Armenica veritas.docx

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Armenica veritas. (Armenian translation of Socrates' works)
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
" October 01, 1997 " Barnes, T.D. " Copyright
Historians of the Roman Empire, of the Christian Church and of Christian theology between the conversion of Constantine and the fateful appointment of Nestorius as bishop of Constantinople in 428 are all alike heavily dependent for much basic information on writers of the fifth century who continued the Ecclesiastical history of Eusebius - Rufinus, who translated Eusebius into Latin and added a continuation down to 395; Socrates, who wrote c. 440 and covered the period from 312 to 439; Theodoretus, who concentrated on the church of Antioch and went as far as 428; Sozomenus, whose unfinished work closes with 425; Gelasius of Cyzicus, who wrote three books about Constantine and the Council of Nicaea c. 475; and Philostorgius who, as a Eunomian, had a very different perspective and interpretation of the fourth century. The most important of these for the historian is undoubtedly Socrates. He has also been the last to receive a proper critical edition.
When the Prussian Academy began to commission critical editions for the new series Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten (drei) Jahrhunderte, it soon decided to include the ecclesiastical historians of the fifth century. The decision was an easy and logical one, since Theodor Mommsen had already prepared a text of Rufinus for Eduard Schwartz's monumental edition of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical history and Martyrs of Palestine (of which the first volume was published in 1903). The editions of Eusebius' continuators began to appear in print without great delay: Theodoretus, edited by Leon Parmentier in 1911 (reprinted in 1954 with some corrections by Felix Scheidweiler, but unfortunately without most of Parmentier's valuable preface), Philostorgius, as reconstucted in masterly fashion from summaries and derivative writers by Joseph Bidez in 1913 (reprinted with additions and revisions by Friedhelm Winkelmann in 1972 and 1981), and Gelasius of Cyzicus, edited by Gerhard Loeschke and Margaret Heinemann.
After the publication of Gelasius in 1918, however, progress slowed. Although Bidez lived until 1945, laboured long on Sozomenus and almost completed an edition, it fell to Gunther Christian Hansen to add the finishing touches and publish it in 1960. Hansen then proceeded to produce in 1971 the first usable edition of Theodore Lector, as Theodorus Anagnostes is conventionally known among English-speaking scholars. (Both editions are now reissued with revisions in the light of Hansen's subsequent researches). Socrates remained, the most important and the most difficult of the whole group. After important preparatory studies by Bidez and Hans-Georg Opitz, who was killed in 1941/2, progress was nugatory until Kurt Treu placed the available materials at the disposal of Hansen in 1983. In a decade he carried the work through to a triumphant conclusion and has produced one of the most important critical editions ever published of any ancient Greek writer.
Four editions of Socrates have preceded Hansen's: Stephanus' editio princeps in 1544; the Geneva edition of 1612, based on Stephanus; Valesius in 1668, whose text was reprinted with slight changes by Reading in 1720, whence Migne took his text for the Patrologia Graeca (lxvii [Paris 1864], 29-842); and Robert Hussey in 1853, whose text William Bright reprinted without critical apparatus and unaccompanied by Valesius' Latin translation in 1893. None of these editors had any knowledge whatever of the best and most important witness to the text, which has a stemmatic value equal to that of all the other witnesses put together. For the best witness to the text is an ancient Armenian translation, which was published at the end of the nineteenth century by M. V. Ter-Movsesean (Valarsapat 1897), and whose excellence was demonstrated by F. C. Conybeare some years later.(1) Must the editor of Socrates therefore be proficient in Armenian as well as in Greek and Latin (and ideally also in Syriac)? Hansen has had the good fortune to find and the good judgement to trust an outstanding collaborator. She is Dr Manja Sirinian, who does control both Armenian and Greek and has provided Hansen with unstinting assistance in the preparation of his edition.
The main witnesses to the text of Socrates, fully described in Hansen's introduction (pp. ix-xxxviii), are as follows:
1. There are three complete Greek manuscripts of Socrates himself which have independent value, viz. (i) Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 69,5 (F) of the eleventh century, which also contains the later ecclesiastical history of Evagrius; (ii) Plut. 70,7 of the tenth century, in which Socrates follows Eusebius' Ecclesiastical history (M = T in Schwartz's Eusebius); and (iii) Athos 2559, Xeropotamu 226 of the fourteenth century (A).
2. Around 530 Theodore Lector produced a Historia tripartita combining Socrates, Sozomenus and Theodoretus. Venice, Marcianus gr. 917, formerly 344, datable c. 1300, which also contains Books V-IX of Sozomenus, preserves in full the first part of the work, which incorporates most of Books I and II of Socrates (T). For obvious reasons, the Historia tripartita has never been edited as a work in its own right: in his edition Hansen gives a synopsis with cross-references to Socrates, Theodoretus and Sozomenus and discusses in detail the alterations which Theodore made to the three authors whom he was combining.
