pindar and theocritus in the 16 th century
in 1836. Before that it belonged to Sir John Sebright (1767–1846), whose bookplate it bears, whose father, also Sir John (1725–94), inherited historic manuscripts from the Welsh antiquary and lin- guist, Edward Lhuyd (1660–1709). Lhuyd acquired it after the death without heir of Sir Thomas Darcy (1632–93), who had had it finely bound with his arms painted on the fore-edge. His father- in-law, Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–50), also had a fine library, much of it bound with his large armorial stamp and brass clasps. This is documented from D’Ewes’s own catalogues, printed and amplified in Andrew Watson’s The Library of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1966), from which it emerges that D’Ewes studied Theocritus with his Cambridge tutor, Richard Holdsworth, and also bought books for his daughter, Lady Darcy. He had an excellent classical library, including Casaubon’s Animadversiones in Athenaei Dipnosophistas (1597) presented by the author to Dominicus Baudius. Our book is not identifiable in his lists, unless it be ‘a paper booke of greke words’. What light does Musurus’s manuscript throw on the complex stemma of Theocritus? Careful consideration of accentuation, dialectal forms (Musurus avoids the presumably original Doricisms), parallels and actual readings induces Ferreri to see ