When the discrepancies of manuscripts of an author are such as materially to affect the sense of a passage in itself important, so as to demand the exercise of discrimination on the part of the student of history, it becomes necessary to understand, and to bear in mind, what were probably the most common sources of such diversities. The following may be named as the most common causes of the various readings which are met with in comparing several copies of the same ancient author.
1. Nothing can be more probable than that authors who long survived the first publication of their works, should, from time to time, issue revised copies of them; and each of these altered copies would, if the work were in continual request, and were widely diffused, become the parent, as we may say, of a family of copies. Thus it would be that, without any fault on the part of the transcribers, a considerable amount of such diversities would be originated, and perpetuated. A large proportion, perhaps, of those variations which occupy the diligence and acumen of editors and critics, and for the rectification of which so many learned conjectures are often hazarded, have, in fact, arisen from the author’s own hand in revising the copies which, at intervals, he delivered to his amanuenses. The perpetual opportunity afforded for introducing corrections, when a book was continually in request, would not fail to encourage, in fastidious authors, the habit of frequent revision: meantime transcribers, in distant countries, might have no opportunity to collate the earlier with the later exemplars. This source of various readings seems to have been too little adverted to by critics; though it might serve to solve some perplexing questions relative to the genuineness of particular expressions or sentences, which have fallen under suspicion from their non-existence in certain manuscripts.
2. Some errors would, of course, arise from the mere inattention, carelessness, or the ignorance of transcribers; and yet fewer, probably, than may at first be imagined; for besides that those who spent their lives in this occupation would generally acquire a high degree of technical accuracy of eye, ear, and hand, and that correctness and legibility must have been the qualities upon which, principally, the marketable value of books depended; it is known that in the monasteries, from whence the greater part of all existing manuscripts proceeded, there were persons, qualified by their superior learning for the task, whose office it was to revise every book that issued from the Scriptorium. Errors of inadvertency must, nevertheless, have occurred. If the author to be transcribed was read by one person, while several wrote from his voice, the process would be open, not only to the mistakes of the reader’s eye, and to those of the writer’s hand; but especially to those of the writer’s ear; for words, similar in sound, might often be substituted, one for the other. Instances of this sort are of frequent occurrence, and the knowledge of the probable cause often serves to suggest the proper correction. If the writer read for himself, he would be liable to mistake letters of similar shape—to mistake the sense by a wrong division of words in his manner of reading, in consequence of which he might involuntarily accommodate the orthography or the syntax to the supposed sense. The frequent use of contractions in writing was a very common source of errors; for many of these abbreviations were extremely complicated, obscure, and ambiguous, so that an unskilful copyist was very likely to mistake one word for another. No parts of ancient books have suffered so much from errors of inadvertency as those which relate to numbers; for as one numeral letter was easily mistaken for another, and as neither the sense of the passage, nor the rules of orthography, nor of syntax, suggested the genuine reading, when once an error had arisen, it would most often be perpetuated, without remedy. It is, therefore, almost always unsafe to rest the stress of an argument upon any statement of numbers in ancient writers, unless some correlative computation confirms the reading of the text. Hence nothing can be more frivolous or unfair than to raise an objection against the veracity or accuracy of an historian, upon some apparent incompatibility in his statement of numbers. Difficulties of this sort it is much better to attribute, at once, to a corruption of the text, than to discuss them with ill-spent assiduity.
3. The assumption of short marginal notes into the text, appears to have been a frequent source of various readings. When such notes supplied ellipses in the author’s language, or when they conduced much to the perspicuity of an obscure passage, the copyist would be very likely to incorporate the exegetical phrase, rather than that it should either be lost to the reader, or should deform the margin.
4. Transcribers frequently thought themselves free to substitute modern for obsolete words or phrases; and sometimes they consulted the wishes of their customers, by exchanging the forms of one dialect (of the Greek) for those of another; or, more often, for the common forms of the language. Alterations of this kind have often been the occasion of bringing authentic works under needless suspicion; for when the text has contained words or phrases which are known to belong to a later age than that of the supposed author, such incongruities have seemed to afford proofs of spuriousness.
5. Intentional omissions, interpolations, or alterations, were unquestionably sometimes ventured on by transcribers. But so many are the means we possess for detecting any such wilful corruptions—drawn from a comparison of different manuscripts, or from the incongruity of the interpolated passage, that there is perhaps, altogether, more probability that, from some accidental peculiarity of style, genuine passages of ancient authors should fall under suspicion, than that any actually spurious portions should entirely escape suspicion and detection.
Of the above-mentioned sources of the various readings found in the text of ancient authors, it should be remembered that the operation of the first was confined to the short term of the author’s life; nor indeed, whatever may be the amount or importance of variations arising from this source, must they go to swell the number of corruptions of the text. The second source of variations was indeed open during the lapse of many centuries; yet it has always been held in check by the diligent collation of copies, on the part of industrious critics, from age to age: and a large proportion of errors, arising from mere inadvertency, are either so palpable as to suggest the means of their own correction; or they are so trivial as to merit no attention, except from those who charge themselves with the responsibilities of an editor. There is, besides, reason to believe that not a few existing copies of the most celebrated authors, present a text that has passed through the process of transcription not oftener than once or twice; and that each time the copy has been executed with scrupulous exactness. Variations arising from the third and fourth sources, have perhaps occasioned to critics and editors more perplexity than those springing from any other cause; and yet these differences are rarely of any moment, so far as the sense of the author is concerned: they can be deemed important only when they tend to perplex the question of the date or the genuineness of a book. Corruptions of the fifth class must be acknowledged materially to affect the credit and value of ancient literature, so far as there can be any reason to suspect their existence; and every diligent student of history will think the investigation of cases of this kind deserving of his utmost attention.
CHAPTER III.
THE DATE OF ANCIENT WORKS, INFERRED FROM THE QUOTATIONS AND REFERENCES OF CONTEMPORARY AND SUCCEEDING WRITERS.
Let us now suppose, that the Greek and Latin authors are extant only in the printed editions—that is to say, that every one of the ancient manuscripts has long since perished, and that the facts that have been referred to in the preceding pages are out of our view, or unknown. Our business then would be, to collect from these works such a series of mutual references, as should both prove the identity of the works now extant with those so referred to; and also fix the relative places of the several writers in point of time.
A single reference, found in one author, to the works of another, who, in his turn, needs the same kind of authentication, may seem to be a fallacious, or insufficient, and obscure kind of proof; for this reference or this quotation may possibly be an interpolation; or the reference may be of too slight or indefinite a kind to make it certain, that the work now extant is the same as that so referred to. In truth, the validity of this kind of proof arises from its amount, from its multifariousness, and from its incidental character. For although a single and solitary testimony may be inconclusive, many hundred independent testimonies, all bearing upon the same point, are much more than sufficient to remove every shadow of doubt; some of these references may be slight and indefinite, but others are full, particular, and complete. If some are formal and direct, and such therefore as might be supposed to have been inserted with a fraudulent design, others are altogether circuitous and purely incidental. If some have descended to us through the same channels, others are derived from sources as far removed as can be imagined from the possibility of collusion.