Alcestis Barcinonensis

When W. D. Lebek introduced his edition the first readable one of the Ale. Bare. (ZPE 52 [1983], 1-29) he introduced this new text as bobbing in the wake of Epigr. Bob., Rut. Nam. 2 (little bits, M. Ferrari, IMU16 [1973], 15-30) and of course Gallus. One might add the page of Celsus now magisterially discussed by H. D. Jocelyn, PLLS 5 (1985), 299-336, the letter of Anna to Seneca, found by Bischoff and discussed by Momigliano (8 Contr., 329-32), some lines of Amm. Marc, (in O.O.); see R. Cappelletto, Recuperi ammianei di Flavio Biondo (1983), 35, numerous sermons of (ps.-) Aug. (cf. Quasten, Patrologia [ital. ed. 3, 1978], 377f., 381f.), 29 letters of Aug. found in a Marseilles codex by J. Divjak, ed. princ. CSEL 1981, the Hermenumata Dionisottiana (JRS 72 [1982], 83-125), and the extraordinary fragments of archaic Latin saved, or invented, or freshened by Agusti'n (A. Lunelli, Miscellanea ...Barchiesi 3 [1980], 3-15). Perhaps best not add the Pighi-Lintott Acta Urbana (cf. D. P. Fowler, CQ [1988], 262-3). That is, Graeculi in sterquilinio suo plurimum valent, but Latinists have no similar convenient rubbish-heaps, and must rummage, clearly to some effect, in libraries, while awaiting another Qasr Ibrim. The leaves in a codex now at Barcelona (on which cf. A. M. Emmett, Mus. Phil. Lond. 2 [1977], 99-100) from which R. Roca-Puig published these verses offered a fair field for a frenzied bout of emendatory activity (bibl., 3, n. 3). The scribe is certainly not, formally, an illiterate (the term is misused, 2): a person of limited education, an ignoramus, a clod, if you will but not an illiterate; we have learned to be careful about these terms, from Herbert Youtie (Scriptiunculae 2, 611-51) and W. V. Harris (most recently, Quad. Stor. 27 [1988], 15-26), above all. Progress and refinements are still being made. The results of a mechanical copy of an original by an authentic illiterate stonecutter have been analysed by Silvio Panciera {Rend. Line. 22 [1967], 100-8). Here, though, they are quite different: the scribe of P. Bare. Inv. Nos. 158-61 is, if you will, illiterate in respect of high literary Latin, which the poet of Ale. Bare., the illustrious Ignotus, uses with such marked skill. The ensuing shambles Marcovich unravels with delicacy and gusto. Only one possible source of danger I note in passing: after the furious activity of correctores varii, the text just may, here and there, be hyper-correct, be really too clean and readable. For it is in truth an extraordinary performance. The short final syllables of para (26) and desero (92) are perfectly classical; Althaea with final a long before gnatum, corrected by M. from natum will distress many (cf. Housman, Class. Pap. 3, 1139-40), but the fault is scribal and editorial, not authorial! 120 lines are, or can be, an adequate sample of a poet's metrical and prosodic habits (cf. ZPE 61 [1985], 253); here I note with interest only final pietatis (102). That Claudian would not have allowed (cf. ed. Birt, ccxv); it is with Claudian that M. wants to compare Ignotus, Claudian, castigatissimus et quasi castissimus in metre (Birt, ccxi; cf. A. Cameron, Claudian, 287-92). One quadrisyllable torpedoes exaltation of Ignotus' metrical chastity, you may think, but he is an expert and eloquent versifier, a little strait in his vocabulary (14), like e.g. the authors of laudationes (cf. BICS 30 [1983], 90f., BICS Suppl. 51 [ 1988], 54). And he is a true wit; he has that talent we love in Ovid of applying polished rhetorical technique to the exploitation of tragic human situations. Genuine black humour is a rare talent (missed, in comm. on 32-8). Nor