texts, transmission of ancient 1. In Greece the first literature, Homeric epic, was composed and handed down orally (see HOMER). According to tradition it was the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus in the middle of the sixth century BC who first ordered an official text of Homer to be written down, and one may guess that the lyric poetry of Archilochus, Alcaeus, and Sappho circulated in written form also. Certainly from the late seventh century onwards the new prose works, which could not have been as easily memorized as poetry, could hardly have survived by oral transmission and must have been written down. Books were not common until well into the fifth century BC, but soon after the middle of that century some sort of book-trade developed, which made it possible for individuals to collect books and form libraries (for books at this time see BOOKS AND WRITING
Aristotle's arrangement of the library at the Lyceum served as a model for the library at Alexandria set up in the third century BC (see ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY); to the editorial labours of the Alexandrian librarians and scholars, in particular to Callimachus, Zenodotus, Eratosthenēs, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus, we owe the texts of classical Greek literature that we still possess today, and some of the ancient notes (scholia) which have come down with them. The manuscripts which reached Alexandria had been copied with varying degrees of care, and most contained numerous mistakes and deviations (‘corruptions’) from what the authors had written. The scholars' task was to restore the original texts, as far as was possible, to classify them according to type (in lyric poetry, for example, there were many different kinds), and also to write commentaries explaining their linguistic, literary, and antiquarian aspects. Restoring the original posed problems of convention; spelling in early texts differed according to the version of the Greek alphabet used in the author's own city, and these texts had to be transliterated into the Ionic alphabet which was in general use in Greece after 403 BC (see ALPHABET). Some obviously wrong readings found in manuscripts of the Middle Ages go back to errors in transliteration made in the third century BC.
Another problem presented by the manuscripts was that of simple interpretation. Texts were written without word division and continued to be so written long after the Hellenistic age; it was not until the Middle Ages that there was consistent separation of words. Accents, a Hellenistic invention, were likewise not used consistently until the Middle Ages. Punctuation was rudimentary and used sporadically; in the texts of plays a change of speaker was indicated by a horizontal stroke at the beginning of a line or by a colon, with inevitable inaccuracy. Lyric poetry was written in continuous lines as if it was prose; Aristophanes of Byzantium was credited with establishing the colometry of lyric (i.e. of distinguishing the individual metric units or cola), a discovery which enabled it to be written in lines like modern poetry.
The scholars at Alexandria aimed to collect copies of all the known literature of ancient Greece. Out of all known literature they drew up lists of the best authors in each genre (see CANONS), thus facilitating the survival of their works at the expense, it would appear, of the works of lesser authors. The critical signs written in the margins by Alexandrian scholars are in some cases still in use today. Lines thought to be spurious were ‘obelized’, that is, a horizontal stroke, obelos, was placed beside the line in the left-hand margin; the diplē > indicated that something in the line was notable; the asteriskos
marked a line incorrectly repeated in another place; the sigma and antisigma (⊂ and ⊃) marking two consecutive lines showed that they might be interchanged. Thus there gradually developed the business of scholarship and in particular of textual criticism and the standardization of texts. For the scholars the priority in textual criticism had been to detect and remove interpolations, i.e. inauthentic additions; and then to a lesser degree, and with increasing caution as knowledge increased, to replace what they thought to be errors with what they conjectured to be the right readings. Their practice was continued by their successors (see DIDYMUS).
2. In the ensuing Roman age, Greek was a foreign language to many readers of Greek texts and in consequence the demand was not so much for textual and literary criticism as for popular annotated editions, grammars, and commentaries published separately from the text. These preserved the best of Alexandrian scholarship. From the second century AD scholarship declined with the disappearance of readers interested in or capable of understanding the classical Greek authors, although there still were scholars engaged in preserving and continuing the tradition of Alexandrian research: in grammar, Apollonius Dyscolus and Herodian, in metric Hephaestion, in the compilation of lexicons Harpocration and Hesychius. But interest in the old authors was limited, and selections and anthologies, e.g. that of Stobaeus, came to be preferred to the complete work of a poet.