3. A Latin translation of Theodore was commissioned c. 560 by Cassiodorus and carried out by Epiphanius (Cass). The manuscript tradition of Epiphanius' Historia ecclesiastica tripartita is far richer and fuller than that of either Socrates or Theodore, and the text was edited for the Vienna corpus of Latin ecclesiastical authors by Walther Jacob and Rudolf Hanslik (CSEL lxxi [1952]). Unfortunately, it must be said that Hanslik's statement of the editorial principles employed does not inspire complete confidence.(2)
4. Sozomenus used Socrates as the main source for his own Ecclesiastical history c. 450, following him closely while deliberately rewriting in a more grandiloquent style.
5. The life of John Chrysostom by George of Alexandria (BHG 873)(3) reproduces much of Book VI so faithfully that he is as valuable for reconstituting the text of this book as Theodore Lector is for Books I and II (pp. xxxvii, xxxviii).(4)
6. A Syriac version, agreed to be no later than c. 650, which is more paraphrase than translation, is preserved in fragments, excerpts and virtual quotations in later authors (Syr).
7. A hellenising Armenian translation, conventionally known as 'Socrates Major' ('Grosser Sokrates'/'Bolshoi Sokrat') to distinguish it from the later non-hellenising version called 'Socrates Minor' ('Kleiner Sokrates'/'Malyi Sokrat') stands apart from all the other witnesses to the text.
Sirinian explains the importance of the ancient Armenian translation (Arm) briefly in the introduction to Hansen's edition (pp. xxv-xxviii), but a recently published Italian translation of a lecture which she gave in Russian in Erevan in 1987 sets out the salient facts more fully than she can in these three pages.(5) Since Sirinian there states that the translation belongs to the first half of the sixth century ('la prima meta del VI secolo'), whereas Hansen's stemma gives a date of c. 600 (p. xxxiii), it may be helpful to reproduce here in English some of the central conclusions of the article. Sirinian observes that the Armenian 'Socrates Major' exhibits 'absolute syntactical fidelity to the original': since the hellenising translator 'sought not only to preserve the order of the words in the sentence, but also to reproduce all its syntactical usages without modifying grammatical categories', he frequently invented artificial locutions which are alien to Armenian. Moreover, this version often confirms conjectures of Valesius or offers readings intrinsically superior to those of all the other witnesses to the text. Sirinian therefore concludes:
It seems reasonable to date the translation of the Ecclesiastical History to the first half of the sixth century. The ancient Armenian translation of the work of Socrates agrees with the best readings of the Historia tripartita of Theodorus Anagnostes and with the Latin translation of Epiphanius, but because both these works contain an incomplete text of the Ecclesiastical History, Socrates Major has become the principal evidence for the oldest state of the original.
Unfortunately, when setting out the relationship between the various manuscripts and versions, Hansen seems to contradict himself in one important particular. Whereas his stemma depicts Cass as directly dependent on a manuscript of Socrates with corrections from Theodore Lector (p. xxxiii), the text of his introduction states that 'der lateinische Ubersetzer sich vollstandig an Theodoros Anagnostes angeschlossen hat' (p. xx). Hansen's stemma should accordingly be simplified and emended to conform to the latter view as follows: (In Hansen's critical apparatus b signifies the agreement of M and F: the readings of A are registered separately because of contamination.)
Hence anyone who wishes to use Socrates must henceforward consult Hansen's edition, which improves upon Hussey's text in several hundred passages. Since the full range of evidence on which our knowledge of the text rests was unavailable to editors before Hansen, anyone who continues to quote or rely on Hussey or on any of the existing English translations, of which the most recent is by A. C. Zenos in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser. (Oxford-New York 1891), 1-178, thereby proclaims to the scholarly world a preference for ignorance over truth. There is of course the practical difficulty that Hansen's text can only be used by those who can read Greek, until a reliable modern translation is produced - as it assuredly will be.
