Tyro

This is a pretty long marginal comment, if you suggest that it is such a thing, and it's written in Tacitean Latin.

spin

Yup, certainly is, but have a look at the side and bottom margins of the manuscript.

What's Tacitean Latin other than vaguely classical Latin here? Does the particular Latin allow one to say whether it was written in the fourth century rather than early second?

I don't know if it was just creeping marginalia, or whether it was a deliberate insertion, but the manuscript tradition we have for Tacitus starts a millennium after he wrote. There is a lot of time for transmission hiccups.


spin

Tyro

What about Sulpicius Severus? Mustn't he have read the passage?

spin

Cuts both ways. If a commentator wrote the passage after the time of S.Severus, then he probably absorbed S.S.


spin

Roger Pearse

The same applies to nearly all the classics, tho. So we have to ask what, if anything, this means. Unfortunately the argument is rarely made explicitly; the reader is left to suppose that manuscript traditions are normally much better than this -- which is not true; that Tacitus is uniquely unfortunate -- which is not true; that unless an ancient manuscript exists then we can't really say what the author wrote -- which is not true and leads the reader straight into obscurantism; and that unless we have an autograph or a copy not far removed (the exact criteria are left vague, tellingly), then we may legitimately assert that any passage we find inconvenient is an interpolation -- which isn't true either.

In the 19th century we saw too much of people who wished to claim that the one passage in some author that is inconvenient to them must be an interpolation, while others, equally well attested in the manuscript tradition, were silently accepted. Rarely did this produce anything but an indication as to the religious or political views of those doing it.

These kinds of arguments must be avoided. There are certainly ways in which ancient literary texts acquire additional material down the centuries, but I really feel that we do not need people finding excuses to ignore evidence in this way.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Few marginal comments are of anything like this length. But it can happen. However the idea that this passage is an interpolation is not academically respectable.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Viklund

Although I do agree with the things you wrote in your previous post, whether it is “academically respectable” or not, is irrelevant.

Roger Viklund

spin

Whatever it means, it means it in a context, which you should not ignore.

I'm sorry, Roger, but you haven't shown any expertise in the matter to be in the position make such remarks with any conviction. All you've done is waved your hands and rehearsed your usual background noise.

While the hegemon controls the means of expression, one can't be sure that any pro-hegemonic statements are independent. You persistently try to ignore this.

Again, sorry Roger, you haven't considered the proposition, shown no desire to do so, and for that matter no ability to do so. Perhaps, if you got some exercise, you might find out how to sound more meaningful. Try to respond to the criticism of this martyr story in A.15.44, rather than avoid it.


spin

Roger Pearse

Actually if I was engaged in looking at something outside my speciality and people were writing in a knowing way about it, I would want to know that they were in fact advocating as reasonable something that no professional agrees with. Wouldn't you?

Otherwise it merely depends how much of our time we want to spend reasoning with the ignorant and obtuse. I never feel a strong urge to try to prove what no educated person doubts, and what those who question it can offer no evidence for beyond reiteration. Others may feel differently, of course; but I find such people actually rather thin on the ground.

Not that this means that we should not investigate things for ourselves, rather than rely on authority. But let's have those who make fringe claims acknowledge that this is what they are doing. Too many of them like to hide behind a pretence of scholarship (I think of Freke and Gandy here, for instance), designed to influence the unwary.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

It would be best to work out what you mean before you say it, surely?

It is difficult to relate any of this to what I wrote, however.

All the best,

Roger Pearse