manuscripts that mention it. But there are many signs of recension discernible in the readings of the other families too, e.g. pas-sages which have evidently had grammar or syntax thrust upon them—and in these I do not include the now obscure allusions and the dead jokes past recall.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1950

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 12 note 1 But R and T, the descendants of AA, seem to me to be more distant cousins than the descendants of BA and CA respectively.

page 12 note 2 Lindsay thinks that CA was the ‘vulgate’ text, which T. G. Set himself to emend, the result being the BA text (Ancient Editions of Martial, p. 55).

page 12 note 3 I have no figures, but if I had, I doubt if they would reveal anything of interest.

page 12 note 4 Viz. 1. 21. 7, 53. 4, 7, 55. 6, 61. 3, 66. n, 69. 1, 70. 5, 78. 7, 99. 12, 17, 109. 8, 116. 1; 2 Ep. 9, 6. 14, 14. 15,16. 4, 40. 5, 83. 3; 3. 2. 4, 6. 2, 58. 43, 77. 3; 4. 56. 5,63. 4, 66. 5,82.4; 5. 3. 6,15. 3,24. 8,45. 2, 75. 1, 78. 24; 6. 61. 10, 64. 32, 66. 6, 83. 5; 7. 7. 5, 14. 4, 27. 5, 87. 10,96. 4; 8. 3. 19, 50. 13, 59. 11,61. 4, 64. 6, 69. 1, 75. I, 3; 9. 12. 3, 30. 5, 45. 2, 51. 7, 57. 4, 58. 5; 10. 5. 4, 7. 9, 24. 11, 30. 1, 71. 4, 78. 8, 82. 7; 11. 1. 9, 3. 10, 15. 13, 37. 1, 3, 81. 4, 99. 2, 104. 21; 12. 32. 7, 16, 44. 1, 48. 7, 48. 15, 62. 15, 65. 8, 72. 3, 6, 77. 2, 84. 4; 13. 57. 2, 90. 1, 119. 1, 135. 1; 14. 24. 1.

page 13 note 1 Unless we are to take -que as = atque etiam, which is surely impossible in Martial.

page 13 note 2 The others are decus, nomen, spes, salus, tutela, levamen, pretium, cura, culpa, dolor, timor, tremor, lormentum.

page 13 note 3 The only plural abstracts thus used by M. are deliciance, amores, gaudia, lusus, opes and oscula.

page 14 note 1 Cf. 4. 14. 7.

page 14 note 2 Heraeus may of course nevertheless be right in saying that Quae est is itself a corruption.

page 14 note 3 e.g. at 9. 79. 5, 6.

page 14 note 4 It would perhaps ease dives to take sis as concessive, cf. 3. 5. 8, 5. 15. 6, but this is a much rarer construction in M. In that case the 2nd person would not be generic but refer to Milichus.

page 15 note 1 I discount Sp. 28. 10 as certainly corrupt.

page 15 note 2 And see Lindsay, , Ancient Editions of Martial, p. 60Google Scholar.

page 15 note 3 Cf. note 3 on p. 16.

page 16 note 1 For the abrupt haec sunt cf. 10. 104. 16; and for the si qua construction cf. 1. 34. 4.

page 16 note 2 Juv. 12. 24. ecce … audi is not quite parallel.

page 16 note 3 For stopgaps in our Mss. see 1. 103. 7, 114. 5; 4.89.6; 5. 4. 1; 6. 10.4; 8. 27. 2512. 17. 3; 14. 46. 2, and Housman's emendations of 2.36.3 and 8. 46 4.

page 16 note 4 Nor of ‘when’ (except possibly at 1. 53. 9).

page 17 note 1 Alternatively the homoeoteleuton 1 and 4 may have caused the trouble; i.e. the scribe went on after 4 with 5 and 6, then back to 2 and 3, and then his signal of restoration was misinterpreted, cf. BA's omission of two lines at 7. 10. 12, 13; also 2. 7. 6–7; 1, 109. 15; 6. 42. 14; 8. 33. 12; 7. 92. 5; 11. 32. 1, 45. 3; 12 Ep. 13; 14. 25, 35, 98,162, and perhaps 13. 38, omitted by BA owing to the like-ness of -antibus hedis to -ondibus horti, and 8. 27. 2, where R's Gaure is due to the likeness of (locup)leli and tibi.

page 17 note 2 As seems to have occurred at 12. 14. 3-4; see p. 22.

page 17 note 3 Tumores and furores were presumably punishments for lies, which he calls down upon himself if what he says is false. For the first cf. the Greek notion that blisters on the tongue were caused by lying.

page 18 note 1 For losses through homoeoteleuton see note 1 on p. 17.

page 18 note 2 I see that Friedrich, G. suggested taking Qui as relative to frater, as I do (Philol. 1909 p. 98)Google Scholar, but he then prients I. 3 without stops and without explanation. (No one seems to have noticed his repunctuation of 1. 7: units, cum sitis duo, C., sedetis? This, with Markland's sedebis, seems to me to be right.)

page 19 note 1 Cf. Munro's hypothesis of an omitted line at 2. 73, which he supplies most ingeniously. For other cases of homeoarchon cf. 1.53 (T's omission of two lines), 88. 4; 7. 31. 1059. 27. 3; 10. 76. 4; 11. 32. 1; 12. 55. 5, 10, 59. 8; 14. 10, 95 (omitted by BA), and especially 7. 45. 11, which BA has omitted from its likeness to the start of the previous line but one.

page 19 note 2 For Atlas = a dwarf the edd. compare Juv. 8. 32.

page 19 note 3 Housman (on Juv. 14 269) would read similem, but his only parallel is 12. 31. 6, where similes may well mean ‘like to one another’, not ‘like in colour to the dove-cot’.

page 20 note 1 si quid manias can mean nothing else, for, apart from its sense of ‘assign’, M. does not use the word in any other sense; cf. 104. 8.

page 22 note 1 The point of 11. 7–10 then would be that M. dares Publius to give up having lovely slaves and take ugly ones. But of course he will not.

page 22 note 2 Because Domitian is dead.

page 23 note 1 For omission or transposition through homoearchon, see note 1 on p. 19, and through homoeoteleuton note 1 on p. 17.

page 23 note 2 M. uses iste for ille and even hic, but not vice versa (haec aures at 7. 26. 4 is clearly corrupt).

page 24 note 1 But in any case there seems to have been a recognized body of title-headings by A.D. 400, if not earlier (see Lindsay, , loc. cit., pp. 53–4)Google Scholar .