It is impossible and unnecessary to discuss here all the passages where Hansen offers obviously superior readings to previous editors. I shall, therefore, discuss a selection of passages in three main categories, which sometimes overlap: (1) passages where all the surviving witnesses to the text appear to be in error; (2) passages where the ancient Armenian translation either stands alone in error or alone preserves the truth against the Greek manuscripts;(6) and (3) two important passages where Hansen takes a different view from earlier editors on whether they were written by Socrates or not:(7)
1. Hansen prints several conjectures of his own which seem correct, sometimes even necessary. In 1. 2. 6 his antitupon for kata ton tupon restores sense and corresponds to mimema in Eusebius, VC 1. 30, which Socrates is here paraphrasing: the sleeping Constantine 'saw Christ telling him to make a copy of the sign which he had seen'. Hansen makes other conjectures which are either based upon the Armenian (for example, 3. 1. 2 anedeiknuto; 6. 18. 18 +sphodros; 7. 18. 25; 7. 22. 10; 7. 25. 13) or make verbal or linguistic improvements to the paradosis (for example, 1. 20. 7: deletion of gunaika after aikhmaloton; 2. 20. 13: tetheisa added before phrasis; 2. 37. 4: +ton; 3. 1. 54: +kai before protos; 4. 12. 40: pleon for pleio and +pros orgen; 4. 14. 2: houtos deleted).
In two passages Hansen marks a lacuna. In 7. 13. 14, b fails to supply an object for the verbs in the clause 'the Jews at once attacked and began to kill'. Cass has ignorantes, on the basis of which Hansen suggests in his apparatus that Socrates may have written 'those who suspected nothing'. Arm offers 'the Christians who came on the scene'. I do not understand why Hansen rejects this as the correct reading or marks a lacuna. In 7. 18. 14 Arm has a long addition, the beginning of which is confirmed as authentic by Theodore Lector, Epit. 314: Hansen rejects the rest and signals a gap in the text.
2. Arm contains a substantial number of erroneous or arbitrary additions to the Greek text (for example, 1. 3. 1 +'or altars'; 3. 1. 36/37; 3. 19. 11; 4. 1. 8; 4. 12. 6; 5. 6. 2; 6. 18. 14; 6. 23. 7; 7. 5. 2; 7. 21. 6; 7. 22. 18; 7. 25. 6, 19; 7. 39. 10; 7. 47. 3). On the other hand, it often supplies words, phrases, clauses and whole lines which have dropped out of the Greek manuscripts and whose authenticity is sometimes confirmed by Cass or by comparison with either Socrates's source or a later writer who used him (for example, 1. 17. 2; 1. 22. 3 +oun; 1. 24. 5 +ek bathron, cf. Eusebius, VC 3. 59. 2; 1. 28. 4; 2. 37. 91 +Valens; 2. 38. 6 +andron Arm Cass; 3. 1. 19; 3. 1. 29 +'in Gaul'; 3. 7. 15, cf. Sozomenus, HE 5. 12. 4; 3. 12. 7, cf. John of Antioch, frag. 179; 3. 20. 3; 3. 23. 54; 3. 25. 1; 4. 7. 10 Cass; 4. 17. 2, cf. Sozomenus, HE 6. 18. 1; 4. 23. 36; 4. 23. 38 Cass; 4. 27. 6 Cass Syr; 5. 2. 1, cf. Sozomenus, HE 7. 1. 3; 5. 22. 8 Cass; 5. 22. 50/51; 5. 25. 6, 11; 6. 16. 3; 6. 23. 7; 7. 8. 13; 7. 10. 10; 7. 20. 11; 7. 28. 1; 7. 29. 2; 7. 36. 16; 7. 46. 9; 7. 47. 3; 7. 48. 1 Cass). Arm also omits several phrases and even whole sentences which Hansen deletes as glosses (3. 1. 39; 3. 18. 1; 4. 27. 1; 5. 6. 1/2). The most spectacular divergence between Arm and the rest of the tradition is that Arm includes a passage of some six lines about Pambo which is missing in b A Cass Syr (4. 23. 27a). It combines two sayings of Pambo found in the alphabetic collection of Apophthegmata patrum and appears to provide a fuller text (PG lxv. 368, 372: Pambo 1, 12).
Three passages of Book I perhaps deserve special discussion. Arm omits the whole sentence 1. 8. 27. Hansen correctly deletes it as a marginal gloss ('Eusebius says etc.'): Socrates is summarising Eusebius on the Council of Nicaea and the sentence summarises two passages which Socrates has in fact just quoted (1. 8. 10, 23 = VC 3. 9. 9, 13. 2). In 1. 13. 3 Arm adds 'in writing (graphe)' after 'worthy of mention': Hansen prints engraphou and begins a new paragraph with 1. 13. 4, thereby clarifying the articulation of the whole chapter (sections 4-10 constitute a digression about something which happened after 325, as 11 states). In 1. 24. 3, as Valesius saw, there is something wrong with the bare asseveration in b A (Hussey's text) that 'George writes about Eustathius' and supplied what is logically necessary by adding 'quae parum inter se cohaerent' as the object of the verb: Arm now supplies what Socrates actually wrote, viz., 'implausible nonsense' (apithana). In the following sentence Hussey prints the definite article before the name Cyrus on both its occurrences: according to Hansen's apparatus, the first is absent from b A, and for the second Arm has 'the same' - another clear improvement to the sense ('For, while alleging that Eustathius was accused by Cyrus of Sabellianism, he says that the same Cyrus was convicted of the same offences and deposed'). Immediately thereafter, however, Arm omits the words 'from Caesarea in Palestine' which are required for the sense ('some were endeavouring to transfer Eusebius the son of Pamphilus from Caesarea in Palestine, while others were eager to bring back Eustathius').
