4P Li gç(' TRANSACTIONS

794 LE LIVRE DE YCONOMIQUE D'ARISTOTE [TRANS. AMER. PHIL. SOC.
least important considerations." However sensible the
observation, it hardly corresponds to the original Latin.
Again, in the same chapter (337a), the French shows
a misunderstanding of the Latin: "Non enirn possibile
non bene ostendentem bene imitari neque in aliis neque
in epitropia. [There can he no good copy without a
good example.]" Oresme turned this to: "Car se les
choses ne apparent hien distincteernent, les servans ne
pevcnt ensuir ou faire selon Ic plaisir du mari et de la
femtne ne en la cure ou garde des choses ne en autres
cvres." This can only mean: "For if the tasks are not
distinctly classified, the slaves cannot follow or fulfill
the wishes of the husband and wife in taking care of the
property or in other tasks." As an example of confused
translation, we may select a sentence at the end of Book
I, ch. 4 (333d) : "Nam lIla que fiunt per ornatum nihil
differunt ab histrionun-i usu tragedias in scena agentiutn.
[For intercourse depending for its charm upon outward
adornment is in no way different from that of the actors
in a tragedy playing their fictitious roles on the stage.]"
Oresme offers as the French equivalent: "Car en tel
apparat fine ont Ic honime et Ia femme qui sunt ensemble
par manage, tel aournement ne differe en rien des
parlers quc Yen seult faire es tragedies." This may be
rendered: "For the outward adornment of the married
couple may be no different from the speeches commonly
associated with tragedies."
The number of such passages in the Yconomique,
although not large, is sufficient to warrant the observation
that translation is a treacherous art even when, as
with Oresme, the translator is completely at home in
both languages. For those who desire to make further
comparison of the French and Latin texts, the latter has
been included as all in this volume. The
vocabulary of the Yconomique is discussed later in Section
4.
Although the title does not indicate it, the Yconomique
contains, like Oresme's three other translations from
the Aristotelian corpus, a running commentary or gloss,
provided by himself. This interpretative material constitutes
approximately two-thirds of the French text.
Whether it deserves to he called commentary or, as
Oresme consistentl y refers to it, gloss, depends upon
the definition given these two terms. In great part, his
explanations are brief and undeveloped—a short sentence
giving a concrete example to illustrate more vividly
an abstract concept or an anticipation of the idea to be
presented in the next translated passage. If we define
a gloss as a short explanatory note and a commentary
as an extended interpretation or discussion of a textual
passage, then we shall have to classify the major part of
Oresme's remarks as glosses, for there are not more
than a half-dozen passages in the Yconomique that
qualify as commentaries according to these definitions.
In supplying this expository material to the original
text Oresme was merely adapting to French the timehonored
practice 1 the expositors 4 the Aristotelian
corpus from the early Greek and Roman commentators
through the great Scholastics of the thirteenth century,
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. From the
Alexandrian and Byzantine expositors, the Arabs borrowed
this method of textual exegesis, and as early as
the fourth century Christian scholars began to supply
explanatory glosses to the Bible; Walafrid Strabo's
Glossaria. ordinaria (Ca. 840) on the Vulgate was employed
for several centuries (last edition, Antwerp,
1634) as an authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures.
Among the Jews, the Talmud was originally a
commentary on the Old Testament, to which later generations
added their own commentaries. Thus the tradition
of the gloss and the commentary was part and parcel
of mediaeval learning. Greatly modified, the tradition
is perpetuated in the relatively modern institution of the
explanatory footnote.
Adopting then the expository methods employed in
the Latin commentaries, Oresme translates a passage
from the Latin Economics—a few sentences, a single
sentence, or often merely a phrase, and then he intervenes
with his explanatory comment, frequently a brief
sentence, but occasionally an extended exposition of
several hundred words. With but one exception, in the
extant copies of the Yconomique these glosses follow
immediately after the translated passage. This manner
of linking text and commentary together in sequence,
known as running commentar y, offers the practical advantage
of focusing attention upon the meaning of the
original text; but it incurs at the same time the danger
of breaking the continuity of thought and destroys whatever
unity of style the original ma y possess. The single
exception to this commingling of text and commentary
in the extant copies of the Yconomique is found in the
finely executed manuscript made for Charles V, now in
the private library of the Countess of Wasiers. In this
manuscript, which also contains the Politiques, the gloss
is written in the broad margins surrounding the four
sides of the two narrow columns of translated text; suitable
cross reference marks are used to identify the
glosses with the textual passages under discussion. This
arrangement leaves the original text unbroken; but it
has the disadvantage of dispersing the longer glosses
over several pages, thus increasing considerably the opportunity
for scribal errors and omissions and causing
the reader to lose his place in the translated material.
Among the manuscript copies of the Ycono;niqu-c there
is no example of a third type of paginal arrangement
much less frequently found in commentated works, in
which the text is given in the right hand column, with
cross references to the glosses appearing in the left
hand column. This parallel presentation of text and
commentary was objectionable because it was often
wasteful of expensive parchment, since text and gloss
seldom required equal amounts of space, and the blanks
that resulted from the juxtaposition of disparate quantities
of written matter offended the esthetic sense of