A Possible New Source for Servius Danielis on
Aeneid III-V
by
Arthur Frederick Stocker
THE TEXT FOR THAT FORM OF THE SERVIAN commentaries on Vergil
which is known from the name of its first editor[1] as Servius Danielis rests on an
exceedingly slim manuscript foundation. Moreover different
manuscripts constitute the basis for the text on the Eclogues and Georgics, Aeneid I-II, and Aeneid III-XII, respectively, from which it
may perhaps be inferred that there occurred at some point
in the tradition a division into what became archetypal
volumes, whence the text descended along separate lines. A
careful description of these manuscripts has been
published by Professor J. J. H. Savage.[2]
The extent of Servius Danielis is considerably greater than
that of the vulgate Servius. The relation between the two
can best be seen by examining the pages of the single
published volume of the so-called "Harvard Servius,"[3] the only edition purporting to do
full justice to both forms of the commentary without
prejudging their respective claims to venerability. It
will be found that they have a great many scholia in
common. These the Harvard editors print the full width of
the page. Others are peculiar to one or the other form of
the commentary—many (accounting for its greater
total length) to Servius Danielis, a few to the vulgate
Servius. These the Harvard editors print in columns
three-quarters the
width of the page,
Servius Danielis flush with the left margin, vulgate
Servius flush with the right. Still others embody what
appears to be parallel comment on the same passage in
Vergil, and are printed side by side in half-width
columns, Servius Danielis again on the left and vulgate on
the right.
From the moment of the appearance of Servius Danielis there
has been the greatest diversity of opinion concerning the
origin and value of the additional scholia. Daniel himself
thought that his Servius auctior
was, if not the genuine commentary of Servius, at least a
better representative of it than the vulgate, which he
viewed as an abridgment, like Paulus' of Festus, that had
driven the original almost or entirely out of circulation.
Thilo, on the other hand, whose late nineteenth-century
edition of Servius[4] has hitherto been
standard, saw in the Danieline additions merely
interpolations gleaned from various sources and more or
less artfully grafted upon Servius. From this
understanding of the matter he took license to butcher
Servius Danielis sometimes beyond recognition in tailoring
it to fit the convenience of a vulgate-centered
edition.
It may be taken as established by modern scholarship[5] that the new material presented by
Servius Danielis is not a miscellany of ancient lore, but
derives from a single source, the antiquity of which is
attested by, among other things, the large number of
citations of authors whose works were quite certainly no
longer extant even in the early Middle Ages. Further, this
source seems quite clearly to have been an entirely
different commentary on Vergil, some characteristics of
which, as distinguished from those of Servius', can still
be discerned. To mention only an obvious one,
cross-references within the additamenta show that the unidentified
commentary treated the works of Vergil in the order Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, whereas Servius dealt
with them in the sequence Aeneid,
Eclogues, and Georgics.
Servius Danielis, then, represents a contaminatio, or fusion, of the genuine
(essentially the vulgate) commentary of Servius with some
other ancient commentary, of which we may say that it is
probably more ancient than Servius' own, probably one from
which Servius himself drew extensively
enough so that there were long passages of coincidence
suggesting the possibility of combining the two in a
composite edition, and probably not the lost commentary of
Aelius Donatus on Vergil, as Professor Albert H. Travis
has shown by a careful comparison of the style of Servius
Danielis with that of Aelius Donatus' extant commentary on
Terence.
[6] Adopting the terminology
of Barwick and Rand,
[7] we may call the
non-Servian forebear of Servius Danielis D, the vulgate
Servius S, and Servius Danielis, as a composite of the
two, DS.
If what has been said about the nature of DS is true, and if
DS possesses, as it were, an integrity of its own, it
becomes manifestly important that its text be constituted
with all possible accuracy, a thing that Thilo did not
even aspire to do. The attempt to accomplish this,
however, runs immediately a-foul of the difficulty
inherent in the small body of manuscript evidence. For Aeneid III-V, to which I confine
myself in this study, there is only one complete DS
manuscript, the Bernensis, bibl. publ. 172 (saec. IX/X),
which Thilo designates by the siglum F. Others provide only occasional help: a
Leidensis, bibl. publ. Voss. F 79 (saec. IX ex.), which
contains an exceedingly meagre abridgment of DS text; a
"Virgil of Tours" (Bernensis, bibl. publ. 165, saec.
