G. Manuscripts and Text

The chief authorities for the text of the de Compositione are indicated in the following list of abbreviations employed in the apparatus criticus of the present edition:—

Siglorum in notulis criticis adhibitorum Index

F = cod. Florentinus Laurentianus lix. 15. saec. xii.
P = cod. Parisinus bibl. nat. 1741. saec. xi. (x.).
M = cod. Venetus Marcianus 508. saec. xv.
V = cod. Vergetii Parisiensis bibl. nat. 1798. saec. xvi.

E = Διονυσίου Ἁλικαρνασέως τοῦ περὶ Συνθέσεως Ὀνομάτων Ἐπιτομή. saec. inc.

R = Rhetor Graecus (Scholiasta Hermogenis περὶ ἰδεῶν, i. 6). saec. inc.

a = editio princeps Aldi Manutii (Aldi Manutii Rhetores Graeci, tom. i.), Venetiis. 1508.
s = editio Roberti Stephani, Lutetiae. 1547.
r = exemplum Reiskianum, Lipsiae. 1775.
Us = exemplum ab Usenero et Radermachero Lipsiae nuper editum.

The Florentine manuscript (F) contains, besides certain writings of other authors, the following works of Dionysius: (1) the essays on Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, and Dinarchus: and (2) the de Compositione Verborum (as far as the words πειρατέον δὴ καὶ περὶ τούτων λέγειν ἃ φρονῶ in c. 25). The Paris manuscript 1741 (P) is the famous codex which contains not only the de Comp. Verb., but also Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics, Demetrius de Elocutione, Dionysius Halic. Ep. ad Amm. II., De Vet. Scr., etc. Some notes upon the manuscript are given in Demetrius on Style pp. 209-11; and the editor has examined it once more at Paris for the purposes of the present recension. The remaining manuscripts are considerably later than F and P. M belongs to the fifteenth century, and V was copied by the Cretan calligrapher Ange Vergèce (as he was called in France) in the sixteenth century. The edition of Robert Stephens is based upon V. In the Journal of Philology xxvii. pp. 83 ff., there is a careful collation, by A. B. Poynton, of “Some Readings of MS. Canonici 45” (C: sixteenth century) in the Bodleian Library, with regard to which the collator says: “Despite the care with which the work is done, the manuscript is not of much value as a presentation of the Florentine tradition, since F exists and the writer of C is rather a διασκευαστής than a copyist. The interest of the manuscript is antiquarian and bibliographical.... It is a copy made at some time in the sixteenth century, probably after 1560. It is based on the Florentine MS. with variae lectiones and marginal notes. It has not the appearance of being a mechanical copy: rather it seems to be the work of a scholar who was conversant with the MSS. of the treatise and, while he was aware of the importance of the Florentine MS., saw that in many cases it needed to be corrected.”

The dates of the Epitome and of the Rhetor Graecus are uncertain. But both are early and highly important authorities. The latter quotes c. 14 only of the treatise, but the quotation enabled Usener to show that the text of F agreed in the main with that of the Rhetor and of the Epitome. The result was to enhance greatly the authority of F, with which earlier editors had merely an indirect and imperfect acquaintance. But by a not unnatural reaction against the excessive attention paid to what may be called the P group (PMV: though M and V sometimes coincide with F against P), Usener is inclined too readily to follow F, or even E, when standing alone. Still, while the readings supported only by F, or E, or P should be carefully scrutinized and independently judged, the concurrent testimony of FE and any other MS. is very strong indeed.

Two passages taken almost at a venture (say, the first twenty lines of c. 12 and the last twenty of c. 19) would be enough to show that neither F nor P can be exclusively followed, and that Usener himself is often (more often than is indicated in this edition) driven to desert F, which in fact contains, in these or other places, a large number of impossible or even absurd readings.[82] Where, however, there are genuine instances of various readings (as εὐκαιροτέραις: εὐροωτέραις in the last of the passages just specified), it seems best to follow F (especially when supported by other authorities), even though the hand of an ingenious early scholar may sometimes with reason be suspected.[83]

One reason for accepting with reserve the unsupported testimony of F is that its evidence is sometimes far from sound in regard to quotations from authors whose text is well established from other sources. In the principal quotations from Pindar and Thucydides this defect is not so manifest; and it may even be claimed that its text of the Pindaric dithyramb, and of the Herodotus extract on p. 82, is distinguished by many excellent features, though not so many as Usener was at first inclined to claim in the case of the Pindar. But in the extract from the Areopagiticus of Isocrates which is given in c. 23, the text presented by F (as compared with that presented by P) seems to suggest that, in dealing with Dionysius’ own words as well as with his quotations, the transcriber may have felt entitled to make rather free alterations on his own account. In order to provide readers with the means of judging for themselves, the critical apparatus has been made specially full at this point.[84]

Usener’s text of the de Compositione deserves the highest respect: it is the last undertaking of one of the greatest philologists of the nineteenth century, and every succeeding editor must find himself deep in its debt. Its record of readings is full to exhaustiveness. In the present edition less wealth of detail is attempted (especially in regard to F and R), though all really important and typical variations have, it is hoped, been duly registered, and particular attention has been paid to the minute collation of P. But apart from the correction of misprints (as on pp. 124 13, 132 23, 250 7), it is hoped that the following among other readings will commend themselves (on an examination of the sections of the Notes or Glossary in which they are defended) as superior to those adopted by Usener (and indicated here in brackets) from conjecture or on manuscript authority: 64 11 (σοὶ omitted), 70 5 (εὖ τί), 78 17 (παλαιαί), 80 13 (παιδικόν), 94 13 (προβαῖεν), 94 16 (σπουδάζεσθαι), 98 20 (οἷά τινα), 106 13 (εὖ ἢ), 132 20 (θηρᾶν), 142 9 (σπανίζει), etc.