Βιβλίο με ελληνική παλαιογραφία
του 1708
Greek paleography
By T. Janz
Ancient Greece is often thought of as the cradle of Western civilization
— an idea that is problematic not least because what we think of today as
"Western civilization" in fact incorporates elements originating in
many different times and places. Why then is ancient Greece so often singled
out as its ultimate source? A determining factor is certainly the fact that we
have very detailed knowledge about Greek civilization going all the way back to
the 5th century B.C.E., while we lack such knowledge about other civilizations.
For example, we know quite precisely how Athenian direct democracy functioned
two an d a half millennia ago, while we are quite ignorant of political
arrangements in most of the rest of the world at that time; in particular, we
know practically nothing of the political institutions among the inhabitants of
northern and western Europe in pre-Roman times, though for all we know the
institutions of representative democracy which are often considered a hallmark
of Western civilization may in fact be more directly related to these than to
anything that took place in ancient Greece. The main reason for this
discrepancy in our knowledge about the past is the fact that the ancient
Greeks, unlike their contemporaries almost everywhere else, left us detailed
accounts of their institutions — as well as works of drama, science,
mathematics, philosophy and much else — in writing, which have been preserved
to this day. Without a written record, we would in principle still be able to
observe the Parthenon, the Pnyx, the Greek theaters, etc., but the
archeologists would be able to tell us relatively little about the uses these
structures were put to; and obviously they would not be able to reconstruct for
us the details of Greek philosophy, drama, science or political institutions.
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The works of ancient Greek authors have been preserved not as autographs
of the authors themselves but because they were copied over and over and over
again by scribes, and because a few of these copies — mostly dating to the medieval
period — are still in existence today in libraries where they are studied by
scholars who produce editions of these works. If you know Greek, you can read
these editions themselves; otherwise, you can read a translation made from one
of them (also, if you know a little Greek, you can enjoy an edition with a
facing translation). Either way, the indispensable link which grants us
knowledge of the words formulated by an author who lived in the distant past is
the extant, hand-written copy of the ancient work — the manuscript.
Etymologically, the discipline of Greek paleography (a word coined in
the 18th century by Berard de Montfaucon, from the Greek elements παλαιο- "old, ancient" + γραφ- "writing, script"+ -ια, a suffix forming abstract nouns) should in principle
encompass the study of all writing in Greek from the past. In fact, the study
of scripts used on papyrus, on coins and medals, in inscriptions and in
documents is generally left to the separate disciplines of papyrology,
numismatics, epigraphy and diplomatics, while the discipline of paleography is
defined as the study of bookhands employed on paper or parchment. In practice,
this means that scripts from the period before the appearance of parchment
books in the 4th century A.D. fall outside of the purview of our discipline,
which also generally limits itself to the period before 1600 A.D., a date which
is arbitrarily precise but which coincides roughly with the point when
hand-written books were definitively eclipsed by printed ones.
ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ, ΕΔΩ.
If all copies produced by scribes were perfectly faithful ones, modern
editors could simply print the text offered by any extant manuscript of an
ancient author. The remaining copies would be of interest only to bibliophile
collectors (and to historians of the period when the copies were made); and the
ability to decipher scripts of the past would be the only skill required of the
editor. Learning this skill is in fact the most basic aim of the study of
paleography. However, in reality, it is almost impossible for a human to copy a
long text without making at least occasional errors. In addition, since scribes
knew this about themselves and about their colleagues, when they found an
obscure or incomprehensible passage in the manuscript they were copying, they
often attempted to correct it, which in many cases resulted in a compounded
error or, even worse, produced situations where several different wordings are
attested but it is unclear which (if any) of the attested wordings goes back to
the original author. The upshot is that every extant manuscript of an ancient
author is of interest not only to bibliophiles and to medieval historians, but
also to editors of that author, who cannot work from a single manuscript source
but must collect the available "variant readings" (ideally from all
extant manuscripts) and decide, in each case, which one is most likely to be
"original" (or conjecture a new one, if they all seem mistaken).
Conscientious readers of editions of ancient authors will also want to take an
interest in the manuscripts, because the decisions made by the editor can and
should be questioned. These decisions are usually recorded in a critical
apparatus. The information given there is normally accurate, and until recently
the only realistic option for a reader has been to assume that it was; however,
with more and more libraries making their manuscript collections available on
line, it is now feasible, and occasionally desirable, for a reader to check the
manuscripts themselves — provided, of course, that she is able to decipher
them.
In passages where the manuscript tradition is divergent, how does an
editor decide which reading is most likely to be original? Basing such
decisions on the merits of the readings themselves alone is not very
satisfactory, since in many cases their relative merits are unclear. The
purpose of the discipline of paleography, as conceived by Bernard de Montfaucon
(1655-1741) in his foundational work Palaeographia graeca (1708)...
ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕ, ΚΑΤΕΒΑΣΤΕ το βιβλίο
Palaeographia graeca,
sive, De ortu et progressu literarum graecarum,
εκδ. Παρίσι, 1708, ΕΔΩ.
... was to give editors an objective criterion for their decisions by
studying the chronological development of Greek script, thus allowing scholars
to assign an approximate date (and, ideally, geographical location) to each
manuscript based on the style of its script. On balance, older manuscripts will
tend to have more genuine readings than more recent ones (though this is
obviously not always true, since a very recent manuscript may be a very
accurate copy of a very old exemplar, or may incorporate variants imported from
a very old exemplar; of course it is also possible that a very old manuscript
was copied very sloppily). Nowadays editors like to base their decisions on a
broader understanding of how the text of their author was transmitted. They
generally do this by attempting to construct a genealogy (or "stemma")
representing the transmission of the text, in which the extant witnesses may be
placed. This is achieved mainly by comparing the readings of the extant
manuscripts (and especially by observing common errors); but obviously the
ability to date the witnesses is still a fundamental prerequisite, and being
able to read them in the first place is even more so.
Most people who study manuscripts are engaged in some aspect of the
philological work we have just described. However, there are many other reasons
why one might want to be able to read Greek manuscripts; and paleographers
generally do not like to think of their field as a mere ancillary discipline
serving the needs of textual critics or historians. Manuscripts are indeed
vehicles for the transmission of texts, but they also have their own stories to
tell and are worthy of study in their own right. They are also artifacts (and
often works of art) which can tell us a great deal about to the times and
places in which they were produced (e.g. educational practices; the circulation
of ideas) and about the people and communities of people who wrote, bought, owned,
sold and read them.
If you work through the pages of this pathway, reading the feature pages
and practising your reading skills by transcribing the included manuscripts,
you will be able to read most Greek manuscripts which are the object of the
discipline of paleography, as defined above. You will make better progress if
you are guided by a teacher, but the pathway is intended to function also as a
tool for self-teaching. You may start with the first feature page, which deals
with majuscule scripts.
ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΑ ΕΔΩ.
ΛΕΞΕΙΣ: ελληνικη παλαιογραφια, βιβλιο, Παρισι, 1708
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