Tag: Manuscripts

The Babylonica of Iamblichus the Syrian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The 1853 Manual of Greek literature by Charles Anthon may be antiquated, and its opening portions discursive to the point of madness, but it still has use.  Indeed I don’t quite know where else one might go for a survey of Greek literature in the Roman period and after.

I picked it up casually last night, to see if he had anything to say about astrological texts — not much — and found myself reading a section on Greek novels.  On p.488 I found the following:

V. Subsequently Iamblichus, the Syrian, who lived in the time of the Emperor Trajan, wrote his Babylonica (Babulwni/ka). It contained the story of two lovers, Sinonis and Rhodanes, and was in thirty-nine books, according to Suidas; but Photius, who gives an epitome of the work, mentions only seventeen. A perfect copy of the work in MS. existed down to the year 1671, when it was destroyed by fire. A few fragments only are still extant, and a new one of some length has recently been discovered by Mai (Nov. Collect. Script. Vet., vol. ii., p. 349, seqq.) The epitome of Photius and the fragments are given in Passow’s Corpus Eroticorum, vol. i.

I confess that I had never heard of this text before, and it is a shame that it should make it all the way to 1671 only to perish then.

The Corpus scriptorum eroticorum graecorum is a series new to me.  Volume 1, from 1824, is here.  On p.iii we learn that the sole manuscript was in the library of the Escorial in Spain, and destroyed in the fire of 1671.  But the edition is of no great value, I suspect.

Photius’ summary can be found here, in the Bibliotheca codex 94. 

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The manuscript of the Chronicle of Zuqnin (Ps.Dionysius of Tel-Mahre)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Amir Harrak, who published an English translation of parts 3 and 4 of this world chronicle, introduces the manuscript in the following, very interesting way.

The Chronicle of Zuqnin is a universal chronicle which begins with the creation of the world and ends with the time of writing, A.D. 775-776. The Chronicle is known from a single manuscript of 179 folios, 173 of which are now housed in the Vatican Library (Codex Zuqninensis, Vat. Syr. 162), and an additional six are currently in the possession of the British Library (formerly British Museum), labelled Add. 14.665 folios 2 to 7. Each folio is circa 235 to 255 mm high and 150 to 165 mm wide. The Vatican folios have been bound in 1881 into a single volume, protected by a hard red cover, whereas the six folios in the British Library have been included with fragments belonging to other manuscripts. According to Tisserant’s reconstruction of the Codex, it originally comprised at least 190 folios.

Of the folios of our manuscript 129 are palimpsest—one a double palimpsest (BM fol. 3), the originally inscribed text representing a number of books of the Old Testament in Greek (the Scptuagint). In fact, the folios once belonged to six distinct manuscripts with text from five biblical books (Judg, 1 Kgs, Ps, Ezek, Dan), which have been assigned dates ranging from the fifth to the eighth centuries.

In 1715 the famous Maronite bishop and scholar J. S. Assemani found the Vatican portion of the manuscript in the Syrian Monastery of Saint Mary in the Egyptian desert of Natrun, and purchased it for the Vatican Library. The other six folios were acquired by the British Museum between 1839 and 1842. That both were part of one and the same manuscript was confirmed on the basis of the Septuagint texts by Cardinal Eugene Tisserant. Tisserant, however, dated the manuscript to the 9th century in light of the Syriac script.

According to J. S. Assemani the manuscript was written in Egypt by a monk of the Desert of Scete (Wadi al-Natrun) at the beginning of the 10th century. By the time he wrote his Catalogue with his nephew S. E Assemani, however, he had changed his mind and believed that the manuscript had been brought, along with others, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, by the abbot Moses of Nisibis (died in 944) in 932. Although this statement is only an assumption, it makes sense, since the manuscript was the product of the monastery of Zuqnin, located near Amida now in south-east Turkey, judging from a note inserted by a monk of the same monastery. This monk, Elisha by name, was a contemporary of Moses of Nisibis (see below for more details). Tisserant further observed that since the sub-script was Greek and not Coptic, as Assemani had first asserted, Syria rather than Egypt must have been the place of origin, seeing that most of the manuscripts in the possession of the monastery of Saint Mary of the Syrians in Scete (of which Moses of Nisibis was the abbot) came from Syria.

