CONCERNING THE FACE WHICH APPEARS IN THE ORB OF THE MOON (DE FACIE QUAE IN ORBE LUNAE APPARET)
INTRODUCTION
The authenticity of this dialogue has sometimes been questioned but without any plausible reason.1 On the other hand, despite statements to the contrary, it is certainly mutilated at the beginning,2 although one cannot tell whether much or little has been lost; this follows not merely from the abruptness of the opening as we have it, the lack of any kind of introduction, and the failure to identify the main speaker until two-thirds of the dialogue have been finished, but even more surely from the nature of the text in the opening sentences.3
In the dialogue as it stands the first speaker is Sulla. His chief function is to recount the myth which he mentions in the first extant words and which occupies the final fifth of the work; but he interrupts the dialogue proper at 929 E 930 A to ask whether a certain difficulty was treated in the discussion which Lucius is reporting. He is a Carthaginian (cf. 942 C), presumably the Sextius Sulla cited by Plutarch in his Romulus, chap. 15 (26 C), and the same as the Carthaginian Sulla who gave a dinner for Plutarch in Rome ( Quaest. Conviv. 727 B). He is probably the Sulla who appears as the interlocutor of Fundanus in the De Cohibenda Ira (note b, 453 A) but probably not the same as the Sulla of Quaest. Conviv. 636 A (ὁ ἑταῖρος) and 650 A (one of τῶν συνήθων). The second speaker, at once the narrator of the whole conversation and the leader of the dialogue proper, is Lamprias,4 who is also the narrator of the De Defectu Oraculorum (cf. 413 D), a dialogue in which he plays the leading role.5 In the De E apud Delphos, where Lamprias appears with Plutarch, Plutarch calls him brother (385 D); and he is frequently identified as Plutarchs brother in the Quaest. Conviv. (cf. 635 A, 726 D - E, 744 C [with 745 A], and possibly 626 A). He is characterized as a wit and a tease (726 D - E, 740 A), one accustomed to speak out in a loud voice (617 E-F), and capable of inventing a story as evidence to support his argument (De E 386 A); he is an expert in culinary matters (643 E, 669 C, 670 E) and in the dance (747 B) and shrinks from appearing as a kill-joy to younger men (704 E). He is made to emphasize his close relations with a Cynic (De Defectu Oraculorum, 413 B); but he is no Cynic himself, and he is mortified to think that he might be supposed to have used his skill in argument to discredit any pious belief (435 E). He is said to honour the school of Aristotle above that of Epicurus (Quaest Conviv. 635 A - B); but he does not hesitate to disagree with Aristotle in the De Defectu Oraculorum (424 C ff.) and to espouse against him the doctrine of the Academy (430 E ff.). In the De Facie he is a vehement critic of Stoic doctrine and a supporter of the Academic position (cf 922 F). Lamprias bore the name of his grandfather; but this does not prove, as has sometimes been asserted, that he was older than his brothers, Plutarch and Timon. De Defectu Oraculorum, 431 C - D, has been thought to show that he was a priest of the oracle in Lebadeia,6 though this is not a necessary implication of that passage; and a Delphic inscription proves him to have been an archon at Delphi towards the end of Trajan's reign or in the beginning of Hadrian's.7 Apollonides, the third speaker, is at once identified as expert in geometry (920 F), and Lamprias indicates that the scope and limitations of his specialty coincide with those of Hipparchus, the great astronomer (921 d, cf. 925 A). He puts forward objections to Lamprias's explanation of the ‘face’ based upon astronomical terminology and calculations (933 f, 935 d-e). An Apollonides appears at Quaest Conviv. 650 F along with Sulla; but he is called o( taktiko\s *)apollwni/dhs, and there is no compelling reason to identify the two.8 Prickard may well be right in saying that the name Apollonides here was used by Plutarch to mean ‘one of the clan of Apollonius,’ i.e. a mathematician who, like Apollonius,9 is interested in astronomical theory. Certainly Aristotle, who puts forward the orthodox Peripatetic theory of the heavenly bodies (928 E ff.), is only a name chosen by Plutarch to signify the school that he represents (cf. 920 F), even as the representative Epicurean in De Sera Numinis Vindicta is called Epicurus.10 The Stoic position is represented by Pharnaces. This name was borne by the son of Mithridates, of whom Plutarch tells in the Lives of Pompey and Caesar, as well as by several notable Persians mentioned by Herodotus and Thucydides11; and Plutarch probably chose it for his Stoic because of its Asiatic sound.12 After the role of Lamprias the largest in the dialogue proper