Abstract

Leo Choirosphaktes' didactic poem Thousand-Line Theology survives in only one manuscript, Vat. gr. 1257 (s. X), which contains a number of rather unusual poetic texts. The subtitle of Vassis' edition, editio princeps, is – strictly speaking – not entirely correct: the whole text was already edited by Rhoby, and parts of it were published by Magdalino. But Rhoby's dissertation has not been published and Magdalino calls his own edition an “imperfect working transcription”. Moreover, these two editions are hardly as good as that of V. Choirosphaktes' poem is not always easy to understand and the only surviving manuscript renders the comprehension of the text even more difficult, because it offers so many incorrect readings. In a number of manuscripts we find a small excerpt of the poem: if one compares the six verses offered by these manuscripts with the text of Vat. gr. 1257, one notices no less than five corruptions, and most of them very serious ones. For the remaining 1153 verses of the poem, we do not possess another manuscript to check the readings of Vat. gr. 1257, but there can be little doubt that there must be hundreds of errors in the text as transmitted by our only manuscript. Some of these errors are easy to spot for reasons of grammar, metrics and meaning, but other errors may escape our notice, because at first sight there does not seem to be anything wrong with the text. As Choirosphaktes is an accomplished poet who knows very well what he is doing, an editor is obliged to change the text by means of divination and emendation whenever the text is not satisfactory. Lately there has been a tendency among editors to be as conservative as possible, but it remains to be seen whether this in itself laudable conservatism is the right method for all texts. V. rightly follows a less cautious method of editing and corrects the text wherever the text needs correcting. One cannot but admire V.'s courage and assiduity in solving the textual problems and unravelling the many mysteries of the Thousand-Line Theology. This is really an excellent edition.