As is often the case, the first and last folios of the manuscript of Zuqnin have been lost. The preface of the work, however, has survived, albeit in a very damaged condition. It was written in S(eleucid) 1087 (A.D. 775-776) “in which (year) Mahdi son of `Abd-Allah is ruling over Syria, Egypt. Armenia, Azarbayjan, all of Persia, Sind, Kho[rasan], as well as over the Arabs, and over the Greeks Leo son of Constantine, and over the Romans Pepin”. The addressees in the preface are the “spiritual fathers (of the writer), George, chorepiscopus of Amida. the abbot Euthalius, Lazarus the Visitor, the honourable Anastasius, and the rest of the monastic community (of Zuqnin)”. Unfortunately, the Chronicler’s name, and perhaps indications of his status and origin have not survived. Moreover, the manuscript per se is scarcely in a perfect state of preservation, since several folios—especially of its first half—have either suffered erasure or are damaged in varying degrees. For some reason, the second half of the manuscript, which contains Parts III and IV, fared better, even though here, too, many folios have suffered erasure and/or are fragmentary. Furthermore, the folios housed in the British Library are worm eaten, a fact which explains why the last account of the Chronicle—the martyrdom of Cyrus of Harran—is very fragmentary and comes to an abrupt end.

As I have remarked before, manuscripts are not static things.  In fact they lead a full and interesting life, and move around like bumble-bees.

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More on the paragraphos mark

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m ridiculously busy, but came across — drat, I was interrupted by the phone even as I typed that! — … but I came across a very nice article online about the ancient paragraphos in — drat, interrupted AGAIN! — … about the ancient paragraphos in French here, complete with a very nice photograph of a papyrus. 

The papyrus was found in the South-West of the Fayum in Egypt in 1901-2 by a French archaeologist, reused in cartonage, and contained portions of a lost work by Menander.  The article links to the announcement of the discovery here, identified by three words in the colophon — Sikuw/nioj Mena/ndrou a)riqmo\j… — which was followed by a numeral indicating 1,000. 

Detail of the papyrus of the Sicyonians of Menander (3rd c. B.C.). Institut de papyrologie (Sorbonne). The paragraphos is placed between the replies of the speakers in the drama

 

The article is not quite correct — the paragraphos, the line in between the lines, indicates that somewhere on that line is a division marker — often a colon, or perhaps a space.  In a modern text each speaker would be on his own line.  Not so in antiquity. 

I always wonder, faced with such comments, how we actually know that this is so.  The article tells us that Aristotle mentions the paragraphos in his Rhetoric, and that it is the only punctuation mark he mentions.  I was unable to locate the passage in Aristotle, tho, as no reference was given. 

UPDATE: I have found that the reference is to Aristotle, Rhetoric, book 3, chapter 8, verse 6 (238-9), rendered here: 

A sentence should break off with the long syllable: the fact that it is over should be indicated not by the scribe, or by his period-mark in the margin, but by the rhythm itself.

At Perseus we get this:

 

ἀλλὰ δεῖ τῇ μακρᾷ ἀποκόπτεσθαι, καὶ δήλην εἶναι τὴν τελευτὴν μὴ διὰ τὸν γραφέα, μηδὲ διὰ τὴν παραγραφήν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸν ῥυθμόν.  

But the period should be broken off by a long syllable and the end should be clearly marked, not by the scribe nor by a punctuation mark, but by the rhythm itself.

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Paragraphos and Coronis – the joy of the chase

Posted on by Roger Pearse

After my last post, I was wondering what the paragraphos and coronis marks in a papyrus looked like.  A search on “paragraphos coronis” in Google quickly revealed that each had a Wikipedia article, albeit a pretty empty one: paragraphos and coronis.

Looking in Google books revealed much more. This page seems to be a French discussion by Catharine Barry, Zostrien (NH VIII, 1), 2000.  This seems to be one of the Nag Hammadi codices, codex VIII, text 1 (“Zostrien” — which seems to be the “Zostrianos” familiar to all those interested in these gnostic texts).  P.663:

The point of this note is to inventory the paratextual elements that are found throughout the text of Zostrien, and to specify their function.  Placed in the right margin, and lightly continued into the text, between the lines, these elements appear in two variants.  As we shall see, they correspond exactly in form and function to what the ancients called paragraphe or paragraphos (gramme), i.e. the marks of a paragraph or a unit of the sense.  In fact the paragraphos consists essentially of a horizontal line which begins in the right margin and is continued between the lines, and which can be reinforced by an oblique bit, giving what is called an “non-linear crochet”.  Furthermore the paragraphos serves most often mainly to draw attention to an indicator of division placed in the line.  This is very often a colon ( : ) followed by more or less white space.[3]

…

3.  The paragraphos is therefore similar in function to the coronis (korw/nij), except that this, as its names indicates, appears “in the form of a semi-circle open towards the right”, like an “anti-sigma” (D. Muzerelle, Vocabulaire codicologique, Paris, 1985, p.127, § 422.12; cf. V. Gardthausen, Griechische Paleographie, zweiter Band, Die Schrift, …, Leipzig, 1913, p.403-4).  On the difficulty of distinguishing the  two terms, see H.-M. Schenke, Matthaus-Evangelium im mittelagyptischen Dialekt des Koptischen (Codex Schiede),  TU 127, Berlin, 1981, p.20, n.33.

The article is of great interest on these papyrological terms.  Yet the signs appear in the 6th century Pliny manuscript M.

