Appendix II -

4.400

Summary

My suggested parallel at Od. and G. 4.400 raises two main difficulties, which I shall deal with in order. The first involves the visibility of any parallel and in particular how prevalent ‘current stichometry’ seems to have been in texts contemporary with the Georgics. The second and ultimately more intractable issue is the question of the state of the Homeric text in Virgil's time.

I

Running, current, partial or marginal stichometry is a way of describing the practice of numbering the lines of a text by ascending letters of the alphabet, often between two horizontal bars, or else by a series of dots, normally every hundred lines or the prose equivalent. The convention of numbering texts every hundred lines in all probability had its origin as a method of calculating how much the scribe who copied a text was owed for his work. The Edictum Diocletiani, though belonging to a period when running stichometry was in decline (see below), gives some idea of its rationale, recording the fees due to scribes for copies of different quality per hundred lines: for top-quality script twenty-five denarii, for second-best twenty, and so on. This leads Turner to suggest that stichometrical marks may identify a text as a ‘professional copy’, the (higher quality) product of a commercial copying establishment. As Turner allows, however, it is impossible to say to what extent such markings transcended their role in the manufacturing process and actually came to be considered an integral part of the paradosis, to be copied from a model along with the text. The fact that running stichometry dies out in the Byzantine period certainly indicates, as Turner argues, that the marks were never fully integrated into the tradition; but it also suggests that the note of the final total of lines with which the Byzantine copyists were content was sufficient for all the practical requirements of copying including, presumably, the calculation of payment. Running stichometry thus perhaps developed the further function of facilitating reference.