Consilium Et Ratio? Papyrus a of Bacchylides and Alexandrian Metrical Scholarship

Abstract

Vidimus poetam periodos numerum trium metrorum superantes eisdem locis metrorum vocibus finitis dividere solere, quibus etiam periodorum discrimen fieri posset, et demonstravit Maas dissertatione diligentissima (Philol. 63, 297) colistas Alexandrinos ita versus seiunxisse, ut quam saepissime finis verbi in fine versus esset; quo factum est ut redderent quae vellet poeta subintellegi discrimina. quae divisio versuum non modo magna cum diligentia sed etiam cum consilio et ratione a grammaticis antiquis confecta optime papyris nostris servata est. .. errores pauci facile corriguntur. .. eo autem ratio grammaticorum antiquorum differt a nostra, quod non semper ad numeros syllabarum, sed interdum ad caesuras versus diviserunt; itaque in carm. 1 str. 1 modo post syllabam septimam modo post octavam seiungitur, in carm. 5 versus 13, 35, 115 non eodem modo dividuntur atque versus respondentes,. .. neque habemus cur haec vituperemus. (Bruno Snell, Bacchylidis Carmina cum Fragmentis, Praefatio 31* [= Snell-Maehler, 1992, XXXI]) I. SNELL'S HYPOTHESIS The paragraph of his introduction which Snell devotes to the colometry of the Bacchylides papyri first appeared in 1934, and survives unchanged in the 1970 (repr. 1992) edition revised by Maehler. Much influenced by the article of Maas which he

Techniques of reading and textual layout in ancient Greek texts

“…Willett's interpretation of colometry should be abandoned. However, it is obvious that cola division was designed with an eye to the cognitive limitation of the human mind: but for the human mind of readers, not that of the members of a chorus:' [t]hese are texts for scholars and readers, not for actors and musicians' (Parker (2001) 52).…”

“…Usener and Radermacher (1899). 41 'The impression is of a rather slapdash procedure: division follows word-end in the first stanza and the rest of the poem is made to fit' (Parker (2001) , 3, 4, 5, 6, 9,11,14,17,18,19, 20B, 20C in Snell and Maehler (1970). 43 We can also point out that, in Bacchylides 5, the metrical interpretation of the papyrus requires word division between cola in 3 cases only in strophes, but in 11 cases in antistrophes (we also have 3 cases for the epodes).…”