The Letters of St. Isidore of Seville by Gordon B. Ford; St. Isidore Review by: P. G.

Walsh The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1972), pp. 279-280 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/708429 . Accessed: 20/09/2013 09:23
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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 279 ARNO SEEL: Laus Pisonis: Text, l'empire romain en Sicilie (Kokalos,1964-5) ; (viii) Cic6ron et C6sar (Bulletin de l'Ass. Kommentar. (Erlantbersetzung, Buds, 1959); (ix) Les probl'mes du De 2 + gen diss.) Pp. [viii] I1. Erlangen: republica(L'Inf. Litt., 1964); (x) Cic6ron et privately printed, [1969]. Paper. son aeuvre philosophique (R.E.L., 1936);
THE transmitted text of L.P. 254-5 reads as follows: ... nos humilis domus et sincera parentum sed tenuis fortuna sua caligine celat. Something is clearly wrong; and if, as it is the main aim of Seel's thesis to establish, the poet was Lucan, a negative is required. To read non (Beck) for nos is easy and economical; but is the result Latin? Seel quotes Ullman's observation that it 'makes an awkward sentence' (this in my view is a considerable understatement), but does not answer it; and his translation is a loose paraphrase of the line: 'Kein niedriges Haus ist mir eigen und ich stamme von rechtschaffenen Eltern.' A chain is as strong as its weakest link; Seel's case for Lucan's authorship is seriously impaired, if indeed it is not disabled outright, by his failure to deal with this point--or rather his failure to apprehend that there is a point to be dealt with, for exact latinity is evidently not his forte, as witness his rendering of insigni praestringit imagine uisus (ioi) by 'er verschliesst sein Gesicht mit einem ganz besonderen Ausdruck'. Attempts to ascribe the poem to a known author are probably futile; but to keep the ball rolling I will throw in an apparently unnoticed argument for Calpurnius Siculus, the predilection of both poets for the 'golden' line and its variants: in L.P. see especially the constellation at vw. 70 (abAB), 71 (abBA), 73 (abAB).

(xi) Le platonisme a Rome-Platon et Cic6ron (Actes du Congras Bud!, i953); (xii) Trois citations de Platon chez Cic6ron (Hommagesa Marcel Renard, 1969); (xiii) Ciceron et le 'Premier Alcibiade' (R.E.L., I964); (xiv) Sur le songe de Scipion (26-28) (L'Ant. Class., 1942); (xv) Cic6ron et les semailles d'ames du Timete(De Leg. i. 24) (Romanitas, 1961); (xvi) Les preuves stoiciennes de l'existence des dieux (De N.D., ii) (Hermes, I962); L'apotheose de Tullia (R.E.A., I944); (xviii) La rdponse de l'humanisme cicronien (Miscellanea Joaquiem de Carvalho,1962).

GORDON B. Pp. 69.

FORD:

The Letters Hackert,

of

St. Isidore of Seville. Second edition.

Amsterdam:
1970.

Cloth, fl. I6.

THIS revised edition of the fourteen letters

attributed to Isidore consists of a two-page Introduction followed by text and facing translation without annotation. The Introduction states that four of the fourteen letters are considered spurious; as Mr. Ford seems to agree, how can they 'include twelve by Isidore himself' ? The text printed of the first thirteen letters is that of the P.L. (Ar6valo), yet, as Ford notes, Lindsay edited seven of them in his O.C.T. of the Etymologiae, and Gundlach an E. Peterhouse, Cambridge J. KENNEY eighth in the M.G.H. Lindsay's text is not invariably an improvement, but the version printed here could have been improved in about forty places by incorporating his corrections and superior readings. There is a PIERRE I~tudes sur l'humannumber of misprints in the other letters, the BOYANCt: isme cicironien. most important confunditefor confundere (Collection Latomus, at for eandem at 7. 4. 4. 5, and eumdem 121.) Pp. 352. Brussels: Latomus, The translation of the difficult epistolary 1970. Paper, 6oo B. fr. style raises acute problems which Ford REPRINTED papers by the Director of the does not attempt to solve, preferring a French School at Rome. (i) Le problkme de mot-d-motversion which is frequently inCic6ron: Les portraits de Cic6ron: La comprehensible, and which ranges from correspondance de Cic6ron (L'Inf. Litt., literal accuracy to the most frightful mis1958); (ii) Travaux recents sur Cic6ron, translation. Some renderings in the pre1939-58 (Actes du Congrds Bud!, I96o); (iii) dominantly liturgical Letter I would raise Cic6ron contre Cic6ron (R.E.A., i949); (iv) wan smiles at Keble or Heythrop, where Cic6ron et la vie contemplative (Latomus the punctuation of the Latin at 1. 8 would I967); (v) 'Cum dignitate otium' (R.E.A., be instantly improved. The translation at 1948); (vi) Sur Cic6ron et I'histoire (Brutus 4. 6 has wholly lost its way. At 7. 6, 'law' 41-43) (R.E.A., 1940); (vii) Ciceron et is the Law of the O.T., and 7. 7-8 has

