Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Four Plays of Menander: The Hero, Epitrepontes, Periceiromene and Samia; Edited With Introductions, Explanatory Notes, Critical Appendix, and Bibliography
Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg, have been of assistance in constituting the text. I have ventured to depend upon these reproductions in a few instances, especially in the mutilated end of the second Leipzig fragment, and to depart from the readings favored by the scholars who have examined the manuscripts directly. The lack of a photographic reproduction of the Cairo manuscript is a serious handicap to every editor and has greatly retarded the work of reconstructing the text. Not only are passages still uncertain which would in all probability have been finally restored, but the wavering and often con?icting testimony of the scholars who have examined the papyrus has led to an unnecessary and unfortunate multiplication of conjectural restorations. And yet, with our pres ent imperfect knowledge of this manuscript, many proposed restorw tions which will ultimately be discarded have at present a provisional standing in the history of the text and will assist both in the final decipherment of doubtful verses and in the interpretation of hope lessly defective passages. I have therefore thought it desirable to give in the Critical Appendix a full report of the divergent or mutually complementary readings of Lefebvre, Korte, and di Ricci, and also to record rather fully the more notable restorations that have been suggested. It is hoped that the Critical Appendix, in spite of its bulk, will be found useful as a record of the scholarly labor which has been bestowed upon this manuscript since its dis covery. It should be added, however, that no such record can do full justice to the contributions of the first editor, M. Lefebvre.
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