is that of Lucius, who is probably the same as ‘Lucius, the pupil of Moderatus the Pythagorean, from Etruria,’ a guest at the dinner which Sulla gave for Plutarch in Rome ( Quaest. Conviv. viii. 7-8 [727 B ff., 728 D ff.]).13 Early in the dialogue (921 F) Lamprias turns to Lucius for aid; he seems to think it appropriate that Lucius should set forth the strict ‘demonstration’ of the Academic theory concerning the moon (cf. 928 D - E); and in fact the statement and defence of this position are shared by the two of them.14 Theon, whom Lamprias asks to identify a quotation (923 F) and whom he later teases for admiring Aristarchus to the neglect of Crates (938 D), is recognized as the literary authority in the group (cf. 931 E, 940 A). He is probably to be identified with Θέων ὁ γραμμοτικός, who was a guest at Sulla's dinner along with Lucius (Quaest. Conviv. 728 F) and who also dined with Plutarch at the house of Mestrius Florus (Quaest. Conviv. 626 E).15 In the De Facie his chief contribution is a speech (937 D 938 C) which he makes after the main part of the dialogue has been concluded and which Lamprias praises as a kind of relaxation after the seriousness of the scientific discussion. The last of the persons present is Menelaus the mathematician. Lucius addresses him directly once (930 A), but Menelaus makes no reply and neither speaks nor is spoken to elsewhere in the dialogue as we have it,16 He is not mentioned anywhere else by Plutarch either; but he is probably meant to be the Menelaus of Alexandria whom Ptolemy once calls ὁ γεωμέτρης and twice cites for astronomical observations which he made at Rome in the first year of Trajan (A.D. 98).17
From 937 C - D it follows that the interlocutors have hitherto been promenading as they talked and that now they sit down upon the steps, seats, or benches (ἐπὶ τῶν βάθρων) and remain seated to the end. No other indication of the scene or location is given in the work as we have it. It had generally been assumed that the dialogue was meant to take place in Chaeronea18; but nothing in the text requires this, and F. H. Sandbach has adduced strong arguments for believing that the dramatic location is Rome or the vicinity of Rome.19 The persons in the dialogue furnish one of these arguments. Apollonides, Aristotle, and Pharnaces occur nowhere else in Plutarch's writings and are probably all fictitious characters. Plutarch nowhere else mentions Menelaus the mathematician either, but we know that Menelaus spent some time in Rome (see note a, p. 8). Sulla, Lucius, and Theon all appear together at a dinner given for Plutarch when he had returned to Rome after an interval of absence (Quaest Conviv. viii. 7-8); and none of these three is ever mentioned as being anywhere but in Rome or its vicinity (see § 2, supra). Lamprias alone belongs to Plutarch's circle at Chaeronea; but it is by no means certain that he did not visit Rome as Plutarch did, though there seems to be no definite evidence either way.20 The other argument for the dramatic location is connected with the question of the dramatic date of the dialogue. At 931 d-e Lucius refers to a recent total solar eclipse, saying: "if you will call to mind this conjunction recently which, beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from many parts of the sky . . ."21 Ginzel22 identified this eclipse with the one which occurred on 20 March a.d. 71, for he found that all other solar eclipses visible in Chaeronea during Plutarch's lifetime fell too far short of totality to permit the appearance of stars. His conclusion was generally accepted23 until Sandbach24 pointed out that, since this eclipse reached its maximum phase at about 11 A.M. local solar time in Chaeronea,25 Plutarch could not have referred to it as having begun after noonday. Ginzel had assumed that the place of observation was Chaeronea; Sandbach, having recognized that this assumption is unwarranted, was able to consider two other eclipses, that of 5 January A.D. 75 and that of 27 December A.D. 83. The latter was total at Alexandria shortly before 15 hours. The former was total in Carthage a little after 15 hours and in the latitude of Rome on the eastern side of the Adriatic at about 15 hours, 20 minutes; at Rome itself the maximum obscuration was 11 · 5 digits, so that, since according to Fotheringham26 stars other than Venus have been visible where the solar obscuration was 10 · 7 digits, it is perfectly possible that some stars would have been seen at Rome about 3.20 p.m. local solar time on 5 January A.D. 75. This eclipse of A.D. 75 as seen in Rome certainly fits the conditions of Lucius' statement better than does the one of A.D. 71 as seen in Chaeronea, even though it was rather late to be described as beginning just after noonday.27 It must be emphasized that there is no reason to assume that Plutarch himself saw the eclipse to which Lucius refers. He had undoubtedly heard that it had been seen in or near Rome; he almost certainly had seen the eclipse of A.D. 71 in Chaeronea and may have seen that of A.D. 83 in Alexandria28; and what he had seen during one or both of these eclipses he may very well have applied to the eclipse of A.D. 75, which he had not seen.29 We may then conclude that the dramatic date of the dialogue is later than A.D. 75, but how much later it is remains uncertain despite Lucius' reference to the eclipse as ‘recent.’ The word which he uses, ἔναγχος, like the English ‘recent,’ has a meaning relative to its context, and in the case of anything so unusual as a total solar eclipse might refer to an event that had taken place at any time within a decade or more; it seems in this passage not to be used of the immediate past, for Lucius expressly reckons with the possibility that his audience may not recall ‘the recent conjunction’ and may have to fall back upon literary evidence for the impression made by a total solar eclipse.30 The attempts to find a historical reference in 945 B which would help to fix the date of the dialogue are quite perverse31; and we are restricted by the evidence at present available to the conclusion that the conversation was meant to have taken place in or about Rome some time and perhaps quite a long time after A.D. 75. So much for the dramatic date. There is no reason at all for Hirzel's assertion32 that this and the date of composition coincide. Certain striking similarities between the De Facie and the De Defectu Oraculorum have often been observed, but from these can be drawn equally cogent — and equally hypothetical — arguments for the priority of either to the other33; and, since in any case the date of the De Defectu is uncertain,34 the relative chronology of the two if established would not determine the date of the De Facie.
The structure of the De Facie is complicated. The whole of the work is narrated by Lamprias who speaks in the first person and quotes those who took part in the conversation, including himself, some few times in indirect discourse (e.g. 933 F) but for the most part directly. The last part of his narration (chaps. 26-30 [940 F 945 D] consists entirely of Sulla's myth given in Sulla's own words; this myth, Sulla himself says, is a story told to him by an unnamed stranger, whom he quotes first indirectly and then (942 D ff.) directly to the end. The second or eschatological part of the myth the stranger had told Sulla that he had himself heard from ‘the chamberlains and servitors of Cronus’ (cf. 945 D). Hearing it from Lamprias now, the reader has this part at fourth hand and the geographical introduction of the stranger at third hand.35 From 937 C it appears that Sulla had promised to tell his myth in return for an account of what had been said in an earlier discussion about the nature of the face which appears in the moon. Such a compact may have been expressly made in the beginning of the dialogue which is lost, where Sulla may have come upon the company already engaged in reviewing that earlier discussion (see note a, p. 3). So much is no more than conjecture. It is certain, however, that most of what Lamprias narrates from chapter 2 through chapter 23 is a conversation which is itself represented as containing a resume or report of what was said at an earlier conversation. This the beginning of chapter 24 (937 C) states explicitly: ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν, ἔφην, ὅσα μὴ διαπέφευγε τὴν μνήμην τῶν ἐκεῖ λεχθέντων ἀπηγγέλκαμεν, and the ἐδόκει λέγεσθαι at the end of chapter 2 (920 F) implies that what Lamprias has hitherto said in that chapter had been used as an argument in the earlier discussion. The leader of that discussion, which is referred to as a διατριβή,36 was not Lamprias or Lucius, who here recapitulate it,37 but someone to whom Lamprias, Lucius, and Sulla refer as ‘our comrade’ and who probably is meant to be Plutarch himself.38 Lamprias and Lucius are, of course, presumed to have been present at that discussion with their ‘comrade’ and Sulla to have been absent from it.39 Of the others, Apollonides certainly was not present,40 nor was Theon41; Pharnaces probably was not42; and concerning Aristotle and Menelaus the text as we have it allows no clear inference to be drawn.43 What these men other than Lamprias and Lucius say in chapters 2-23 is not, then, part of the report of that earlier discussion; but neither is all that Lucius says, for in several places his remarks or arguments are expressly declared