IX),[8] in the margins of which, along with
a great deal of miscellaneous matter, are found bits of
DS; and a puzzling manuscript of Cassel (bibl. publ. ms.
poet. fol. 6, saec. IX/X), which merits an article by
itself for the DS affinities which it exhibits in what, by
"Harvard" usage described above, would be common or
parallel text, but for the most part does not include the
DS additions to the Servian vulgate.
There is a fifth manuscript, another Bernensis, bibl. publ.
167, approximately contemporary with F (saec. IX/X), which has been found to
contain a little over half of the DS scholia found in F. Its value Thilo specifically
denies, stating (without proof) that it is, in a very
unusual way hereinafter to be described, a copy of F,[9] and in this he is supported by
Savage, at least so far as the Aeneid is
concerned.
[10] A contrary view, however, has been
held by Hagen
[11] and Funaioli,
[12] working with the commentary on the
Eclogues and
Georgics, and, in view of the
new importance assumed by DS in the light of the
discoveries of Barwick and his successors,
[13] it seems worth while to re-examine
the whole question of the relationship between these two
manuscripts with the hope of vindicating the authority of
Bern. 167 (which may be called
G)
as a new witness to the DS text for the
Aeneid.
For purposes of this inquiry, I have in my possession
photographs of both manuscripts for Aeneid III, 1-707, and Aeneid V, 9-826,[14] within which
limits I have personally re-collated their text. I have
also been aided by having the photographs of all the other
important Servius manuscripts for Aeneid III and V, both the DS and the S, so
that I have been able to weigh the testimony of F and G
in the light of the full tradition. Finally, loan has been
made to me of some unpublished notes of the late Professor
E. K. Rand, of Harvard University, and Mr. George B.
Waldrop, of Shady Side Academy, Pittsburgh, who once
undertook but did not complete a similar study, using a
much smaller section of text[15] as their
sample. To these and to conversations with both of the
gentlemen mentioned I am indebted for many stimulating
suggestions.
F and G have
both been described by Savage.[16]
F has text in three columns. The
center column is occupied by the text of Vergil, with
ordinarily twenty-four lines to a page. The outer columns
contain the scholia of Servius Danielis. The scribe
followed no principle that I have been able to discover in
assigning scholia to one column or the other. Since the
order of the scholia was in most cases clearly fixed by
the order of occurrence in Vergil
of the
words that were being commented upon, it was not important
that he should. His sole consideration seems to have been
to transcribe each note as near as possible to the line of
Vergil in which the lemma occurred, and he used whichever
margin afforded the requisite amount of space.
G, on the other hand, has text
in two columns, the inner one (as the book was bound)
containing the text of Vergil, usually with thirty to
thirty-three lines on a page, and the outer one something
more than half of the DS scholia
ad
loc. At first glance, the selection seems
quite arbitrary, but as long ago as 1867 it was noted by
Hermann Hagen, cataloguer of the manuscripts at Bern,
[17] in his edition of the so-called Bern
scholia to the
Eclogues and
Georgics,
[18] that, with very few exceptions,
[19] the scholia in
G are the ones found in the
left margin of
F. So
scrupulous was the scribe of
G to
reproduce all of these that on occasion, when space failed
him, he went so far as to transcribe on scraps of
parchment, now interlarded with the gatherings of
G, notes for which otherwise he
would have had no room,
[20] and we may theorize
that on other occasions, when there is a break in
G in what would be the sequence
of scholia from the left margin of
F, he did the same thing, but the scraps have
since become lost.
[21] Scholia found in the
right margin of
F, however, he
disregarded so systematically that I have found only three
of them in
G within the entire
compass of
Aeneid III and V.
