64th poems. Anyone who reads these two poems cannot but feel that it is the same kind of an affected mannerism as the overworked anxius 19 of the Culex. As Virgil's indebtedness to Catullus, and particularly to the 64th poem, is frequently apparent, the absence of vagus would seem to be the result of conscious avoidance. When did this attitude on Virgil's part begin? On first reading Catullus, or was it a later reaction from the mannerisms of the VEOTEρIKOί, but before he wrote the Eclogues? 20 6. Another mannerism of Catullus was the excessive use of the diminutive ending in the case of both adjectives and nouns. Three of the non-Virgilian words in the Culex are such diminutives: araneolus, aureolus, pendulus. We can here at least trace Virgil's own attitude. While avoiding sentimental diminutives in the Georgics and Aeneid, he does make use of them in the Eclogues to some extent-though of course to a lesser degree than Catullus. About 10 per cent of the words which occur in the Eclogues only are such diminutives. We have here direct evidence of a change of attitude on Virgil's part in the matter of vocabulary. 7. A mannerism of the author of the Culex is the use of compounds with re-, where the preposition adds little or nothing to the meaning of the uncompounded word: recino 13, 72, refoveo 122, 213, regemo 386, remoror 119, resideo 106, 109, 146, 358, revolubilis 169. In Virgil's authentic works the simple words are used rather than the compounds, if there is any need to use the word at all. Was this use of re- an early mannerism which Virgil later consciously avoided, or is it evidence of separate authorship? 8. Two words are peculiar to the Culex. Labrusca, which is 19 It occurs 5 times in the Culex: lines 159, 237, 250, 349, 353. It occurs but once in Virgil's authentic works, Aen. IX. 20 For such overworked words see Literary Digest, November 18, 1926, 27, an abstract of an article by Robert Littell. We have seen ‘avid,' and 'opalescent,' pet adjectives of best sellers of 20 or 25 years ago, have their brief day and then vanish for a time, due to the natural reaction from the overworking of a sentimental word. treated as a neuter plural, is possibly a sheer error on the part of the poet. Conchea is a coinage for the occasion. Vocabulary is but one of a number of possible pieces of evidence in regard to the question of the authenticity of the Culex. Drew 21 has recently made a careful examination of the use of common sources by Virgil and by the author of the Culex, in which he concludes that where there is any evidence of priority the Culex seems to have been first in the field, and that certain passages seem to indicate that Virgil and the author of the Culex were one and the same. There remains to be considered the evidence of the prooemium and such other internal evidence as the poem affords. I hope to discuss this evidence in another paper dealing with the recent article on the subject by Baehrens.22 The metrical evidence should be rechecked, inasmuch as the results of the various investigators in the field are in conflict. Until all the evidence is considered, the question of authorship must be left open. But, if vocabulary were our only criterion, we should have to conclude: (1) that there is no more reason for regarding the Culex as Ovidian than the Eclogues or the Aeneid, which show a larger percentage of Ovidian words; (2) that, in view of the fact that so many of the non-Virgilian words are found in Catullus, Lucretius, and Cicero, we have quite as much reason for placing the Culex before Virgil's authentic works as we have for placing it after them; (3) that, as some of the features which differentiate the Culex from the Georgics and the Aeneid are found in the Eclogues, it is not impossible that Virgil may have been the author of the Culex; and (4) that so far as vocabulary is concerned, inasmuch as there is no positive evidence to the contrary, we should be justified in lending more weight to the positive statements of Lucan, Statius, Martial, and Suetonius. 21 D. L. Drew, Culex, Sources and their Bearing upon the Problem of Authorship (Oxford, 1925). 