The most important of all divergences between Arm and the other textual witnesses occurs in Book VII. When Theophilus died in 412, there were two candidates for the see of Alexandria: the archdeacon Timothy and Cyril, the nephew of Theophilus. The contest was bitter, fighting ensued and Abundantius the dux Aegypti intervened on the side of one of the two candidates. He is named as Timothy by b (A is lacking here and Cass abbreviates, omitting all mention of Abundantius), as Cyril by Arm. The reading 'Timothy' has never been challenged: on the contrary, recent historians who have written about the stormy career of Cyril have sometimes drawn far-reaching inferences from the supposed fact that 'Cyril was installed despite opposition from the secular arm'.(8) But the reading of Arm is proved correct by the logic of the passage:
When because of this rioting broke out among the congregation, the commander of the military forces Abundantius attached himself to the party of Cyril. As a result Cyril was enthroned on the third day after the death of Theophilus and entered on his episcopate in a more powerful position than Theophilus. (7. 7. 3/4)
Most of what has been written about Cyril's quarrel with the prefect Orestes and about the murder of Hypatia needs to be rethought in light of Socrates's statement that Cyril owed his election to the intervention of Abundantius.
3. In 1. 13. 12 Hansen includes as an integral part of Socrates's original text the list of bishops who subscribed the creed at Nicaea and their sees, which is preserved in T and was printed by H. Gelzer, H. Hilgenfeld and O. Cuntz, Patrum Nicaenorum nomina (Leipzig 1898), 61-70. In his edition of Theodore, Hansen denied that the names (except for the first four) came from Socrates: he held rather that Theodore took them 'wohl aus einer Kanoneshandschrift' (p. 11). But the epitome of Theodore, which Hansen also printed in parallel with the full synopsis of the contents of the Historia tripartita clearly states that' Socrates lists the names of the holy fathers who assembled at the council in Nicaea' (Epit. 21). Hansen has now rightly restored the full list to Socrates. That has two significant corollaries. First, it illustrates the careful and conscientious scholarship of Socrates. Second, it entails that Socrates himself knew of no 'synodicon of Athanasius':(9) it was invented by a lazy scribe who did not wish to write out a long and dull list of names which meant nothing to him.
Hansen has expunged the quotation from a letter of Constans printed by Hussey as 2. 22. 5, which he holds to be a forgery (123. 20 app.: 'der gefalschte Brief'). The editorial decision appears to be correct, since only F and A have the quotation (added in the margin in A), which is omitted in M T Arm (though the omission in Arm is not probative, since it omits documents: Syr is here lacking). But, if Socrates did not quote the letter of Constans, that does not settle the very different question of whether the passage is an authentic or an invented quotation. For it is not transmitted solely by two manuscripts of Socrates; it also occurs in the pre-metaphrastic life of Athanasius (BHG 185), which quotes many genuine documents (PG xxv. ccxxxv/ccxxxvi), and in the life of Paul of Constantinople (BHG 1472), which appears to derive both from that life and from Socrates. (It was presumably from one of these that it has been interpolated in the text of F and added in the margin of A.) Moreover, although many have rejected the letter as a forgery,(10) there are at least three strong reasons for accepting it as authentic. First, it seems certain on historical grounds that Constans wrote such a letter, and Socrates summarises the content of the suspect quotation in the preceding sentence (2. 22. 4). Secondly, the passage quoted refers to Constans's protection of Paul of Constantinople as well as of Athanasius - an embarrassing fact which Athanasius and later writers attempted (almost successfully) to edit out of the historical record. And third, the version of the letter summarised by Socrates and quoted in F and A refers to the presence of both Paul and Athanasius at the court of Constans in the early months of 345 - another genuine detail which Athanasius wished to be forgotten.(11)
Hansen's text of Socrates has a wider significance than being both a superb edition and the first critical text of an important author.(12) It highlights the value of early Armenian versions as witnesses to the text of Greek writers. Classical scholars have long been aware of the importance of Armenian versions where the Greek original has been lost - for example, the Chronicle of Eusebius and several works of Philo of Alexandria. No less obvious is the value of a complete Armenian translation of a work which only survives incomplete in Greek - for example, the Progymnasmata of Theon of Smyrna (L. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci, ii, Leipzig 1854, 59-128), of which G. Bolognesi and M. Patillon are preparing the first complete edition. But there has been some reluctance until recently on the part of editors to search out and to utilise Armenian translations when Greek manuscripts preserve the text in question complete (for example, Plato's Timaeus).(13) It will be appropriate, therefore, to conclude with a salute to Dr Sirinian for the unstinting help which she has given Hansen. The edition which they have jointly produced revolutionises our knowledge of the text of the ecclesiastical history of Socrates.(14)
1 F. C. Conybeare, 'Emendations of the text of Socrates Scholasticus', Journal of Philology xxxiii (1914), 208-37; 'A collation of the history of Socrates Scholasticus, books IV-VII, with the old Armenian version and the Latin version of Epiphanius Scholasticus as preserved in the Historia tripartita of Cassiodorius', ibid. xxxiv (1915), 47-77.
