Horatian Notes IV: despised readings in the manuscripts of Satires Book 1

Abstract

In three earlier instalments of these ‘Horatian Notes’ (1969, 1971, 1982) I have tried to weigh the claims to truth of manuscript variants in the transmitted text of Odes and Epodes. In the Satires there is so much of that sort of thing that I have had to restrict myself to Book 1. Now, as well as earlier, disagreements with the decisions of all or most contemporary editors arise. I note, however, that this paper was written before D. R. Shackleton Bailey's edition appeared in 1985. Readers of the present notes will find that we have come, independently if perhaps unsurprisingly, to similar conclusions on a number of passages.There is then much to say, and because of a plethora of evidence I do not propose to comment on the numerous cases where editors of the last half-century or so make what I regard as the right choice, yet, in one way or another, give rise to the suspicion that they do so for the wrong reasons. Thus at 1.1.38 very few editors now follow Keller and Vollmer, not to mention many of their early predecessors, in printing patiens to describe ‘the tiny ant’ in the animal fable designed to illustrate human failings. With Lambinus and Bentley, they do now print sapiens; yet a perusal of commentaries shows how right was A. Palmer, not usually a herald of Bentley's virtues, to refer to Bentley's note both in his app. crit. and his commentary. It is possible to print sapiens and yet to misunderstand it as ‘prudent, thrifty’; so e.g. L. Mueller. A reference to Bentley (and here also to Lambinus), which can be provided briefly in an app. crit. as much as in a commentary, is here and often elsewhere a reminder of good sense. Nevertheless, in order to save space I pass by such cases in this paper. Nor, as a rule, do I discuss cases where the quality of variants, whether preserved directly or indirectly, happens to be more or less balanced.