Roger Pearse

I've spent some time today typing up details of the extant manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus. I thought perhaps it might be of interest to some people to see on what we base the modern editions of an ancient Greek text of non-trivial size.

The notes are here.

Only 15 of the 40 books now survive. Infuriatingly, a complete copy was seen in the imperial palace at Constantinople prior to 1453 by an Italian humanist, so the rest must have been lost only then.

The same edition from which I took these details also mentioned the quotations of Diodorus in Eusebius' Chronicle, which include portions of books 1 and 2 (which are extant complete) and book 7 (which is one of the lost books).

"The quotations [from Diodorus] from the Chronicle are very literal. They sometimes differ from the Greek vulgate in the numerals, although we can't be sure whether those in Eusebius, which might also have been changed, are better than those in the manuscripts of Diodorus."

There are also quotations in the Praeparatio Evangelica, from books 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 (lost) and 20.

"...the quotations of Eusebius are of two sorts. Sometimes he quotes a passage in extenso and in a quasi literal fashion, sometimes he abridges his model in making numerous excisions. But there is more: in the second case, the text appears sensibly altered. One can easily verify this by examining the variants of a short extract that Eusebius quotes using both methods: I.13.1-2 = PE III.3.10 (literal) and II.1.2-3 (abridged)."

All the best,

Roger Pearse

PhilosopherJay

Hi Roger,

Great stuff, thanks.

I think it is really important to understand Eusebius' precise methodology in dealing with quotations.

Why do you think Eusebius does this in the passages you cite?

Sincerely,

Philosopher Jay

Riverwind

Thanks, Roger. Always building those resources. Wish I were so industrious.

Roger Pearse

You're welcome!

I think that some study of how Eusebius quotes extant texts would be useful. He is a pioneer, of course, in this; allusion rather than quotation is the norm.

I haven't looked at the passages above myself. However I do recall that in the HE he quotes the same passage of Clement of Alexandria twice; once in an abbreviated form, then a book or so later in full.

Why does he do so? Well, who today can know? However if you quote excerpts you have to provide bridging material a lot of the time, if you quote brief bits from memory you may misremember, and so on. Eusebius stands at the damn of verbatim quotation of evidence, and he doesn't have quotation marks to use, or any predecessor in the modern way of quoting -- he is the originator of that approach -- so it's a bit halfway between the literary allusion of classical writers and the carefully delimited quote of our own times. Perhaps.

I believe that the Lawlor translation comments that sometimes his quotations do not fit the context of his comments about them, suggesting that they were done by a secretary. I'm not sure on what that rests.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Glad to help! But I wanted to know about Diodorus myself, and, having obtained the materials, thought that I should put them where I can consult them again.

Roger Pearse