More tomorrow — those search terms seem to give such interesting books in Google books!

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How to find a lost manuscript of Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The lost manuscript of the full text of Eusebius’ Gospel problems and solutions was last seen in Sicily five centuries ago.  But it could quite possibly still be there.

It might be nice to search for Sicilian mss.  I was thinking about it last night.  We have a couple of clues.  Latino Latini writes that Sirleto had seen the ms. in Sicily.
 
1.  We need to work out what Cardinal Sirleto was doing in Sicily, and where he was doing it.  A study of his life should provide clues, and possibly his correspondence is extant (published would be nice, but improbable).  This might tell us where he found the ms.
 
2.  We need to work out what collections of Greek mss exist in Sicily, and also which were taken elsewhere (to Naples? to Spain?)  An enquiry of specialists like N.G.Wilson should provide clues.  Are there Greek abbeys there?
 
3.  We know (how) that Aurispa sent a shipment of Greek patristic mss from Constantinople to Sicily a century earlier.  Why to Sicily?  Where to?  Where might they have ended up?  Is this one?
 
Once we know the answers to these, and have a list of search sites, then it becomes a question of looking in catalogues, and visiting collections.
 
Might be an interesting project!
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Timothy I and the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the 9th century AD

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The letters in Syriac of the East Syriac patriarch Timothy I are of considerable interest, and it is a great pity that no translation of them exists.  They are, admittedly, of great length.

But few people realise that the caves around the Dead Sea have been producing manuscripts for rather longer than the last 50 years.  A discovery of apocryphal psalms by Bedouin in the 9th century is described in Timothy I, Letter 47.   A translation was made by Sebastian Brock but published only in India in Moran Etho 9, a brief outline of Syriac literature,.  My own copy was obtained with some difficulty from India, and it arrived in a little packet with the end open and tied up with cloth tape, so that customs could open and inspect it! It is, in short nearly inaccessible to everyone.  So I thought I would give it here.

Brock introduces the letter as follows:

Letter 47; this letter, written towards the end of Timothy’s life (he died in 828) is of particular interest; it deals with two main topics, the Syriac translation of Origen’s Hexapla (known today as the Syrohexapla), made by the Syrian Orthodox scholar Paul of Telia c. 615; and the discovery, ten years earlier, of ancient Hebrew manuscripts in the region of Jericho a discovery anticipating that of the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at Qumran by over a thousand years! Timothy’s Letter is the earliest evidence of knowledge of the Syrohexapla among scholars of the Church of the East, and it also provides many important insights into how manuscripts were copied and circulated. The information about the finds of Hebrew manuscripts explains (among other things) the appearance in Syriac of the so-called ‘Apocryphal Psalms’, 152-5 – some of which have now turned up in their Hebrew original in the Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11. Right at the end of the letter Timothy turns to the matter of ecclesiastical appointments, giving a glimpse of the wide extent covered by the Church of the East in the early ninth century.

And then the translation:

To the revered bishop Mar Sergius, metropolitan of Elam, the sinner Timothy does obeisance to your reverence and asks for your prayer.

We have read the letters which your reverence sent to us on the subject of the Hexapla, and we have learnt from all that you wrote therein. We give thanks to God for your good health and the fair course of your episcopal governance, and we, who are sinners, ask God’s mercy that your affairs may have a successful and glorious outcome.

On the subject of the book of the Hexapla about which your reverence wrote, we have already written and informed you last year that a copy of the Hexapla, written on sheets using the Nisibene format, was sent to us through the diligence of our brother Gabriel, synkellos of the resplendent caliph (lit. king). We hired six scribes and two people to dictate, who dictated to the scribes from the text of the exemplar. We wrote out the entire Old Testament, with Chronicles, Ezra, Susanna, Esther and Judith, producing three manuscripts, one for us and two for the resplendent Gabriel; of those two, one was for Gabriel himself, and the other for Beth Lapat, for this is what Gabriel had instructed in writing. The manuscripts have now been written out with much diligence and care, at the expense of great trouble and much labour, over six months more or less; for no text is so difficult to copy out or to read as this, seeing that there are so many things in the margin, I mean readings of Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus and others, taking up almost as much space as the text of the Septuagint in the body of the manuscript. There are also a large number of different signs above them – how many, it is not possible for anyone to say. But we had bad and greedy scribes, eight men for just under six months. The copying was done as far as possible using correction, seeing that it had been made from dictation; the copies were gone over a second time and read out. As a result of the excessive labour and work of correction my eyes were harmed and I nearly lost my sight – you can get an idea of the weakness of our vision from these shapeless letters that we are writing now.

Even the exemplar from which we were copying, however, contained errors, and most of the Greek names were written in reverse: the person who wrote them must have had a knowledge of Greek as weak as our own, apart only from the fact that he was not aware of the reversal of the characters he was writing, whereas we were at least aware of that! For he had not noticed the replacement and interchange of the characters, sometimes writing the letter chi in place of kappa, and zeta in place of chi, as well as putting all sorts of other things. We, however, recognized the situation.

