Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl - Plautus

Plautus

To the world in general Ritschl was best known as a student of Plautus. He cleared away the accretions of ages, and by efforts of that real genius which goes hand in hand with labor, brought to light many of the true features of the original. It is infinitely to be regretted that Ritschl's results were never combined to form that monumental edition of Plautus of which he dreamed in his earlier life. Ritschl's examination of the Plautine manuscripts was both laborious and brilliant, and greatly extended the knowledge of Plautus and of the ancient Latin drama. Of this, two striking examples may be cited. By the aid of the Ambrosian palimpsest he recovered the name T Maccius Plautus, for the vulgate M Accius, and proved it correct by strong, extraneous arguments. On the margin of the Palatine manuscripts the marks "C" and "DV" continually recur, and had been variously explained. Ritschl proved that they meant Canticum and Diverbium, and hence showed that in the Roman comedy only the conversations in iambic senarii were not intended for the singing voice. Thus was brought into strong relief a fact without which there can be no true appreciation of Plautus, viz., that his plays were comic operas rather than comic dramas.

In conjectural criticism Ritschl was inferior not only to his great predecessors but to some of his contemporaries. His imagination was in this field (but in this field only) hampered by erudition, and his judgment was unconsciously warped by the desire to find in his text illustrations of his discoveries. But still a fair proportion of his textual labours has stood the test of time, and he rendered immense service by his study of Plautine metres, a field in which little advance had been made since the time of Bentley. In this matter Ritschl was aided by an accomplishment rare (as he himself lamented) in Germany, the art of writing Latin verse.

In spite of the incompleteness, on many sides, of his work, Ritschl must be assigned a place in the history of learning among a very select few. His studies are presented principally in his Opuscula collected partly before and partly since his death. The Trinummus (twice edited) was the only specimen of his contemplated edition of Plautus which he completed. The edition has been continued by some of his pupils--Goetz, Loewe, and others.