[22]
Over the intriguing question why and under what circumstances
anyone should so undiscerningly have perpetuated about
half of the DS commentary and ignored the rest it is not
necessary to linger. Perhaps the scribe had in mind some
other manuscript, in which there really was a distinction
between scholia of
one sort in one
margin, and of another in the other. It is, of course,
true that the present state of
G
would be explained if the scribe who made this unfortunate
selection had been copying directly from
F. The distribution of scholia between the
left and right margins of
F,
however, is quite as likely to derive from
F's source as to have been
original with
F itself, and the
coincidence which we observe proves nothing more than that
the two manuscripts are in the same line of descent. The
same may be said of the large number of demonstrably
corrupt readings which they share. In
Aeneid III and
Aeneid
V alone, I have noted several hundred, of which I cite
only a few as examples:
- A. III, 2 (Th. 333, 10) visum] usum F G
- A. III, 20 (Th. 339, 12) qui arcis] quartis
F G
- A. III, 104 (Th. 359, 12) Electræ]
electrace F G
- A. III, 113 (Th. 363, 21) strictis] stratis
F G
- A. III, 140 (Th. 369, 10) animas dulces
linquebant] animæ eos linquebam et F G
- A. III, 167 (Th. 373, 11) finitimas] finiamas
F G
- A. III, 202 (Th. 378, 1) qui Aeneas] quinea
F G
- A. III, 209 (Th. 379, 14) symplegadas petras]
simpligiadas petros F
G
- A. III, 246 (Th. 385, 3) de diris] dederis
F G
- A. III, 246 (Th. 385, 9) verum cum] acrum F G
- A. III, 319 (Th. 397, 10) cur] cui F G
- A. III, 330 (Th. 399, 24) Pyrrho] porro F G
- A. III, 332 (Th. 401, 17) profectos a Creta]
profecto sacrata F G
- A. III, 370 (Th. 408, 3) virgo] uiro F G
- A. III, 402 (Th. 414, 20) eum] enim F G
- A. III, 450 (Th. 421, 23) pro non] ponam F G
- A. III, 544 (Th. 434, 19) belli omen]
bellionem F G
- A. III, 590 (Th. 441, 26) moratum] montium
F G
- A. III, 657 (Th. 448, 29) meminit] memirit
F G
- A. III, 697 (Th. 455, 14) oraculis] oculis
F G
- A. V, 28 (Th. 592, 17) maritima nata
declamatio] mira nata declinatio F G
- A. V, 30 (Th. 593, 12) a Criniso] carinoso
F G
- A. V, 45 (Th. 595, 6) Anchisen] andiisen F G
- A. V, 49 (Th. 596, 6) decem] autem F G
- A. V, 81 (Th. 602, 9) infra omnes] intra
homines F G
- A. V, 122 (Th. 608, 13) in tergo] interrogo
F G
- A. V, 287 (Th. 618, 9) de hastis] beatis F G
- A. V, 467 (Th. 628, 8) et Terentianus]
oratius F G
- A. V, 553 (Th. 633, 19) quosdam] quos dixit
F G
- A. V, 613 (Th. 637, 19) amœna] acta
mœna F G
- A. V, 810 (Th. 650, 21) magnoque] manoque F G
They establish beyond peradventure the existence
of a close family relationship between
F and
G, but they
afford no support for the contention of Thilo and Savage,
that
G is a copy of
F.
It is, as every textual critic knows, exceedingly difficult to
prove that one text was taken from another, in the absence
of direct evidence on the point. There are at least two
minimum requirements, one positive, the other negative.
Positively, there must be a substantial number of false
readings in the supposed copy which could most readily be
explained from some ambiguity or peculiarity that might
plausibly be considered unique in the supposed original.
Negatively, there must be an absence in the alleged copy
of correct readings not found in the suspected source
(except such as might be the product of scribal
emendation). Even if these two conditions are met, the
hypothesis remains vulnerable to attack from many
quarters, as, for example, if it can be shown that the
"copy" contains any considerable number of divagations
that would not normally result from copying this
"original," but would be likely if the scribe had been
looking at another kind of script.
Of "positive" indications that the scribe of G was copying from F,
a few can be cited:
- A. III, 67 (Th. 349, 20) possessio] F possessi G. There is a dot under the 'o' in F, probably accidental, which
might easily be mistaken by a copyist for the sign
of deletion.
- A, III, 67 (Th. 349, 21) nisi . . . nutriatur
(23). SVPREMVM (350, 15) non . . . clamat] F om. G. This is an exact line
in F.
- A. III, 68 (Th. 350, 16) CIEMVS] F Genus G. The 'C' and the 'i' run together in F so as to resemble a 'G' in
square capitals.
- A. III, 93 (Th. 358, 1) SVMMISSI] Summis si
F Summissi si G. F's only error is in word
division, but a copyist, seeing "Summis," might
easily have corrected it from Vergil into
"Summissi," and then retained the detached
"si."
- A. III, 135 (Th. 368, 12) SVBDVCTAE] F subducitæ G. F uses the familiar 'oc'
form of 'a', which might have deceived a copyist
into thinking that the preceding letter, actually
a 't', was an 'i', while the cross stroke went
with the first loop of the 'a' to form a
't'.
- A. III, 229 (Th. 382, 26) veni . . . rursum
prius (27)] F om. G. The omission
is easy, by homœoteleuton, but
particularly if one is copying from F, where "rursum ueni interdum"
occurs at the beginning of one line and "rursum
ueni etiam" at the beginning of the next.
