GREEK ROMAN * AND * BYZANTINE * SCHOLARLY * AIDS The series of SCHOLARLY AIDS is published by the Editors of GREEK, ROMAN AND BYZANTINE STUDIES as supplements to the quarterly journal. For the list of those currendy available and of the GREEK, ROMAN AND BYZANTINE MONOGRAPHS still in print, see the inside back cover. Communications to the Editors may be addressed to the Senior Editor, William H. Willis, Box 4715 Duke Station, Durham, North Carolina 27706, U.S.A. Orders for purchase and subscription should be placed directly with the Circulation Manager, Miss Dorothy Rounds, at the address given on the inside back cover. CONVENTIONS IN EDITING A Suggested Reformulation of the Leiden System STERLING DOW Hudson Professor of Archaeology Harvard University GREEK ROMAN ' AND ' BYZANTINE * SCHOLARLY ' AIDS ' NUMBER 2 DUKE UNIVERSITY 1969 The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation has generously provided a grant of funds in support of the publication of this Scholarly Aid. Made and printed in Great Britain by William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles Dedicated to Jeanne and Louis Robert in admiration for other things and because they have done most for good editorial usage CONTENTS Foreword vi I INTRODUCTION i Apologia i General Definition of Objectives 2 II CONVENTIONS 3 Above and Below the Preserved Text 3 Numbering of Lines 3 The Use of Editorial Signs 5 [καί] Restorations (see also IV infra) 5 [...], [------] Lacunae 5 m, Spaces Left Blank by the Letterer 6 καί Doubtful Readings 6 llllll Attrition 7 [[καί]] Rasurae 7 1TEON Reading Clear, Interpretation Unknown 9 Strokes Clear, Letters Unknown 10 καί Parts Read Earlier, Now Missing 10 < > Additions by the Editor 11 ( ) Substitutions by the Editor 11 < > Letters Left Incomplete by the Letterer 11 { } Suppressions by the Editor 11 ( ) Resolutions of Abbreviations and Ligatures 12 Note on Pointed Brackets 12 Editing of Earlier Modern Copies 12 The Problems of Editing 13 CONTENTS III BIBLIOGRAPHY 14 Earlier Systems 14 The Leiden System 14 Official Publication 14 Summaries of the Leiden System for the User 15 Discussions of the Leiden System 16 The Wingspread Convention 17 IV RESTORATION IN EPIGRAPHICAL TEXTS 20 The Nature and Magnitude of the Problem 20 The Two Extreme Conceptions 21 The Kirchner Principle 21 The Principle of Extreme Freedom 22 Difficulties with the Principle of Extreme Freedom 23 Examples of Free Restoration 24 The Factors Involved in Restoration 25 A Further Example 26 Various Essential Considerations 27 A Suggested Solution 29 Proposed Rules 3° V ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE: Epheboi in Neronian Athens (IG II2 1989) 32 Previous Study, Provenience, Description 32 New Text 34 Plate facing 34 Commentary 34 The Inscription as a Whole 37 Foreword Experience has shown that organizational formulations easily result in un­ satisfactory compromises, obscurities, and omissions. Doubtless one person, act­ ing alone, is no less liable to error, but he can at least try to satisfy that one person’s notions, such as they may be, of thoroughness and clarity. In much of what follows, the expression is unavoidably dogmatic, but like the Leiden pro­ posals, everything is recommendations, not laws; whatever authority inheres in the recommendations must derive from inherent reasonableness, if there is any, and from reasonableness alone. Or rather, since we are after all in the realm of convention, where ultimately it is usage which alone matters, and alone estab­ lishes law, I have understood “reasonable” to mean “reasonable in the light of present practice.” For better or worse, I have sought no official backing. L. Robert and Z. Stewart have read the whole with discernment, but I wish not to involve them or any other person. E. L. Bennett Jr, H. Bloch, J. Chadwick, W. V. Clausen, K. M. Clinton, DeC. Fales Jr, E. W. Handley, J. H. Kroll, P. L. MacKendrick, G. Nagy, G. M. Quinn, R. S. Stroud, L. L. Threatte Jr, S. V. Tracy, L. B. Urdahl and J. C. Waldbaum also have given valuable assistance. If what is con­ tained herein leads to useful discussion and agreement, in practice (one would hope) as well as in theory, and also, if it is needed, in organizational action, I for one shall be pleased to conform to the eventual decisions. All that matters is to serve clarity, simplicity, and adequacy—not to gratify any one person’s feel­ ings about any particular sign. Certain limitations of the present effort should be noted. Textual apparatus is not dealt with. There is nothing here on “style” : my efforts in that direction, along with those of others in America, are set forth in the American Journal of Archaeology 69 (1965) 199-206 (with abbreviations). Nor have I attempted to deal with usages outside the classical sphere, e.g. cuneiform tablets and the like. The Leiden and other treatments of conventions have usually cited examples which were fabricated, and which consequently had (it seemed to me) an air of unreality. I have therefore been at pains, except in a few brief instances, to cite instances from actual inscriptions in their context. Some of these are from my own publications: in searching for instances which are perfectly certain, one is driven to selecting instances which are familiar. VI I INTRODUCTION Apologia IN I93I Dos Leydemr Klammer System (full references in the Bibliography infra) came into being. Papyrologists had taken the lead, and initially at least representatives of other disciplines were not as fully consulted as would ideally have been desirable. Nevertheless, during the next decade and a half the conventions agreed upon at Leiden came to be widely adopted for the editing of epigraphical and papyrological texts. Any Classically trained scholar who knows the usages in one of these fields can often interpret correctly, without re­ course to tables of sigla and the like, the conventions now used in editing most of the texts in the other field. But palaeographical texts—the “authors”—con­ tinued to be edited somewhat differently, and often differently from one another. It may suffice to refer to O. Staehlin’s Editionstechnik, 2nd ed. (Teubner, Leipzig tf)1-!) and P· Maas, Textkritik (Leipzig 1927; later editions, including the Eng­ lish translation [Oxford 1958] are wholly unaffected by Leiden). Several years ago the Leiden1 system was put to a new test. It was urged by the present writer that the Bronze Age texts from the Aegean area should also be edited in such a way that, with a minimum of usages necessarily peculiar to the editing of the Linear B and A tablets (etc.), the diacritical signs should be intelligible to all Classical scholars. Colleagues learned in these writings willingly agreed, and the Wingspread Convention {infra, Bibliography) is the Leiden system re-stated with a few, readily-intelligible additions necessary for the tablets. Apparently the Leiden System is here to stay. It has worked—can one not say ? reasonably well. No large alteration has been or is likely to be proposed. There is ample evidence, nevertheless, to show that the Leiden system was not perfect or final. Nearly everyone has his own pet notions, and no one, if he had to start again at the beginning, would devise a system precisely like that which has been adopted. In fact several minor changes have been suggested. In epigraphy there is no agreement in theory or in practice on the proper status of “restorations” within square brackets. On the use of dots, theory is clear, practice often delinquent. On several signs used less frequently, there is no clear statement anywhere, neither is there an up-to-date bibliography of what has been written about the conventions. Nor does any recent article attempt to cover the same ground critically. In addition, the latest official formulation, itself more than thirty years old, of the Leiden system is out of print and unobtainable. It left much unsaid and some matters unclear. 1 As between Leiden and Leyden in English, there is no decisive consideration except usage, which favors Leiden. ·+ I