Repertory of Conjectures on Horace
Guidelines
The Horace database consists of two files: Repertory of Conjectures and Bibliography.Repertory
To browse through the entire Repertory click on the Search Repertory button at the bottom of the home page.
To search for every entry that contains information in a particular field, use the wildcard ‘*’. For example, to find all entries with comments, write ‘*’ in Comments. If text is entered in more than one search field, only entries with text in all those fields will be shown. For example, to find conjectures proposed by or attributed to a certain scholar, two searches have to be made, one with the scholar’s name in Attributions and another with the name in Proposed as original conjecture by. If one enters the name of the scholar in both fields, the search will yield nothing or the rare cases in which, for one reason or another, an attribution has not been removed when the information has been verified and the name of the scholar to whom a conjecture has been attributed has been entered in Proposed as original conjecture by.
Reference number
Every conjecture has its own entry with a reference number. The highest reference number is higher than the number of conjectures. The users will find that there are a little over 7500 entries, but the highest reference number is close to 8200 (in Janury of 2014). The reason for this is that a reading that was at some point introduced as a conjecture has for some reason later been removed from the repertory; a reference number once created will never be deleted or used for another conjecture. This makes cross-referencing, and referencing in general, safe.Manuscript reading according to
Whenever an editor gives the name of a scholar X after a reading reported in his critical apparatus, it is registered as a conjecture in Attributions (see below). If a publication by X reveals that he did not propose the reading as a conjecture but reported it as a manuscript reading, a reference to the publication will be given in Manuscript reading according to. For example, in entry 29 Plessis has attributed a reading to Bentley, but Bentley mentions it as a manuscript reading, not as a conjecture. A reference to the publication of Plessis will be found in Attributions, a reference to the publication of Bentley in Manuscript reading according to.
Here one might ask: if the reading is a manuscript reading and not a conjecture, ought it not be removed from the Repertory of conjectures? There are two reasone for keeping it in the Repertory. The frist is practical: if such readings were to be removed, they are most likely to be introduced again at a later point, whenever someone finds that they are reported in a critical apparatus as if they were conjectures; during the compilation of the Repertory it has become evident that if a reading is attributed to a scholar X in the critical apparatus of one edition, it will be attributed to that scholar in the critical apparatus of other editions as well. The second reason has to do with the aim of the Repertory. For a reading to be admitted into the Repertory, what is required is that it has either been attributed to someone as a conjecture or proposed by someone as his own conjecture.
This field is also used when a scholar reports that a reading that has been proposed as a conjecture by another scholar is found in a manuscript.
The bibliographical references are linked to the Bibliography.
Book
The titles of Horace’s Books are found in a scroll bar, abbreviated as in the Oxford Latin Dictionary. This field is empty when the conjectures are on Ars poetica or Carmen saeculare.Poem
To search for a poem in a book, enter the number of the poem or Ars or Saec.Line
Enter the line number(s).Lemma
Shackleton Bailey’s 4th ed. (2001) of Horace’s Opera is used to define the lemma. Diacritical signs such as ‘<’, ‘>‘, ‘[‘, ‘]’, and ‘†’ have not been registered. If Shackleton Bailey has adopted a conjecture in his text, the conjecture will be identical with the lemma. When this is the case, a manuscript reading will be given in parentheses after the lemma. The manuscript(s) will not be identified (the users should remember that the Repertory is not a critical edition). The sole purpose of giving a manuscript reading is to make it possible for the user to get a quick idea of what is involved in the conjecture in question.Conjecture
As a rule orthographical variants are not recorded, since they are not considered conjectures.
Enclitic words have been treated as any other words, and an addition of –que etc. will be recorded as an Addition of word(s) (see Type).
We have not recorded changes that involve obelisation, suspected lacunas (such alterations must be classified as diagnoses, not conjectures, i.e. attempted remedies), or punctuation. A change of punctuation alters the interpretation of the text, not the wording.
When a conjecture is a deletion of line(s), both Lemma and Conjecture will remain empty. However, if the deletion involves e.g. the second half of one line and the first half of another (and perhaps entire lines in between), this will be described in Lemma.
Type
The Type field contains a scroll bar with different types of conjecture.
A conjecture is sometimes complex and involves more than one type. In some cases this has been registered in one entry (see reference number 1346), in other cases in several entries with cross-references (see ref. 1598-1603).
The Type Addition of line(s) is a line composed by the conjector except in one case, ref. 7577, where the conjector has inserted a line from the Ps.-Virgilian Ibis.
Attributions
This is where any uncorroborated attribution is recorded. It is recorded as it stands in the publication in which the attribution is made.
If a scholar X attributes a conjecture to Y, this is indicated in the following way: ‘X: Y’. If the attribution has been corroborated, that is to say, if a publication has been found in which Y proposes the conjecture as his own, the attribution will as a rule be deleted; instead a short reference (see Bibliography) to the work of Y will be given in Proposed as original conjecture by. If it turns out that Y does not propose the reading as a conjecture of his own but presents it as a manuscript reading, this will be registered by means of a short reference to the work of Y in Manuscript reading according to; in such a case, the reference to Y in Attributions will be kept in order to save other scholars from entering upon the same wild goose chase.
The bibliographical references are linked to the Bibliography.
Proposed as original conjecture by
In this field there are references to publications in which a scholar has proposed a conjecture as his own. It is kept in the Repertory even if the scholar retracts it in a later publication. If the retraction occurs in a discussion, a reference preceded by the sign ‘¤’ will be given in Discussed by (see immediately below).
The bibliographical references are linked to the Bibliography.
Discussed by
The user will find a list of bibliographical references, arranged in chronological order, to publications in which a conjecture has been discussed. What counts as a discussion is somewhat arbitrary, and the members of the project have used their own discretion when compiling the Repertory. The sign ‘¤’ preceding a reference indicates that the author argues for the authenticity of a manuscript reading against the conjecture in the entry in question. If a scholar discusses several conjectures in a publication, the reference will be given in the entries of each conjecture.
The bibliographical references are linked to the Bibliography.
Comments
This field is reserved for any information that the compilers wish to communicate.Bibliography
This file is more than a bibliography in the ordinary sense of the word. It does not contain only works referred to in the Repertory but has been designed as a tool that may be of service whenever work on the Repertory is resumed. At the beginning of the project, publications listed in bibliographies such as l’Année philologique or Jahresberichte über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft were entered into the field Second-hand reference (see below) whenever they appeared promising. At the time of publication of the database, around 1.900 publications had been checked; around 1.700 were registered but have not been checked (see Status).
In the Bibligraphy users will find:
- References to publications that have been checked by a member of the project; in most cases the authors or editors of these publications propose or attribute or discuss conjectures; if on inspection it has turned out that they do not, the references are nevertheless kept in the bibliography: they were included for some reason, and if they were to be taken out, there is a fair chance that they might be included again at some later point as publications that one would like to look at.
- First-hand references to publications that have not been checked but are more or less likely to contain proposals or attributions or discussions of conjectures.
- Second-hand references, found in bibliographies such as l’Année philologique or Jahresberichte über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, to publications that have not been checked but seem promising. Such references have been registered in the field Second-hand reference (see below) exactly as they were written in the publications in which they were found.