- A. III, 272 (Th. 388, 22) LAERTIA] F Tertia G.
F uses a rustic capital 'L', topped with what
might easily be mistaken for the horizontal stroke
of a rustic capital 'T'. It also represents the
'AE' (here, of course, not a diphthong) by 'e'
with a cedilla, which mediæval scribes,
notoriously careless about diphthongs, were prone
to overlook.
- A. III, 337 (Th. 403, 1) prosperi . . .
præstitit (3)] F om
G. This again is an exact line of F.
- A. III, 351 (Th. 404, 15) aut prius] F
autem G. Over the 't' of
F, in the line above,
happens to stand a 'p' with the cross stroke
through its shaft, the regular symbol for "per." A
copyist might take this for a horizontal stroke
over the 't' of "aut," which would be the regular
suspension for "autem."
- A. III, 420 (Th. 417, 22) imitatur] F mitatur G. Over the 'i' of F,
in the line above, is a 'q' with so long a shaft
that the 'i' looks not unlike a continuation of
this shaft.
- A. III, 500 (Th. 428, 25) Roma] F romam G. A loop in the symbol for "pro," occurring
in F directly over the 'a'
of "Roma," might have been mistaken by the copyist
of G for a stroke over the
'a', which would be the normal suspension for
"Romam."
- A, V, 245 (Th. 615, 26) navali] F naualim G. F again has been
guilty only of wrong word division. It has
"naualim" at the end of one line and "nesteus" at
the beginning of the next, where clearly the
division should be "nauali mnesteus." G has "naualim mnesteus." He
might have taken "naualim" from F, just as he saw it, and then made the easy
emendation of "nesteus" to "mnesteus."
None of these is conclusive. The two most
significant are the cases (A. III, 67; A. III, 337) where
G omits, for no discernible
palæographical reason, exact lines of the text as it
appears in
F. The first of these is
an uncommonly long line at the foot of the page, extending
the width not only of the "left margin" but also of the
center column used for Vergil. The second is a normal
line, consisting of 46 letters. These two, however, are
not the only cases of the apparently inadvertent omission
in
G of short bits of text that
stand in
F.
[23] Disregarding some that result from
homoeoteleuton (which might deceive any scribe, regardless
of the text from which
he was
copying)
[24] and a few that may have
been deliberate (on account of the scribe's reluctance to
attempt the transcription of Greek,
[25] I have found four that closely
parallel the ones which have been cited, and a fifth that
partially does so:
- A. III, 46 (Th. 344, 18) seges . . . puerum]
F om. (mg. suppl.) G. This
is not a line of F. As
spelled out in F, the
omission is one of 47 letters.
- A. III, 48 (Th. 345, 2) victa . . . obrutum]
F om. (mg. suppl.) G. Again,
not a line of F and an
omission of about the same length (46 letters in
F).
- A. III, 141 (Th. 369, 21) consentiat . . .
tantum] F om. (mg. suppl.) G. These words come from the middle of a
long line in F. In F they total 46 letters.
- A. III, 477 (Th. 425, 18) Adelphis . . .
dicit] F om. (mg. suppl.) G. Not a line in F.
52 letters.
- A. III, 241 (Th. 384, 21) quod . . . geritur]
F om. (mg. suppl.) G. 20
letters at the end of a scholion, divided in F between two lines.
The first four of these are about of a length (47,
46, 46, 52 letters). They can be explained most easily on
the assumption that the writer of
G
missed a whole line of his original. If that is so, his
original was not
F. If his original
was not
F, however, it must have
been a manuscript very much like it, to account for the
regularity with which he reproduces only those scholia
that appear in the left margin of
F. It must have been a manuscript which, like
F, had space in the scholia
column for about 46 letters to the line. It may even have
been the source of
F. We may
theorize that in seven instances the eye of the writer of
G skipped over a whole line
in his exemplar. Two of these happen also to be whole
lines in
F, as would be natural
enough if
G's exemplar was the
parent of
F also. By the theory,
the passage from A. III, 241, would be an incomplete line
in the original of
G. The evidence
of omissions, then, would, if my reasoning is correct,
serve to refute rather than to support the contention that
G was taken directly from
F.