At the end of every biblical book the following was written: “This was written, collated and compared with the exemplar of Eusebius, Pamphilus and Origen”.

This, then, is the way the Hexapla had been copied. It has endless differences from the text which we employ [sc. the Peshitta]. I am of the opinion that the person who translated this exemplar in our possession was working from the versions of Theodotion, Aquila and Symmachus, since for the most part there is a greater resemblance to them than to the Septuagint. I had imagined that a copy of the Hexapla had already been sent to your reverence, so when you wrote we immediately wrote off to the noble Gabriel, telling him to fulfil his promise to you; but if he does not want to send it to you, let him write to us, for we will copy it out again and send it to you. So much for that topic.

We have learnt from certain Jews who are worthy of credence, who have recently been converted to Christianity, that ten years ago some books were discovered in the vicinity of Jericho, in a cave-dwelling in the mountain. They say that the dog of an Arab who was hunting game went into a cleft after an animal and did not come out; his owner then went in after him and found a chamber inside the mountain containing many books. The huntsman went to Jerusalem and reported this to some Jews. A lot of people set off and arrived there; they found books of the Old Testament, and, apart from that, other books in Hebrew script. Because the person who told me this knows the script and is skilled in reading it, I asked him about certain verses adduced in our New Testament as being from the Old Testament, but of which there is no mention at all in the Old Testament, neither among us Christians, nor among the Jews. He told me that they were to be found in the books that had been discovered there.

When I heard this from that catechumen, I asked other people as well, besides him, and I discovered the same story without any difference. I wrote about the matter to the resplendent Gabriel, and also to Shubhalmaran, metropolitan of Damascus, in order that they might make investigation into these books and see if there is to be found in the prophets that ‘seal’, ”He will be called Nazarene” [Matt. 2:23], or “That which eye has not seen and ear has not heard” [1 Cor. 2:9], or “Cursed is everyone who is hung on the wood” [Gal. 3:13], or “He turned back the boundary to Israel, in accordance with the word of the Lord which he spoke through Jonah the prophet from Gad Hfar”, and other passages like them which were adduced by the New Testament and the Old Testament but which are not to be found at all in the Bible we possess. I further asked him, if they found these phrases in those books, by all means to translate them. For it is written in the Psalm beginning “Have mercy, O God, according to your grace” [Ps.51], “Sprinkle upon me with the hyssop of the blood of your cross and cleanse me”. This phrase is not in the Septuagint, nor in the other versions, nor in the Hebrew. Now that Hebrew man told me, “We found a David [i.e. a Psalter] among those books, containing more than two hundred psalms”. I wrote concerning all this to them.

I suppose that these books may have been deposited either by Jeremiah the prophet, or by Baruch, or by someone else from those who heard the word and trembled at it; for when the prophets learnt through divine revelations of the captivity, plunder and burning that was going to come upon the people as a result of their sins, being men who were firmly assured that not one of God’s words would fall to the earth, they hid the books in the mountains and caves to prevent their being burnt by fire or taken as plunder by captors. Then those who had hidden them died after a period of seventy or fewer years, and when the people returned from Babylon there was no one surviving of those who had deposited the books. This was why Ezra and others had to make investigations, thus discovering what books the Hebrews possessed. The Bible among the Hebrews consists of three volumes, one [sc. the Pentateuch] being the volume which the Seventy Interpreters subsequently translated for king Ptolemy -who is worthy of a wreath of accolades; another was the volume from which others translated at a later time, while the third is preserved amongst them.

If any of these phrases are to be found in the aforementioned books it will be evident that they are more reliable than the texts in currency among the Hebrews and among us. Although I wrote, I have received no answer from them on this matter. I have not got anyone sufficiently capable with me whom I can send. The matter has been like a burning fire in my heart and it has set my bones alight.

Pray for me: my frame is very weak, my hands are not very good at writing, and my eyes are feeble. Such things are indications and messengers of death. Pray for me that I may not be condemned at our Lord’s judgement.

The Holy Spirit recently anointed a metropolitan for Turkestan, and we are making preparations to anoint another for Beth Tuptaye [Tibet]. We have sent another to Shiarzur and another for Radan, since Nestorius the metropolitan of Radan has died. We are also making preparations for another at Ray [Tehran region], since Theodorus has died; another for Gurgan, another for Balad-Cyriacus of Beth `Abe; another for Dasen since Jacob has sunk into the pit from which there is no resurrection; another for Beth Nuhadra, which has no bishop. So pray with us to the Lord of the harvest that he may send out labourers for his harvest.

Shubhalisho’ of Beth Daylamaye has plaited a crown of martyrdom. We have sent in his place ten monks from Beth ‘Abe. Pray for me, reverend father in God my Lord.

