Studies in the text and transmission of the Iliad

312 Pages·2001·19.175 MB·English

by  Martin L. West

Studies
in the Text and Transmission
V of the Iliad
BY
Martin L. West
K - G ~ Saur Miinchen ' Leipzig 2001
DieDeutscheBibiiothek—ClP~Einheitsaufnahme
West,MartinL.:
StudiesinthetextandtransmissionoftheIliadIbyMartinL.West.-~
Miinchen;Leipzig:Saur,2001
ISBN3-598-73005-5
©2001 byK.G.SaurVerlagGmbH,MiinchenundLeipzig
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Preface
These studies are a by-product of my recent critical edition of the Iliad in
the Bibliotheca Teubneriana (Stuttgart—Leipzig—Miinchen, 1998--2000).
Part I is largely an amplification of the first twelve pages of the edition’s
Praefatio. It also contains a fuller list of the papyri, and an account of the
aims and methods of the edition. Part II consists of textual discussions of
individual passages, mostly amplifying hints already given in the critical
apparatus.
I should like to take the opportunity to thank the publisher and his offi-
cers, not only for being so ready and willing to produce the present vol-
ume, but also for the care which they devoted to producing the second
volume ofthe edition, beautifully completing What the firm ofB. G. Teub-
ner had begun.
December 2000 M. L. W.
i 5

Contents
PART I. THE TRANSMISSION
The Pre—AleXandrian Transmission
Zenodotus’ Text . . . . . . . . . . . .
Didymus and his Sources . . . . . .
The Papyri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Early Medieval Transmission
s~v1:*==-~>-~
The New Teubner Edition . . . . .
PART II. THE TEXT
Notes on Individual Passages . . . . .
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"J
INDEXES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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PART I
THE TRANSMISSION

i
r
i 1. The Pre~—Alexandrian Transmission
The Iliacl that is the object of our studies is a written text. It is the crea-
tion, we presume, of a poet trained in the techniques of oral performance
and accustomed to deliver his poetry orally; a poetwho composed his ver—
5
.I
‘.ii. ses, not without premeditation, but with considerable fluency, line by line
I
i rather than word by word. However consistently he kept to one version
3% ofthe stories he told, there will have been variations of scope and of detail
I between each performance and the next. Fixity could come only when a
text was written down. y
In principle it can happen that the same oral poem is written down at
different times, in different places, or from the lips of different bards. This
I
results in texts that may diverge substantially in the sequence of episodes,
i‘ in narrative detail, or in other respects. But in the case of the Homeric
é=§§2 poems there is no good evidence that such divergent recensions were ever
current. Apparently each epic was written down only once, or ifotherver-
sions ever existed, they disappeared at an early date.
i
6. Our Iliad took on its definitive form as it was written down.‘ It is my
conviction that the process ofwriting it downwas intermittent and extend-
2i ed over many years. In any case it was the completion of the writing down
that marked the completion of the composition. That is where the story
of the transmission begins.
f
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The primal text
-:E2{ The first complete text probably consisted of a collection ofpapyrus rolls.
I';=
:5T1'2??; (Parchment is also possible.) We should not imagine them to be twenty-
four in number; the division of-the poem into twenty~—four ‘books’, as they
are commonly called, or f)0u|Ito16i0u, as they were called in antiquity, was
Eli
5;; made at a later time and for a different purpose, as will be argued below.
E‘? In any case this original text did not yet contain the Doloneia, which
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ii makes up one of the twenty-four sections ofthe Iliaal as it has come down
§
i
IIO US.
.-.i'-.s.1<gi It may be assumed that each verse was written on a separate line, accord-
._, ing to the standard Greek practice attested since the time of the ‘Nestor’s
Iii
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:Ii.0»s?k;' ' This essential point was established once and for all by Adam Parry in his famous paper
.z_ii ‘Have we I-Iomer’s Iliad?’ in Yale ClassicalStudies 20 (1966), 177-216; reprinted in]. Latacz,
Ii_iiiii Homer. Tradition andNea-era-ng (Wege derForschang, 463: Darmstadt 1979), 428—66.
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