22 W. H. Baehrens, "Zum Prooemium des Culex," Philologus, N. F., xxxv, The author of the Culex, whether Virgil or not, was clearly a novice, who was not yet at home with poetical diction. If the author was Virgil, the work could hardly have been written at twenty-six, or even at twenty-one, as Frank thinks. I agree with Rand that the only acceptable date for Virgilian authorship would be that given in the manuscripts of Donatus, cum esset annorum XVI, without emending to XXVI with Scaliger and Brummer, or to XXI with Frank.23 As a schoolboy performance the Culex is not unworthy of Virgil. It is too crude for the age of even twenty-one, if the author is Virgil. But if the Octavius of the prooemium was the later Augustus, it is conceivable that Virgil, five years or so after writing the poem, presented his own schoolboy effort to another schoolboy to serve as a useful compendium of mythology, and that he added the prooemium at that time. 23 See note 2. XIV.-A New Literary Fragment on Demosthenes BY WARREN EVERETT BLAKE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Plate XLVI Michigan Papyrus 10, acquired in 1920 as "an unidentified prose fragment," consists of ten small scraps varying in size from cm. 3.7 X 4 to cm. 10.4 X 7.9. The material is of good quality but is badly preserved, being full of breaks and wormholes. One piece, frag. E, is discolored to a dark umber shade. Writing appears on one side only and the original form of the work was clearly a roll. The roll was at some time earlier in its history cut horizontally, apparently into three sections, only the lower two of which are here partially preserved. The cuts are not modern as the condition of the straight edges shows. The middle and lower sections were originally of the same height. Of the pieces preserved frags. A and E belong to the middle section and the rest, with the possible exception of frag. J, which is too small to determine, belong to the lower section as the presence of the margin indicates. Longitudinal joining of the middle to the lower sections is impossible on the basis of continuity of the text, which is badly broken at the possible line of juncture. Frag. A however may with perfect certainty be joined to frag. B for three reasons: the two pieces of papyrus are of the same shade, a little lighter than the rest; there are six heavy fibres in the verso of frag. A which match six others in the verso of frag. B; the longitudinal folds of frag. A come in the same position with relation to the text as in frag. B. Joining of frag. E with any of the lower ones seems impossible. A side-by-side joining of frags. C and D is certain. Minute traces of the beginning of letters on the extreme right of frag. C fit exactly on the initial letters of frag. D. Finally, frag. G may be joined to the side of frag. H on the evidence of the correspondence of papyrus fibres. As to the original height of the roll, two independent lines of reasoning give the same probable and interesting result. In the first place measurement of the fragments shows that the average depth of the lower margin was somewhat over cm. 6. That of frag. C at its greatest depth is cm. 6.6, while that of frag. B, which alone preserves a part of the straight lower edge, is cm. 6.2. Now the total height of frag. A plus frag. B is cm. 20.1 and the actual number of lines of text in the two is 24. This is a most remarkable amount of margin for so small an amount of text. But the top of frag. A is sheared off in the middle of a line. How many more lines were originally above it and how deep the upper margin was, we have now no sure means of knowing. However, we may assume as certain that with a lower margin of over cm. 6 there must have been some upper margin also if any sort of symmetrical appearance was desired. As in the case of the Theaetetus Commentary papyrus it may quite likely have been somewhat narrower than the lower margin. The proportion of the two there is about 5:9. If we assume the same reasonable proportion here we get an upper margin of about cm. 3.5. Now in general the amount of the total height of the papyrus which is occupied by text in rolls of some degree of pretentiousness (as the width of the lower margin alone shows the present one to have been) is about two-thirds, rarely less.1 If then we may safely count on about cm. 10 of margin in the present roll (cm. 6.4 lower plus cm. 3.5 upper) there must have been about cm. 20 of text and a total height of about cm. 30, with possibly three more lines of text in the missing top section. Secondly, another consideration leads us independently to the same result. The remains of the two lower sections indicate that they were of the same height originally. Frag. A measures cm. 10, frag. B, cm. 10.1. Also the cut was a deliberate one made with no regard for the text. This would raise the assumption that the roll was intentionally cut into three equal pieces and that the missing top portion was of the 1 See Wm. Schubart, Das Buch bei der Griechen und Römern2 (Leipzig, 1921), pp. 58 f. |