THE DATE OF ANCIENT WORKS, INFERRED FROM THE QUOTATIONS AND REFERENCES
OF CONTEMPORARY AND SUCCEEDING WRITERS.
Let us now suppose, that the Greek and Latin authors are extant only
in the printed editions--that is to say, that every one of the ancient
manuscripts has long since perished, and that the facts that have been
referred to in the preceding pages are out of our view, or unknown. Our
business then would be, to collect from these works such a series of
mutual references, as should both prove the identity of the works now
extant with those so referred to; and also fix the relative places of
the several writers in point of time.
A single reference, found in one author, to the works of another,
who, in his turn, needs the same kind of authentication, may seem
to be a fallacious, or insufficient, and obscure kind of proof; for
this reference or this quotation may possibly be an interpolation; or
the reference may be of too slight or indefinite a kind to make it
certain, that the work now extant is the same as that so referred to.
In truth, the validity of this kind of proof arises from its _amount_,
from its _multifariousness_, and from its _incidental character_. For
although a single and solitary testimony may be inconclusive, many
hundred independent testimonies, all bearing upon the same point, are
much more than sufficient to remove every shadow of doubt; some of
these references may be slight and indefinite, but others are full,
particular, and complete. If some are formal and direct, and such
therefore as might be supposed to have been inserted with a fraudulent
design, others are altogether circuitous and purely incidental. If some
have descended to us through the same channels, others are derived
from sources as far removed as can be imagined from the possibility of
collusion.
But a work may happen to want this kind of evidence, and yet, on
other grounds, it may possess a valid claim to genuineness. In fact,
almost all the existing remains of ancient literature are abundantly
authenticated by the numerous and explicit quotations from them, or
descriptions of them, that occur in other works. And there are very few
books that do not contain some direct or some indirect allusions to
other works: so it is that the remains of ancient literature, taken as
a mass, contains within itself the proof of the authenticity of each
part.
The nature of the case gives to this body of references a pyramidal
form. In the most remote age it is, of course, small in amount; in
the next age it becomes much more ample and substantial; and in later
periods, it spreads itself over the entire surface of literature.
The literature of the Greeks was national and original; they borrowed
from their neighbours less in poetry, philosophy, and history, than
in religion, or the arts: their _early_ writers were not, in the
modern sense of the term, men of learning; their works were composed
at the impulse of genius, and of the moving spirit of the times. The
habit of literary allusion and quotation had not then been formed, nor
indeed was it congruous with this order of intellectual production; and
yet the early Greek writers contain mutual references, which, if not
numerous, are sufficient to establish and ascertain, in most instances,
the genuineness of each.
The second period of Greek literature, dating from the times of
Alexander, and reaching down to the overthrow of the Greek national
independence by the Romans, was, in the natural order of things,
an era of learning, of criticism, and of imitation. The writers of
this period, therefore, abound with references of all kinds to their
predecessors and contemporaries. A second age of literature holds up
a mirror of the first. Erudition, amplitude, comprehension, method,
labour, take the place of spontaneous effort, and of intuitive taste.
Commentators, compilers, and collectors abound; and the writers of such
an age seem to perform the functions of _caryatides_ in the temple of
learning; as if their only business was to sustain the pediment which
chiefly attracts the admiration of spectators. Among writers of this
class, therefore, we are to look for a copious harvest of quotations;
and in their pages we shall rarely fail to meet with evidence bearing
upon any question of the genuineness of an ancient writer.
The Romans borrowed everything but energy of character and practical
good sense, from the Greeks. Their literature, from the first, was
of a derived character; their writers added learning to what might
be their native genius; and their works reflect the literature of
their masters. Sufficiently ample allusions, therefore, to the
most celebrated of the Greek authors, as well as to those of their
countrymen, are found scattered throughout the Latin classics.
Both the Greek and Latin writers of later ages were well acquainted
with the literature of brighter times; and they have left in their
works ample means for bringing down the chain of references to the
time of the decline of learning in Europe--to that time up to which
we have already traced the history of existing manuscripts; so that
the two lines of evidence unite about midway between the fifth and the
fifteenth centuries.
