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CRATYLUS 393b–c AND THE PREHISTORY OF PLATO'S TEXT*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2013
Extract
We start from a passage in Plato's Cratylus, 393b7–c7. For reasons which will become clear in due course, I give Burnet's text (with the addition of underlinings and apparatus of my own), which differs from that of the more recent OCT edition on an important detail.
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Footnotes
*
I am indebted for helpful comments and suggestions to Antonio Carlini, Augusto Guida, Walter Lapini, Maria Jagoda Luzzatto, Sabina Mazzoldi, Enrico Rebuffat and a reader, at first anonymous, who eventually identified himself as David Sedley. To all, my thanks. In the article the main editions of Plato's Cratylus are referred to only by editor's name after their first citation.
References
1 Burnet, J., Platonis Opera, vol. I (Oxford, 1900)Google Scholar.
2 Duke, E.A., Hicken, W.F., Nicoll, W.S.M., Robinson, D.B. and Strachan, J.C.G., Platonis Opera, vol. I (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar. Hereafter I refer to this as ‘Duke et al.’
3 There is something to be said for Ast's excision of the first μόσχον (c2) as a gloss; here I leave the matter aside for simplicity.
4 I do so in The Cratylus of Plato: A Commentary (Cambridge, 2011), 152–80Google Scholar, from which I have taken the passage's translation.
5 Cf. the treasure of information stored in Carlini, A., Studi sulla tradizione antica e medievale del Fedone (Rome, 1972)Google Scholar; the Praefatio to Duke et al.'s edition; Tempesta, S. Martinelli, in Trabattoni, F. (ed.), Platone: Liside, vol. I (Milan, 2003), 14–34Google Scholar; and more specifically Murphy, D.J. and Nicoll, W.S.M., ‘Parisinus Graecus 1813 in Plato's Cratylus’, Mnemosyne 46.4 (1993), 458–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 On B, Arethas and John Calligraphus see the recent discussion by Luzzatto, M.J., ‘Codici tardoantichi di Platone ed i cosiddetti Scholia Arethae’, Medioevo greco 10 (2010), 77–110Google Scholar (cf. below, n. 19).
7 See Murphy and Nicoll (n. 5), 470–1 and nn. 27–8, and D'Acunto, A., ‘Su un'edizione platonica di Niceforo Moscopulo e Massimo Planude: il Vindobonensis Phil. gr. 21, Y’, SCO 45 (1995), 261–79Google Scholar at 268–9. On Y in general see also Carlini (n. 5), 161–3.
8 For a general list, with examples from various dialogues belonging to the first six tetralogies, see Carlini (n. 5), 129. Carlini, 137, also collects errors, attested in one MS or another, which seem to be due to misreading of majuscule script and hence point to a majuscule common source. But in any case the common source's script could only be majuscule in the light of Carlini's plausible hypothesis (on which see below) that it is a late antique edition.
Here are a few rather uncontroversial examples of errors common to the three families in the Cratylus. 390a1 τῷ αὐτῷ ἐάντε ἐν om. βTδ: add. Ast. 399b4 ὀξύτερα om. βTδ: add. Buttmann. 401c7 ἐστίαν (εστίαν, ἑστιαν) βTδ: ἔστιν Burnet (ἔστι Badham). 410b5 post ἀητόρρουν add. ὅθεν δὴ βούλεται αὐτὸν οὕτως εἰπεῖν, ὅτι ἐστὶν ἀήρ βTδ: secl. Heindorf. 415d4 post καλεῖν add. ἴσως δὲ αἱρετὴν λέγει, ὡς οὔσης ταύτης τῆς ἕξεως αἱρετωτάτης βTδ: secl. Burnet. 421a10–b1 ὀνόμασμά ἐστιν βTδ: ὂν οὗ μάσμα ἐστίν Buttmann. 438e8 ἄλλο ὂν βTWQ: ἀλλοῖον γρ. W.
NB: Duke et al. treat as common interpolations two passages which I consider authentic: see ‘Platone, Cratilo 395c, 408b: due presunte interpolazioni’, RFIC 129 (2001), 129–33Google Scholar.
