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49-484: Stichometry is the practice of counting lines in texts: Ancient Greeks and Romans measured the length of their books in lines, just as modern books are measured in pages. This practice was rediscovered by German and French scholars in the 19th century. Stichos ( pl. stichoi ) is the Greek word for a 'line' of prose or poetry and the suffix '-metry' is derived from the Greek word for measurement. The length of each line in

98-532: A book dealer in the 4th century AD when the practice of stichometry was perhaps becoming less familiar: Since the list of line totals [of the books in the Bible available] in the city of Rome is not reliable, and elsewhere because of greed is not complete, I have gone through each individual book, counting 16 syllables to the line (as used in Virgil), and recorded the number for each book in all of them. Beginning in

147-472: A gifted musician, which is irrelevant here. ... Nietzsche is not at all a specifically political nature. He may have in general, on the whole, some sympathy for the growing greatness of Germany, but, like myself, no special tendre [fondness] for Prussianism ; yet he has vivid feeling for free civic and spiritual development, and thus certainly a heart for your Swiss institutions and way of living. What more am I to say? His studies so far have been weighted toward

196-571: A great reputation and brilliant success, but soon hearers fell away, and the pinch of poverty compelled his removal to Breslau , where he reached the rank of ordinary professor in 1834, and held other offices. The great event of Ritschl's life was a sojourn of nearly a year in Italy (1836–37), spent in libraries and museums, and more particularly in the laborious examination of the Ambrosian palimpsest of Plautus at Milan . The remainder of his life

245-414: A kind of Isocratean school of classical study ; in it were trained many of the foremost scholars of the late 19th century. The names of G. Curtius , Ihne , Schleicher , Bernays , Ribbeck , Lorenz , Vahlen , Hübner , Bücheler , Helbig , Benndorf , Riese , Windisch , and Nietzsche , who were his pupils either at Bonn or at Leipzig, attest his fame and power as a teacher. In 1854 Otto Jahn took

294-460: A new line. The libraries of Europe contain many medieval copies of ancient Greek and Latin texts. Many of these contain short notes or 'subscriptions' on the final page that, in hundreds of cases, give the total number of lines in the work. In texts of classical authors such as Herodotus and Demosthenes , these totals are expressed in the older, acrophonic numerals that were used in Athens during

343-453: A scholarly journal. He had actually considered giving up philology for science when, on Ritschl's recommendation, he was appointed a professor of classical philology at Basel, and Leipzig hurriedly conferred the doctorate without examination." Nietzsche's consuming interest in philosophy, however, soon overcame his work in philology. His first published book, The Birth of Tragedy , effectively ended his career as professor. "Ritschl dismissed

392-405: Is the first from whom I have ever accepted any contribution at all while he was still a student. If — God grant — he lives long enough, I prophesy that he will one day stand in the front rank of German philology. He is now twenty-four years old: strong, vigorous, healthy, courageous physically and morally, so constituted as to impress those of a similar nature. On top of that, he possesses

441-564: The Iliad and Odyssey , which may have been among the first long, Greek texts written down, became the standard unit for ancient stichometry. This standard line ( Normalzeile , in German) was thus as long as an epic hexameter and contained about 15 syllables or 35 Greek letters. Stichometry existed for several reasons. Scribes were paid by the line and their fee per line was sometimes fixed by legal decree. Authors occasionally cited passages in

490-573: The 19th century, archaeologists discovered a large number of more or less fragmentary Greek scrolls in Egypt. Ohly describes and analyzes some fifty papyri which provide direct, ancient evidence for total and partial stichometry. Friedrich Ritschl , a leading German classicist in the mid-19th century, stimulated interest in the mysterious numerals found at the end of medieval manuscripts by discussing them in several of his essays. In an 1878 article that Ohly called ‘epoch-making,’ Charles Graux proved that

539-658: The Demosthenes manuscripts descended from the earliest editions. He used these totals to show that the supposed excerpts of documentary evidence inserted in the speeches were not present in those early editions and were thus late forgeries. His book, The Documents in the Attic Orators , includes an introduction to stichometry. Plural Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include

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588-638: The Latin inscriptions from the earliest times to the end of the Republic . It forms an introductory volume to the Berlin Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum , the excellence of which is largely due to the precept and example of Ritschl, though he had no hand in the later volumes. The results of Ritschl's life are mainly gathered up in a long series of monographs, for the most part of the highest finish, and rich in ideas which leavened