Send me the Apologia for Origen by Eusebius of Caesarea, so that I may read it and then send it back. Make a search for the Discourses on the Soul by the great patriarch Mar Aba: there are three of them, but only one is available here. And copy out and send the Homilies of Mar Narsai, since we have not got them; for Mar Ephrem, of holy memory, wrote to us to say that there is a great deal there with you which is not available here. Write to ‘the Tyrant of Fars’ and inform him that every metropolitan who is appointed by a bishop with his co-ordainers is subject to the canon of the Church of God, the Synod of the 318 Fathers [sc. the Council of Nicaea], and the canons of Mar Aba.

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P.Oxy.10 – a chapter number in the margin?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The 1897 publication of the Oxyrhynchus papyri contains an interesting fragment, P.Oxy. 10.  This is third century A.D., and is in the Bodleian.  It contains parts of two consecutive columns from the lost Πεντέμυχος of Pherecydes of Syros.  The author wrote in the 6th century BC and was one of the first Greek prose writers.  A chunk of this work is preserved in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 6, and most of this chunk is contained, without variation, in the first column of the papyrus.  The content of the fragment seems to be a speech by Zeus from the marriage of Zeus and Hera. The work was extant at this time in full, as Diogenes Laertius tells us (Vit. Phil. i. 11. 6), and indeed he quotes its opening words. 

The interest of  this papyrus for us, however, is the presence of a numeral in the margin. 

POxy 10. Pherycedes of Syros

On this the editor comments: “The numeral in the margin probably denotes a new chapter, and indicates that this was a continuous work, not a collection of extracts.”

If so, this would be interesting as showing how a chapter was marked in an ancient prose work in the 3rd century AD.

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T. Birt in 1882 on chapter titles

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In Die antike Buchwesen T. Birt discusses the division of books into chapters.  He was to change his views, and I intend to translate his revised statements from 1923 soon.  But for now, here is what he says in 1882.  I have augmented the footnotes by looking up the reference, and placed my additions in [square] brackets.

CHAPTER IV.
The lines in the book.

If we ask antiquity, what  measure he uses for the length of his books, his answer is almost unanimous: the line.  The occasional use of different methods is easily recognised as insignificant by comparison.

Clement of Alexandria measures, as we saw (p. 148 [=Strom. II fin.], the size of his book by the “number and extent of the chapters”. From this it is already evident that the size of a chapter itself fluctuated. So they could not be used as a yardstick for comparison. Also, the concept of the chapter does not seem to be very old. In Photius this division of the text is of course commonplace, as in the scholiasts of Aristotle and Hippocrates, where it alternates with τμῆμα (1).  In the manuscripts, chapter headings appear, perhaps for the first time, in the papyrus chemicus N. 66 of the Leyden Museum; however here they seem to be added afterwards. [2] Symmachus reads Seneca in chapters [3] and Cassiodorus reads Josephus in titles [4]. Jerome’s commentaries were present to Rufinus in non-numbered chapters [5].