The nature, extent, and validity of the evidence that may be derived
from the mutual references of authors, will be best exhibited by a
classification of its several kinds under the following heads:--
1. Literal quotations, whether the author cited is named or not.
Such quotations serve the double purpose of proving the existence of
the work quoted in the time of the writer who makes the reference,
and of identifying, and sometimes even of correcting, the extant
text. If, for example, in subsequent writers, we find only a dozen
or twenty sentences, taken from different parts of an earlier work,
the verbal coincidence is sufficient to prove that the work, such as
we now find it, is the same as that quoted. When such quotations are
numerous and exact, they afford the best means, either of restoring
the genuine reading of authors, or of judging of the comparative
purity of different manuscripts. For frequently these quotations seem
to have suffered less in the course of transcription than either the
other parts of the work in which they are found, or than that from
which they are taken. The reason of this difference may readily be
imagined:--either the author himself quoted from a copy purer than
any that are now extant; or the transcriber, meeting with a passage
which he remembered to belong to a well-known work, consulted the
original, of which he had a good copy, and the very circumstance of
doing so would naturally induce somewhat more of care than in ordinary
transcription.
2. Incidental allusions are often met with, either to the words or to
the sense of an author, sufficiently obvious to prove that the one
writer was known to the other; and yet they are too incidental and
remote to be regarded as an interpolation. In questions of apparent
difficulty, such accidental references may be conclusive in proof
of the existence of a work at a certain time. Among the ancient
historians, there are instances in which two writers, who do not
mention each other, narrate the same facts with so many coincidences of
method, or of details, embellishments, or reflections, as to make it
certain either that both narratives were derived from the same source;
or that the one was copied from the other. And if the one narrative
has altogether the air of originality, and is in accordance with the
writer’s style and spirit, the other writer must be held to be the
quoting party, and therefore he establishes the prior existence of the
work from which he has borrowed.
3. Nearly every one of the principal authors of antiquity has been
explicitly mentioned, or criticised, or described, by later writers.
Lists of their works have been given, with summaries of their contents;
or they have been made the subjects of connected commentaries, by means
of which the mass of the original work may be identified, and collated,
with existing copies. Books of this secondary class are usually fraught
with references to the entire circle of literature that was extant in
the writer’s time. There are also extant several works containing the
lives of ancient authors, with accurate lists of their works. These
biographical pieces, while they have on one hand afforded a security
against the production of spurious works, on the other hand have given
occasion to such attempts; for if some treatise, known to have been
written by a celebrated author, was believed to have perished, an
opportunity was presented for composing one which should correspond
with the description given of it. But such spurious works must always
be deficient in positive evidence, nor will they fail to betray the
imposition by some glaring inconsistencies in style, or in matter.
The lives of statesmen and warriors often contain such allusions to
the writers of the same age, as suffice to prove the time when they
flourished. All the information we possess on this head is, in many
instances, derived from allusions of this sort.
4. A copious fund of quotations is contained in some ancient treatises
on particular subjects, in which all the authors who have handled the
same topic are mentioned in the order of time.
5. Controversies, whether literary, political, or religious, have
usually occasioned extensive quotations to be made from works of all
classes; and, on the spur of an acrimonious disputation, many obscure
facts have been adduced, which, by some circuitous connexion with other
facts, have served to determine questions of literary history.
6. Among all the means for ascertaining the antiquity and genuineness
of ancient books, none are more satisfactory or more complete than
those afforded by the existence of early translations. Indeed, if
such translations can be proved to have been made near to the time at
which the author of the original work is believed to have lived, and
if they correspond, in the main, with the existing text--and if they
have descended to modern times through channels altogether independent
of those which have conveyed the original work--and if, moreover,
ancient translations of the same work, in _several languages_, are in
existence, no kind of proof can be more perfect, or more trustworthy.
In such cases every other evidence might safely be dispensed with.
Ancient translations serve also the important purpose of furnishing a
criterion by which to judge of the comparative merits of manuscripts,
and by which also to determine questions of suspected interpolation.
Although the genuineness of by far the greater part of ancient
literature is established by a redundancy of testimonies, such as those
here described, there will of course be some few instances of works
which, though probably genuine, are so destitute of external proof that
they must remain under doubt; and there are also some few which, though
probably spurious, possess just so much plausible proof of genuineness
as serves to maintain a place for them on the ground of controversy.
The two together, therefore, will yield some number of disputable
cases. The controversies that have actually been carried on relative
to such doubtful works have served to show the exceedingly small
chance which any actually spurious work can have of escaping suspicion
and detection. And thus these discussions furnish, implicitly, the
strongest grounds for relying upon the genuineness of those works
against which even a captious and whimsical scepticism can maintain no
plausible objection.