New year, new Loebs! Below, Loeb Classical Library General Editor Jeffrey Henderson introduces the latest additions to what critic Adam Kirsch calls “one of the greatest accomplishments of modern scholarship.”
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This season brings another exciting set of volumes for the Loeb Classical Library. A two-volume edition of Quintus Ennius (fl. ca. 204–169), the “father of Latin literature,” by Sander M. Goldberg and Gesine Manuwald (LCL 294, 537) inaugurates Fragmentary Republican Latin (FRL), a monumental new series in twelve volumes (as currently projected) that is the first Loeb Classical Library project with its own series editor (Manuwald) and one that will surely be an even more indispensable resource for all readers of Roman literature than its predecessor, Eric H. Warmington’s Remains of Old Latin (ROL) in four volumes. On the Greek side, the Library adds three new works by Galen to its growing collection of the great physician’s fundamental texts: Hygiene, Thrasybulus, and On Exercise with a Small Ball (LCL 535, 536). Meanwhile, John Yardley’s new edition of the third and fourth decades of Livy’s History of Rome proceeds apace with volume X, containing books 35–37 (LCL 301).
Remains of Old Latin (1935–40) was an outstanding achievement, masterfully collecting and organizing a broad range of material, making much of it available in a modern language for the first time, and supplying annotation at once concise and rich. ROL was nevertheless atypical of its era for featuring fragmentary texts, however important their authors. After all, the concept of scattered quotations from or paraphrases of texts subsequently lost as “fragments,” and an interest in collecting and organizing them, date only from the early modern period, especially the 19th century. Until fairly recently, fragments resided in forbiddingly specialized editions and were rarely encountered outside of footnotes, much less in translation. But that is changing, as many recent Loeb Classical Library editions illustrate, not least the landmark Early Greek Philosophy published last fall in nine volumes (LCL 524–532). The decision to replace Warmington’s venerable ROL recognized the need for substantial revision and rearrangement of the existing material; the inclusion of additional authors and genres; and the incorporation of current methodological awareness of the complex nature of fragments, their transmitting contexts, and the limitations they present for analyzing and appreciating the works of which they were once a part.
Much as Early Greek Philosophy abandoned the traditional but misleading title “Presocratics,” the new title Fragmentary Republican Latin not only avoids the unappetizing connotations of “remains” and “old,” but also reflects a much larger scope and ambition: FRL includes not only all verbatim citations of the respective authors and literary genres but also paraphrases and indirect comments, as well as the testimonia on lives and individual works. Projected to be included along with Ennius are Pacuvius and Accius as well as the tragic incerta; Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Caecilius Statius as well as the comic and dramatic incerta; the togata, Atellana, and mime; Lucilius and other political invective and popular verse; most testimonia and fragments from Roman Republican orators; most testimonia and fragments from Roman Republican historians; a selection of lyric, elegiac, and hexameter poetry; and selected inscriptions, including the Twelve Tables. Fragmentary works by authors of whom complete pieces are also extant will not be part of this collection; thus fragments of Varro, Cato, and of course Cicero will be added to the editions of their surviving works. FRL volumes will appear successively over the next few years.
Unlike EGP, the FRL is not being assembled by the same editor(s) throughout: Gesine Manuwald is supervising a team of experts each working on his or her own edition and following editorial principles and practices underlying the entire FRL, which are clearly articulated and fully explained in the series introduction that appears in its inaugural edition of Ennius. An editor may sometimes make individual decisions in response to the particular needs of each writer, literary genre, or the numbering system adopted. In those cases, editors will describe their supplementary considerations in the introductions to their own editions.
And how fitting that the FRL begins with the great Quintus Ennius, a pioneer who embraced and achieved great success and popularity in a wide range of literary and dramatic endeavors, both prose and verse and including satire, that would be remarkable in any era but are simply amazing at the dawn of Roman literature. “As heir to Hellenistic as well as classical Greek traditions,” the editors write, “he helped stimulate Roman interest in a wide range of intellectual pursuits and played a major role in setting Latin literature on the assimilationist course that was to be its hallmark throughout the Republican period.” In particular, his classic Annals, the story of Rome from the arrival of Aeneas down to his own time, made Greek epic more fully Roman, including adopting its dactylic hexameter for Latin. Although it is an unfortunate twist of fate that none of Ennius’s works have survived complete, he does leave more fragments than any other Republican author, all of them are here to enjoy in a magisterial new edition.
Galen, the dominant voice in medicine for over 1,500 years, has fared better at the hands of fate: he is by far the best preserved and most voluminous writer of the ancient world. But until recently he has not been so popular with translators. For nearly a century the Loeb Classical Library included only On the Natural Faculties by Arthur J. Brock, published in 1916 and for a long time the only work by Galen readily available in English. It well suited James Loeb’s literary and cultural mission for his Library: Brock (1879–1947), like Karl Gottlob Kühn (1754–1840), who edited the standard Greek text, was a physician for whom Galen inspired a neo-humanistic medicine that he believed able to ameliorate the “neurasthenia” occasioned by modern life; he is best remembered for treating the poet Wilfred Owen for shell shock. At the 22nd Stationary Hospital at Aldershot in March 1916, Brock wrote of his Loeb edition, “I should be glad to think that the present work might help, however little, to hasten the coming reunion between the ‘humanities’ and modern biological science; their present separation I believe to be against the best interest of both.”
Ian Johnston similarly combines humanism and science as he extends the Library’s Galenic collection: a retired neurosurgeon and historian of science who also translates early Chinese poetry and philosophy, he has selected for this new volume works of not merely historical interest but also enduring relevance and utility, as previously in his three-volume edition of the Method of Medicine with G. H. R. Horsley (LCL 516–518) and his subsequent volume of three other classic works, On the Constitution of the Art of Medicine, The Art of Medicine, and A Method of Medicine to Glaucon (LCL 523), which cover fundamental aspects of Galen’s practice.
In that spirit we welcome the three new works in this season’s catalogue. Hygiene “is [Galen’s] substantial statement on one of the two major components of the art, which may be divided broadly into the preservation of health when it is present (hygiene) and the restoration of health when in it is vitiated by disease (therapeutics)—a division Galen himself explicitly makes.” For those who may be seeking guidance after holiday-season excesses there is Thrasybulus, which investigates with theoretical rigor whether hygiene is the proper domain of medicine or gymnastics, with practical relevance to the question, what are the specific roles of doctors, related health professionals, exercise therapists, and gymnastic trainers? And for sports fans there is On Exercise with a Small Ball, which “makes and attempts to substantiate the claim that the group of exercises carried out with a small ball are the best forms of exercise across the board.”
Perhaps this set comes just in time to help some of us meet our New Year’s resolutions!
