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Another chapter in the history of scholia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Kathleen McNamee
Kathleen McNamee
Affiliation:
Wayne State University
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Extract

The ancient law school about which we have the most information was at Beirut. Editors of legal papyri have occasionally speculated about possible connections between particular ancient texts and the activities of professors of law in that city, but no one has examined the evidence in a body. It is likely, I think, that legal papyri reflect the state of contemporary legal education at Beirut, and that they preserve, moreover, primary evidence for the history of scholarship in general. With so broad a topic, it would be useful first to consider what we know about legal instruction in antiquity, particularly at Beirut, then to review the relevant papyrological evidence, and finally to draw the two subjects together by considering the possible relation between the marginal commentaries of legal papyri and the extensive scholia which fill the broad margins of many medieval manuscripts.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 269 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

1 Collinet, P., Histoire de Iecole de droit de Beyrouth (Paris, 1925) (hereafter Collinet). Reviewed critically, updated, and mainly upheld by L. Wenger, Die Quellen des rbmische Rechts (Vienna, 1953), esp. pp. 619–32.Google Scholar

2 Collinet, pp. 16–20, canvasses and rejects arguments for an Augustan or a Hadrianic foundation; he settles on the early third century or the late second as the time the school was established. Whether there was a single institution or more than one is open to question. For the earlier period of legal studies at Beirut, Fergus Millar opts for the latter: It is essential to stress that all our evidence up to the fourth century does indeed present the teaching and learning of Roman law as an aspect of the rather more Roman city that Berytus was; and that we should speak of law schools rather than of the Law School. The Roman colonies of the Near East. A study of cultural relations, in Solin, H. and Kajava, M. (edd.), Roman Eastern Policy and Other Studies (Helsinki, 1990), pp. 7–58, at p. 23.Google Scholar

3 Collinet, pp. 114–15 (a table).

4 Thaumaturgus, Gregory, oral, panegyr. ad Origenem 5.62, Crouzel H. (ed.), Remerciement a Origene, suivi de la lettre dOrigine a Grigoire (Paris, 1969); PG 10.1065–6: In fact Gregory never reached Beirut but was detained in Caesarea, where his life took a new direction as a result of his encounter with Origen.Google Scholar

5 Libanius, ep. 652.1 (a.d. 361, to Anatolius, consularis Phoenices); ep. 438.5 (A.D. 355); ep. 1529.1 (A.D. 365).Also from the fifth century is a papyrus, from Hermupolis in Egypt, containing panegyrics on teachers at Beirut are the terms used: P.Berol. inv. 10558+10559, E. Heitsch, Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der romischen Kaiserzeit [Gottingen, 1961], nos. xxx and xxxi, P21851. They may have been associated with the teaching of law: (no. xxx, line 75); (no. xxxi, line 35).

6 Geogr.gr.min. II, p. 517, 25.

7 On legal studies at Rome see D. Liebs, Die Jwisprudenz im spdtantiken Italien (260–640 n. Chr.) (Berlin, 1987); Scheltema, H. J., Lenseignement de droit des antecesseurs (Leiden, 1970) (hereafter Scheltema, Lenseignement), p. 3.Google Scholar

8 The Digest of Justinian, Mommsen, T., Krueger, P. (edd.), English tr. by Alan Watson (Philadelphia, 1985). Const. Omnem 1: Haec autem tria volumina a nobis composita tradi eis (scil. to students,) tarn in regiis urbibus quant in Berytiensium pulchefrima civitate, quant et legum nutricem bene quis appellet, tantummodo volumus, quodiam et a retro principibus constitutum est, et non in aliis locis quae a maioribus tale non meruerint privilegium: quia audivimus etiam in Alexandrina splendidissima civitate et in Caesariensium et in aliis quosdam imperitos homines devagare et doctrinam discipulis adulterinam tradere: quos sub hoc interminatione ab hoc conamine repellimus ut, si ausifuerint in posterum hoc perpetrare et extra urbes regias et Berytiensium metropolim hocfacere denarum librarum auripoena plectantur et reiciantur ab ea civitate, in qua non leges docent, sed in leges committunt.Google Scholar

