The Manuscript Tradition of Propertius
Konrad Gries, J. L. Butrica · The Classical World · 1986
The climacterics of the study of the Propertian tradition are marked by the editions of Lachmann (Leipzig, 1816, introducing N) and of Baehrens (Leipzig, 1880, A and F), by the papers of Hosius (RhM 46 [1891], 577-88, v) and Postgate (TCPhS 4 [1894], 1-83, L and jz), and by Ullman's demonstration (CPh 6 [1911], 282-301) that F was derived from A via Petrarch's copy. Butrica's doctoral dissertation (University of Toronto, 1978) ushered in another new epoch: for the first time it presented an historical survey of the whole tradition and so established the foundations for further research. Now an expurgated version of the thesis has been published and can be acknowledged as a major achievement. But Butrica has gone beyond his thesis in concluding that a group of 15th-century MSS form a third branch of the tradition (X) deserving to be cited alongside N and A. If he is right (and, having come to the same conclusion independently, I am sure he is), then the Propertian apparatus will look very different in future. The case is argued in Chapter 3. Butrica points out that a number of N's more diverse readings (e.g. 2.30.19 non tamen immerito; 2.32.33 fertur) are not found in 15th-century MSS nearly as often as we might expect if N were the copy that Poggio sent to Niccoli in 1427; indeed they are not found at all until three north Italian MSS of the 1470s. He then suggests that Poggio's codex was in fact not N but the lost source