Justus Lipsius and the Text of Tacitus

Abstract

Editors, and other students, of the text of Tacitus have of late been taken up with the problems of the two codices unici and perhaps have tended to neglect the contributions made by their predecessors. If this be true, Dr. J. Ruysschaert has rendered a service to scholarship in publishing a book on Juste Lipse et les Annals de Tacite: une méthode de critique textuelle au XVIe siècle. It is safe to say that up to the nineteenth century a commentary on the text of Tacitus in the main consisted of comments by, and on, Lipsius. Much of this lore was gathered together in I. Bekker's Variorum edition of 1831 and, augmented by G. H. Walther's more unorthodox notes and a critique of them, in Ruperti's four volumes of 1832–39. At that time, however, a breach in the tradition occurred and the Corpus Lipsianum (if this name may be applied to the lore in the Variorum editions) became less known than it deserves.