637-466: The Library of Alexandria. Holger Essler (University of Würzburg) discussed stichometry's role in the ongoing efforts to reconstruct the papyri excavated at Herculaneum. Dirk Obbink (Oxford University) used stichometry in his restoration of Philodemus' On Piety . Jay Kennedy (Manchester University) claimed in several articles and a book, The Musical Structure of Plato's Dialogues , that Plato counted

686-632: The Prussian government, and pressed his resignation. He accepted a call to Leipzig, where he died in harness in 1876. Ritschl was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1868. Ritschl's character was strongly marked. The spirited element in him was powerful, and to some at times he seemed overbearing, but his nature was noble at the core; and, though intolerant of inefficiency and stupidity, he never asserted his personal claims in any mean or petty way. He

735-606: The aid of the Ambrosian palimpsest he recovered the name T Maccius Plautus, for the vulgate M Accius, and proved it correct by strong, extraneous arguments. On the margin of the Palatine manuscripts the marks "C" and "DV" continually recur, and had been variously explained. Ritschl proved that they meant Canticum and Diverbium , and hence showed that in the Roman comedy only the conversations in iambic senarii were not intended for

784-467: The aims and history of stichometry among the Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines. Ohly's catalog of ancient papyri with stichometry together with Bassi's survey and the line reports in medieval manuscripts collected by Graux provide a wide range of evidence for ancient stichometric practices and their evolution through the centuries. Rudolf Blum summarized research on stichometry in the catalog of Callimachus at

833-493: The ancients was a unit of spatial length equal to the hexameter. Theodor Birt has rightly erected his shrewd and persuasive The Nature of the Ancient Book upon this foundation. Birt's 550-page work was stimulated by practical questions about the ancient culture of books but grew into a broad reevaluation and reorganization of our knowledge of ancient literature and intellectual life. His introduction argued: The nature of

882-578: The art of writing Latin verse. In spite of the incompleteness, on many sides, of his work, Ritschl must be assigned a place in the history of learning among a very select few. His studies are presented principally in his Opuscula collected partly before and partly since his death. The Trinummus (twice edited) was the only specimen of his contemplated edition of Plautus which he completed. The edition has been continued by some of his pupils-- Georg Goetz , Gustav Loewe , and others. Ritschl recommended that his student, Friedrich Nietzsche , be considered for

931-523: The classical period but abandoned sometime during the Hellenistic period. Thus these stichometric totals are thought to descend, along with the content of the texts, from very early editions. Many ancient authors mention stichometry. Galen complains about the verbosity of a rival and says he can offer a description in fewer lines. In the 1st century BC, a philosopher criticized Zeno of Citium and cited particular passages by giving their line number to

980-493: The details below. Request from 172.68.168.133 via cp1102 cp1102, Varnish XID 538852445 Upstream caches: cp1102 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:46:37 GMT Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl Ritschl was born in Großvargula , in present-day Thuringia . His family, in which culture and poverty were hereditary, were Protestants who had migrated several generations earlier from Bohemia . Ritschl

1029-483: The enviable gift of presenting ideas, talking freely, as calmly as he speaks skillfully and clearly. He is the idol and, without wishing it, the leader of the whole younger generation of philologists here in Leipzig who — and they are rather numerous — cannot wait to hear him as a lecturer. You will say, I describe a phenomenon. Well, that is just what he is — and at the same time pleasant and modest. Also

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1078-413: The history of Greek literature (of course, including critical and exegetical treatment of the authors), with special emphasis, it seems to me, on the history of Greek philosophy. But I have not the least doubt that, if confronted by a practical demand, with his great gifts he will work in other fields with the best of success. He will simply be able to do anything he wants to do. Walter Kaufmann described

1127-420: The importance of ancient institutions and ancient art both his published papers and the records of his lectures amply testify. He devoted himself for the most part to the study of ancient poetry, and in particular of the early Latin drama. This formed the centre from which his investigations radiated. Starting from this he ranged over the whole remains of pre- Ciceronian Latin , and not only analysed but augmented

1176-418: The kinds of formats and editions used in antiquity. Stichometry thus led to a broader study of the spatial organization of ancient books and their social, economic, and intellectual roles. As Hermann Diels said, The investigations of the recently deceased Charles Graux, taken all too prematurely from the world of scholarship, have made it henceforth inalterably certain that the standard line (the stichos ) of