9 Const. Deo Auctore 12 (Ideoque iubemus) nostram autem consummationem, quae a vobis deo adnuente componetur, digestorum vel pandectarum notnen habere sancimus, nullis iuris peritis in posterum audentibus commentarios illi applicare et verbositate sua supra dicti codicis compendium confundere: quemadmodwn et in antiquioribus temporibus factum est, cum per contrarias interpretantium sententias totum iuspaene conturbatum est: sed sufficiat per indices tantummodo et titulorum suptilitatem quaedam admonitoria eius facere, nullo ex interpretation eorum vitio oriundo. Cf. Const. Tanta 21 Hoc autem, quod et ab initio nobis visum est, cum hoc opus fieri deo adnuente mandabamus, tempestivum nobis videtur et inpraesenti sancire, ut nemo neque eorum, qui in praesenti iuris peritiam habent, nee qui postea fuerint audeat commentarios isdem legibus adnectere: nisi tantum si velit eas in Graecam vocem transformare sub eodem ordine eaque consequentia, sub qua et voces Romanaepositae sunt (hoc quod Graeci dicunt), et si qui forsitan per titulorum suptilitatem adnotare maluerint et ea quae nuncupantur componere. alias autem legum interpretationes, immo magis perversiones eos iactare non concedimus, ne verbositas eorum aliquid legibus nostris adferat ex confusione dedecus. Scheltema, Lenseignement, p. 16, lists possible explanations for the contradiction, none satisfactory to him: the threat was an empty threat; it was revoked at once but we have no notice of the revocation; interpretatio carried a meaning different from what we understand as commentary. Matheeussen (below, n. 21) has proposed that the prohibition applied only to the official copies of the Digest prepared for each of the three recipient cities. Honore (ZSS 110 [1993], 766–7) offers a simple solution; namely, that this impractical and almost unenforceable restriction was simply allowed, quietly, to lapse almost as soon as it was promulgated. It was omitted from the publication in 534 of Cordi.

10 Thalelaeus: RE9 (1934), cols. 1208–10.

11 Scheltema, H. J., van der Wai, N. et al. (edd.), Basilicorum libri LX (Groningen, 1953–1985). Wenger (above, n. 1), pp. 622ff. provides several illustrative quotations. Collinet, pp. 117–206, with specific references for the particular epithets at p. 125, adds Amblichus and Leontius.Google Scholar

12 Wenger (above, n. 1), p. 622 n. 261, lays out the evidence for setting the termini post quern and ante quern as, respectively, the first decade of the fifth century and the year 500.

13 Wengers cautious assessment of the evidence for the achievements of the Beirut professors (above, n. 1, pp. 626–9) is a useful antidote to Collinets sometimes exuberant analysis. For the present argument, however, the fact that the fifth century was a period of significant pedagogical and codicological innovations in the East is the critical fact.

14 Foundation by Augustus: CIL III 161, 165, 166, 6041, 153; Ulpian lib. I de censibus (Dig. 50.15.1.1). See also Strabo, Geog. 16.2.19 (756), with the discussion of Millar, The Roman Colonies (above, n. 2), pp. 7–58, esp. p. 12. See also Millar, , The Roman Near East 31 B.C.–A.D. 337 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), esp. pp. 279–85 and 527–8.Google Scholar

15 Millar, The Roman Colonies (above, n. 2), p. 8.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 14.

17 Gregory Thaumat., oral, panegyr. ad Origenem (1.7) (above, n. 4),. He also expresses concern that his extensive study of Latin will be an impediment to effective expression in Greek.

18 Libanius at or. 2.43 complains of the decline of Greek rhetoric in his day: he links the decline specifically with the current privileged position of Latin over Greek, and of the craze for legal studies: 48.22 (A.D. 384/5) he laments the annual exodus of the youth of the best families in Antioch for Beirut and Rome:

19 Liebeschuetz, J. H. W G., Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford, 1972), p. 246.Google Scholar

20 An argument for instruction in Greek now to be discarded (Collinet, p. 212) held that Cyril, the earliest Beirut scholar included among ol rrjs oiKovpevTjs SiSdcncaXoi (he probably began to teach in the first or second decade of the fifth century), wrote a work entitled im6p.vr]p.a The passage on which the claim is based, however (BS 314–21, Heimbach I 646), is corrupt, as Scheltema, Lenseignement, pp. 9–10 n. 35, has pointed out: schol. Even if the source were uncorrupted, however, this would be no guarantee that the work on definitions was in Greek, for Latin in the Basilica was uniformly transliterated into Greek.