1) Dietz, Schol. Hippokr. II 3.  Vgl. Bergk Gr. Litterat. vol. I p. 233. [Dietz is Scholia in Hippocratem et Galenum, (1834) vol.II, 3. Page 3, part of the introduction, contains mention of both 6 kephalaia and some tmh/mata (the last word on p.3). Διήρηται δὲ ἡ μὲν πᾶσα πραγματεία εἰς ἑκτὰ κεφάλαια. Ταῦτα δὲ τὰ μέρη ἐν τοῖς Ἱπποκράτους χρόνοις οὐκ ἐζητοῦτο· δυα γὰρ ἧσαν τὰ διδασκόμενα, τοσαῦτα καὶ τὰ τμήματα.]
2) See Leemans, Horapollo, p. XXII.   (1835).  [This reads: Mercerus in adnot. ad cap. 1. dixit, titulos capitum non ipsius esse Philippi, sed a diligenti postea lectore adjecta; idque patere ex MSto Cod. in quo ad marginem adscribantur. Vellem addidisset quoque, num eadem manu tituli illi scripti essent; nam illud non abhorrere a more posterioris aetatis Graecorum, ut eo modo argumentum capitis vel paragraphi uniuscujusque praemittatur, patet ex papyro Chemico n°. 66. Musei Lugduno Batavi, in quo singulis capitibus tituli, eadem manu atque reliqua, sunt superscripti. Pertinet autem MStum illud, ut ex literarum formis conjicitur, ad tempora Constantinorum. Cf. Cl. Reuvens in Epist. ad Letronnium Ep. III. pag. 65. Art. XI. in Tab. Pap. Gr. et Dem. pag. 4. Art. 40. et in Addend. pag. 162, 163. — Mercer, in a note to Ch.1. said that the titles of the chapters were not by Philip, but added later by a careful reader; and was clear from the manuscript itself, in the margin of which they were written. I would like him to have added also, whether those titles were written in the same hand; for that this does not differ from the manner of the latter age of the Greeks, where in the same way the argument was prefixed to every chapter or paragraph, is clear from the papyrus chemicus n °. 66. of the Leiden Museum, where the titles of individual chapters, in the same hand as the rest, are written over the top. However that manuscript belongs, as may be supposed from the forms of letters, to the time of Constantine.  Cl. Reuvens in Epist. ad Letronnium Ep. III. pag. 65. Art. XI. in Tab. Pap. Gr. et Dem. pag. 4. Art. 40. et in Addend. pag. 162, 163.]
3) Symm. ep. X 27.  [Possibly Q. Aurelii Symmachi quae supersunt, ed. by Otto Seeck (Berlin, 1883) , but I was unable to locate the passage, and Birt in 1882 must have used an older edition].
4) Cassiodor arithm. 1: Josephus in libro I antiquitatum titulo IX.  [i.e. Josephus in book 1 of the “Antiquities”, chapter 9.  Cassiodorus appears in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 69-70. Vol.2 containing the Institutiones is here.   But I cannot find the reference given.  In col.618, tho, in the Expositio in Psalterium, I find: “Josephus quoque … vernaculus Judaeorum in libro octavo Antiquitatum titulo tertio multa de temple constructione locutus est …”  and in col. 109 I find “De quo etiam Josephus in libro Antiquitatum tertio, titulo septimo, …”
5) As quoted by Rufinus (Jerome IV. 8. 378 ed. Mart.) in tertio commentariorum (sc. ad Ephesios) libro . . . sub eo capitulo ubi scriptum est “Qui uxorem” eqs. post aliquanta sic ait; if the chapter concerned  had been numbered, Rufinus would have found it easier to cite it by number; likewise further on (p. 380): de eo capitulo ubi dicit apostolus „Sicut elegit” eqs. ita ait; see ibid p. 402; finally on p. 405:  longum est si velim . . . propositis capitulis ad singula respondere. [not verified; these remarks are Birt’s.  From here on I have not looked up the references.]

[p.158]  In the year 114 A.D., we find from inscriptions, [1] the city journal or daily paper [2] of the country town of Caere was divided into chapters; it had both chapter numbers and page numbers; what determined the size of the chapter here is unclear; but in any case they were not of equal size [3]. Wills were also divided in this way, and a Kaput ex testamento M. Megonii M.F. Cor. Leonis is also reported in an inscription [4]. Cicero’s book of Paradoxes was divided into chapters, and the four logoi paradoxwn of Damascius may be compared with it, of which the first was divided into 352 kefalaia (Phot. cod.130). But since it is a fact to say that Epaphroditus (under Nero) was rather the first to call the books of the Odyssey ‘kefalaia’, a quite adequate explanation for this can be found in another connection.

1) Mommsen, 1 RN. 6828 (Orelli 3787; Gruter S. 214): Q. Ninnio Hasta P. Manilio Vopisco cos.
2) Commentarium cottidianum municipi Caeritum.
3) Ulpius Vesbinus has built the municipality of Caere a phetrium (φράτριον); the inscription gives first the permission of the city magistrates, descriptum et factum recognitum . . . ex commentario quem iussit proferri Cuperius Hostilianus per T. Rustium Lysiponum scribam, etc. then inde pagina XXVII Kapite VI; follows the permission to Vesbinus; followed by a copy of a second document, the request of the magistrates to Curiatius Cosanus that he make no objection to the construction; this was clearly earlier: inde pagina altera capite primo; thirdly, finally follows the undertaking of Cosanus; on pagina VIII kapite primo. So the first chapter covered the first eight pages or more; on page XXVII one was in chapter VI: on the eighteen pages that lay between pp. VIII and XXVII, at least four chapters were covered, each having an average of 4.5 pages.
4) Fleetwood, inscr. ant. sylloge (1691) S. 75.
5) See chapter 9 below.

Another term is related to this, and perhaps identical with it, pars libri and μέρος βιβλίου. When Jerome writes [6]: undecimus liber . . . facilior erit in principiis et usque ad duas sui partes reliqua simili more dictanda sunt, this presupposes that after two partes of his book, more follow and that each pars [p.159] was clearly delineated in appearance [p.159] for the reader, presumably by paragraphing in that contexts. A book of Hippocrates was similarly divided for Galen (1): τούτου τοῦ βιβλίου τὸ μὲν κατὰ τὸ ἕν γράμμα μέρος τὸ πρῶτον εἰς σμ’ στίχους ἐξήκει.  And a “part” does not mean any particular length, because its number of stichoi must be counted first.  In Hippocrates a μέρη was however a different unconnected treatise.  Asconius cited at least one of the speeches of Cicero, the Scauriana, in such “parts”; his first quotation from it is in fact circa ver (a) prim. XXXX, the next ibidem, but the fourth circa tertiam partem α primo, the following is interpolated with statim, then is paulo post, then circa medium, then post dum partes orationis, post tres partes orationis α primo, finally ver.α nov. . . and ver. α novis. CLX. Again, the partes here are not of equal size (2).  All the more must they somehow have been distinguished in the text, since the usual citation by lines was not carried out.

