Review of Anonymous Seguerianus ed by Patillon 05 BMCR Malcolm Heath

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.09.16

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2005/2005-09-16.html
M. Patillon (ed.), Anonyme de Sguier. Art du discours politique.
Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2005. Pp. xcxi, 150 (pp. 1-61 double).
ISBN 2-251-00526-9. 47.00.
Reviewed by Malcolm Heath, University of Leeds
(m.f.heath@leeds.ac.uk)
Word count: 2209 words
Michel Patillon's new edition of the rhetorical treatise known as the
Anonymus Seguerianus should become the default choice for serious
study, both for the quality of the text and translation, and for the
extensive and characteristically informative introduction and notes.1 That
recommendation will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the
impressive series of editions of rhetorical texts that Patillon (henceforth P.)
has produced in recent years.2 Among these, the edition of Theon was
especially notable for making accessible the Armenian version of the
chapters lost in the Greek paradosis. In this case, too, P. gives us, not just
a good text, but more text than previous editors. To understand this, some
background may be needed.
The Anonymus Seguerianus (henceforth AS) was discovered by Sguier de
St Brisson, and first published in 1840. Its authorship is unknown. Graeven
argued in his ground-breaking edition3 that the author was called
Cornutus, a suggestion that is still able to trap unwary non-specialists into
a confusion with the first-century Stoic. But AS is a compilation of material
drawn from named authorities, at least some of whom date to the second
century AD. Graeven was not guilty of an elementary chronological
blunder; his idea was that there must have been a third-century
rhetorician of that name. But the argument, which crucially depends on
the fact that the definition of kolon in AS 242 identical to that attributed
elsewhere to Cornutus, is not compelling: more probably, the compiler of
AS inherited this definition from the first-century Stoic through one of his
proximate sources.
Dilts and Kennedy, in the introduction to their edition,4 report that
Graeven's 'theory that Anonymous Seguerianus is a shortened version of a
work on rhetoric by a rhetorician of the third century named Cornutus ...
has been discredited' (xi). That is misleading. Though the attribution to a
hypothetical third-century Cornutus has been rejected, it remains virtually
certain that the text which Sguier discovered is a shortened version:
parts of a more extensive version are preserved in the indirect tradition. At

the indisputable minimum, an anonymous commentary on [Hermogenes]

On Invention contains passages which cite the same range of authorities
as AS in the same manner; these passages partially overlap with AS, but
also present material missing from the version preserved in manuscript.
Previous editors of AS have not thought it their business to edit the
material from the anonymous commentary (some do not even advertise
its existence), and getting at it has hitherto posed a formidable challenge.
Parts of the commentary were printed in volume 7 of Walz's Rhetores
Graeci (RG 7.697-860); the parts omitted from volume 5 have to be
constructed from the text and apparatus of volume 5. Walz is not a userfriendly work at the best of times, and only the most obsessive devotees
of fragmentary rhetoricians would contemplate the task of reassembling
the lost sections of AS from Walz's diaspora. So it is immensely valuable to
have the relevant parts of the anonymous commentary (henceforth AC),
properly edited from superior manuscript evidence, in P.'s accessible Bud.
Though I believe that the relationship between AS and the material
preserved in AC is not as inscrutable as P. supposes (xxiii), the decision to
place this material separately in an Annexe rather than contaminating the
two versions is methodologically correct. In what follows I cite AC using P.'s
section numbers.5
P.'s treatment of the opening section of AS illustrates both the
conservative and the interventionist tendencies in his editorial practice.
He retains the words which other editors have plausibly
suspected as an interpolation. That suspicion is encouraged by the fact
that John of Sardis (PS 358.6 Rabe) omits the words. P. mentions and
discusses this evidence in a note, but does not acknowledge it in his
apparatus. (That is not the only case in which P.'s apparatus is less
informative than it should be: an edition's users are entitled to expect that
the apparatus will supply them with all the relevant evidence and should
not have to hunt about in notes.) A few lines later, however, P. adopts
Aujac's in place of the transmitted , thus achieving
consistency with the adjacent plural proems, proofs and epilogues. But
anyone who compares, for example, 2.1 ( ) with 40.1 (
), or considers the promiscuous mix of singular and
plural proem(s) and epilogue(s) in 27-28, is likely to conclude that this
intervention is unnecessarily fussy. Similarly, in technographic prose it
seems misguided to assume that every -clause needs to be furnished
with an explicit (40.6) or (43.3, following Kennedy).
Editorial intervention is, of course, necessary when one is dealing with an
abbreviated technical text preserved in a single manuscript, and the
judgements that need to be made are inevitably delicate and uncertain.
So it is not surprising that P.'s proposals do not all command assent. I
select a few illustrative passages for comment.
In AS 20 P. prints his own supplement, < >
. He claims support from a parallel in RG 4.428.27f., which offers

