De Re Publica - History of The Text

History of The Text

Large parts of the text are missing: especially from the 4th and the 5th book only minor fragments survived. All other books have at least some passages missing. Scipio's dream, which is only a part from the 6th book, is nearly all that survives from that book. The Somnium Scipionis, as it is known, survives because it was the subject of a commentary by Macrobius, who excerpted large portions; both he and his readers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were mainly interested in its discussion of astrology and astronomy, especially given the loss of the rest of the book. An enterprising copyist early in the textual tradition appended a copy of the Somnium to a copy of Macrobius's Commentary, but this copy appears to be inferior to the one Macrobius was reading. This text became so popular that its transmission was polluted by multiple copies; it has been impossible to establish a stemma for it.

The largest part of the surviving text was uncovered as a palimpsest in 1819 in a Vatican Library manuscript (Vat Lat 5757) of a work by Augustine and published in 1822. Before that date Scipio's dream was the only larger excerpt of the text that was known to have survived the Middle Ages. The other fragments are mainly quotes found in the work of other authors (for example Augustine and Nonius Marcellus). Through these other authors' discussion of Cicero's treatise, the main topics of each book can be surmised.

The discovery in 1819 by Cardinal Angelo Mai was one of the first major recoveries of an ancient text from a palimpsest, and although Mai's techniques were crude by comparison with later scholars', his discovery of De Republica heralded a new era of rediscovery and inspired him and other scholars of his time to seek more palimpsests.

A photostat was published in the 19th century by the Vatican library, and a transcript is available in the 1908 Supplementary Proceedings of the American School of Rome. Uncertainty continues over several corruptions in the text that affect key data, such as the structure and size of the Comitia Centuriata in early Rome as described by Scipio in Book II. Another key area of debate is the one corrective hand present in Vat Lat 5757; some scholars believe the corrective hand was a more skilled copyist, perhaps a supervisor, who had access to the same text as the copyist and was correcting the first work; others have concluded that the corrective hand had access to a different version of the text.

It is worth noting that in one letter to his friend Atticus, Cicero asks him to make a correction to the copy of De Republica Cicero has sent him. This correction is not present in the Vat Lat 5757 version of the text.

Read more about this topic:  De Re Publica

Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history and/or text:

    The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.
    Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)

    Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.
    Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)

    I am so glad you have been able to preserve the text in all of its impurity.
    Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)