6) Hieron. comm. Jesai. XI praef.
1) Galen in Hippokr. de nat. hom. XV S. 9.
2) The second half of the oration after the medium holds the rest of pars II and pars III and IV; so pars I must been have completed with the entire first half of pars II; so circa tertiam partem primo α is incomprehensible to me, as one would expect circa alteram.

Something that is indeed a measurement of space is the sheet, σελίς, pagina. To determine the size of the book from the number of pages appears to be obvious, and in fact in the above-mentioned commentarius of the city of Caere the pages were numbered, so that it almost quotes by them. This happened here, however, probably only because counting the verses in a miscellaneous text like this was not really possible.  Otherwise they are quoted, – though rarely – only by verses, and counting the sheets seems never really to have become a common practice.  We can quote here especially the fourth Philodemus roll περὶ ῥητορικῆς (3), whose columns of text from sheet VIII onwards (4) are provided with numbers underneath: ΡΛΖ is on p. VIII, ΡΛΘ on XI, again PM, ΡΜΛ etc until PMZ on sheet XIX; so apparently the roll was of 147 sheets. More often we find the number of selides [p.160] given in the subscription at the end of book; this was done mostly on the Eschatocoll beneath the more important number of stichoi, as in the Herculaneum rolls N. 105, 106, 109, 111, 115 in the listing following the stichometry, with which N. 103 is to be compared. Occasionally in these only the selides are recorded: so Vol. Herc. ed. Oxon. index N. 1414: Φιλοδήμου περὶ χάριτος, κολλήματα CEΔΙΟΗ (1). However, they are never found, like the stichoi, written in the old decade numerals and counting them so proves that they were in principle different from the stichoi, as not really belonging to the bibliometric Usus. – A Greek epigram designates at the end an indeterminate mass of poetry books as μυριάδες βυβλιανῶν σελίδων (2), similar to what Juvenal (VII 100) states about historians: Nullo quippe modo millesima pagina surgit omnibus. Martial speaks of a hundred paginae once (VIII 44). That the sheet in ancient times was still not used as a measurement of the size of a book, can only be explained on the theory that using verses was possible, and allowed an even greater accuracy to appear desirable, than pages could provide: because, in fact, the length of a column of  text was inconstant and could vary between 20-50 lines (3).

1) Which Spengel and also later Cobet rightly read as 78 Selides (σελι οη’  or rather perhaps σελι. οη’).
2) Julianus Aegyptius to Theodorus, Anthol. Pal. VII 594.
3) Within a single book it can be constant, as in the Bankesianus, ca. 43 lines.  But Philodemus περὶ κακιῶν (ed. Oxford) varies between 36, 37, 38; the same p. 83-105 freely between 37 and 46. Vol. Oxon. II p. 1-45 has 25-27, p. 46-116 instead 35.  (See Cobet Mnemos. 1878 p. 262).

Aside from Clement, we find in Cornificius and Cicero that the size of a book is counted from the number of letters it contains …

I hope to add tomorrow the couple of pages in which Birt revises his opinion.  But these pages, elderly as they are, are fundamental for all subsequent work on the question and so well worth reading even as they stand.

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A 12th century trilingual Arabic, Greek and Latin psalter

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent tells me about this post at Arab Orthodoxy:

On the website of the British Library they’ve posted images of a Psalter dated to 1153 written in parallel Greek, Latin, and Arabic. The Arabic translation of the Psalms is that of Abdallah ibn al-Fadl al-Antaki, the famous 11th century deacon and translator from Antioch. You can turn to all the pages and zoom in. Take a look, it’s beautiful.

Here.

In St. Petersburg they’ve recently published a two-volume facsimile and study of a 17th century illuminated Arabic Psalter based on Abdallah ibn al-Fadl’s translation. I’ll get around to writing a review of that at some point…..

I wonder where on earth that was written.  My guess, considering that it dates to the crusader period, is in Syria.  Just before the crusades the Byzantines had conquered the area, bringing Greek; then the crusaders come in, with Latin; and the local Christians speaking Arabic.  Where else would you have this kind of tri-lingualism?

What a wonderful thing to have online!

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Early opinions on chapter divisions

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been reading an article about the history of scholarship on the subject of chapter titles, from 1962-3, by Diana Albino.(1)  It begins with some interesting remarks.

