The treatise on Imitation is known to us only from fragments. Only the first half of the study of the Ancient Orators is preserved, treating of Lysias, Isocrates and Isaeus; in the second part Demosthenes, Hyperides and Aeschines were discussed. The treatise on the Style of Demosthenes is thought to be an enlarged edition of the discussion of Demosthenes in the earlier series. Other Works which have been lost were on the Choice of Words, on Figures, and on Political Philosophy, the latter a defence of the rhetoric of Isocrates and his school against its Epicurean detractors. The early editions attributed to Dionysius an Ars Rhetorica, but this is no longer held to be his work.
For a detailed account of the Scripta Rhetorica the reader is referred to Max. Egger, Denys d’ Halicarnasse, pp. 20-246; a brief survey of these works may be found in W. Rhys Roberts, Dionysius of Halicarnassus: — The Three Literary Letters, pp. 4-34. Roberts also gives (pp. 209-19) a bibliography of the Scripta Rhetorica down to the year 1900.
To his labours as literary critic Dionysius brought a wide and thorough acquaintance with the works of the Attic prose writers, a discriminating taste, and great industry and zeal. His chief merit as a critic lies in his purity of taste; he rejoiced in the recent triumph of Atticism over Asianism and did his best to strengthen that victory. His rhetorical works have much in common with those of Cicero, due to their both using many of the same sources. Like Cicero, Dionysius held Demosthenes in the greatest admiration; but this excessive admiration for one man seems to have made him unfair in his judgment of others: — he tended to judge all the prose writers by the standards he set up for the orators. In other respects as well he is often narrow and superficial in his criticisms, and his manner is too dogmatic.
The first reference to Dionysius as a rhetorician in any extant author is in Quintilian, who merely names him three times in lists of rhetoricians. In the third century the circle of Libanius paid some attention to him. From the fifth century onward he was regarded by the Byzantines as the supreme authority on rhetoric.
MANUSCRIPTS
The manuscripts used by Jacoby for the first ten books of the Antiquities are as follows:
A. — Chisianus 58, 10th cent.
B. — Urbinas 105, 10th-llth cent.
C. Coislinianus 150, 16th cent.
D. — Regius Parisinus 1654 and 1655, 16th cent.
E. — Vaticanus 133, 15th cent.
F. — Urbinas 106, 15th cent.
C and E also contain Book XI.; F contains only I.-V.
The MSS. used for Book XI. and those for the Fragments of XII.-XX. will be listed in Vol. VII.
A and B are by far the best of the MSS.; the others are all late, and some of them, especially C and D, contain numerous interpolations. The editio princeps was based on D. B was first used by Hudson, but he contented himself with giving its readings in his notes. The translators Beilanger and Spelman were prompt to adopt most of the good readings of B, and many were taken into the text by Reiske. Ritschl was the first to make a comparative study of A and B. As a result of his first investigation, based on insufficient evidence, he was inclined to rate A much higher than B; but later he showed a better appreciation of the good readings found only in B, and concluded that a sound text must rest upon a judicious use of both A and B, — a conclusion in which Jacoby heartily concurred. Kiessling based his edition on B so far as possible.
The individual symbols of the late MSS. appear very infrequently in Jacoby’s (and the present) critical apparatus, since these MSS. are rarely of any service in establishing the text. An occasional good reading found only in the margin of D (Dmg) may have been entered by R. Stephanus himself; in any event such readings are evidently based on conjecture rather than on the authority of any manuscript.
EDITIONS
The important editions of the Antiquities follow:
Robert Estienne (Stephanus), Paris, 1546. The editio princeps of the Greek text. Books I.-XI. Based on the very inferior Cod. Reg. Paris. 1654-55.
Friedrich Sylburg. Frankfort, 1586. Books I.-XI. and the Excerpta de Legatiombus, translation (Gelenius’ version revised) and notes. Sylburg made use, chiefly in his notes, of two MSS., a Romanus (not to be identified) and a Venetus (272). Reprinted in careless form at Leipzig in 1691.
John Hudson. Oxford, 1704. Books I.-XI. with the Excerpta de Legationibus and Excerpta de Virtutibus et Vitiis, a revision of Portus’ Latin translation, and notes of various scholars. Hudson was the first to use the Urbinas (which he called Cod. Vaticamis), but cited its readings only in the notes.
