Photius on the Transmission of Texts ("Bibliotheca", Codex 187) Treadgold, Warren T Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Jan 1, 1978; 19, 2; ProQuest pg. 171 Photius on the Transmission of Texts (Bibliotheca, Codex 187) Warren T. Treadgold I N CODEX 187 of his Bibliotheca, photius (ca A.D. 810-after 892) reviews a peculiar book that was rare in his time and is lost altogether in ours. He begins, "Nicomachus of Gerasa's two books of Arith­ metical Theology were read. This certainly is a title suited to astonish and to excite a keen desire, but the treatise-not to call it a work of computations that are based on air and are a waste of time-falls far short of its title."! In this book, the mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa (ca 120-196) studiously identified the numbers from one to ten with various pagan gods and goddesses, a pursuit that Photius con­ demns as paganism and silliness.2 Photius does see some value in the book, however, because it presupposed an acquaintance with the subtleties of geometry, arithmetic and astronomy, and even with music and musical instruments.3 After summarizing and disparaging Nicomachus' work in some four pages, Photius adds a few remarks, addressed, like the whole of the Bibliotheca, to his brother Tarasius, on the rarity of the Arithmetical Theology. These are unique in the Biblio­ theca in that they say something about the scholarly community of photius' time. The passage is written in untidy and difficult Greek, considerably harder than photius' standard, and its difficulty has evidently led to some corruption in our text. I propose modifying in four places the text of the most recent edition of the Bibliotheca by Rene Henry (Photius III, Bude, Paris 1962) and revising his translation. Since I have been able to check Henry's collation of the two primary manuscripts 1 }tveyvwc871 NLKofLaxov r"pac71vov apL8fL71TLKiiJV 8"OAOYOVfL£VWV {3L{3>.la {3'. 'H fLtv oov £7TLypac/J~ oihw 8avfLacaL Kat 8PLfLvv €pWTa KwijcaL ag la, & St 7T()VOC, iva fL~ Myw AOYLCfLWv KfivfifL{1aTOVVT1jc SLfiPPLfL£VOC. Phot. Bib!. 142b. 16-21. For a brief discussion of this lost work, see P. Merlan in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge 1967) 95. I would like to thank Professor Wolfgang Lebek of the University of Cologne for giving me extensive and valuable advice on this article. SOn Nicomachus' dates, see J. M. Dillon in CR 83 (1969) 274-75. 8 Bib!. 143a.2-9. 17l 172 PHOTIUS ON THE TRANSMISSION OF TEXTS of the Bibliotheca for this passage and found it accurate, 1 shall make my arguments here mainly on the basis of the sense. Here is the text as 1 would print it. 32 ov (p.et. rt,v . .. ) Bekker, Henry: ov p.a.77Jv M: ~ p.et. rt,v A2, quid prius pro A non liquet. 38 yet.p M: om. A, Henry. 145b.l Interpunxit Henry non post £C7TW,C£V. sed post 7TOO£V. 'rOV addidi. 4 'rep smpsi: 'r6 A M, Henry. 1 would translate, fairly literally, as follows. "Well, in any case, dearest brother, there you have in the form of a summary also Nicomachus' famous and hard-to-find theology of numbers. It is not (I call your intelligence and erudition to witness) because of its intrin­ sic difficulty and abstruseness that it has almost been withdrawn from men, since in our day, in geometry, arithmetic and the other sciences, as you know as well as 1 do, there are many among our acquaintances who have no less exact knowledge, 1 dare say, than the son ofHermias (for you of course know the skill of Ammonius in those fields), and none of the propositions that Nicomachus piles up together in his work on numbers would be obscure to them. But why did it become rare? Time, 1 suppose, and the practice of not sparing useful things as WARREN T. TREADGOLD 173 a result of destroying useless things very casually, took on a great and irresistible power. And even the treatise of Nicomachus would have profited by its being believed [by] almost [everyone] to have been destroyed among many useful things. It does exist, however, and is studied, shearing itself (as you see and, I know, will see more clearly) of no sInall renown." The translation will make clear how I understand most points of the Greek. Since the book's "intrinsic difficulty and abstruseness" are given as conceivable causes of its being I-UKPOV 'T(UV avOpw7TwV avaKE­ Xwp7JKvia, these words can hardly refer again to its abstruseness, but must refer to its unobtainability, the whole point of the paragraph.4 In line 38, M's yap seems to help bring out the fact that Ammonius and the son of Hermias are the same man, who In Photius mentions elsewhere as a paragon of learning.5 In line 145b.1, punctuating after EC7TCXV'CEV, as both manuscripts do, seems to make the sense clearer than punctuating before it. The addition of TOV in the saIne line, presumably lost by haplography afterT6, gives the sentence some kind of structure and EOOC in line 3 a satisfactory function.6 In line 4, the accusative T6 is presumably a copyist's error for the now hOInopho­ nous dative Tip. In the next line, my glossing of I-"KpOV as "by almost everyone" seems necessary. The other conceivable meanings are (1) that people almost but not quite believed that the book had been destroyed, or (2) that people (correctly) believed that the book had been almost destroyed; but neither of these cases would help the book's reputation, now deflated by Photius' studying a single manu­ script of it. Finally, in the last line, 7TpaTTETa, must mean "is studied" 'Henry translates "hors des facultes humaines." & Cf. Bib!. 127a.5-10. 172a.2-9 and 173a.32-34 (though this could also be Ammonius Saccas). and 341b.I-28. Ammonius Hermiae taught in Alexandria in the second half of the fifth century; see A. C. Lloyd in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy. 316-17. • Henry translates "La ten dance a ne pas garder les reuvres utiles du fait que les inutiles corrompent aisement les habitudes a acquis une grande et invincible force." making l80c the object of .p8€lp€£v (which seems to require an emendation to 1j8T/). But this leaves the reader confused by the apparent but false balance between p.