In modern printed editions the surviving works of the Graeco-Latin civilization are published divided into books and in chapters.  But the scholar who wants to restore the original reading and that therefore examines the manuscript tradition, finds that in the codices few works are distributed in chapters, differing among themselves in various ways and very rarely supplied with titles and numeration. The problem arises therefore as to whether the ancients used the system of division into chapters and whether, therefore, they cited literary works in the way we are accustomed to for modern works, or whether instead such a method was introduced only in a more recent age.

The first scholars who addressed themselves to this issue (1) asserted that the distribution into chapters of literary works was unknown to the ancients, that they would have only known the use of summaries, and they attributed them to later editing; above all to the librari of the Middle Ages. In fact they were of the opinion that the division documented for some works from manuscripts and incunabuli also need not  necessarily be thought to be derived from the author.  This was because many were often clearly in contrast to the general design of the work or quite were made in an awkward and approximate way; that the titles of the chapters, they found, did not perform the function of indicating the content with sufficient clarity and precision.

(1) V.I. Matthaeus GESNER: Scriptores rei rusticae veteres Latini, Biponti, 1787, vol. 1°, pp. 48-53.

Interesting stuff.  But in these blessed days, we can wonder whether Gesner’s book is online.  And thanks to the generosity of the Americans, who have placed their libraries online and made them freely available to those of us living in less liberal lands, we find that it is!  In fact I find that Albino got the page number wrong.  It is, in fact, p.xlviii-liii!

 The remarks of Gesner quote various authors.  It is too late tonight for me to work on this much, but I see at a glance on p.xlix a discussion of indexes or summaries.

XXI. Sed exortum tamen mature est genus quoddam, unde gradus ad capitum, quae vocant divisiones factus est. Nimirum qui de rebus diversis scriberent, quas non omnes omnis palati esse praeviderent, ii solebant indices quosdam, lemmata, summaria (his enim utuntur unius ejusdemque rei nominibus auctores idonei) apponere libris suis, sed non partibus eorum, quas ita distrahere & lacerare nolebant, verum uno in loco sub conspectum legentis ponebant uniuscujusque argumentum libri. Hoc Valerius Soranus fecerat, cujus se exemplum secutum ait Plinius in ipso praefationis fine, cui indicem illum subjungit, quo liber totus primus impletur. Hoc Gellius, hoc Solinus fecit, de quorum summariis plenissime, ut solet, disputat in praefatione ad opus magnum Claudius Salmasius. Quod vero ait, ab initio tantum operis, & post praefationem positos id genus indices, oblitus est credo Columellae nostri, qui diserte docet in ipso fine libri, qui undecimus nobis est, se illo loco “omnium librorum suorum argumenta subjecisse, ut, cum res exegisset, facile reperiri possit, quid in quoque quaerendum, & qualiter quidque faciendum sit.” & habet in eo ipso loco lemmata Lipsiensis Codex & Goesianus, nec ipsa tamen multum editis meliora, aut talia, qualia a Columella scripta jure putes. Quin Martialis quibusdam epigrammatibus, v. g. Xeniis, nisi tamen aenigmata voluit scribere, plerisque, apposita lemmata fuisse, nec aliter potuisse, res ipsa loquitur. Alia quaestio est, utrum ea, quae habemus, sint Martialis, quod de toto hoc genere merito negat Sanctius Minervae 3, 14, p. 507. Sed illud plane diversum scriptionis genus est, & a nostro proposito alienum.

A very hasty translation, mostly wrong in detail but getting the message over:

XXI. But we have entered prematurely on the subject of how chapters, which they call “divisions” were made.  Obviously anyone who writes on diverse subject, which not everyone has foreseen, will be accustomed to prefix to his books some indices, lemmata, summaria (both terms are used by competent authors), but not in bits, which they were unwilling to tear into chunks, but in one place as the argument of the book.  This Valerius Solanus did, whose example was followed by Pliny at the end of his preface, who added an index to it, filling the entirety of book 1.  This Gellius, this Solanus did, whose summaries Claudius Salmasius discusses very fully, as it is his custom, at the start of his great work.  …??… I think he forgot Columella, who eloquently teaches at the very end of the book which is our book 11, that in that place he “appended the arguments of all his books, so that, at need, it would be easy to discover what was also being sought, and to do so.”  And in that place the Lipsiensis and Goesianus manuscripts have lemmata, which …??… you may think written by Columella.  In fact Martial in some epigrams, i.e. the Xeniis (=’Gifts’) unless he was writing riddles, has added lemmata to many of them, which talk about the gift itself.  The other question is whether the ones we have are by Martial, which is denied by the most holy of Minerva (?), 3, 14, p.507.   But this is a different kind of writing and obviously alien to our subject. 

I’d like to get all those paragraphs of Gesner in English.  If this really is the start of all the thinking on the subject, it would be good to understand the argument clearly.

1. Diana Albino, La divisione in capitoli nelle opere delle antichi, Annali della facoltà di lettere e filosofia, Napoli, vol. 10 (1962-3) pp. 219-234

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