21 In the East it was not only students of law who lacked Latin: Scheltema, Lenseignement, pp. 11–2.1 am indebted for the analysis that follows to the clear and patient exposition provided by Constant Matheeussen of the Universite catholique de Bruxelles in a lecture he gave at Wayne State University in January 1996.

22 Scheltema, Lenseignement, esp. ch. 2, Lenseignement avant et apres la codification. For an example of an index and the passage it translates, see C. Matheeussen, ^interpretation de la gratuite du mandat dans les scholies des Basiliques et la reductibility du salaire du mandataire, Subseciva Groningana III: it is apparent that the surviving index to Dig. 17.1.1.4 (Paul) is a translation of the Latin into Greek and not, as often averred, a summary (pp. 50 and 58).

23 The scholars who most frequently provide these references are Thalelaeus, Theodore, and Stephanus: Collinet, pp. 243ff.; REs. Thalelaeus (above, n. 10).

24 But it since has been lost. Baviera, J., Furlani, J. (edd.), FIRA pars altera (Florence, 1940), pp. 637–52; P2 2958, pre–Justinian: 5th cent.?, E. G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia, 1976), p. 126.Google Scholar

25 25 Collinet, pp. 272–9; relevant citations in the Basilica are collected at pp. 311–12.

26 Scheltema, Lenseignement, p. 11.

27 Also, the man can use the money: Libanius, ep. 1539: The quantity of books refers to those to which the professor has access, whether he wrote them himself or owns them. A library of good quality would presumably recommend a professor to a prospective student.

28 K. McNamee, An innovation in annotated codices, Proceedings of the XXI International Congress of Papyrology, Berlin (August 1995), forthcoming.

29 Texts of new format in which the same scribe added both notes and commentary (references marked with an asterisk, here and in subsequent notes, are texts of law; see below): P2145, 186, 1487, 2281, 2282, 2286, 2982; perh. 2277, P32362.3, 2979.1, 2979.2 (Mertens).

30 Annotations in relatively informal hands in codices of new design: P2 2866, 2867, 2971, 2974. In layout, however, these books resemble other texts of new format.

31 Annotations are written in neat blocks at the outer edge of the page of P2 145, 1356, P3 2861.21 (Mertens); at the inner edge of the page of P2 119; at both inner and outer edges of P2 142, 186, 1487 (esp. e.g. fol. 4r, 5r, v), 2953. Texts in which it is unclear whether notes are in the inner or outer margin are: P2 2280, 2282, 2866, 2867, P3 2979.1, 2979.2 (Mertens). Both the left and right edges of notes are preserved in P2145, 2280,2866, 2867, 2984, 2966, P3 2979.1, 2979.2(?) (Mertens).

32 Aratus Phaenom.: P.Berol. inv. 5865, M. Maehler, APF 27 (1980), 19–32 (P2 119, Byzantine).

33 The widest such, at the extreme edge of a page, is 3 cm (P2 145: Aristophanes and 1356: Pindar, discussed below). The scribe of 2979.1 (Mertens) maintained a border of similar dimensions between text and commentary. The widest margin I have seen between a block of marginal commentary and the inner edge of the page is 2.5 cm (in P2 186, the Oxyrhynchus Callimachus); elsewhere it runs to about 1–1.5 cm, e.g. in P2119 (Aratus, above, n. 32) and 1487 (the Antinoe Theocritus). Irvine, Martin, The Making of Textual Culture (Cambridge, 1994), p. 385, draws attention to the regularity in the apportionment of space in medieval manuscripts: The page was typically ruled in three unequal columns, a large central column for main text and two outer columns or margins of varying width for glosses [i.e. scholia] (emphasis added).Google Scholar

34 Bookrolls with long annotations in informal hands include: P2 361 (Epicharmus), 1237 (Ibycus), 1360 (Pind.). The layout of these bookrolls is conventional. No special steps were taken to accommodate marginalia.