to be his own contribution.44 That earlier discussion cannot, however, be identified with any that Plutarch may have had with his friends or with any lecture that he may have given; it is primarily a literary fiction, part of the structure of the dialogue for which it provides a specious motivation. The recapitulation of this fictitious discussion along with the incidental arguments provoked by it contains all that Plutarch would consider to be ‘scientific’ in the dialogue. At its conclusion Lamprias is ready for Sulla's myth (chap. 24 init. [937 C - D]); but before Sulla can begin to speak Theon raises the question of the habitability of the moon, contending that, if it is not habitable, there can be no reason for it to exist with the nature or composition that according to Lamprias and Lucius it does have.45 Lamprias calls Theon's speech a kind of relaxation after the seriousness of the preceding discussion. In fact, however, Theon has raised the metaphysical problem of the final cause; and to this Lamprias replies at length (chap. 25). He argues first that the moon, constituted as he contends it is, need not, even if uninhabitable, be without a purpose in the universe (938 C - F), and secondly that, even if uninhabitable by corporeal human beings, it may still be inhabited by living beings of an entirely different kind to whom the moon may justly appear to be the only real earth and our earth the slime and dregs of the universe, uninhabitable by creatures that have warmth and breath and motion. Here Sulla checks Lamprias (chap. 26 init. [940 F]) lest the latter encroach upon his myth; and Lamprias was upon the very threshold of it, for the myth, as it turns out, teaches that the moon is inhabited by souls that have left their bodies after death on earth or have not yet been incorporated by birth into terrestrial bodies. So the episode consisting of Theon's speech and Lamprias's reply (chaps. 24-25) is not merely a formal literary device. It is, to be sure, a transition from the scientific part of the dialogue, in which it is argued that the lunar phenomena imply the earth-like constitution of the moon, to the concluding myth in which the purpose of such a moon in the universe is imaginatively portrayed; but this ‘transitional episode’ raises the philosophical question, without the answer to which the strictly astronomical conclusion could to a Platonist or Aristotelian be no complete or satisfactory explanation, and itself contains the metaphysical answer, of which the myth is, despite all its intrinsic interest, essentially a poetical embellishment. When this ‘transition’ is properly attended to, there can be no question about the integral unity of the whole dialogue or any doubt that the purpose of the whole is to establish and defend the position that the moon is entirely earthy in its constitution and that on this hypothesis alone can the astronomical phenomena and the existence of the moon itself be accounted for.46
The main part of the dialogue is of extraordinary interest for the history of astronomy, cosmology, geography, and catoptrics; and this aspect of the work deserves more attention than it has usually received.47 It is not a technical scientific treatise and is not to be judged as if it were meant to be such; but it is all the more significant that in a literary work intended for an educated but non-technical audience towards the end of the first century a.d. Hipparchus and Aristarchus of Samos are familiarly cited and a technical work of the latter is quoted verbatim, the laws of reflection are debated, the doctrine of natural motion to the universal centre is rejected, and stress is laid upon the cosmological importance of the velocity of heavenly bodies.48 Most of the attention given to the dialogue, however, has been attracted by the concluding myth.49 This consists of two parts. The second and main part is the eschatological myth, which establishes the purpose of the moon in the cosmos by explaining her role in the ‘life-cycle’ of souls and which the stranger told Sulla he had from the chamberlains of Cronus (942 D 945 D); the first is the introduction to this myth or ‘frame-story,’ in which the stranger explained to Sulla how from the continent on the other side of the Atlantic he came to the Isle of Cronus, one of several that lie westwards of Britain, and thence, after having served thirty years, travelled to Carthage where he met Sulla (941 A 942 C). This geographical introduction has aroused the wildest speculations. Kepler was convinced that the trans-Atlantic continent was America, and he tried to identify the islands mentioned in the myth50; W. Christ in 1898 still could assert that Plutarch's continent is ‘obviously America’ and proves that about A.D. 100 sailors reached the North American coast via Iceland, Greenland, and Baffinland51; and in 1909 G. Mair argued that the source of this knowledge of America was reports of Carthaginian seafarers who had penetrated into the Gulf of Mexico, that the Isle of Cronus is Scandinavia, and that the northern geography of the myth derives from accounts of the voyages of Pytheas of Massilia.52 Even before Mair had published his fantastic theory Ebner had conclusively demonstrated that Plutarch could not have referred to any real crossing of the Atlantic or any rumours of such a crossing, that by using the name Ogygia at the beginning (941 A - B) he had clearly indicated the purely mythical intention of his geography, and that this geographical setting is simply an imitation of Plato's Atlantis in the spirit of Hecataeus story of the Hyperboreans, Theopompus Meropis, and the Sacred Records of Euhemerus.53 The additional geographical particulars are the usual ‘corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.’ The theme of the sleeping Cronus may have been suggested to Plutarch by Demetrius of Tarsus, who in the De Defectu Oraculorum (419 E 420 A) is made to say that on an island near Britain Cronus is kept prisoner by the bonds of sleep and is guarded by Briareus and attended by Spirits who are his servitors. This Demetrius appears to have been an historical person who did travel to Britain, whence in the dialogue he is said to have recently returned; and he may have told Plutarch some Celtic legend or superstition which the latter hellenized and wove into the fabric of his myth.54 The discussion of the second part of the myth, the demonology and eschatology, has also been concerned mainly with the problem of Plutarch's sources. Heinze attempted to prove that this myth had been put together out of material drawn from Xenocrates and from Posidonius and that in the resulting combination the parts that belong to those two authors are distinguishable.55 Adler vigorously attacked this thesis and argued that Posidonius was Plutarch's source for the whole myth and for whatever there is in it that may have come ultimately from Xenocrates56; but R. M. Jones57 proved conclusively that neither Heinze's conclusions nor Adler's will bear scrutiny, that Posidonius could not have been the source, and that, while Plutarch combined various eschatological notions which were current and some of which were probably held in common by different philosophers, his myth is in the main an interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. Later, against Karl Reinhardt's attempt to trace the myth back to a hypothetical ‘solar esehatology’ of Posidonius, Jones re-established the Platonic character of Plutarch's eschatology, psychology, and demonology here and the impossibility of taking Posidonius for the source.58 Hamilton later contended even more positively that Plutarch took the Timaeus as the model for the whole of his myth in the De Facie and that, since the De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo shows that he regarded the Timaeus seriously, he must have intended the corresponding portion of his myth in the De Facie to contain an equally serious exposition of his own beliefs concerning the nature and fate of the soul.59 Soury in his extensive study of the myth, while emphasizing the possible influence of the mysteries, agrees in general with Hamilton that it is preponderantly Platonic.60 Anyone who without a preconceived thesis to defend reads the De Facie will recognize, I believe, that Plato was Plutarch's inspiration throughout the dialogue but that Plutarch is himself the true author of the whole work and that, while there is in it a distillation of his wide and varied scientific and philosophical reading, he cannot possibly have composed it by copying out any source or combination of sources. I have tried in the exegetical notes to indicate the ‘parallels’ which will help the reader to understand the dialogue itself by seeing its relation to the rest of ancient scientific and philosophical thought. Among these ‘parallels’ some of the most striking are drawn from later writers, especially Neo-Platonists; these I have mentioned not in order to insinuate that they show Plutarch's direct influence upon those later writers, although many of them certainly were acquainted with him, but because they illuminate the meaning of the De Facie and at the same time indicate what may have been contained in some of the philosophical writings known to Plutarch and long since lost to us, and may help to cast some flicker of light upon that obscure and controversial problem, the prehistory of Neo-Platonism.
