ΑΘΗΝΑΙΩΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ

Extract

The object of the following article is not to review the work achieved by the first editor of the newly recovered Ἀθηναίων πολιτεία, still less to discuss the plan adopted for its publication by the authorities of the British Museum. It would, however, be an exaggerated and perhaps a misleading reticence, if no reference were made to those preliminaries and mere points of procedure. Many sharp things have been thought and said in various quarters about the matter: but there are several sides even to these minor questions. The Museum from amid its priceless cuneiform and hieroglyphic treasures, all crying for publication, need not have regarded the mission of this small Greek argosy as marking so great an epoch. A committee, indeed, might have worked more surely, but it would have worked more slowly than our single industrious and indeed brilliant editor: had assessors been voted him, we might still be waiting the result. Now, as may be observed with satisfaction, the resources of the whole world of learning are being concentrated upon the new text, and the earlier murmurs of critical dissatisfaction are in a fair way to be lost in good-humoured collaboration for a reconstruction of the text. This work, indeed, has been carried so far already, as appears from the March number of the Classical Review, that it will not be deemed premature to raise some questions in regard to the value of the new text, viewed from the side of the historian. It is the design of the present paper to define some of the points which must be considered before the exact place of the new text among our historical sources can be determined. It is no reproach to the editor to say that he has dealt somewhat curtly with these problems in his Introduction and notes. It will require that many minds should independently be brought to bear upon the multitude of questions which present themselves in connexion with the more strictly historical criticism, or, as it was in some quarters too proudly termed of yore, ‘the higher criticism,’ before definitive results can be reached. If the present paper contribute to elucidate some of the points to be discussed in relation to the historical authority of the recovered treatise on the Athenian Constitution, it will fulfil its purpose, and not be considered a petitio principii.