J. J. Reiske, Leipzig, 1774-75. The text and translation of Hudson’s edition with Reiske’s own notes added. Too late to accomplish much in Vol. I., Reiske discovered that the printer was faithfully reproducing all the typographical errors of Hudson’s edition; but from Book III. 21 onward he corrected the proof sheets and also for the first time inserted the good readings of B in the text. Dionysius is often cited by the pages of this edition.
Adolf Kiessling, Leipzig (Teubner), 1860-70. Based on B, so far as possible.
Carl Jacoby, Leipzig (Teubner), 1885-1905; Index, 1925.
Adolf Kiessliug-Victor Prou, Paris (Didot), 1886. Greek text and Latin translation (Portus revised). An unfortunate edition. Kiessling, after getting the work fairly started, dropped it completely; and Prou, who was called upon to complete the task, was far from possessing Kiessling’s critical ability. Jacoby recognized the hand of Kiessling through the greater part of Books I.-III.; from that point on the edition has virtually no critical value.
Besides these complete editions of the Antiquities, selected chapters were edited by D. C. Grimm (Archaeologiae Romanae quae ritus Romanos explicat Synopsis), Leipzig, 1786; J. J. Ambroscb (i. 9-38; ii. — 1-29; ii. 30-56; ii. 64-74) in four academic Festschriften, Breslau, 1840-46; Fr. Ritschl (i. 1-30), Bonn, 1846. Angelo Mai published at Milan, in 1816, some fragments from an epitome contained in a Milan MS., Cod. Ambrosianus Q 13 sup., and its copy, A 80 sup. These are now included (as the Excerpia Ambrosiana) among the Fragments of Books XIl.-XX.
TRANSLATIONS
The first Latin translation of the Antiquities (Books I.-XI.) was that of Lapus (or Lappus) Biragus, published at Treviso in 1480, three-quarters of a century before the first edition of the Greek text appeared. It possesses a special interest because it was based on two MSS., not as yet identified with any now’ extant, which were placed at the translator’s disposal by Pope Paul II. Ritschl argued that one of these must have belonged to the better class of MSS. now represented by A and B, since the translation contains most of the additions to the text of the editio princeps that are found in one or both of the older MSS. Lapus’ translation was reprinted, ‘with corrections,’ but also with a multitude of fresh typographical errors, at Paris in 1529, and again, as revised by Glareanus, at Basle in 1532. A fresh translation of Books I.-X. by Gelenius, based on the text of the princeps, appeared at Basle in 1549; for Book XI. he merely reprinted Lapus’ translation. Sylburg (1586) revised the translation of Gelenius and added his own version of Book XI. Aemilius Portus brought out a new translation (Lausanne, 1588); and this translation was adopted in the editions of Hudson and Reiske, and, with numerous corrections, in that of Kiessling-Prou.
An Italian translation by Francesco Venturi appeared at Venice in 1545, one year before the editio princeps. The translator names as his sources a Greek copy, very difficult to read, and a Latin translation [Lapus] full of errors. Apparently no serious use was made of the manuscript; it may well have proved to be generally inferior to Lapus’ reading. In any case, Venturi’s translation, with the exception of a few minor changes which were probably due to conjecture, presupposes the same Greek text as that of Lapus. Another Italian translation was published by M. Mastrofini, Rome, 1812-13.
A French version by G. F. le Jay (Paris, 1722) was loudly acclaimed by the admirers of the translator as representing perfection itself; but the two men who next translated the Antiquities, Bellanger and Spelman, showed that it was a servile translatio
n of Portus’ Latin version, errors and all. The following year Bellanger brought out, anonymously, his own translation, based on Hudson’s text and the good readings of B contained in Hudson’s notes. It is a smooth, fluent translation, but often rather free and at times little more than a paraphrase. It was reprinted later under Bellanger’s own name.
In German there have been translations by J. L. Benzler (1752; reprinted 1771-72) and by G. J. Schaller and A. H. Christian (Stuttgart, 1827-50). Benzler’s version was quite free, that of Schaller (Books I.-IV.) accurate and scholarly; the part translated by Christian has not been seen by the present translator.
The only English version to appear hitherto is that of Edward Spelman, which was published with notes and dissertations at London in 1758. It is a good and, for the most part, fairly close translation of Hudson’s text (Books I.-XI.) as improved by the good readings of the Urbinas and occasional conjectural emendations. See further on p xlv.
