OF POETRY AND FINE ART WITH A CRITICAL TEXT AND TRANSLATION OF THE POETICS BY S. H. BUTCHER PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH; FORMERLY FELLOW OF SECOND EDITION London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1898 All rights reserved PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION THE present volume has grown out of certain chapters relating to the Poetics in the first edition of 'Some Aspects of the Greek Genius.' These chapters have been enlarged, and partly re-written ; and further questions, not touched on in the earlier volume, and bearing on Aristotle's theory of tragedy, are here discussed. A text and a translation of the Poetics are prefixed to the Essays. It is just a hundred years since a critical text of the Poetics has been published in Great Britain. Tyrwhitt's edition, which appeared at Oxford in 1794, was, indeed, the work of an admirable scholar; but since that time much light has been thrown on almost every page of this treatise. yet even to-day, after all the labours of German scholars, no editor can hope to produce a text which will not provoke dissent on the part of competent critics. And For my own part, I find myself more frequently in agreement with William Christ on questions of reading, than with any previous editor. Susemihl, to whom every student of Aristotle is profoundly indebted, appears to me to carry conjecture too far, more especially in the transposition of sentences and the omission of words. On the other hand, Vahlen's adherence to the Parisian MS. (A) borders on superstition,-if one may dare so to speak of the critic who in a preeminent degree has contributed to the elucidation of the Poetics. The superiority of the Parisian over all other extant MSS. is beyond dispute; still I cannot share the confidence with which the best editors now speak of it as the sole source from which the rest are derived. It is true there are no decisive passages by which the independent value of these latter can be established. But that some of them have an independent worth is rendered highly probable by two considerations. First, by the appearance in them of words which are omitted in Ao, but are necessary to complete the sense. The missing words are not unfrequently such as a copyist could hardly have supplied. Secondly, by the number of instances in which the true reading is hopelessly obscured in A, but preserved in some of the so-called 'apographa.' No ordinary scribe could have hit on such happy corrections. While doubting, however, whether A is indeed the archetype of all extant MSS., I have, for the sake of convenience, retained in the critical notes the usual abbreviation 'apogr.,' to denote any MS. or MSS. other than Ao. (οὕτω The conjectures of my own which are admitted into the text are few in number. They will be found in iii. 3. 1448 a 33, xix. 3. 1456 b 8, xxiii. 1. 1459 a 17, xxiv. 10. 1460 a 35, xxv. 4. 1460 b 17, xxv. 14. 1461 a 28, xxv. 16. 1461 a 35.1 The emendation in xxiii. 1, ἑνὶ μέτρῳ μιμητικῆς for ἐν μέτρῳ μiμntikîs will, I hope, appear as plausible to others as it is convincing to myself. In ix. 5 (ouтw Tà TUXóνTa óvóμaтa), though I have not altered the traditional reading, yet for reasons stated in note 2, p. 349, I suspect we ought to read où тà TUXÓVтa ovóμata, and I venture to press this suggestion. In a certain number of passages I have bracketed words, hitherto retained by the editors, which I take to be glosses that have crept into the text. The passages are these-iii. 1. 1448 a 23, vi. 18. 1450 b 13, xvii. 1. 1455 a 27, xvii. 5. 1455 b 22.2 But the detailed treatment of these and other questions of criticism and interpretation must be reserved for the more fitting pages of a commentary. Fortunately, the general views of Aristotle on Poetry and Art are not affected by the minor 1 Of these the conj. in iii. 3 is withdrawn in Ed. 2; that in xxv. 14 gives place to <oiovoûv> (Tucker). 2 In vi. 18 I read in Ed. 2 Tŵv λeyoμévwv (Gomperz) instead οἱ [τῶν μὲν λόγων], and in xvii. 5 τίς αὐτὸς (Bywater) for [τινὰς αὐτὸς]. |