David Butterfield on the Indirect Tradition of Lucretius

The "direct tradition" of an author is the manuscripts, printed editions and others copies of whole works by that author. The term "indirect tradition" refers to the times when an author is quoted and/or mentioned by another author.

I have written once before on this blog about David Butterfield's book entitled The Early Textual History of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. It's a pleasure to return to Butterfield's book and report some of what he found about the indirect tradition of Lucretius, as I examine the question: to what extent can Lucretius said to have been "forgotten" before Poggio found a manuscript of Lucretius in 1417 at a German monastery he did not bother to name? A manuscript which Poggio then lost, as he seems to have lost by far the most of those Classical manuscripts he discovered. To be fair to Poggio: copies were made of most of these manuscripts before they were lost; also, Poggio had very good handwriting, as we can see from some of these copies which have somehow survived.

Butterfield sums up what he has been able to find of Lucretous' indirect tradition between when Lucretious wrote his poem, around 55 BC, and the end of the 10th century, on pp 100-101, where he says: "Fifty-five different Latin authors cited 492 different Lucretian verses in full or in part." On page 100 Butterfield also notes that the indirect tradition indicates that manuscrupts of Lucretius were available in Rome up until the 5th century, in north Africa between the 2nd and the 4th centuries, and, most interestingly, in Spain around the turn of the 7th century.

Lucretius is not always named by these authors who quote him. On pp 47-100, Butterfield goes over the indirect tradition in great detail. I hope these are in mostly chrological order: Lucretius is named by Cicero, Ovid, Vitruvius, Nepos, Velleius Paterculus, Pliny the Elder, Statius, Tacitus, Quintilian, Apuleius, Quintus Serenus, Jerome, Sidonius Appolinaris, the anonymous 8th-century Fragmentum Parisinum de notis the anonymous 9th-century florilegium Exemplore diversorum auctorum, and the anonymous work of the 9th or 10th century known as the second Vatican Latin mythology. That's quite a lot of prominent mentions, by 12 different authors, which would work against Lucretius been forgotten. As for the times when the remaining 43 authors quoted Lucretius without naming him, and as for how often readers would have known that Lucretius was being quoted, that's much more difficult to say.

Butterfield is very conservative in mapping out this tradition: on many occasions, he mentions that other scholars have described passages in various texts as having come from Lucretius, but he feels that the evidence for this is insufficient. For example, papyrus fragments from the 1st century AD have been found at Herculaneum, and some have attributed the texts to Lucretius, but Butterfield maintains that the texts are too short to allow us to be certain of this attribution.

Butterfield stops this phase of his description of the indirect tradition at the end of the 10th century, because these are the only instances, before 1417, where he believes that it can be conclusively demonstrated that another author had direct access to a manuscript of Lucretius. In a footnote on pp 286-286, about two dozen further authors from the eleventh century up until 1417 are mentioned who seem to have been familiar with some part of the text of de rerum natura, but who, in Butterfield's judgment, could have been familiar with the indirect tradition only. That is, instead of referring to a complete text of Lucretius' poem, they may be simply quoting a quotation.

To depart from the theme of indirect tradition and mention direct tradition, while staying with the question of to what extent Lucretius can be said to have been "forgotten" before 1417: there are 3 surviving 9th-century manuscripts of Lucretius, 2 complete and fragments of a 3rd.

On page 32, Butterfield offers a stemma, a diagram showing his theory of which manuscripts were copied from which other ones, which, in addition to those 3 surviving 9th-century manuscripts, postulates the existence of 5 more made between the 9th and the 12th centuries.

And of course there there was more readership of Lucretius, there were more quotations and and mentions, there were more manuscripts. We don't know how many more. Butterfield is not saying that this is the extant of the readership of Lucretius. He's saying that this is the extent of what he can prove.

And it's a great pleasure, for me, to follow Butterfield on his search for all of this evidence. It's great to get into so many details. But, for a long time previously, I already had had a general idea of the size and shape of Lucretius' audience. As had very many others who had some familiarity with Latin literature.

Which is why it seemed so strange to us when we heard about this hugely best-selling book by a Harvard English professor, which claimed, among other strange things, that Lucretius had been forgotten before Poggio miraculously, just by chance, saved him from oblivion, which in turn changed the world, because the world had been completely unfamiliar with Lucretius and all that he had to say.

David Butterfield on the Early Textual Transmission of Lucretius

Textual transmission is the means by which a text -- for example, de rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), a book-length Latin poem of Epicurian philosophy written in the 1st century BC by a man named Lucretius, his only surviving work -- has been passed along -- in Lucretius' case, manuscripts written in the 9th century BC were copied into other manuscripts in the 15th century, and printed editions have been made based on various manuscripts. This is called the direct tradition. In addition, other authors have quoted or described passages from Lucretius poem: this is referred to as the indirect tradition.

In this blog post, I criticized Stephen Greenblatt for including grossly misleading and just plain inaccurate statements about the textual transmission of de rerum natura in his book The Swerve.



Although reading The Swerve was a very disappointing and upsetting experience for me, all the more so because so very many readers who know even less about ancient Latin literature than I do have assumed that Greenblatt knows much more about it than he obviously does, it led me eventually to another book which I positively love: The Early Textual History of Lucretuius' De Rerum Natura.



It is hard to imagine 2 books about the same book which would be more dissimilar than Greenblatt's book and Butterfield's. The Swerve is a very popular book, full of wild exaggerations, reckless speculation and plain inaccuracies, while The Early Textual History of Lucretuius' De Rerum Natura is definitely not for most readers. It is very radically limited to statements which Butterfield can support with exhaustive evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I'm sure Butterfield would agree; however, in this book he strictly limits himself to that for which he build a solid case. It seems that even compared to many of his colleagues in Classical Studies, Butterfield is very conservative in stating evidence for the transmission of Lucretius.

And yet, what is left over after Butterfield is done rejecting evidence which he deems not sound enough, still presents a picture of a much greater readership of and interaction with Lucretius' poem than that presented by Greenblatt, who carelessly dismisses a thousand years between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance in which, he says, Lucretius was forgotten.

First of all, there are the manuscripts, both those which we still have, and those whose existence the extremely-cautious Butterfield confidently posits.

And I must not go any further before assuring you that I am not a Classicist, nor a scholarly editor, and cannot yet follow Butterfield in all the details of his arguments for the previous existence of manuscripts of de rerum natura. (I've included the modifier "yet" because I intend to re-read Butterfield's book over and over, because I enjoy doing so, and also to consult many of the works Butterfield mentions in his footnotes, so that I may eventually understand him more fully than I now do.) Rather than go into too much detail and risk mis-representing what Butterfield says, I will try to keep it simple, and if there's actually anyone reading this who cares to investigate the matter further, but hasn't yet read Butterfield's book, he or she can read Butterfield's book.

And yes: some of the Latin names of codices below are abbreviated, in the same form as they appear on p 32 of Butterfield, because after I thought it over, I decided that if I tried to write out the full names I would probably mis-spell some. I admit it. I ain't frontin'.

First, the direct transmission: We currently have 3 9th-century manuscripts of Lucretius: the most significant one was written early in the 9th century, on pages which are oblong in shape, and has therefore come to be referred to as O; another, from the late 9th century, is written on square pages and is called Q, from the Latin quadratus, meaning square; and finally there are 3 fragments of another manuscript from the late 9th century, fragments which, together, Butterfield calls S, after the Latin schedae, meaning fragments.

In addition, Butterfield feels that 6 more manuscripts, now missing, written between the 8th and around the 12th century, can be confidently posited:

-- Ω, an 8th-century manuscript from which O was copied;

-- Ψ, also called the Cod. Sang. mid-9th century, copied from Ω, and from which in turn both Q and S were copied;

-- the Codex Dungali, copied from O in the 9th or 10th century;

-- the Cod. Murbac., or Poggianus, the copy which Poggio, a hero of Greenblatt's, found in "some German monastery" (Poggie was not more specific than that in his letter describing the find), copied from O in the 9th or 10th century;

-- the Cod. Corb., copied from Q, possibly in the 12th century; and

-- the Cod. Lobbes, unrelated to any of the others, copied in the 12th century.

So, there are 9 manuscripts of Lucretious' poem, right smack in the middle of the era when, according to Greenblatt, Lucretius was unknown. Plus whatever the Cod. Lobbes was copied from.

In Butterfield's opinion, all of the manuscripts from the 15th century or later were copies, or copies of copies, etc, of Poggianus, although one of them could have been correcting using O.

Next, the indirect transmission: Between the 1st century BC and the 10th century AD, Butterfield says (p 100), "Fifty-five different Latin authors cited 492 different Lucretian verses in full or in part."

In addition, there are 16 fragments which at various times have been thought to have been parts of Lucretius' poem not found in the direct transmission. The skeptical Butterfield says we do have sufficient evidence to regard any of them as actual quotations from Lucretius.

And then there is a very long and very remarkable footnote, pp 286-288, note 1 of Appendix II, in which Butterfiled discusses about a dozen authors who quote Lucretius between the end of the 10th century and Poggio's discovery in 1417, who in Butterfield's opinion could have been quoting from the indirect tradition and not from manuscripts of the entire poem; and about a dozen more who other scholars have said were acquainted with Lucretius, but, according to Butterfield, with insufficient evidence.

The more I learn about Poggio, who according to Greenblatt ushered in the Renaissance by discovering the Poggianus or Cod. Murbac., the less I like him. He seems to me to have been pathologically ill-mannered. Many have taken him to have been badly-disposed toward monks and monasteries, but maybe he just hated everybody, and it only seems that he hated monks because he had mostly to do with monks and monasteries, because monasteries were where most of the manuscripts were which he was looking for. Maybe if he had been a clockmaker instead of a Classical scholar, he would've poured all of that verbal abuse onto his customers, and we never would have heard about it because he would have written far fewer letters, and they all would have been lost.

Speaking of pieces of writing being lost: for a while I thought of accusing Poggio of actually having impeded the process of Classical Studies, because again and again I read of him finding some old manuscript (old in his own time) which was then lost. But as I studied further I saw that Poggio was hardly unique in this regard. For example, look at the 6 now-lost Lucretian manuscripts described above: only 1 passed through Poggio's hands before being lost.

Reviewing Butterfield's book in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Lisa Piazzi remarks, "Probably only a few specialists will read it from beginning to end." A few specialists and at least 1 oddball autistic blogger. And perhaps 2 or 3 of you will have found this blog post interesting.