The revival of interest in classical Attic Greek in the second century AD (see SOPHISTIC, SECOND), combined with the emphasis on rhetoric in education, ensured the survival of the admired models, Plato, Xenophon, and Demosthenes, and in verse the popular plays of the tragedians and of Aristophanes. A factor which led to losses at this time, however, was the change in the form of books from the papyrus roll to the parchment codex with leaves as in the modern book (see BOOKS AND WRITING
Classical literature was the basis of the whole educational system for Christian and pagan alike, since there were no alternative Christian texts. However, most Christians had no further interest in reading pagan literature once their education was over. Hence there was less incentive in a Christian society to copy texts apart from those which appeared on the school curriculum, and not enough, it would appear, to ensure their survival through the wars and destructions of the fourth and subsequent centuries. But although the Roman and early Byzantine periods were a time of loss, it is clear from a comparison of later manuscripts with early papyri, some of the latter not much later than the Alexandrian scholars themselves, that there was no appreciable corruption during this time and that the quality of surviving texts was hardly impaired.
3. By the end of the sixth century a serious decline in learning and literacy had begun in the eastern empire, and for three centuries there is little recorded about classical studies. After the eighth century, the darkest time of this Dark Age of Greek literature, came a period of peace and a revival in the ninth century associated with the names of Photius and Arethas, who sought out surviving classical books. At the same time there were two important changes in manuscripts, one of material and one of handwriting. First, papyrus became scarce, particularly after the Arab conquest of Egypt (AD 639–42), and was replaced by parchment (made from animal skins) and later by paper (this was not common in the West before about the 13th century, but it was used earlier in Byzantium). Secondly, the old hand, uncial, was replaced by minuscule, which could be written rapidly in half the space (see BOOKS AND WRITING
After the losses of the ninth and tenth centuries, the survival of most of what was left of the Greek classics was virtually certain. The literary texts were copied regularly and so too were those of the medical and mathematical writers. Nevertheless, losses still occurred; the libraries of Constantinople must have suffered severely when the city was sacked by the Franks in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. However, serious though this was it did not for long disrupt the progress of learning. It was followed by a flowering of Greek scholarship from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, when much consolidation of learning took place and resulted in careful editions of the surviving texts.
This period of scholarship is associated particularly with the names of Planudes and Triclinius. The latter sought out manuscripts and was often rewarded by the discovery of different readings, which we now have only in his marginal notes; thus his own manuscripts of an author (or copies of them), although relatively late (fourteenth century), are often no less valuable witnesses to a text than the earliest surviving manuscript perhaps 500 years older. The phrase ‘merely late, not worse’ (recentiores non deteriores), has been used by a modern scholar to describe manuscripts of this kind. Triclinius' searches had a particularly fortunate outcome in the discovery of a hitherto virtually unknown text of nine plays by Euripides, not selected for reading in schools like the other surviving plays but preserved by chance. When Byzantium fell to the Turks in 1453 the only ancient Greek text known to have been lost as a result was a complete copy of the World History by Diodorus Siculus. Even before the flight of Byzantine scholars to the West, the Italian humanists had been collecting Greek manuscripts from the Byzantine empire in large numbers. By the time Byzantium fell the survival of Greek literature in the West was assured.
4. Latin literature began in the third century BC and by the middle of the following century a considerable body of texts was in existence, of poetry, plays, and prose. However, although books must have circulated by that time, very little is known about the way in which texts, presumably written on papyrus rolls as in Greece, were copied and published. The epics of Naevius and Ennius were in a sense a national possession and received some scholarly attention; but dramatic texts, for example, being distributed as acting copies, suffered many alterations and recastings (Plautus' Poenulus and Terence's Andria both have two different endings preserved in the manuscripts). The influence of Crates (4), a Pergamene grammarian who visited Rome c.168 BC, and scholarship of the Alexandrian school (see HELLENISTIC AGE), gave rise to a desire for authentic texts, and a succession of scholars using the methods of the Alexandrians worked to this end down to the time of the emperor Augustus. (See, for example, the research on Plautus done by Varro.) On the other hand a revival of interest in the old authors such as Plautus during the early first century BC had a contrary effect. There was a demand for more easily intelligible texts than the original versions with their archaic, obscure, and often recherché vocabulary. Thus popular texts of these authors with considerable variety of readings circulated by the side of the authentic texts. This process was extended to later writers who were more widely read, such as Virgil, and systematic revision of the texts in circulation became necessary; this was carried out with sound scholarship on the basis of the best manuscripts available, at least during the first three centuries AD. Asconius did important work on Cicero, Virgil, and Sallust, but the outstanding scholar of the later part of the first century AD was M. Valerius Probus.