The Greek text here presented is based on the edition of Jacoby, but departs rather frequently from his text. All significant departures are indicated in the critical notes, but not, as a rule, minor details of orthography, elision and crasis, or correc tions of obvious typographical errors that appear in his edition. Jacoby -was fairly consistent in following out the principles “which he had established with greater or less probability in two preliminary studies of Dionysian usage. But in the case of some phrases and combinations of vowels for “which he could not show that elision or crasis is normally to be expected, he vacillated in his attitude toward the MSS., sometimes following them in permitting hiatus and at other times emending; the present edition follows the MSS. (or some MS.) in all such cases. The MSS. are likewise followed in their spelling of the various forms of adjectives such as χαλκοΰς and χρνσοΰς, which appear in the contracted and the uncontracted forms with about equal frequency; Jacoby occasionally emended an uncontracted form. He adopted the late spellings έπαύσθην and ηλάσθην wherever they have the authority of any MS., and occasionally elsewhere; in the present text the Attic forms έπανθην and ήλάθην are everywhere restored.
The present editor has permitted himself the liberty of spelling a few Latin proper names in the Greek text in the manner that many an editor would have liked to spell them, but as only a few of the earlier editors ventured to do in actual practice, and then only in the case of part of the names. It is hard to believe that Dionysius would have written such forms, for example, as Φαίστυλος for Φανστυλος (compare his correct form Φαυστίνος), Λωρεντόν (in Book I.) for Λαύρεντον (the form found in Book V.; cf. Λαυρεντϊνοί and Λαυρέντιο), or Λαΰνα for Λαουϊνία in such a context as i. 59, 3 (and if he wrote the correct form here, he must have used it elsewhere).
The critical apparatus lists only the more important variants and emendations; many simple emendations made by the early editors and adopted in subsequent editions are passed over in silence. No fresh collations of the MSS. have been available; but here and there an obvious error in Jacoby’s report has been corrected or a suspicious entry queried.
The present translation is based on that of Spelman. His rendering of numerous passages, more especially in the speeches, is so spirited and so idiomatic, and often requires so few changes to make it seem thoroughly modern in tone, that it seemed desirable to use what was best of it in preparing this version for the Loeb Classical Library. If Spelman had been at his best more uniformly, a mild revision, to bring his translation into accord with the present Greek text, would have been all that was required. But the quality of his English is very uneven. He constructs a good many long, cumbersome sentences, in imitation of the Greek, shows an excessive fondness for the absolute use of the participle, and at times uses a vocabulary that seems more Latin than English. Where he thus departs from a good English style, and wherever his rendering is not sufficiently close to the Greek for the present purpose, changes have been freely made, some of them very drastic. No attempt has been made to preserve the antique flavour that characterizes Spelman’s rendering, as a whole, inasmuch as the passages which he has rendered most successfully from other points of view are usually the most modern in diction. He did not translate the fragments; they appear here in English for the first time. The notes with which Spelman accompanied his version were scholarly and useful in their day, but have not the same interest now; accordingly, an entirely new set of notes has been prepared for this edition.
For the convenience of the reader parallel passages from Livy have been indicated in the notes, beginning with i. 64.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A BIBLIOGRAPHY of the Roman Antiquities covering the period from 1774 to 1876 was published by Jacoby in Philologus, xxxvi. (1877), pp. 129-31, 152-54. It was continued in the introductions to the several volumes of his edition, including the Index (1925). To the lists there given should be added:
Edw. Schwartz, in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, 8.v. Dionysius, cols. 934-61.
Max. Egger, Denys d’ Halicar nasse (Paris, 1902) pp. 1-19, 247-98. An excellent study of Dionysius, more particularly as rhetorician.
H. Liers, Die Theorie der Geschichtsschreibung des Dionys von Halikarnass. Wahlenburg, 1886.
Eiliv Skard, Epigraphische Formeln bei Dionys von Halikarnass, in Symbolae Osloenses xi. (1932). 55-60.
E. Gaida, Die Schlachtschilderungen in den Antiquitates Romanae des Dionys von Halikarnass, Breslau, 1934.
SIGLA
A = Chisianus 58.
B = Urbinas 105.
C = Coislinianus 150.
D = Regius Parisinus 1654 and 1655.
E = Vaticanus 133.
F = Urbinas 106.
O = All the MSS.
R = All the MSS. not otherwise cited. a, b, and occasionally c, added to the symbol of a MS. indicate the successive hands; mg denotes a marginal entry.
Steph. = editio princeps of R. Stephanus.
Steph. = notes of H. Stephanus.
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