The edition that Stefan Knoch has prepared for the glorious Sammlung Tusculum offers a new text and a new translation of the fifty-three declamatory excerpta of Calpurnius Flaccus, an almost unknown rhetor of the Roman imperial age. Stefan Knoch is not new to critical engagement in the field of Roman declamation, and the author of this review has already had occasion to discuss for the Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft a brief yet dense and substantial volume on this literary genre, which offered a commendable and valuable synthesis.[1] Let us now turn to the edition under consideration. In the introduction, Knoch concisely and densely compiles a range of information concerning Roman declamation, Calpurnius Flaccus and his literary and cultural context, the manuscript tradition, and the differences between the current printed edition and its predecessors, which are examined swiftly. Overall, this introduction contains all the essential elements for understanding the author, although it is not without its weaknesses, such as the overly concise discussion of the dating and the structure of the manuscript tradition, to which I shall return later.
This part is followed by the Latin text accompanied by a facing German translation, and a comparison table that outlines the divergences between this edition and the one rightly regarded as the standard, namely the Teubner edition of L. Håkanson (1978), which has not been superseded by the subsequent edition by Sussman (1994). Thirty-eight points of textual divergence are recorded, making Knoch’s contribution particularly worthy of scholarly attention, mainly for the author of this review, who will take care of some suggestions in the CUF edition currently in preparation with Catherine Schneider. Before giving an evaluation, we have to remember that Tusculum series does not host critical editions and so that the scientific community does not expect that a Tusculum edition have a true critical apparatus.
As a matter of fact, the author includes one only when the editor deems it necessary. Knoch himself justifies this approach on p. 19, defining his work as a Leseausgabe, a reading edition intended to make the fragments of Calpurnius accessible to a broader audience beyond the narrow circle of specialists. While this position is certainly defensible, the methodology employed is, in my view, not so clear: there is no indication of the manuscripts or their variants, and the edition restricts itself to highlighting innovations not only with respect to the earlier Teubner edition by Lehnert (1903), and to those of Håkanson and Sussman, but also in relation to Aizpurua’s French translation, which lacks critical authority. Occasionally—but without consistency—the work refers to the editorial tradition, such as Burmann’s edition of 1720.
The critical intervention relies to a significant extent on suggestions provided by Werner Taegert, former director of the Staatsbibliothek in Bamberg, who possesses a strong philological background, although his own classical philological work has focused on Virgil and Claudian. Knoch repeatedly expresses gratitude to Taegert and acknowledges the value of many of his textual proposals. For these reasons, this “apparatus” must be characterized as a compilation of critical and reading notes—though not devoid of intellectual merit and philological interest.
Without dealing with a detailed evaluation of each individual emendation, in general terms they do not always prove convincing—either because they are faciliores, or because they do not permit a reasonable reconstruction of the genesis of the error. I limit myself here to the example of declamatio 4, in which Knoch, against the conjecture sacrum proposed by Gronovius and later accepted by Håkanson (which seems required by the nearby larem), preserves the servum found in the manuscripts and in Lehnert’s edition—presumably influenced by the proximity of patrem, which at first glance might suggest the necessity of a human figure (servus) who, however, is not mentioned elsewhere in the declamatio.
From a bibliographical standpoint, the author demonstrates broad familiarity with scholarship on Calpurnius, with one notable omission: the dissertation by Elisa Nury.[2] Her study is dedicated to the application of digital tools to automated collation and uses Calpurnius Flaccus as a case study (owing to the limited number of manuscripts). Although it does not fundamentally alter the manuscript tradition as defined by Håkanson,[3] it proves especially useful for the constitution of the text, as it greatly facilitates the verification of manuscript concordances and discrepancies.
The notes primarily aim to support reading and do not engage deeply in exegetical analysis. In my view, the principal merit of this edition lies in its translation. Although the present reviewer is not a native speaker of German, the translation reads smoothly and, where possible, succeeds in assisting the reader in navigating complex issues, both in terms of legal content and its development—within a work, as Knoch rightly points out, intended for advanced students and marked by a linguistic expressionism that at times verges on opacity.
In conclusion, this is a sound edition, but one oriented more toward the interpretation of content and the legal narrative than toward the philological and textual analysis.
Notes
[1] S. Knoch, Die lateinische Deklamation, Hildesheim, Olms. 2021, «Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft» 75/1 (2022), 28-31, online at https://ulb-dok.uibk.ac.at/AAHG/periodical/titleinfo/7949502.
[2] Automated Collation and Digital Editions: From Theory to Practice, London, King’s College, 2018, online at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/studentTheses/automated-collation-and-digital-editions. The results are also summarized in E. Nury, Visualizing Collation Results, «Variants» 14, 2019, 75-94, online at https://journals.openedition.org/variants/950?lang=fr. T. Lupo, Military Violence in Latin Declamation: A Case Study, Classica et Christiana 18/1, 2023, pp. 117–130, appeared after the volume had gone to press. This article is available at https://history.uaic.ro/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Tommaso-LUPO-La-violenza-militare-nella-declamazione-latina-un-caso-di-studio-Classica-et-Christiana-18-1-2023-117-130.pdf.
[3] In this case as well, it is noteworthy that the stemma provided by Knoch on p. 17 entirely disregards the features of contamination between N and B2, which were outlined by Håkanson.