Metalepsis, paragraphe and the scholia to Hermogenes - Leeds ...

MALCOLM HEATH, METALEPSIS, PARAGRAPHE AND THE SCHOLIA TO HERMOGENES
itself. I shall not examine the scholia on the division of metalepsis into heads.)
First I show that the Sopater sections in RG 4 draw on at least one commentary in
addition to the Sopater of RG 5 (§3.3). An analysis of the corresponding parts of
the scholia in RG 7 reveals a second source used in the Sopater sections of RG 4
(§3.4). That in turn leads to a suggestion about the identity of the Sopater of RG 4
(§3.5).
3.2 Sopater (RG 5)
Sopater often disagrees with Hermogenes, and often agrees with him.
Gloeckner catalogues such passages, and concludes that Sopater was using two
sources, supporters of Minucianus and Hermogenes respectively. 57 Gloeckner’s
diagnosis is in my view based on a false assumption about the approach to be
expected in such a commentary: the evidence for the third-century commentators
on Minucianus and Hermogenes (Porphyry, Metrophanes and Menander) suggests
that an eclectic and critical approach was characteristic of the tradition of
commentary on rhetorical treatises from the start. But it is worth looking more
closely at four passages which Gloeckner singles out as providing direct evidence
for the conflation of different sources. None of them, in my view, support his
thesis.
(i) Gloeckner takes the repetition of Minucianus’ etymology of st£sij as a
doublet indicating two sources (‘p.76, 23: Minuciani etymologia verbi st£sij
exhibetur quam p. 77, 13 coniunctam cum aliis repetitam reperies’). But there is
nothing here which allows us to draw source-critical conclusions. When
Hermogenes refers (35.9) to ‘the so-called issues’, Sopater (76.22-30) explains the
‘so-called’ by noting that Hermogenes does not accept Minucianus’ etymology.
When Hermogenes says, a little later (35.17-19), that ‘the question of the origin of
the term “issue” ... is one I leave for others to argue out’, Sopater repeats the
point, with a longer list of possible etymologies (77.11-22). The apparent doublet
in Sopater is thus prompted by a feature of the text on which he is commenting.
(ii) In 159.26-160.11 58 Sopater summarises and rejects the view of ‘some
theorists’, who divide the issue of definition into three classes; but from 160.12
onwards he proposes three classes, which Gloeckner finds indistinguishable from
those just rejected (‘quae ... non a qualitatibus modo ... reiectis quicquam
differunt)’. Hence he infers that at 160.12 Sopater changes from a source who
rejects to a source who accepts classes of this kind (‘genera ad Minuciani morem
inventa’). In fact, there is a difference in principle between the classes rejected
and those accepted; Sopater is thus rejecting one principle of classification and
endorsing another. His objection to the first set of classes is that they do not
57 Gloeckner (1901) 71-6.
58 Text: comparison of 5.159.25-161.19 with 4.578.29-581.1 reveals some corruptions (e.g. at
159.26 read Órou for lÒgou: cf. 4.578.30) and abridgements in RG 5, which at some points is
unintelligible when read alone; but the additional matter at 4.580.16-31 is redactional. At 5.159.33
~ 4.579.4 the example of kat¦ kr…sin has apparently dropped out, and the following words (toÚj
te kat¦ a‡thsin kaˆ toÝj kat¦ ¢mfisb»thsin) are opaque; this is not the only indication that
the text of Sopater’s commentary available to deutero-Sopater had already suffered significant
corruption (see e.g. Appendix 1 n.1, on RG 5.110.19-23 ~ 4.284.11-14).
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