12-28-2011, 06:38 AM
Quote:It's my understanding from reading so far that most of the written sources we have now were known then, but there was little or no archaeological verification for the sources. Is that correct?So far, people have helpfully steered you towards discussions of the "invention" of archaeology in the eighteenth century. But I'm not sure that this made any particularly profound impact on scholars' understanding of the written sources (which, I think, is your main concern).
From that point of view, the ongoing process of source criticism is perhaps more interesting. For some texts, this isn't really an issue. For example, Caesar's Gallic War (de bello Gallico) has only ever been known from around half-a-dozen manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, eleventh centuries, which all derived from one or other of two (lost) exemplars, so the Latin text known to your "educated gentleman of 1760" was pretty much the same text that we use today. (Successive editors have suggested emendations but no major changes.)
As another example, the situation with Tacitus' Agricola (de vita Iulii Agricolae) is even more stark, since only two copies of a single exemplar have ever been known. Interestingly, in 1902, the supposed ninth-century exemplar itself was found, which has enabled improved readings of various sections. So your gentleman of 1760 would have been using an inferior version of the Agricola.
As a third example, the text of Vegetius (Epitoma rei militaris) has experienced a very different history, because it has always been popular, and was used consistently throughout the middle ages. There are over two hundred different manuscripts, probably deriving from half-a-dozen exemplars which exhibit subtle differences. By chance, the various editions available in 1760 all chose one exemplar (a different one each time!) and ignored all the others. It was only with the "official" Teubner text of 1869 that we got a "scientific" approach, weighing up the evidence of the different exemplars and selecting the most likely text. Even now, it's possible for a less-than-vigilant editor to produce a ghastly version of the Latin text (Stelten's edition of 1990 has been lambasted by critics), and even the latest version of the Teubner (1995) received a cool reception in some quarters.
It's safe to say that your 1760 gentleman would be happy with our Caesar, intrigued by our Agricola, and completely surprised by the changes in our Vegetius!
