Preface
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In preparing a second edition of this volume, I have profited by several criticisms with which the work has been favoured, and by various other contributions to the study of Sophocles which have come into my hands since 1883. The modification of detail which is chiefly noticeable in the present edition is the substitution of English for Latin as the language of the critical notes on the text. Without having altered the opinion which I formerly expressed, that Latin possesses unequalled merits for this purpose, I had been led to feel that a combination of Latin critical notes with an English commentary on the same page suffered from a certain want of unity and harmony. There seemed to be also a practical objection, viz., that some readers were harassed by the change of mental attitude involved in turning from a Latin to an English note on the same passage. The intrinsic superiority of Latin as a vehicle of textual criticism could hardly be deemed to outweigh these disadvantages; and it is by this consideration that my choice has now been decided.
The Autotype Facsimile of the Laurentian MS. of Sophocles, published in 1885 by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, is by far the most important boon ever conferred on students of the text. A possessor of this perfectly executed and durable photograph commands an aid of indefinitely greater value than the most minute and most exact collation; so far, indeed, as the purposes of textual criticism are concerned, he has the manuscript itself before him. I have used the facsimile in carefully verifying the report of the Laurentian readings given in my first edition, and on a few points have been enabled to supplement it, or to render it more precise. In this connection I may briefly advert to another point of detail which distinguishes the present re-issue. Some of my friendly critics in Germany have observed that those MSS. which are later than the Laurentian, and which are all more or less signally inferior to it, were reported in my first edition with a superfluous fulness, which somewhat encumbered the critical apparatus, and also tended to obscure the leading facts. The view which, for a long period of time, has been steadily gaining ground in Germany is that, whether the Laurentian MS. is or is not actually the sole source of all the other MSS. of Sophocles now extant, at least the cases are very rare in which any correction of the Laurentian by another MS. is of a higher order than could have been furnished by a grammarian’s conjecture. The difficulties in the way of supposing the Laurentian to be, in fact, the unique source still seem to me very considerable. But the experience gradually gained in the progress of this work has impressed me, more and more, with the truth of the other proposition just noticed,—viz., that the positive worth of the corrections supplied by the other MSS. is no greater than it easily might have been if the Laurentian were their common parent. Forty years have passed since Cobet first maintained that the Laurentian is the MS. from which all the rest have been immediately or indirectly transcribed; and, though I cannot share the confidence with which that view has since been defended by such scholars as Dindorf and Moriz Seyffert, I can now comprehend it, at least, better than formerly. Be our view of the genealogical facts what it may, it cannot be questioned that, in critical notes on the text of Sophocles, the paramount significance of the Laurentian MS. must be brought into clear and bold relief. Dindorf effects this by referring to the later MSS. under the generic name of ‘apographa.’ Mekler, in the 6th Teubner edition of Dindorf’s text (1885) uses the letter ‘r’ to denote ‘lectio e recentiorum librorum consensu aut uno alterove ducta.’ This symbol, ‘r,’ has been adopted by me in the critical notes of this edition to denote ‘one or more of the MSS. other than the Laurentian’; but it is used only in those cases where a more specific statement was unnecessary. By thus combining the use of a general symbol with occasional recourse to more particular statement, I have sought to exhibit the relative importance of the documents in a just perspective, without any undue sacrifice of precision.
The commentary, as it is now set forth, will furnish sufficient evidence of the desire which I have felt to profit by any criticism which has convinced my own judgment, and to express gratitude for such criticism in the most practical form. Among my foreign reviewers, mention is due to Professor Wecklein, and to Dr Kaibel, the editor of the Epigrammata Graeca. To the latter I am indebted for calling my attention to epigraphic evidence of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. in regard to the Attic orthography of certain words. The Grammatik der Attischen Inschriften, by Professor Meisterhans (1885), is an excellent hand-book of reference on this subject1. Among English critics, I owe grateful acknowledgments to the authors of unsigned reviews in several journals, as well as to some eminent scholars whom I am permitted to thank by name,—Professor Butcher,—whose examination of this work, in the Fortnightly Review, has been to me an exceptionally valuable source alike of instruction and of stimulus,—Professor Tyrrell, Mr A. Sidgwick, and Mr R. Whitelaw. The criticisms of Mr Whitelaw occupy a large space in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society for 1886. Although I have not always been able to agree with his views, I have been indebted to them for amendments on some points, and have never differed from them without careful consideration; nor has anything given me more pleasure in connection with this book than the very kind and generous manner in which he has referred to it.
- 1.In v. 68 I should have given ηὕρισκον, not εὕρισκον, had I then known the evidence collected by Meisterhans from Attic inscriptions of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. for the temporal augment in the historical tenses of verbs beginning with ευ. Following that evidence, I have given ηὕρηκ’ in 546 and ηὑρῆσθαι in 1050.
I must once again express my best thanks to the Managers and staff of the Cambridge University Press.
THE COLLEGE, GLASGOW,
November, 1887.