2 R. Hanslik, CSEL lxxi (1952), p. xvi: 'Waltarius Jacob ex 137 codicibus a se collatis sex classes distinxit, quarum prima in textu constituendo utendum erat, ceterae autem respici non debuerunt. Sed prima classis 27 codd. continens in tres familias, quarum codices artius inter se connexi sunt, dividi potest. Primae igitur familiae optimi codices sunt Neapolitanus Net Leidensis L, secundae Leningradensis C, tertiae Carnutensis A et Casinensis M, quorum vetustissmus codex C initio saec. IX, ceteri saec. X (praeter codicis M posteriorem partem) scripti sunt. Jacob autem omnes ex uno eodemque archetypo fluxisse sibi persuasit. Ego ipse quidem cautius dixerim eos ad archetypum prope accedere. Nihilominus autem ex unaquaque familia optimo codice adhibito et fontibus Graecis passim accurate comparatis historiae tripartitae textus omnibus fere locis sanari potest, si quis non solum linguam Latinam Cassiodori aetatis respiciet, sed etiam Epiphanium saepe ad verbum vertentem ne ipsum quidem intellexisse, quae scripsisset, concedet.' Inevitably, Hanslik employed Hussey's text of both Socrates and Sozomenus (London 1860).
3 Publ. by F. Halkin, Douze recits byzantins sur saint Jean Chrysostome, Brussels 1977, 69-285.
4 George knows both versions of the long passage 6. 11. 9-20, which Hansen prints in parallel as alternatives both penned by Socrates (pp. 329-33).
5 M. S. Sirinian, 'Ricerche sulla Storia ecclesiastica di Socrate Scolastico e sulle sue versioni armene', Annali di ca' Foscari. Rivista della Facolta di lingue e letterature straniere dell' Universita di Venezia xxxiii (1994), 151-67.
6 The text offered by the Greek manuscripts in 1. 6. 1 appears to reflect a conscious attempt to emend a corrupt exemplar in which the original verb exekaieto had accidentally dropped out.
7 Hansen argues briefly and effectively that the transmitted chapter headings do not come from Socrates's own hand, but have been added by a 'Late Antique editor' (p. lx).
8 For example, L. R. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria: select letters, Oxford 1983, p. xiii. He deduces that 'the contested election made his position predictably insecure in a city prone to conflict and violence where not even bishops were safe from lynching' (p. xvi).
9 The existence of the work was disproved by E. Schwartz, Gesammelte Schriften, iii, Berlin 1959, 77-82 (first publ. 1904).
10 For example, R. P. C. Hanson, The search for the Christian doctrine of God: the Arian controversy, 318-81, Edinburgh 1988, 307-8.
11 On the significance and political context of Constans's letter see now T. D. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius : theology and politics in the Constantinian empire, Cambridge, Mass. 1993, 89.
12 I have detected only one lapse from the highest standards of scholarship: the neuter 'gnorimon . . . touto . . . katastan' (7. 16. 5) is construed as a 'nominativus absolutus' (361. 22/23 app., 501) instead of an accusative absolute.
13 See the admirable survey by C. Zuckerman and M. E. Stone, A repertory of published Armenian translations of classical texts, 2nd edn, Jerusalem 1995.
14 For information and advice, I am much indebted to Michael Redies and my Toronto colleague Douglas Hutchinson-whom Dr Sirinian is assisting in the preparation of a critical edition of the pseudo-Aristotelian On virtues and vices.
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