9 Platon, L. Méridier, Oeuvres complètes, vol. V.2: Cratyle (Paris, 1931)Google Scholar.
10 Ast, F., Platonis Quae Exstant Opera, vol. III (Leipzig, 1821)Google Scholar; Bekker, I., Platonis Scripta Graece Omnia, vol. IV (London, 1826)Google Scholar; Stallbaum, G., Platonis Opera omnia, vol. V.II: Cratylum (Gotha and Erfurt, 1835; repr. New York and London, 1980)Google Scholar.
11 Fowler, H.N., Plato (vol. VI): Cratylus, Parmenides, Greater and Lesser Hippias (Cambridge, MA and London, 1926)Google Scholar; Minio-Paluello, L., translation of the Cratylus in Platone, Opere complete, vol. II (Rome and Bari, 1991 2)Google Scholar; Reeve, C.D.C., Plato: Cratylus (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar; Dalimier, C., Platon: Cratyle (Paris, 1998)Google Scholar.
12 Hirschig, R.B., Platonis Opera, vol. I (Paris, 1873).Google Scholar
13 Ficino, M., Divus Plato (Venice, 1491 2)Google Scholar.
14 The phenomenon is especially common when the transposed antecedent loses the article: see e.g. Phd. 61b ἐποίησα οἷςπρώτοις ἐνέτυχον (= τὰ πρῶτα οἷς ἐνέτυχον), Tht. 157e ὃν ἄρτι διῇμεν λόγον (= ὁ λόγος ὅν κτλ.); Eur. Andr. 91–2 οἷσπερ ἐγκείμεσθ᾿ ἀεὶ | θρήνοισι καὶ γόοισι καὶ δακρύμασιν (= τοὺς θρήνους καὶ γόους καὶ δακρύματα οἷσπερ κτλ.); Xen. An. 1.9.19 κατασκευάζοντα … ἧς ἄρχοι χώρας (= τὴν χῶραν ἧς κτλ.). For examples of transposition of the relative's antecedent, with preservation of the article but without attraction, see e.g. Resp. 477c and Soph. Ant. 404. On the whole matter see Cooper, G.L. III, after Krüger, K.W., Attic Greek Prose Syntax, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor, 1998), 1.537–8Google Scholar; Kühner, R. and Gerth, B., Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache: Satzlehre, 2 vols. (Hannover and Leipzig, 1898–19043), 2.416–20Google Scholar.
15 ‘Pleraeque novae lectiones quas praebet Q vel incuria vel coniectura ortae sunt’ (Duke et al., Praefatio, x).
16 See Timpanaro, S., La genesi del metodo del Lachmann (Padua, 1985 3), 111–12Google Scholar.
17 See A. D'Acunto (n. 4). We cannot, however, completely rule out the possibility that at c1 the Ypc reading ἀλλ᾿ ὃ ἂν is just an (infelicitous) emendation by Planudes.
18 In the stemma I assume, just for the sake of simplicity, that the three families β, T and δ form the three branches of a tripartite transmission. My argument would be unaffected if this assumption were mistaken and the transmission of the Cratylus were in fact bipartite, i.e. if there were a hyparchetype common to βT, βδ or Tδ.
19 Carlini (n. 5), 127–38. Carlini's hypothesis harmonizes with Luzzatto's (n. 6) recent argument that the so-called scholia Arethae preserved in the margins of the Bodleian B (and indeed B as a whole – though this does not seem to me to follow from her argument as automatically as she assumes, for various reasons which I shall not go into here) derive from a late antique MS, whose mise en page she precisely reconstructs.
20 On the Alexandrian edition of Plato see Schironi, F., ‘Plato at Alexandria: Aristophanes, Aristarchus, and the “philological tradition” of a philosopher’, CQ 55 (2005), 423–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schironi argues convincingly that Aristarchus wrote a commentary on Plato's dialogues, presumably using Aristophanes' edition, and that it is from Aristarchus that the critical signs which were affixed to Plato's works by the second century a.d. (see Diog. Laert. 3.65–6, PSI 1488 = Plato 142 T CPF) derive. On the Academic edition see Carlini (n. 5), 22–30, who points out that the tetralogical ordering, often associated to Thrasyllus on the basis of Diog. Laert. 3.56–61, might date back to the Academy of Arcesilaus (third century b.c.).
