Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
things in common across all the issues, while others are special to
individual issues. But can ... really be translated
'sont des noncs appliqus communment'? The more common approach
gives the section a continuity lost if P.'s proposal is adopted: some have
found topics that are common across all the issues, others ones that are
special to individual issues; but Aristotle found both common and special
topics.
P. would not be worried by this rupture of the 'some-others-Aristotle'
sequence. If the sequence is maintained, then Neocles is the source for
the Aristotle citation as well as the initial 'some-others' contrast. If the
sequence is broken, it becomes possible to suppose that the reference to
Aristotle was inserted by AS himself. And that is what P. suggests (xxviixxviii). He speaks of AS having undertaken 'une vaste enqute chez les
thoriciens anterieurs', and adds: 'Aristote en particulier a t lu pour
cette occasion' (lxxxix). Yet AS's knowledge of Theodorus and Apollodorus
appears to be mediated by Alexander, and I have little doubt that his
knowledge of older tradition was also indirect. At AS 207-8 the cluster of
references to Plato, Chrysippus and Aristotle is suggestive of a
doxographic source; Neocles refers to the Stoics at AC 181; and the
reference to Aristotle at AC 191 surely derives from Alexander.
P.'s willingness to credit AS with direct use of Aristotle is characteristic of
his distinctively high estimation of the author, to whom he attributes
about 57% of the text (the passages attributed to AS are listed -- and
miscounted -- on p. xxx). On P.'s view, the author moves fluidly between
reporting the views of named authorities and providing his own summary
of common doctrine. By contrast, Dilts and Kennedy see him as a pure
compiler who 'never advances an opinion of his own' (xi). I am not
unsympathetic to P.'s position in principle: it is too easy to think of the
composition of technical works as a process of mindless compilation from
sources. Yet AS is overtly compilatory in its approach, and the absence of
a name does not prove the absence of a source: the unattributed
definition of at AS 6 is the same as that at AS 223, where the
source (Neocles) is named. Further, the author's helpful habit of refreshing
the introductory identification of a source by name with the occasional
parenthetic 'he says' sometimes leaves orphans when the introductory
naming has been lost in the abridgement. P. convincingly argues that 'he'
in AS 142 is a case in point: the source has switched unannounced to
Harpocration at AS 138. Yet at AS 89 and 94 he emends to ,
allowing him to attribute the whole of the long, carefully structured
exposition of the three virtues of narrative in AS 63-98 to the compiler
himself. Certainly this tightly integrated section should not be divided
between different sources, as it is by Dilts and Kennedy. But I see no
reason to doubt that AS is dependent here on one of his regular sources. I
think the indirect tradition supports an attribution to Alexander son of
Numenius, and provides evidence of Alexander's debt to Dionysius of
Halicarnassus; but that, too, goes beyond the scope of this review.
Though P. does a service in making the additional material from AC
available, his treatment of the rest of the indirect tradition is less
satisfactory. He overlooks a scholion to Demosthenes (sch. Dem. 20.5 (20
Dilts)) which provides a plausible variant at AC 197. I suggested
earlier that he fails to appreciate a variant at RG 4.428.27; in my view,
there is a strong probability that the unabridged AS was available to the
compiler of this section of the scholia to Hermogenes (misattributed to
Marcellinus by P., who has overlooked Rabe's corrections to Walz).6
Graeven's attempts to identify traces of the unabridged AS are sometimes
misconceived; but some have more to say on their behalf than P.
acknowledges. And there may be instances that even Graeven missed: I
have begun to wonder whether the definitions of invention in John of
Sardis's prolegomena (PS 357.21-358.5, immediately before his rendition
of AS 1) might not derive from AS. But that, yet again, goes beyond the
scope of this review.
I began describing Patillon's edition as the default choice for serious study
of AS. The doubts and disagreements I have expressed here are not
intended to cast doubt on that judgement. No edition of a technical
compilation preserved in an abridged form in a single manuscript can
hope to answer all the questions conclusively. The relevant criterion is the
extent to which it enables discussion to move to a new level. Patillon
amply satisfies this criterion. It is precisely because his work puts me in a
stronger position to engage with this text and pose questions about it than
ever before that I have been able to reach conclusions that sometimes go
beyond and sometimes diverge from his. Not for the first time, I have
come away from one of Patillon's editions immensely stimulated and with
a profound sense of admiration and gratitude.
Notes:
1. The stimulus which this edition gave to my own study of the treatise
quickly overflowed the limits of a review. An expanded version, more fully
annotated and illustrated, and pursuing in greater depth a number of
issues that I only allude to here, can be found in 'Notes on the Anonymous
Seguerianus', LICS Discussion Paper 2 (2005).
2. Theon (1997, with G. Bolognesi); [Apsines] (2001); Longinus and Rufus
(2001, with L. Brisson); [Aristides] (2002). An edition of [Hermogenes] On
Invention is promised.
3. J. Graeven, Cornuti artis rhetoricae epitome (Berlin 1891).
4. M.R. Dilts and G.A. Kennedy (ed.), Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from
the Roman Empire: introduction, text, and translation of the Arts of
Rhetoric, attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara
(Leiden 1997). P. refers to another recent edition, which I have not seen: