An early Byzantine corpus of gnomological collections (DEI & ΑΠΜ): edition, German translation and commentary

• Applicant: Dr. Jens Gerlach
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 430273455

This project aims to provide a new critical edition of the Byzantine gnomologia DEI and ΑΠΜ which have been shown to represent a single corpus. Based on the two oldest redactions, the edition will adhere to current philological standards, present the textual transmission in detail and replace the previous, more than a century old editions (whose authors did not use some essential textual witnesses which have been identified since) in order to close the gap between the source corpora and later florilegia that draw on them, for both of which several recent editions exist. An innovative method of structural analysis for the construction of a genetic stemma of the stages of redaction will for the first time be combined with the established methods of textual criticism to determine the filiation of structurally related witnesses.To elucidate the tradition of the single units (gnomes and apophthegms) as well as the genesis of the twin collections in their changing forms of compilation, this new edition will separately establish the text of either main redaction, since these vary greatly and have their own histories of transmission and reception.A critical apparatus will present the textual variants within the structurally related groups of manuscript witnesses. Additional apparatuses (sources, parallels and descendent collections) will trace the complex tradition of the individual units from Late Antiquity through the Byzantine era in detail.In addition to that of the individual units, the textual transmission of their lemmata, i.e. the authors etc. indicated in the texts themselves, is also to be scrutinised. This should help elucidate and correct misattributions in the Byzantine florilegia tradition and the dependent modern collections of fragments by author. Thus, the new edition aspires to further the knowledge of the texts of Ancient philosophers, particularly those with a fragmentary or lost tradition, and can thus contribute to a better overview of Greek wisdom literature from Antiquity to modern collections.A new German translation will be provided to make the corpus accessible to a more general readership with an interest in philosophy or the history of culture and education. To the same end, the text will be accompanied by commentary on the sources, the author attributions, the development of the successive redactional stages, of the textual transmission and variants,of the philosophical content,of language and style, of the philosophical terminology and its history and of the reception and the changing Byzantine contexts in which these collections are used and re-used.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Christian Brockmann