35 Roberts, C. H. and Skeat, T. C., Birth of the Codex (Oxford, 1987), p. 37. For an earlier, but still useful, study of the relative frequency of rolls and codices, see W H. Willis, A census of literary papyri, GRBS 9 (1968), 220; Williss material is updated, for codices, by E. G. Turner, The Birth of the Codex (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 102–34.Google Scholar

36 Riad, H., Selim, A. el– Kadr, Koenen, L., The Cairo Codex of Menander (PCairj 43227) (London, 1978); P2 1301, second half of the fifth century (G. Cavallo and H. Maehler, Greek Bookhands of the Early Byzantine Period: AD. 300–800 [BICS Suppl. 47, 1987], pi. 16b).Google Scholar

37 Informally annotated codices of conventional design include: P2 141 (Aristophanes), 201 and 215 (Callimachus), 406 (Euripides).

38 Aratus, Phaenom.: above, n. 32; Pindar, P. 1: MPERN.S. 123, K. McNamee, Proceedings of the XXInternational Congress of Papyrology (Copenhagen, 1993), pp. 177– 84 (P21356,6th cent.); Callimachus, varia: POxy XX 2258 (P2186,6th or 7th cent.).

39 G. Cavallo and H. Maehler, Greek Bookhands (above, n. 36).

40 The marginalia of PReinach 2173 (P2 2971) look, for example, as if they may have been added by a reader rather than a professional scribe, but there can be no certainty.

41 Cf. B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, tr. Daibhi 6 Croinin and David Ganz (Cambridge, 1990), p. 74, speaking of the older (eastern) half– uncial manifest in a set of Latin manuscripts of the third to fifth centuries, mainiy from Egypt: Given the very considerable component of legal texts transmitted in this kind of writing, the Latin law school of Berytos (Beirut) probably played a role, if not already in its formation then certainly in its use from the third to the fifth century.

42 Scheltema, Lenseignement, p. 8, provides a table of texts read in each of the five years of study in pre–Justinian and post– Justinian Beirut; cf. Collinet, p. 230.

43 Scheltema, Lenseignement, p. 8, provides a table of texts read in each of the five years of study in pre–Justinian and post– Justinian Beirut; cf. Collinet, p. 230.

44 Const. Deo Auctore 12 and Tanta 21 (see above, n. 9).

45 Zacharias the Scholastic describes how Severus, for example, who began law studies at Beirut in 486 or 487, systematically added comments to the margins of his books: Zacharias Scholasticus, Vita Severi 25, M. A. Kugener (ed.), Patrologia Orientalis II fasc. 1 (Paris, 1903), pp. 52ff. The text is preserved in Syriac translation, difficult to interpret. Kugener translates: Severe etudia les lois autant quon peut le faire, examina et approfondit tous les edits imperiaux compris ceux de son temps, compara ensemble les conunentaires contenus dans les precis des lois, nota dans les cahiers des racines auxiliaires de loubli et du souvenir et laissa, comme des a ceux qui viendraient apres lui, ses livres et ses notes. Scheltema, Lenseignement, pp. 14–15 n. 45, interprets: Severe consulta les constitutions, auxquelles on setait refere dans les puis il copia les gloses marginales faites par dautres etudiants et munit ces gloses de lemmes latins [i.e. Kugeners racines auxiliaires de loubli et du souvenir]. II preta a des etudiants plus jeunes les cahiers de cours ainsi formes.

46 In any case, the new and careful format is in keeping with the obsession of the Roman administration to avoid alteration to the original text: J.– L. Mourgues, Ecrire en deux langues. Bilinguisme et pratique de chancellerie sous le haut–empire remain, Dialogues a histoire ancienne 21 (1995), 124.

47 Collinet, p. 114, names four, from Alexandria and Heliopolis. Legal papyri whose specific Egyptian provenance is known were excavated at sites stretching from the Fayum to, perhaps, the Thebaid: Crocodilopolis (P2 2283), Theadelphia (P2 2961), the Fayum (P2 2286, 72983, 72984), Oxyrhynchus (P2 2954,2963,2965, 2968,2969, 2975, 29827), Antinoopolis (P2 2979,72953, 2988, P3 2979.1, 2979.2 (Mertens), PAnt III 155), Hermupolis Magna (P2 2989, 72990; Hermupolis is also the provenance of the Berlin fragments of epikedeia on professors at Beirut, P2 1851: see above, n. 5), and the Thebaid (P2 2280,2967, 2974).