In the second century AD there was again a revival of interest in early Roman writers, and it is to this revival that we owe most of our knowledge of Ennius and Cato who, though not surviving in manuscript, are quoted and referred to by compilers of excerpts (such as Aulus Gellius). During the third and fourth centuries many Latin texts were epitomized, continuing and increasing a tendency that had been apparent in the first century AD when Livy was so treated. This was the great age of commentators, among whom were Donatus and Servius. The last pagan revival came at the end of the fourth century, in the face of the triumph of Christianity during the reign of the pious Theodosius (378–95), attested by, among other things, the ‘subscriptions’ or notes written at the end of a text by whoever originally checked and corrected it, which gave details about when the manuscript was copied and by whom. This subscription was often copied verbatim from manuscript to manuscript, and is valuable as evidence of pedigree. In general, Latin-speaking Christians like their Greek counterparts accepted that the pagan Latin texts were still essential for education and could be used, but with caution. The old Roman educational system prevailed until it came to be replaced much later by that of monastic and episcopal schools.
5. The destructions of the fourth and fifth centuries were exceeded by those of the sixth century and by the final collapse of the western Roman empire under the waves of barbarian invaders (see FALL OF ROME). The cultivated world narrowed with the fall of North Africa to the Vandals; Spain, which survived the Frankish invasions of the third century and the Visigothic in the fifth (even transmitting a residuum of Roman culture through Isidore, bishop of Seville), succumbed early in the eighth century to the Arabs; and Gaul under the Franks was not in a position to preserve classical learning. Nevertheless, books continued to be produced in the fourth and fifth centuries, including luxury copies of Virgil. Although the Latin Church was predominantly hostile to pagan literature, yet pagan Latin texts were included by this time in the important collections of books being made at the ecclesiastical centres of Rome, Ravenna, and Verona. At the beginning of the sixth century it was still possible to obtain copies of most of the important Latin classical and post-classical authors except for the very early literature which had disappeared in the course of the previous centuries. (For the copying of books in a sixth-century monastic library see CASSIODORUS).
The period from the mid-sixth to the mid-eighth centuries, a dark age in the Latin West as in the Greek East, brought about a steep decline of interest in classical literature, texts of which seem scarcely to have been copied at all, while a large number of biblical and patristic works was produced. Many Latin works perished when old parchments had their original text removed by washing and were then reused for religious texts (reused manuscripts are called palimpsests), less from hostility than from complete lack of interest in the classics. The surviving part of Cicero's De republica is known only from what has been recovered from underneath the commentary of St Augustine on the Psalms.
But at the same time, from the late sixth century onwards, classical literature was being saved and propagated by missionaries from Ireland; impelled by a zeal for books and learning they spread across Europe founding monasteries to which they passed on their own enthusiasm, e.g. at Luxeuil in Burgundy, Bobbio in northern Italy, and St Gall in Switzerland, and creating a need for books of all kinds. It was the importation of books into England in great quantity which enabled the biblical scholar and historian Bede (673–735), who had never left Northumbria, to acquire his vast learning. Anglo-Saxons in turn became missionaries and scholars. A special variety of Latin handwriting, known as ‘insular’, is associated with the early scholarship of the British Isles.