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280

THE

CLASSICAL

REVIEW

other errors. 8. I prints Verecundum, but translates as if lower case. 8. 2 takes all the punch out of the argument for papal as 'priestprimacy by translating pontificatus hood'. 10. 4 contains two obvious errors, I2. 4 seems to miss the reference to the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and in the same letter 7-8 is mostly awry, 9-Io has further mistakes, and lucrerisin 13 does not mean 'mourn'. It is difficult to imagine who could benefit from this edition, since the Introduction is so jejune, the text outdated, the translation unreliable, and the annotation non-existent. University of Glasgow P. G. WALSH

T. B. L. WEBSTER: Greek Theatre

Second edition. Pp. xvii + Production.

214;
1970.

24 plates.

London: Methuen,

Cloth, ?2"25. THISuseful book (first published in 1956 and reviewed by me in C.R. lxxi [1957], III f.) now appears in a second edition which contains four pages of Addenda and Corrigenda. Webster now thinks that the performance of a satyr-play by Pratinas at which the wooden seats collapsed is likelier to have taken place in front of the old temple of Dionysus than in the Agora; see Bulletinof theJohn RylandsLibrary,42 (196o), 495 f.; he now regards the assumption that the Periclean theatre had wings as 'pure conjecture'; and following G. M. Sifakis, Studiesin the Historyof HellenisticDrama, 128, he thinks the Lycurgan theatre must have been rebuilt before 292 B.c. A. M. Dale, Collected Papers, Io6 f., he thinks has 'shown convincingly that all the plays of Aristophanes are better played with a single door'; but see K. J. Dover, Proc. Cambridge Philological Society,no. 192 (1966), 6 f., an article which Webster ought certainly to have mentioned. Christ Church,Oxford
H. LLOYD-JONES

JOHN

FERGUSON: Socrates:

a source

book. Pp. xii+335. Cloth,

Macmillan (for

Press), 1970. ?2 (paper, 41Pp). FERGUSON PROFESSOR says that he wishes to

the Open University

present 'the main source material about Socrates' (p. xi), but it is unclear by whom or for what he expects the material to be used. The first half of his book contains extracts from Diogenes Laertius, Plato, Xenophon, Old Comedy, and Aristotle, which would be useful to a student with a philosophical or historical interest in Socrates, but the last hundred and fifty pages are given to later writers, from whom such a student would glean hardly anything to his purpose. Perhaps Ferguson's real aim in this part is to introduce readers to authors seldom read, such as Numenius, Orosius, and Theophylact, and he is using references to Socrates only as a principle of selection. Some of the passages, however, are too short to be revealing and many are repetitions. Thus the mot 'Some people live to eat; I eat to live' appears no less than five times. But whatever his intention Ferguson might have carried it out more professionally. We are not told whose texts are being translated, the references are sometimes inaccurate, and the translations contain mistakes. A particular puzzle about the plan of the book is the prominence given to Libanius: he receives more space than Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Aristotle put together. Ferguson confesses his book was compiled in a hurry: perhaps if he could not spend more time on it he should not have attempted it at all, for as it stands it is rambling in design and unreliable in retail. Of early writers Plato receives by far the most attention. Of Ferguson's extracts from the Platonic corpus some, like the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo are obvious choices, some, like the whole of Alcibiades I, less obvious, and some surprising. Among the last is Parmenides130-5, which Ferguson himself declares to be not Socratic. On the other hand passages are omitted which might have been thought grist to his mill, such as the conversation with Anytus in the Meno. After Plato Aristophanes comes off best, with some long quotations from the Clouds.Xenophon is not well treated. Ferguson had an opportunity to present a number of passages which are of interest to the historian of philosophy but often neglected, for instance Memorabilia iii. 8. 2-7, iii. Io, iv. 6. Instead he quotes Hegel's sneer at Xenophon's Socrates (p. I) and passages which support it. Aristotle too might have been given more space: his references to Socrates are not so many or prolix that Ferguson need have been selective. As for Aeschines of Sphettus he is not included among the early sources at all but put between Porphyry and Proclus.

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