Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Friends of Cistellaria await the day when the other half of this positively female-dominated play shows up in Sicyon. Walter Stockert cut his editorial teeth on another mangled container script (Aulularia, 1983), and now a full scholarly edition with (sorely needed) commentary on the play is set to appear.¹ Meantime the text for the Sarsina series delivers the bare bones of the paradosis, extensively collated and/or re-collated, and supplemented by additions to W. Studemund's fine transcript (1893) of what is, or was, legible in the tantalizing Milan palimpsest Bibl. Ambrosiana G 82 sup = S.P. 9/13-20. This, A, our sole witness for vv. 233-491, i.e. the six hundred or more (?) lines lost at this point from the Palatine MSS, exists for chunks between 70 and 522.

For foretaste Stockert gave a demonstration of what might be achieved by cutting-edge 'multi-spectral' digital photography in 'Die Wiedererweckung eines Codex. Virtuelle Arbeit am Codex Ambrosianus des Plautus', RAL Ser. 9a, 19 (2008), 407-34. With the Medievalist-Renaissance codicological expert Prof. Teresa De Robertis for its Auxilium, an Austrian-Italian academic-industrial team used computerized overlay techniques to produce a virtual version of the codex. Nine pages were treated and a new siglum, A*, marks new readings derived from this expensive prototype magicbox wizardry, while increasing degrees of uncertainty are registered with the refined notations of (1) sublinear dot through (2) square brackets to (3) dot plus brackets, and lacunae with countable missing letters are meticulously paced out with spaced dots (versus indeterminable gaps represented by continuous dots). Stockert has tried out the recovered flickers of text on various colleagues whose ingenuity is already attested from time to time in the apparatus, and he promises 'more' to come in the commentary (flagging up vv. 35, 221, 235, 249, 290, 405-08, 451, 509). But it is perhaps time some tearaway joined in with these orderly Dionysia (not, I think, a role the properly cautious Stockert is cut out for) and cut loose on at least the partially half-secure lines, to see if they can find any more toys in the broken box. Meanwhile, we watch that space——these spaces—and wait.

Lindsay's Oxford Classical Text gives up entirely on vv. 251-72, 324-62, 385-404, 409-49, and cuts, where Stockert has at least scraps for the first two stretches. On the other hand, no trick photography is going to bring on Help with fol. 236 and 237, 239 and 240, 243, 244r (except for vv. 385-8), or 246: perierunt. For the rest, naturally, series format has its plusses and minusses, featuring: hugely toilsome running data on the assignment of parts, their nomenclature, and their state of (non-)survival in a band running between text and apparatus; a bumper haul of no less than forty-five testimonia, clearly marshalled in their own appendix; helpful metrical notes in the apparatus, both to higher matters according to Questa and to humbler workaday information, with handy tabulation in a second appendix;² the spelling 'GImnasium', and e.g. Dionisia, passim, with Sicion intermittent (156 vs 130); hiatus marked in the text, with suggested finesses in the apparatus.³