The rest of the evidence comprising "positive" support for
this
thesis carries little more
conviction. "Possessi" (A. III, 67) may have been the
reading that was seen by both
F and
G;
G
adopted it,
F (copying with an eye
for the sense) emended almost unconsciously to
"possessio," but then perhaps caught himself and deleted
the 'o'. Haplographies (A. III, 420; A. V, 245) and
dittographies (A. III, 93) are common enough in all
conditions of text, as are omissions by homoeoteleuton (A.
III, 229). "Aut" and "autem" (A. III, 351) are very
frequently confused in text transmission.
[26]
G's "subducitæ" (A. III, 135)
suggests compellingly only that
G
was copied from some text using the 'oc' or 'cc' form of
'a', or perhaps the Beneventan form of 't', which we shall
see later is likely on other grounds.
[27] Only
G's
"Genus" (A. III, 68), "Tertia" (A. III, 272), and "romam"
(A. III, 500) remain to point the finger at
F, and on these not much of a
case can be built.
Negatively, the postulate of direct descent fares no better.
It is true that G makes few
substantial improvements upon the readings of F. In view of the closeness of
the relationship clearly existing between them, it should
not be expected that it would. It is true, too, that the
individual errors of G are much
more numerous than the individual errors of F. F is the better manuscript.
Apart, however, from what may be taken as easy scribal
emendations, G is in some instances
undoubtedly correct where F is in
error:
- A. III, 10 (Th. 336, 3) Ilium] G illum F
- A, III, 16 (Th. 338, 11) felicitate] (i supra alt. e ss.) G felicitati F
- A. III, 246 (Th. 385, 11) volatu] G uoluto in uolutu (in ras.)
F
- A. III, 274 (Th. 389, 4) Leucate] G leutate F
- A. III, 330 (Th. 399, 23) desponsatam]
disponsata G dispontam F
- A. III, 396 (Th. 412, 15) Calabria] G calabro F
- A. III, 455 (Th. 422, 5) vocet] G uouet F
- A. III, 517 (Th. 431, 9) serenitas] G senenitas F
- A, III, 590 (Th. 441, 24) Cyclopas] G cydopas F
- A. III, 590 (Th. 441, 26) Cyclopum] G cydopum F
- A. III, 678 (Th. 451, 10) unde] G ut de F
- A. V, 1 (Th. 587, 1) fletur] G flectur F
- A. V, 122 (Th. 608, 17) dammæ] damme
G clammæ F
- A. V, 137 (Th. 610, 11) haurit] G ahurit (in ahuris) F
- A. V, 229 (Th. 614, 16) teneant] G eaeneant (in æneant) F
- A. V, 295 (Th. 619, 2) Sallustius] salustius
G saltius F
- A. V, 324 (Th. 621, 2) a] G ad F
- A. V, 489 (Th. 629, 11) pro nominibus] G pro pronominibus F
- A. V, 823 (Th. 652, 1) recepisse] G recipis se F
- A. V, 823 (Th. 652, 2 in app.) herbam] G hebam (in hesbam) F
Moreover, it contains a few passages of text that
are not found in
F at all:
- A. III, 394 (Th. 412, 9) vel . . . timeas]
G om. F To be sure, the
words come at the end of a line in G and might have been added
later. There is, however, nothing in the
photograph to suggest that they are the work of
other than the original hand. Thilo accepts them
as authentic DS.
- A. III, 475 (Th. 425, 3) Scytha] ferenti uel
furenti id est flanti. id est digne habito uel
exaltato add. G This is a
hodge-podge and certainly not correct DS ad loc. The first part of it is
a gloss on "ferenti" (A. III, 473), and the second
on "dignate" (A. III, 475). Neither has anything
to do with what goes before. But the important
thing for our purposes is that G writes it directly after "Scytha," and
takes two lines to it. He must have gotten it from
his original, and it is not in F.
- A. III, 576 (Th. 439, 25) ructatur] uel eruit
add. G
- A. III, 629 (Th. 446, 14) Ithacensis] uel ita
fensis ulixes add. G
Although both of the foregoing are sheer nonsense
and occur at the end of a line of text where they
might have been added subsequently, the
photographs give no indication that they are the
work of other than the original hand.
- A. V, 790 (Th. 649, 7) QVAM MOLEM ut . . .
moles] (tantis pro tantas)
G om. F This looks like a
clear case of a scholion in G that is not in F—certainly not where G would have looked for it in
F, if he had been copying
from that source, for F's
left hand margin opposite the "Quam molem" in
Vergil is entirely blank. By way of qualification
to the force of this example, it must be said that
the page in F is badly
faded and could not very satisfactorily be
photographed. It is barely possible that the note
may have appeared in some part of the page that
cannot now be read.