The De Facie, which is No. 73 in the so-called Catalogue of Lamprias and No. 71 in the Planudean order, is apparently preserved in only two MSS. of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Grec 1672 (saec. XIV) and 1675 (saec. XV), conventionally called Parisinus E and Parisinus B respectively.61 These have hitherto been supposed to be independent copies of a single archetype62; but recently G. R. Manton has put forward strong arguments for thinking that B is a descendant of E through an intermediate manuscript, ‘a copy of E, which was worked over by a scholar who filled in lacunae and inserted conjectures of his own.’ 63 I have collated both manuscripts from Photostats which were generously put at my disposal by Dr. William C. Helmbold; and I have recorded under the usual symbols the variant readings of each of them, for I soon discovered that not only is Bernardakis' report of the mss. untrustworthy, but that the same must be said of Raingeard's in his recent edition of the dialogue, and that even Treu's collation (see note b, p. 26) is not free of errors. I have not recorded mere omissions or variations of accent or breathing, however, unless the sense is affected by them; and I have regularized crasis and elision without regard to the manuscripts or report of them, for they show no consistency in this matter.64 In conformity with the usage of Professor Babbitt and regardless of the manuscripts, I have printed the forms γίγνεσθαι, γιγνώσκειν, and οὐδείς, though the manuscripts usually have γίνεσθαι, γινώσκειν, and οὐθείς; but I have adopted the form duei=n throughout. I have tried to the best of my ability to assign emendations to those who first proposed them; but for some which appear without ascription in all modern editions, and the author of which I have been unable to discover, I have had to be content with the unsatisfactory note, ‘editors.’ For the suggestions said to be written in three different hands on the margins of the copy of the Aldine edition now in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Rés. J. 94), I have had to rely upon the report of Raingeard in the apparatus criticus of his edition (cf pp. xvi f. of his Introduction)65; all of these I indicate without differentiation by the formula, ‘Anon., Aldine, R.J. 94.’ Upon Raingeard's report and those of Reiske, Wyttenbach, Hutten, and Bernardakis I have had to rely for the variant readings of the Aldine edition and of the edition of Xylander; but the edition of Froben (Basiliensis, 1542), as well as those of Stephanus (1624), Reiske, Wyttenbach, Hutten, Dübner, Bernardakis, and Raingeard, and the translations of Xylander, Amyot, Kepler, Kaltwasser, the two translations of Prickard,66 and that of portions of the essay by Heath,67 I have consulted and compared throughout. Those emendations which, so far as I know, are original with me are indicated by the initials H. C. Besides the editions, translations, and articles already mentioned in this Introduction, the chief aids to my study of the text have been the following: Adler, Maximilian: Diss. Phil. Vind. x (1910), pp. 87 ff. (cf. note b, p. 18).
Wiener Studien, xxxi (1909), pp. 305-309. ‘Zwei Beiträge zum plutarchischen Dialog ‘De Facie in Orbe Lunae,’ ’ Jahresbericht des K. K. Staatsgymnasiums in Nikolsburg, 1909-1910 (Nikolsburg, 1910).
Wiener Studien, xlii (1920-1921), pp. 163-164.
Festschrift Moris Winternitz (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 298-302. Apelt, Otto: ‘Zu Plutarch und Plato,’ Jahresbericht Gymnasium Carolo-Alexandrinum zu Jena, 1904-1905 (Jena, 1905).
‘Kritische Bemerkungen,’ Jahresbericht . . . Jena, 1905-1906 (Jena, 1906). Chatzidakis, G. N.: Athena, xiii (1901), pp. 462-714. Cobet, C. G.: Novae Lectiones (Leiden, 1858).
Variae Lectiones (Leiden, 1878).
Collectanea Critica (Leiden, 1878). Emperius, A.: Emperii Opuscula Philologica et Historica . . . ed. F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1847), pp. 287-295. Hartman, J. J.: De Plutarcho Scriptore et Philosopho (Leiden, 1916), pp. 557-563. Herwerden, H. van: Lectiones Rheno-Traiectinae (Traj. ad Rhen., 1882).
Mnemosyne, xxii (1894), pp. 330-337, and xxxvii (1909), pp. 202-223. Kronenberg, A. J.: Mnemosyne, lii (1924), pp. 60-112, and Ser. III, x (1941), pp. 33-47. Kunze, R.: Rhein. Mus. lxiv (1909), pp. 635-636. Madvig, J. N.: Adversaria Critica, I (Hauniae, 1871), pp. 664-666. Mras, K.: Zeitsckrift für die österreich. Gymnasien, lxv (1914), pp. 187-188. Naber, S. A.: Mnemosyne, xxviii (1900), pp. 329-364. Papabasileios, G. A.: Athena, x (1898), pp. 167-242. Pohlenz, Max: Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, xxxii (1912), pp. 648-654.