1225-407: The lines in his dialogues in order to insert symbolic passages at regular intervals and thereby formed various musical and Pythagorean patterns. Rachel Yuen-Collingridge and Malcolm Choat (Macquarie University) used stichometry along with other kinds of evidence to make inferences about scribal practice and copying techniques. Mirko Canevaro (Durham University) argued that the stichometric totals in

1274-422: The literature of antiquity and the form of the ancient book reciprocally conditioned each other. The context of publication enveloped and modified literary creativity. The dividends of these investigations will thereby far exceed the satisfaction of merely antiquarian pleasures. Many of Birt's theories and interpretations are dated and have been superseded by later research, but he permanently broadened and deepened

1323-453: The margins of a text, usually to mark every hundredth line. Stichometry was sometimes confused with colometry , the practice of some Christian authors in late antiquity of writing texts broken into rhetorical phrases to aid delivery. Some modern Jewish and Christian scholars use ‘stichometry’ as a synonym for stichography , which is the occasional practice in ancient scriptures of laying out texts so that each biblical or poetic verse begins on

1372-489: The methodologies used in histories of the ancient book and connected stichometry to a broad range of intellectual and literary issues. In 1893, James Rendel Harris' book Stichometry extended these new developments to an analysis of the stichometric data found in many early manuscripts of the Christian Bible and other Christian texts. In 1909, Domenico Bassi published a survey of the stichometric notations found on

1421-517: The nearest hundredth line. Diogenes Laërtius probably draws on the Pinakes , the published catalogue of the Library of Alexandria, when he reports the total number of lines in the oeuvres of various authors. He says, for example, that Speusippus wrote 43,475, Aristotle wrote 445,270, and Theophrastus wrote 232,808 lines. The Cheltenham Canon lists line totals for books in the Christian Bible and concludes with an anonymous note apparently written by

1470-595: The numerals at the end of the medieval manuscripts were proportional to the length of each work and in fact gave the total number of a fixed unit equal to a Homeric line. This discovery established the concept of the standard line. While studying the Clarke Codex of Plato's dialogues at Oxford, Martin Schanz noticed that isolated letters in the margins of two dialogues formed an alphabetic series and marked every hundredth standard line (alpha = 100, beta = 200, etc.). He

1519-469: The papyri excavated at Herculaneum. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, archaeologists discovered a large number of fragmentary, Greek scrolls in Egyptian tombs, mummies, and city dumps. Some of these contained stichometric notations, and papyrologists became interested in the question of whether this data provided clues that would aid in reassembling the fragments. Kurt Ohly studied

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1568-430: The place of the venerable Welcker at Bonn, and after a time succeeded in dividing with Ritschl the empire over the philological school there. The two had been friends, but after gradual estrangement a violent dispute arose between them in 1865, which for many months divided into two hostile forces the universities and the press of Germany. Both sides were steeped in fault, but Ritschl undoubtedly received harsh treatment from

1617-487: The position of professor at the University of Basel. He described Nietzsche in the following words. However many young talents I have seen develop under my eyes for thirty-nine years now, never yet have I known a young man, or tried to help one along in my field as best I could, who was so mature as early and as young as this Nietzsche. His Museum articles he wrote in the second and third year of his triennium . He

1666-527: The practice was already routine. The same standard line was used for stichometry among the Greeks and Romans for about a thousand years until stichometry apparently fell out of use among the Byzantine Greeks in the Middle Ages as page numbers became more common. The standard work on stichometry is Kurt Ohly  [ de ] 's 1928 Stichometrische Untersuchungen , which collects together

1715-422: The results of some fifty years of scholarly debate and research. Today, stichometry plays a small but useful role in research in fields as diverse as the history of the ancient book, papyrology, and Christian hermeneutics. There are two kinds of stichometry: total stichometry is the practice of reporting the total number of lines in a work. Partial stichometry is the practice of including a series of numerals in

1764-400: The scholarship of the time. As a scholar, Ritschl was of the lineage of Bentley , to whom he looked up, like Hermann, with fervent admiration. His best efforts were spent in studying the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome, rather than the life of the Greeks and Romans. He was sometimes, but most unjustly, charged with taking a narrow view of philology . That he keenly appreciated

1813-404: The singing voice. Thus was brought into strong relief a fact without which there can be no true appreciation of Plautus, viz., that his plays were comic operas rather than comic dramas. In conjectural criticism Ritschl was inferior not only to his great predecessors but to some of his contemporaries. His imagination was in this field (but in this field only) hampered by erudition, and his judgment