Instances of these two types are clearly fatal to
the hypothesis that
G was taken
directly from
F.
To complete the refutation, it is possible to cite an imposing
number of cases where G is corrupt
and F affords no grounds whatsoever
for misunderstanding. A conspicuous example occurs early
in Aeneid III, where F carries in the left margin the
note, HOSPITIVM ANTIQVVM aut carum . . . regi (A. III, 15;
Th. 338, 4-6), followed by the note on DVM FORTVNA FVIT
(A.
III, 16; Th. 338, 10). Between the
two notes, as a sign of cross-reference from the lemma in
Vergil,
F has the symbol
'·d·', so that the apparatus entry must
read:
regi. DVM] regi ·d· Dum F
Since the insertion of such signs of cross-reference
between two scholia, continuously presented, is unusual,
we should not be surprised to find confusion in any
manuscript copied from
F, but
certainly not the corruption found in
G:
regi. DVM] regium (corr.)
G
Other aberrations in
G point
to the presence in
G's original of
well known palæographical difficulties that are
absent in
F, e. g.,
- A. III, 172 (Th. 374, 24}
- A. III, 359 (Th. 406, 5} dicit] F (written out in full)
dr G
- A. III, 414 (Th. 416, 7} (sc. "dicitur") To
make this mistake, the scribe of G must have had before him an original in
which "dicit" was abbreviated as 'dt', with the
horizontal stroke for a compendium over the 't'.
Minuscule 't' and minuscule 'r' are readily
confused.
- A. III, 73 (Th. 351, 9) Asterien] F asarien G The letters 'te', run together, can look
very much like a flat topped 'a', and G must come from something on
that order to contain the mistake it does. In F, however, the 'st' is
ligatured and a plain 'e' follows, leaving no room
for misunderstanding.
- A. V, 59 (Th. 597, 24) Anchise] F atichise G The letter 'n' and the letters 'ti', in
ninth century script and when laterally
compressed, can sometimes look very much like one
another, but they do not in F, where the 'n' is unusually
distinct.
- A. III, 607 (Th. 444, 13) vastoque . . .
iuvabit] & rł usque periisse iuuabit
F & rł quisq;
perisse iudicabit G The
scribe of G must have been
copying from an original that used "et rłq"
rather than "et rł" for "et
reliqua."
- A. V, 380 (Th. 624, 3) dicat alacer tamen]
(with correct word division) F dica ala certam G
- A. V, 553 (Th. 633, 19) certe] F arce G
- A. V, 238 (Th. 615, 5) iaciam] iaceā
F iacet G In all three of the foregoing, G's difficulty apparently
derives from misunderstanding of the 'oc'
Beneventan form of 'a' and the very similar
Beneventan form of 't'. In the first example, this
could very easily have resulted in the loss of the
't' (between two 'a's) in "dicat alacer." In the
second, the writer of G
mistook a real 'c' for the initial loop of an
'oc'-type 'a'. In the third, there is simple
confusion between 'a' and 't'. In each case, the
script of F is
plain.
- A. III, 645 (Th. 448, 7) ratione] F ratiore G
- A. V, 80 (Th. 601, 19) bonos ter enuntiatum]
honeste renunciatē F
honeste nentiatē G Both of these cases reflect confusion in
G resulting from the
similarity between 'n' and 'r' in insular script.
The mistake could not have been made by a scribe
who was copying from F.[28]
- A. III, 631 (Th. 446, 17) iacere] a sobriis
cubandum (culiandum G)
ostendit temulentos iacere add.
F G The interesting point is the divergence
in G from F's "cubandum." F's
'b' is unmistakable, but 'b' in insular script can
very easily be taken for 'li'. There is a very
similar case on A. V, 15 (Th. 590, 7) where, at
"obliquatque," F fell into
the trap and reads "obbquat que." G does much better, with
"obliquat q".
To conclude, G is not a copy of F. Its similarities with F are so striking, however, as
to suggest that both were copied from the same
source—more cursive in style and exhibiting, it may
be, a mixture of Italian and insular traits. F was the more careful of the
two copies. Hence it is that, when F and G diverge, F is much more likely to be
correct, and that there are a substantial number of
omissions in G of text that appears
in F, as compared with rather few
and dubious instances of the reverse situation. Clearly
G is a new source for
Servius Danielis on Aeneid III-V,
although its relationship to F is
so close that it cannot be expected to contribute very
materially to the establishment of the text.
Notes