Other divergences from Lindsay:⁴ 1 antidhac (antehac); 3 aperuistis (-i); 4 potueritis (-is); 8 pretio (p. tanti est); 53 aufer (inter); te, obsecro (te opsecro); 88 meam mi alius quisquam imminuit (i. meam mihi q. a.); 106 dabit (-is); 109 mi cordi (in c.); vv. 122 - 127-9 - 123-5 -130, with 125 - 130-2 in brackets (122-132, with 126-9 in brackets); 123 nam ego illanc (n. i. e.); 132 deperit (perdita est); 149 satine (satin); 168-9 in brackets (not); 176 postquam (post[quam]); 189 uti (ut); 206 [crucior] (no brackets); 221 experitur (expetitur); 227 nec (neque); 238 obeli (... perdite); 240 tot tam (in brackets); 249 fateor (laetor); 283 th . . . he (Th[ynis]ce); arma et (arma [SER. arma? AL.] e.); 286 peri (perii); 306 equidem (quidem); 312 exconcinnauit ([ex]c.); 315 modo ipsa (mo[do i]psa); 330 intro abeo (intrabo); 341 bonu... 360a mihi est ut (malum aufer bonum mihi opus est); 368 mala[m u]t ne des innocenti (malam ... i.); 370 nisi [me]us modo unus filius? GIM. (n. tuo' modo u. filiust, ; 271 at ecc.... tui (at ... [tui]); 381 LA. (no attribution); 382 ita ([nam] i.); 408 extritis (extertis); 453 expurigare (expurgare); 455 uer . . . sita sunt, with obeli (uera, ME. si ea s.); 458-60 AL. inter.........us nep... | uerba dare [ne]cesse. | non illata.........mator. MEL. pol mi qui [sanct]a [qui] frangant foedera. (SEL. inter ... uerba dare | non illa .... qui f. f.); 463 at [ego] ne[c] do (no brackets); 467 u[o]c[ant Moles]stu[m: eunde]m conspicis ([vocant Mole]stum. ...); 467 AL. [o]bsecro, ME (opsecro. AL.); 469 obeli (die); 471 [ab i]llo ([ab] i.); 480 quae... (quaedam); 481 [di] (no brackets) ... obeli (pariter); 483 eo te hac ignorat Fides (eo.... at f.); 485 ducam uxorem. MEL. ducas si d[i tibi duint] (duc[am] ux[orem. ME.] ducas si...); 487 ues[tem] (no brackets); 490 instruxisti (ins[truxisti]); 491 uoluisti quidem (u. ...); 502 alibi (abi) ... satis sit (sit satias); 516 et pater (e. summus); 522 minuti, et (minutique e.); 523 dem [uiuae] ([dem uiuae]); 524 gnatam meque (filiam aeque); 531 amens (amans); 559 reuoco (et uoco); 561 unde (und'); 565 [meretrix] (no brackets); 578 duce (duc); 582 [non] ([non hercle]; 619 aliena (alia); 622 in caelum (c.); 631 sequere hac me (sequeren, mea); 650 ilico (ibo); 661 infitiatur ea (infitiare iam); 672 itaque [et] (i.); 674 me (mea); 678 mi ... mi (mei .. mei); 683 praeter iit (praeteriit); 685 ilicet. (ilicet); 691 mi [esse] (mihi esse); 695 [LA. est. PHA.] (no brackets) ... quis [est]? (quis?); 697 eccam, (eccam;); 702 contemplabor (-o); 703 ago; (ago); 704 mane, [mane] ([mane,] mane); 706 ... ([bona femina et malu' masculus uolunt me.]; 708-22 bracketed as interpolation (not); 711 tum [eam mihi opi]nor (tum....more ); 713 [eae] erae (erae); 721 istam agendam (a. i.); 722 dic (dice); 725 quid nam (quidnam); 728 quamnam (quemnam); 732 cauea (caueam); 741 commodule quaedam. tu (commodo loquela tua); 757 ... ([esti partem dimid]); 758 ... ([l ego, quoniam tres]); 760 ... ([reponi]).

Table of Contents:

1.   'sub prelis' (p.25). Papers on the sex workers and on women's speech appeared in both the milestone collections on the play: 'Le cortigiane della Cistellaria nel contesto della Nea e della Palliata', in the 'Ludus philologiae' volume of essays set to herald, and now accompany, the Sarsina edition, R. Raffaelli and A. Tontini (eds.) Cistellaria: (Sarsina, 27 settembre 2003)', Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2004 (Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates 7), 35-51; and 'Schwören auch Frauen bei Herkules? Bemerkungen zu Cist. 52 und anderen Plautus-Stellen', in R. Hartkamp and F. Hurka (eds.) Studien zu Plautus' Cistellaria, Tübingen 2004, 363-9. Revaluation of Cist. was kick-started by D. Konstan (1983) Roman Comedy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, chapter 5.
2.   See vv. 5-7, 14-15, 206, 211-12, 217-18, 221-2, 227-8, 688 for non-Lindsayian colometry.
3.   Most are signalled for further attention in the commentary: cf. vv. 15, 139, 368, 522, 556, 565, 573, 674, 678, 711, 723, 775.
4.   This list excludes minima orthographica, esp. -s (-'), cum, relicuus, aculam, etc (quom, reliquos, aquolam etc), -uu- (-uo-), -nq- (-mq-), -s- (-ss-), -bs- (-ps-), mi (mihi), nil (nihil), eius (eiius), periur- (peiier-), etc. While e.g. rursum and prorsum, not rusum and prosum, are welcome, ei for long i must be more trouble than it can be worth—but this series abides by strict rules for what counts as attesting 'omnia antiquitatis vestigia ... religiose' (p. 9).