 . P. describes that variant as 'difficult',

but the corruption from ... to is barely
credible. Though the expression is surprising, the image is appropriate and
compelling: you should address your opponent's arguments only where
you need (and have the opportunity) to counter them; to give them free
publicity in the proem is to turn the proem into (as we might say) a selfinflicted wound. Here, as in AS 1, P. underestimates the contribution of the
indirect tradition.
In AS 74, by contrast, he overestimates it. P. supplements the text of a
discussion of lexical brevity from a parallel passage in John of Sardis'
commentary on Aphthonius (22.18-20 Rabe). But the context in John is
constructed out of alternating extracts from AS and Theon, and the words
in question are found in Theon. It seems obvious that John has inserted a
note from Theon into a passage from AS. P. counters (82 n.3): 'mais on la
lit aussi chez J. Doxapatrs, qui ne dpend pas de J. de Sardes.' But that is
simply false: Doxapatres presents a similar conflation of AS and Theon,
and one striking agreement (, inspired by Theon 84.12, for
in AS 75.2f.) proves his dependence. This supplement is therefore
to be rejected decisively.
AS 149 reports Neocles as specifying three categories of artificial proof
based on fact: , , and ; but the following
discussion confusingly refers to as well. P. eliminates the
confusion by reading 'four' for 'three', and inserting an entry for
into the list. This is an initially attractive solution to a passage that I have
always found difficult. But on reflection, I think the problem is with
Neocles' exposition rather than the text. does not have a stable
enough independent existence in the following discussion to merit this
place in the classification: in AS 152 is defined as a kind of
, and as equivalent in customary usage to . Moreover, now
that AC is so much more accessible, it is easier to see the structure of
Neocles' theory of proof in its entirety: in particular, it is clear that when
Neocles maps his classification of proofs onto a classification of
epicheiremes, he has in mind a three-part classification without any
reference to (AC 81-82). An understanding of the complex
structure of Neocles' theory is also, in my view, the key to solving the
puzzle about how the AC material is to be integrated into the material
transmitted in AS; but that is a question that goes beyond the scope of
this review.
In AS 170 most editors adopt Spengel's emendations (or some variant on
them), and see a distinction between theorists: among topics, some
people have found ones that are common across all the issues, others
ones that are special to individual issues. Yet the opening genitive creates
the expectation of a distinction between kinds of topic, as at (e.g.) AS 145.
P. meets that expectation by preserving the transmitted ...
and reading for : some topics have spoken certain

things in common across all the issues, while others are special to
individual issues. But can ... really be translated
'sont des noncs appliqus communment'? The more common approach
gives the section a continuity lost if P.'s proposal is adopted: some have
found topics that are common across all the issues, others ones that are
special to individual issues; but Aristotle found both common and special
topics.
P. would not be worried by this rupture of the 'some-others-Aristotle'
sequence. If the sequence is maintained, then Neocles is the source for
the Aristotle citation as well as the initial 'some-others' contrast. If the
sequence is broken, it becomes possible to suppose that the reference to
Aristotle was inserted by AS himself. And that is what P. suggests (xxviixxviii). He speaks of AS having undertaken 'une vaste enqute chez les
thoriciens anterieurs', and adds: 'Aristote en particulier a t lu pour
cette occasion' (lxxxix). Yet AS's knowledge of Theodorus and Apollodorus
appears to be mediated by Alexander, and I have little doubt that his
knowledge of older tradition was also indirect. At AS 207-8 the cluster of
references to Plato, Chrysippus and Aristotle is suggestive of a
doxographic source; Neocles refers to the Stoics at AC 181; and the
reference to Aristotle at AC 191 surely derives from Alexander.
P.'s willingness to credit AS with direct use of Aristotle is characteristic of
his distinctively high estimation of the author, to whom he attributes
about 57% of the text (the passages attributed to AS are listed -- and
miscounted -- on p. xxx). On P.'s view, the author moves fluidly between
reporting the views of named authorities and providing his own summary
of common doctrine. By contrast, Dilts and Kennedy see him as a pure
compiler who 'never advances an opinion of his own' (xi). I am not
unsympathetic to P.'s position in principle: it is too easy to think of the
composition of technical works as a process of mindless compilation from
sources. Yet AS is overtly compilatory in its approach, and the absence of
a name does not prove the absence of a source: the unattributed
definition of at AS 6 is the same as that at AS 223, where the
source (Neocles) is named. Further, the author's helpful habit of refreshing
the introductory identification of a source by name with the occasional
parenthetic 'he says' sometimes leaves orphans when the introductory
naming has been lost in the abridgement. P. convincingly argues that 'he'
in AS 142 is a case in point: the source has switched unannounced to
Harpocration at AS 138. Yet at AS 89 and 94 he emends to ,
allowing him to attribute the whole of the long, carefully structured
exposition of the three virtues of narrative in AS 63-98 to the compiler
himself. Certainly this tightly integrated section should not be divided
between different sources, as it is by Dilts and Kennedy. But I see no
reason to doubt that AS is dependent here on one of his regular sources. I
think the indirect tradition supports an attribution to Alexander son of
Numenius, and provides evidence of Alexander's debt to Dionysius of

