Some Problems of Text and Interpretation in the Bacchae . II

In Part I of this article the major problems of the transmission of the Bacchae were considered, with a discussion of interpolated lines and lacunae, whether certain or merely postulated by previous editors. In the Introduction it was argued that P is a copy of a manuscript which was very like L (whether a copy or a twin hardly matters) before being supplemented with variant readings and with the whole of Tr. and Ba. 756 ff. from a lost source. The symbols λ and were used for P's exemplar and this remoter source respectively. The ancestry of in turn was traced back to Λ, the ancestor of L. This, if right, means that L and P (including the end of B a .) both descend from a single uncial archetype, though with a fair chance that some true variants from a different tradition reached and λ. P, however, steadfastly preferred the original reading of λ (= L, in effect) whenever possible. When P differs from L, there are three possibilities: ( a ) that he is making a fresh error (misreading or carelessness—seldom, if ever, constructive); ( b ) that λ (before being supplemented) differed from L (probably only in ortkographica ); ( c ) that λ (after contamination) included a variant which P preferred (significant variants are so rare that legibility is likely to have been P's main criterion)

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• What Are the Topnoi in Philebus 51C

  Open Access•Todd Compton•The Classical Quarterly•1990

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