48 On the assumption that the prohibition was observed, PHeidLat 4 (Digest, P2 2966), PSI XIII 1347 (Codex, P2 2970), PSII 55 (Stephanus, Index to the Digest, P2 2965), and PReinach 2173 (Digest, P2 2971) are not from Alexandria.

49 The most striking example of compiled scholia from the Byzantine period are the scholia vetera to Homers Iliad in the margins of Venetus A (Marcianus 454), which combine versions of learned commentaries by four Alexandrian scholars: H. Erbse, Scholia graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Stuttgart, 1969–87), vol. i, introduction.

50 Didymus, at the time of Augustus, produced commentaries on Greek poetry which collected excerpts from the works of his Alexandrian predecessors: Pfeiffer, R., A History of Classical Scholarship i (Oxford, 1968), p. 273.Google Scholar

51 On the evidence for compilation in its marginalia, see McNamee, K., Missing links in the development of scholia, GRBS 36 (1995), 399–414.Google Scholar

52 Zuntz, G., An Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of Euripides (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 272–5.Google Scholar

53 Wilson, N. G., A chapter in the history of annotation, CQ n.s. 17 (1967), 244–56, esp. 252–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Zuntz, An Inquiry (above, n. 51), p. 274n., with the argument enlarged at Zuntz, Die Aristophanes–Scholien der Papyrf– (Berlin, 1975), Nachwort.

55 Wilson CQ (above, n. 52), cites Devreesse, R., Dictionnaire de la Bible, Chaines, (Paris, 1907), B. Altaner, Patrology, tr. H. Graef (Freiburg, 1960), pp. 622–3, O. Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 4 (Freiburg, 1924), p. 13.Google Scholar

56 Wilson, N. G., CQ (above, n. 52), with the argument developed in Scholars of Byzantium (Baltimore, 1983), pp. 31–3, and The relation of text and commentary in Greek books, in C. Questa and R. Raffaelli (edd.), // Libro e II Testo (Urbino, 1984), pp. 105–110.Google Scholar

57 Boyd, W. K., The Ecclesiastical Edicts of the Theodosian Code (New York, 1905, repr. 1969).Google Scholar

58 Const. Omnem 10: Et haec omnia in hoc quidem florentissima civitate [i.e. Constantinople] vir excelsus praefectus huius almae urbis tarn observare quam vindicare, prout delicti tarn iuvenum quam scriptorum qualitas exegerit, curae habebit: in Berytiensium autem civitate tarn vir clarissimus praeses Poenicae maritimae quam beatissimus eiusdem civitatis episcopus et legum professores.

59 Collinet, pp. 63–70.

60 In a manuscript of Canon Law: MS. Laud. Gr. 39 (X; N. G. Wilson, Mediaeval Greek Bookhands [Cambridge, Mass., 1973], pi. 18).

61 In a manuscript of Photiuss letters it introduces a marginal note in Letter 8 that refers to Thucydides and Demosthenes: Ms. Barocci 217 (IX; Wilson, Mediaeval Greek Bookhands [above, n. 59], pi. 15). It also appears relatively frequently in the later scholia to Aristophanes.

62 The collocation o–qp–fiwaai– wpatov occurs a remarkable ninety–six times in the scholia to Lucian.

63 The single possible exception (at II. 23.36a) is a passage of the scholia vetera traced by Erbse to Aristonicus but copied, I think, from an exegetic commentary. It is not a lengthy comment such as fill the margins of Marcianus 454 (Venetus A). Rather, it is a shorter note written in an inner margin, the position in which two other exegetic notes employing the term O7]p, elcooai also appear. Erbse notes the absence of a diple beside the affected line and comments fort, neglegentia scribae; but perhaps the diple is lacking because this note, like many others written in this position, is in fact from the exegetic, not the Aristarchan scholia.

64 Collinet, pp. 167–76.