At the end of the eighth century came the new interest in learning that was crucial for the preservation of Latin literature, the Carolingian revival, brought about in Charlemagne's reconstituted Roman empire of western Europe, and centred on the monasteries. Of this revival, Alcuin, the perfect exemplar of Anglo-Latin culture, was the chief promoter. Alcuin (735–804), who had been born and educated at York, made the acquaintance of Charlemagne at Parma in 781 and was placed by him at the head of a school attached to his court, where he followed the programme of Cassiodorus in teaching the seven liberal arts. Later he became Abbot of St Martin's at Tours, where he remained until his death. Among much else he taught his monks to copy manuscripts, and as a result France contributed greatly to the transmission of texts in the ninth and tenth centuries (see BOOKS AND WRITING
6. By the end of the ninth century the survival of a large number of Latin works was secured by their being part of the educational curriculum or established as works of literature; but there were others which were rarely studied, and some which were represented, as far as can be seen, by one copy only. In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries there was suddenly a renewed interest in the classics, and books on the verge of extinction began to be copied. Because of this we still possess the texts of Varro's De lingua Latina and Frontinus' De aquis. During the twelfth century generally the more active intellectual life was no longer being pursued in the monasteries but in the cathedral schools. Although education continued to be based on Latin literature it was becoming more secular, catering for the needs of those who wanted to study law, medicine, and logic, while at the same time there was now a leisured class who wanted from literature a reflection of its own life and desires. It is therefore a matter of regret that when for the first time for many centuries love poetry and satire were in demand for their own sakes, the age was without the poetry of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, who had not yet been rediscovered. As far as classical literature is concerned it was an age of consolidation; its two outstanding scholars were the historian William (librarian) of Malmesbury (d. 1143), and John of Salisbury (c.1110–80).
7. The teaching of the seven liberal arts, under the influence of Alcuin, did much to prepare the way in the eleventh century for the application of philosophical method to the study of theology, an educational pattern which became known as scholasticism. To the scholastics, classical literature was no longer important for its form or style or for other literary reasons, but for its material content, information, or moral anecdote. These aspects could be more readily absorbed in excerpts than by reading complete texts. Ovid and Seneca, who can be easily appreciated in selections, became very popular; Virgil, who could not, languished. But perhaps the most significant aspect of scholasticism for classical literature in the long run was the importance acquired by Aristotle, even if only for his works on logic, and the resulting revival of interest in Greek. Until the end of the twelfth century Aristotle was known in the West only in the Latin translations of, and commentaries on, a few of his logical works, by Boethius and others (see ARISTOTLE
8. Stimulated by the general revival of intellectual interests characteristic of the Renaissance, Italians of the fourteenth century began to demand more and better texts. But manuscripts were scarce and copyists not very efficient; there was a need for scholarship to match enthusiasm. The combination was found above all in Petrarch (1304–74) and (with more enthusiasm than scholarship) Boccaccio (1313–75). Petrarch's greatest reverence was for Cicero, for whose works he searched throughout Europe; by the end of his life he had collected almost all Cicero's philosophical and rhetorical works and a wide range of speeches, but was most moved by his discovery (which others had made before) of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, to his brother Quintus, and to Brutus. His attempts to learn Greek (from the monk Barlaam) were not successful, but his earnest desire to understand the Greek background to Roman literature moved others to achieve this end. To Boccaccio's enthusiasm for collecting classical books we probably owe the rediscovery of, among others, Martial, Ausonius, Ovid's Ibis, parts of the Appendix Virgiliana and the Priapea. He played some part in propagating the texts of Tacitus, Apuleius, and Varro, which only the library at Monte Cassino possessed. Petrarch and Boccaccio both persuaded Barlaam's pupil Leonzio Pilato to translate Homer into Latin and to teach Greek at Florence. Discoveries continued until well into the fifteenth century and beyond: the unique source of the Younger Pliny's letters to Trajan (book 10) was found in Paris in 1500, and the only manuscript of Tacitus Annals I–VI at Corvey in 1508.
The declining fortunes of the Byzantine empire in the East led to many Greek-speakers moving into Italy even before the exodus which followed the fall of Byzantium in 1453. Spurred on by their new knowledge of Greek, the Italians were keen to collect Greek manuscripts, which included, of course, as well as classical literature the Greek New Testament. Access to the Greek text of this led Bessarion at least to anticipate the attitude of Erasmus, that the proper basis for the interpretation of the New Testament was the Greek text and not the Latin Vulgate of Jerome, and so there were new beginnings in theology also. The latter part of the fifteenth century saw the arrival of the printing press, and a new step was taken in the preservation of the classics, notably by the Venetian editor and printer Aldus Manutius (1449–1515), whose books were distinguished by accuracy as well as by the beauty of the typography. He was the first printer to produce small books that were convenient for the student to carry around with him. See also PAPYROLOGY and TEXTUAL CRITICISM below.
