A fragment of Simonides?

The Classical Quarterly

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 293-295

  Johnstone, Hugh ^a  

^a NONE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85008538321     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/47.1.293     Document Type: Article

References (9)

1. I am grateful to N. G. Wilson, L. P. E. Parker and Prof. M. Frede for criticism of an earlier draft, and to the editors of CQ and the anonymous referee for further comments.
2. D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford, 1962).
3. Demodocus fr. 2, M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci (Oxford, 1992), vol. 2. For the manuscript leadings one has to consult F. Susemihl's edition of E.N. (Leipzig, 19123). Cf. also ps-Aristotle, M.M. 1208bl6, Aristotle, Rhet. 1412bl5 (after a conjecture by Ross); Menander, Epitrepontes 894; Philo Judaeus, LA. 1.95.4; Plant. 85.3; Aet. 41.7, for other instances of authorial (i.e. quoter's) yap intruding in a quotation. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1035b8 and bl 1 (ed. D. Ross, 1924) uses intrusive yap, but in a definition rather than in a quotation. Cf. also Met. 1017al3 and Rhet. 1388M (where the MSS’ yap is abandoned by R. Kassel [Berlin, 1976], but see J. E. Sandys, The Rhetoric of Aristotle [Cambridge, 1877], vol. 2, pp. 134, 222).
4. See N. G. Wilson, ‘A mysterious Byzantine scriptorium: Ioannikios and his colleagues’, Scrittura e Civilita 7 (1983), 161-76. It was C. Brockmann, ‘Zur Uberlieferung der aristotelischen Magna Moralia’, in F. Berger et al. (edd.), Symbolae Berolinenses fur Dieter Harlfinger (Amsterdam, 1993), pp. 43-80, who first identified Laur. 81, 18 as a product of Ioannikios’ scriptorium (p. 46), and who showed that, for the Magna Moralia, it is an independent manuscript. The manuscript has not been read by editors of E.N., but I have collated its version of E.N., and hope to publish my findings shortly.
5. The dating is Wilson's, p. 168.
6. Our sources for the fragments of Simonides, besides papyri, begin with Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle, but Stephanus of Byzantium (sixth century), Choeroboscus (sixth century), Priscian (sixth century), Etymologicum Genuinum (late ninth century), Photius (c. 810-893), Etymologicum Magnum (before 1175), and Tzetzes (twelfth century) are much later sources. None of these quote so extensively as to suggest that they had anything like Simonides’ Opera in their library. It is significant, and a sign of the age the ascription would have to be, if it is an informed ascription, that the early commentators-even Aspasius in the second century A.D.-could not identify the quotation in E.N. (see n. 9 below). For an account of the authorities for Simonides’ epigrams see J. H. Molyneux, Simonides: A Historical Study (Illinois, 1992) pp. 6-8.
7. So far as we know, none of the reference books available in c. 1175 (Hesychius, Suda, Etymologicum Magnum, Etymologicum Gudianum etc.) could have led a scribe to attribute the quotation to Simonides.
8. Sir A. Grant, The Ethics of Aristotle (London, 1866) p. 217; J. A. Stewart, Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford, 1892), Vol. II, p. 200; J. Burnet, The Ethics of Aristotle (London, 1900), p. 315; A. Gauthier and J. Y Jolif, L'Ethique a Nicomaque, introduction, traduction et commentaire (Louvain, 1959), vol. 2 (2), p. 633.
9. See D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford, 1955), p. 6, where he explains how the fragment which I am discussing ‘has suffered much ill-treatment’ at the hands of Bergk and Wilamowitz.