1862-434: The sources from which our knowledge of it must come. Before Ritschl the acquaintance of scholars with early Latin was so dim and restricted that it would perhaps be hardly an exaggeration to call him its real discoverer. To the world in general Ritschl was best known as a student of Plautus . He cleared away the accretions of ages, and by efforts of that real genius which goes hand in hand with labor, brought to light many of

1911-449: The stichometry found in many of the scrolls excavated at Herculaneum in Italy but his 1929 book Stichometrische Untersuchungen contained a complete survey of the treasure trove of newly discovered Greco-Egyptian papyri with stichometric notations. It is regarded as the standard work on stichometry. Ohly discusses the length of the standard line, the evidence for syllable counting, the various number systems used in stichometric reports, and

1960-460: The true features of the original. It is infinitely to be regretted that Ritschl's results were never combined to form that monumental edition of Plautus of which he dreamed in his earlier life. Ritschl's examination of the Plautine manuscripts was both laborious and brilliant, and greatly extended the knowledge of Plautus and of the ancient Latin drama. Of this, two striking examples may be cited. By

2009-407: The unusual situation as follows. "But Nietzsche had not yet fulfilled his residence requirement and hence had no doctorate. So Ritschl expected the case to be hopeless, 'although in the present instance,' he wrote, 'I should stake my whole philological and academic reputation that the matter would work out happily.' It is hardly surprising that Basel decided to ignore the 'formal insufficiency.' Ritschl

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2058-757: The works of other authors by giving their approximate line number. Book buyers used total line counts to check that copied texts were complete. Library catalogs listed the total number of lines in each work along with the title and author. Scholars believe that stichometry became established in Athens sometime during the 5th century BC when copying prose works became common. Stichometry is mentioned briefly in Plato 's Laws (c. 347 BC), several times in Isocrates (early to mid-4th century), and in Theopompus (late 4th to early 3rd century), but these casual references suggest

2107-661: The zenith of his fame, Ritschl passed in 1826 to Halle . Here he came under the powerful influence of Christian Karl Reisig , a young Hermannianer with exceptional talent, a fascinating personality and a rare gift for instilling into his pupils his own ardour for classical study . The great controversy between the Realists and the Verbalists was then at its height, and Ritschl naturally sided with Hermann against Böckh . The early death of Reisig in 1828 did not sever Ritschl from Halle, where he began his professorial career with

2156-457: Was able to show that other manuscripts had similar marginal markings. His 1881 article named this kind of line-counting 'partial stichometry' and contrasted it to 'total stichometry' studied by Graux. Theodor Birt 's well-known The Nature of the Ancient Book (1882) substantially widened research on stichometry. Birt saw that Graux's breakthrough led to a cascade of insights about scribal practices and publishing, citations and intertextuality, and

2205-423: Was delighted: 'In Germany , that sort of thing happens absolutely never.'." Nietzsche was beginning to lose interest in philology at the time, due to his intense interests in science, Wagner 's music, and Schopenhauer 's philosophy. Kaufmann continued: "His call to the university of Basel came as a surprise to Nietzsche, who had not yet received his doctorate though he had published some fruits of his research in

2254-478: Was fortunate in his school training, at a time when the great reform in the higher schools of Prussia had not yet been thoroughly carried out. His chief teacher, Spitzner , a pupil of Gottfried Hermann , divined the boy's genius and allowed it free growth, applying only so much either of stimulus or of restraint as was absolutely needful. After a wasted year at the University of Leipzig , where Hermann stood at

2303-399: Was largely occupied in working out the material then gathered and the ideas then conceived. Bonn , where he moved on his marriage in 1839, and where he remained for twenty-six years, was the great scene of his activity both as scholar and as teacher. The philological seminary which he controlled, although nominally only joint-director with Welcker , became a veritable officina litterarum ,

2352-460: Was unconsciously warped by the desire to find in his text illustrations of his discoveries. But still a fair proportion of his textual labours has stood the test of time, and he rendered immense service by his study of Plautine metres, a field in which little advance had been made since the time of Bentley. In this matter Ritschl was aided by an accomplishment rare (as he himself lamented) in Germany,

2401-481: Was warmly attached to family and friends, and yearned continually after sympathy, yet he established real intimacy with only a few. He had a great faculty for organization, as is shown by his administration of the university library at Bonn, and by the eight years of labour which carried to success a work of infinite complexity, the famous Priscae Latinitatis Monumenta Epigraphica (Bonn, 1862). This volume presents in admirable facsimile, with prefatory notices and indexes,

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