~ .pd8€c8u, 'TWV xpT/clp.wv and 'TeX rixPT/C'TU .p8dp€'v. and by the apparent but false similarity between q,8dpHV (,corrupt') here and 8,a.p8ap8a, ('be destroyed') in line 5. One might think of the proverb C1>8€lpov"v 1fBT/ XPT/c'Ta &I-").[u, KUKUl (quoted in I Cor. 15.33), but since the question in Photius is of useless things and not of evil ones, the parallel is not apt. Emendation could be avoided by taking both lBoc and KPa.'TOC as objects of lAufJ€. but such dissimilar objects offend against parallelism and are hard to understand. 174 PHOTIUS ON THE TRANSMISSION OF TEXTS in such a context, leaving O-llK dAlY7Jv S6~av as the object of a1ToKEt­ pa/LEV7J; this gives an acceptable sense after the preceding sentence.7 What does this brief and none too clear passage tell us? First, that about a third of the way into the Bibliotheca Photius was still address­ ing his comments to his brother Tarasius.8 Some have maintained that the preface and postface are either literary fictions or part of a version of the Bibliotheca earlier than ours.9 But if the preface and postface are literary fictions, the fiction is sustained into the middle of the work; if they belong to an earlier version of the text, that version includes codex 187, and, to judge from the Ka~ in line 30, all the codices that precede it. Second, we learn that, at least in Photius' opinion, there were schol­ ars active when he was writing whose mathematical and scientific knowledge equaled that of the ancients. If, as I suspect, the Bibliotheca was composed in 845, these scholars would include John the Gram­ marian (ca 775-after 847), Leo the Mathematician (ca 790-after 869), and their students.1o Note that Photius does not include himself among these really expert mathematicians; his own strongest fields were philology and theology. Still, he does seem to have been the one who discovered Nicomachus' book, which he describes as if it had previously been considered lost, and 1Tp&'TTETat in the last sentence may mean that he taught from it in his school.l1 7 Henry translates, "Mais il subsiste et se fait un grand renom (comme tu Ie vois et comme tu Ie verras encore plus clairement, je Ie sais) meme dans les abreges qu' on en fait." This is evidently a slip, taking the aorist middle participle a7ToKE'pap.lvTI as if it were passive. In any case, Photius' whole review shows that the book, far from attaining a great reputation, is now so badly discredited that it would be better for it if people believed that it had been destroyed. For the phrase 86[av ••• a7ToKE'pap.lvTI, if. a verse inscription quoted in Paus. 9.15.6 (~p.ETlpaLc fJov;>..a;:c .E7TapT,,! P.€V £KdpaTo 8&eav) and Dion.Hal. Ant.Rom. 9.23.2 (~'Pw­ p.alwv 7T6A.c av8pWv TOCOJTWV Kal TO'OJTWV apETd:C a7ToKELpap.lv"!); Henri Estienne. in his Thesaurus GrMcae Linguae I (rev. ed., Paris 1831-65) 1467, also cites without giving specific references Gregory of Nazianzus (T~V 86fav rijc JKKA'?Clac a7ToKElpavTEC) and St Basil (a7ToKELpap.Evoc TOLaJT"!v 86fav). 8 Cf the preface, Bibl. 1.2-3: a8EAtfoWv "'{ATaTl p.o,. Tap&cLE. 8 So Cyril Mango, "The Availability of Books in the Byzantine Empire, A.D. 750-850," in Byzantine Books and Bookmen: A Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium (Washington 1975) 39-43. 10 On John, Leo, their dates, their teaching and their students, see Paul Lemerle, Le premier humanisme byzantin (Paris 1971) 135-76. 11 Unlike Lemerle, op.cit. (supra n.10) 197-99, I think it is fair to call the group of students that Photius describes in one of his letters a school, and I do not share Lemerle's doubts (163-65) that Photius and Leo the Mathematician taught St Constantine-Cyril about 843. Cf the review of Lemerle's book by Ihor Sevcenko, AHR 79 (1974) 1533-34. WARREN T. TREADGOLD 175 Third, this passage gives us some idea of photius' view of the pro­ cess of transmission of ancient texts and the beginning of the Byzan­ tine revival of learning. Photius says, evidently referring to the 'Dark Ages' of the seventh and eighth centuries, that people used to discard books very casually on the ground that they were of no use, a habit which led to the destruction of m.any useful books as well as useless ones. No doubt accidents and decay over the course of time (0 xpovoc) caused most of the losses; but the verb cpOEtpELV seems to refer to the deliberate destruction of books, either by erasing them to copy new texts on the parchment or by dismembering them to use the parch­ ment for various household purposes. By Photius' time, however, things are plainly different, and a number of scholars exist who know that many useful books were destroyed and have been inclined to count among them the treatise of Nicomachus, apparently known to them only from. citations. Most recently, Photius, perhaps among others, has discovered a copy of the book and studied it, with the result that he can now announce to Tarasius, probably among others, that it has been much overrated. What we have here, then, is a de­ scription of a revival of learning that is well under way, datable prob­ ably to 845, and in any case no later than 857.12 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los ANGELES January, 1978 12 I treat the question of the date of the Bibliotheca at length in a book, The Nature of the Bibliotheca of Photius, which is to be published in the series of Dumbarton Oaks Studies. The traditional date is 855, but some (e.g., Lemerle, op.cit. [supra n.lO] 37-40) argue for 838 and others (e.g., Mango, op.cit. [supra n.9] 40-42) for after 876.