Gulielmius and the Erfurtensis of Cicero: New Readings For Pro Sulla

Extract

The Erfurtensis (E), now lat. 2°.252 in the Staatsbibliothek Preuβischer Kulturbesitz at Berlin (West), was assembled by Wibald of Corvey in the mid twelfth century, and is the most comprehensive medieval manuscript of Cicero, containing nearly half of what was eventually to survive. The manuscript as it exists today has lost one or more folios at several different points, but in some of these places readings were recorded by sixteenth and seventeenth-century scholars before the mutilations occurred. There is, however, only one lacuna where early collations survive and where, also, E is a manuscript of primary importance for the reconstruction of the text. The omission in question, caused by the removal of folios at some unknown date between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century, comprises the end of pro Caecina (beginning after vincula, § 100) and virtually all pro Sulla (ending before- tundis Catilinae, §81). No readings are known to have been taken from the end of pro Caecina, but from the bulk of pro Sulla, before the manuscript as we have it resumes, a sizeable number of readings has fortunately been preserved. The tradition of pro Sulla takes the form of two branches, one consisting of Munich, Bayer. Staatsbibliothek, Clm 18787, olim Tegernseensis, (T) and all the deteriores (to), the other consisting of just two manuscripts, E and its twin, Vatican, Pal. lat. 1525 (which will be referred to as V). V comes to a halt at §43; the early collations of E are therefore of the highest importance for pro Sulla until §81, especially from §43 onwards where they comprise our only record for one of the tradition's two branches.