21 O4's marginal notes are systematically transcribed in O's apograph Laur. 59.1, a complete Plato written under the direction of (again!) Planudes.
22 Luzzatto, M.J., ‘Emendare Platone nell'antichità. Il caso del Vaticanus gr. 1’, QS 68 (2008), 29–85Google Scholar. Among those ancient sources, Luzzatto argues on the basis of her new interpretation of O4's abbreviations, was a so-called ‘Attic’ edition of the dialogues which can be identified with the ἔκδοσις τῶν Ἀττικῶν ἀντιγράφων mentioned by Galen, In Platonis Timaeum p. 13 Schröder, according to the MSS text of that passage. Luzzatto rejects the widespread attempts to correct forms of the adjective Ἀττικός – in Galen, in Harpocration (35.11, 55.6 Dindorf etc.) and elsewhere – into forms of the adjective Ἀττικιανός, which should refer to editions to do with someone called Atticus. For a survey of the evidence (carried out from this ‘Attician’ perspective) see Dorandi, T., ‘“Editori” antichi di Platone’, Antiquorum Philosophia 4 (2010), 161–74Google Scholar.
23 See Threatte, L., The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions, 2 vols. (Berlin and New York, 1980–96)Google Scholar, 1.172–90, 238–59, who also points out the distinction between (i) and (ii).
24 Slings, S.R., Platonis Rempublicam (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar. Thereby Slings improves on a suggestion by von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., Platon (Berlin, 1920 2), 2.336–7Google Scholar. Wilamowitz lists various similar passages and makes also a brief reference to Cra. 416d. See also Leroy, M., ‘Sur un emploi de ΦΩΝΗ chez Platon’, REG 80 (1967), 234–41Google Scholar (who, however, fails to recognize the distinction between (i) and (ii), i.e. between the adoption of the Ionic alphabet and the adoption of ΕΙ/Οϒ as signs for long close e and o). Among other passages, Leroy mentions Cra. 396b-c, where οὐρανία is derived from ὁρῶσα τὰ ἄνω: a parallel for Resp. 509d. For a different view see Robinson, D.B., ‘Κρόνος, Κορόνους and Κρουνός in Plato's Cratylus’, in Ayres, L. (ed.), The Passionate Intellect (New Brunswick and London, 1995), 57–66Google Scholar, who claims that ‘where a clarifying spelling was certainly available’ to Plato, ‘perhaps we may presume him to have made use of it where appropriate’. This presumption seems to run foul of the evidence.
25 On the papyrus and its significance see again Wilamowitz (n. 24), together with Pasquali, G., Storia della tradizione e critica del testo (Florence, 1952 2), 257Google Scholar, and Carlini, A. in Corpus dei papiri filosofici 1*** (Florence, 1999), 102–3Google Scholar. The papyrus is edited by Pontani, F., ‘Per la tradizione antica del Lachete di Platone: PPetrie II, 50 e POxy 228’, SCO 45 (1995), 99–126Google Scholar at 117–26.
26 He did not write them both as ΗΟ, using Η as a sign for initial aspiration, as in Attic script before 403: in the Ionic alphabet Η was the sign for long open e, and after the Athenians adopted that alphabet they just stopped marking initial aspiration except in few special contexts in which they continued to use Η despite its ambiguity (see Threatte [n. 23], 1.24–5 and my Cratylus commentary [n. 4], 439 n. 105 – where however I argue that in Cra. Plato does use Η when, at 412a and 437a, he has to mention initial aspiration).
27 See Irigoin, J., Histoire du texte de Pindare (Paris, 1952), 52–3Google Scholar (and 22–7 for other surviving traces of ‘ancient script’ in Pindar's text), and Reynolds, L.D. and Wilson, N.G., Scribes and Scholars (Oxford, 1991 3), 9Google Scholar.