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Interpolations in the Phoenissae: Papyrus Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. W. Haslam
M. W. Haslam
Affiliation:
University College London
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Extract

The Phoenissae of Euripides was throughout antiquity an exceptionally popular play, and is generally thought to be exceptionally heavily interpolated. In the Phoenissae, as in other annotated plays, a significant feature of variance between the medieval text and the text in antiquity is revealed by the scholia: verses present in the medieval manuscripts (to attempt a non-controversial formulation) were occasionally absent from ancient manuscripts. ‘Some (many, most) manuscripts are without this verse (these verses)’. Such scholia are well known: the ancient tradition, if one may speak of such a thing, was evidently in a more fluid state than the medieval.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , May 1976 , pp. 4 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1976

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References

1 For sc. see BICS 19 (1972), 20 f.

2 An evidently subsequent scholium, on 1225, attests that the line was absent from the majority of manuscripts.

3 Not by, J. Baumert, ENIOI (Tübingen 1968), who allows that Phoen.122 is possibly spurious (p.49) but believes Or.1024 to be genuine (p.50, n.1). Baumert misrepresents and seriously undervalues the evidence of the papyri, a fundamental defect which Reeve, M.D., in his otherwise admirable critique (GRBS 13, 1972, 248–65), does nothing to remedy. (See for instance on Andr.7, ‘omitted’ by P. Oxy. iii. 449: Baumert 84, Reeve 261.)Google Scholar

4 More exactly, ten and a half.

5 See Et.Pap. 3 (1936), 75, Gnomon 36 (1964), 642, n.3 (not Phill.110 (1966), 30, n.2).

6 It will be understood that ‘omitted’ is an anachronistic term, or at least a potentially anachronistic one, in so far as it takes the medieval text as the norm. The same is true of ‘minus-verses’, of course, but ‘minus-verses’ is less prejudicial and suggests that the phenomenon has a connection with the so-called ‘plus-verses’, known best in Homer but also found in Euripides (e.g. Bac.1104a in P.Oxy. xix. 2223, on which see R. Merkelbach, RhMus 97 (1954), 374 f.).

7 I am grateful to the Egypt Exploratior Society for allowing me to mention this papyrus, and both to the Society and to Dr. Hughes for allowing me to mention the next.

8 506. There is special irony in Eteocles' calling Tyranny was proverbially subordinate to one other-Death: Eur.fr.250N2 (Archelaus),

9 Unlike Theseus in the supplice: 328 (Aethra to Theseus)

10 Even since the accession of the papyrus. The omission has been called ‘curious’ and ‘Inthessante‘.

11 I am being slightly, but only very slightly, unfair. The text in the antistrophe is a little corrupt. (In the papyrus it does not survive.) Wecklein would have known the truth: he comments in his apparatus at 817, ‘post 817 aliquid excidit (= 800), nisi stropha interpolatione laborat’.

There is an analogous case in the second stasimon of the Bacchae. The first line of the antistrophe (537), corresponds to nothing in the strophe, and should not be left in the text. Similarly Andr. 1206, Hec. 175 f., and perhaps Alc. 458.

12 Most of them too smell more of the study than of the stage. This may not be true of interpolations generally, but only of those revealed by the papyri: actors' interpolations may for the most part have already establishes themselves.

13 According to Reeve, , GRBS 13 (1972) 254, n. 23, deletion would have been unjustified. Perhaps he is right, but it is a deplorable state of affairs if a proposed deletion of a verse which is in fact spurious is to be rejected on principle.Google Scholar

14 No compunction need now be felt about expunging Bac.1025–6, say.