Götting. Gelehrte Anzeig. clxxx (1918), pp. 321-343. Sandbach, F. H.: Proc. of the Cambridge Philological Soc., 1943. Harold Cherniss
Addendum
Since this Bibliography was compiled in February 1953 some publications dealing with the De Facie have come to my attention which require a brief notice. Konrat Ziegler in Plutarch über Gott und Vorsehung, Dämonen und Weissagung (Zürich, Artemis-Verlag, 1952) has written a brief summary of the essay (pp. 42-45) and has translated the myth (940 F 945 D into German (pp. 268-278) with the addition of a few explanatory notes. He makes one noteworthy alteration in the text at 941 A - B: adopting τὸν δὲ Βριάρεων ἔχοντα φρονρόν, after which he puts a full stop, he removes the following words, τῶν τε νήσων . . . παρακάτω κεῖσθαι (?), from their position in the MSS. and places them after κύκλῳ θάλαττα in 941 B three lines below. The question of the MSS., which is touched upon in the Introduction § 6 supra, has been discussed, though without specific reference to the De Facie, by R. Flacelière in his edition and translation of the Amatorius (Plutarque: Dialogue sur lamour [Paris, ‘Les Belles Lettres,’ 1952], pp. 35-37) and in an article, ‘La Tradition manuscrite des traités 70-77 de Plutarque,’ Rev. Études Grecques, lxv (1952), pp. 351-362. By a different route he reaches the same conclusion as did G. R. Manton, namely that B is derived from E, probably through an intermediate manuscript now lost.68 In Gnomon, xxv (1953), pp. 556-557 K. Hubert replied to Flacelière's arguments and again sought to establish the independence of B with respect to E. Flacelière in his article entitled ‘Plutarque et les éclipses de la lune’ (Rev. tudes Anciennes, liii [1951], pp. 203-221) is primarily concerned with the interpretation of De Genio Socratis, 591 C, but in connection with this he discusses De Facie, 933 D - E and 942 D - E and argues that in the former of these two passages Plutarch depends upon the calculations of Hipparchus (cf. my note in Class. Phil. xlvi [1951], p. 145 referred to in note e on 933 E infra). G. Zuntz in Rhein. Mus. xcvi (1953), pp. 233-234 has proposed several emendations in the text of the essay: 940 E: He is right in assuming that Bernardakis' ὑμεῖς is a misprint for ἡμεῖς of the MSS., but ὅσαπερ which he condemns and emends is, of course, correct; he apparently misunderstood the construction, ὅσαπερ ἡμεῖς (scil. χρώμεθα) ἀέρι. 942 F: After τίς δ 'οὗτός ἐστιν; he would add <ἔφην: ὁ δ᾽:>, thus producing the same effect as did Reiske's punctuation. Cf. on this sentence my note in Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), pp. 150-151. 943 D: He would write τὸ ἄλογον καὶ [τὸ] παθητικόν on the strength of De Def. Orac. 417 B (p. 75. 23 [Sieveking]). This would be possible but is unnecessary, since καὶ can here be taken as ‘explicative.’ 944 C: He suggests Φερσεφόνης οὖδος ἀντιχθόνιος or Φερσεφόνης οὖδος ἀντίχθονος, apparently unaware of von Arnim's far more probable emendation (see notes d and e on p. 221 infra). His further supplement, τὰ δὲ <πρὸς τὰ> ἐνταῦθα, is quite unnecessary. 944 E: To ἔρωτι τῆς περὶ τὸν ἥλιον εἰκόνος he would add <τοῦ ἑνὸς> or <τοῦ νοητοῦ> or <τἀγαθοῦ> on the ground that the phrase as it stands is unintelligible. The following words, δι 'ἦς ἐπιλάμπει κτλ., themselves explain what Plutarch means (see note g on 944 E infra), and there is no excuse for any supplement at all. 945 B: He rightly defends Kaltwasser's alteration of Τυφὼν to Πύθων (see Introduction, p. 12, note b supra). H. C.November 1954 To my great regret I have been unable to take account of Professor M. Pohlenz's edition of this essay in Plutarchi Moralia, vol. v, Fasc. 3 (Leipzig, Teubner, 1955), since it became available only after this volume had already been paged and corrected for printing. H. C.
February 1956