The Manuscript Tradition of Procopius' Gothic Wars

The Introduction, which gives information about the life and work of Procopius and also about previous editions and studies of the text, is followed by Chapter 1 which contains an analytical codicological and palaeological description of codex Ath, which was written in the late 13th century and is thus the earliest extant ms of Procopius' Wars. Section 2 examines the position of the codex in the stemma codicum, proposed by the latest editor of the text, Jacob Haury, Procopius Caesariensis Opera Omnia (Teubner: Leipzig, 1905-12, revised by G.Wirth, 1963). A collation of the text with the principal manuscripts (K and L) of the two families, z and y, shows that Ath belongs to the y family. A further collation of Ath with all other extant manuscripts of this family of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, illustrates the importance of Ath in the tradition of the text, despite its minor phonetic, grammatical, syntactical and linguistic errors. Section 3 gives a description and updated information of all manuscripts of family y, which were briefly described by previous editors, and some of them were not examined at all, before their relation is examined and the stemma codicum is revised on the basis of a series of propositions. It is concluded that Ath has been the exemplar for some of the later manuscripts, either directly or through intermediaries. The study concludes with a more theoretical chapter, Section 4, which places the production of Ath and other manuscripts, containing Procopius' works and other early Byzantine historiographical texts, in the general context of the intellectual milieu of the Palaeologan period.

"En conclusion, à une époque où l'on assiste à une inflation des publications dans le domaine des études grecques et latines, il serait de saine politique pour le maisons d'édition de ne retenir que les monographies qui apportent une contribution importante à la recherche."
Bruno Rochette in: Latomus 2007