Remarques sur la tradition manuscrite du De Aedificiis

Abstract

The author has listed 15 manuscripts - that is, three more than those used by Haury in the current Teubner edition. He himself has examined the four MSS in Paris, and another four on microfilm. The history of the text has not been studied since the work of Haury, except for some conjectures by Glanville Downey (1947), and the analysis of a new manuscript in the Benaki Museum Catalogue (1991). None of the manuscripts is earlier than the 12th century. Haury classified the MSS in two groups: y and z; the latter represents a shortened version, which he did not describe in detail. Downey suggested that this ‘abridged’ version represented an earlier one which Procopius later expanded. The new study makes it clear that he was mistaken; z is definitely an abridgement, which replaces certain accounts with a common phrase, or retains the reference to an account which has been omitted. The purpose of the abridger is not entirely clear, since some passages remain intact, and elsewhere he omits only a word, or a phrase. But he shows a measure of intelligence and recreates a coherent construction. For the most part, Haury used the y family, and in practice only the V manuscript (Vaticanus), of which the others are copies. There is a lacuna in this manuscript in the description of Euboea, which is caused by the loss of a folio; but the model of the z family did not have this lacuna. It follows that the z mss. derive from a different archetype, and may sometimes be used to correct V, particularly with the help of marginal annotations in V. Of the z family, B, unknown to Haury, is of special importance. But the common archetype already contained errors, particularly in word-divisions. Some errors which appear in all the manuscripts (for example, in describing the monastery of Conon in Isauria, on which cf. D. Feissel, below) originate in the original organisation of the text in columns, with words sometimes ill-placed, or ill understood by the copyists. References to The Buildings are rare, although it was used as early as the 10th century by Symeon Metaphrastes in his version of the Life of St. Sabas. There are some improvements to be made to the text, but not on a large scale; Haury’s edition is generally reliable.