Halicarnassus; but that, too, goes beyond the scope of this review.
Though P. does a service in making the additional material from AC
available, his treatment of the rest of the indirect tradition is less
satisfactory. He overlooks a scholion to Demosthenes (sch. Dem. 20.5 (20
Dilts)) which provides a plausible variant at AC 197. I suggested
earlier that he fails to appreciate a variant at RG 4.428.27; in my view,
there is a strong probability that the unabridged AS was available to the
compiler of this section of the scholia to Hermogenes (misattributed to
Marcellinus by P., who has overlooked Rabe's corrections to Walz).6
Graeven's attempts to identify traces of the unabridged AS are sometimes
misconceived; but some have more to say on their behalf than P.
acknowledges. And there may be instances that even Graeven missed: I
have begun to wonder whether the definitions of invention in John of
Sardis's prolegomena (PS 357.21-358.5, immediately before his rendition
of AS 1) might not derive from AS. But that, yet again, goes beyond the
scope of this review.
I began describing Patillon's edition as the default choice for serious study
of AS. The doubts and disagreements I have expressed here are not
intended to cast doubt on that judgement. No edition of a technical
compilation preserved in an abridged form in a single manuscript can
hope to answer all the questions conclusively. The relevant criterion is the
extent to which it enables discussion to move to a new level. Patillon
amply satisfies this criterion. It is precisely because his work puts me in a
stronger position to engage with this text and pose questions about it than
ever before that I have been able to reach conclusions that sometimes go
beyond and sometimes diverge from his. Not for the first time, I have
come away from one of Patillon's editions immensely stimulated and with
a profound sense of admiration and gratitude.
Notes:
1. The stimulus which this edition gave to my own study of the treatise
quickly overflowed the limits of a review. An expanded version, more fully
annotated and illustrated, and pursuing in greater depth a number of
issues that I only allude to here, can be found in 'Notes on the Anonymous
Seguerianus', LICS Discussion Paper 2 (2005).
2. Theon (1997, with G. Bolognesi); [Apsines] (2001); Longinus and Rufus
(2001, with L. Brisson); [Aristides] (2002). An edition of [Hermogenes] On
Invention is promised.
3. J. Graeven, Cornuti artis rhetoricae epitome (Berlin 1891).
4. M.R. Dilts and G.A. Kennedy (ed.), Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from
the Roman Empire: introduction, text, and translation of the Arts of
Rhetoric, attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara
(Leiden 1997). P. refers to another recent edition, which I have not seen:

D. Vottero (ed.), Anonimo Segueriano: Arte del discorso politico

(Alessandria 2004), including text, Italian translation, and commentary.
5. P.'s forthcoming edition of [Hermogenes] On Invention will include the
anonymous commentary in its entirety.
6. According to H. Rabe, 'Aus Rhetoren Handschriften: 11. Der
Dreimnner Kommentar WIV', RM 64 (1909), 578-89, at 588, the section
beginning at RG 4.422.18 has the puzzling heading 'Metrophanes,
Athanasius, Porphyry, and Polemo'.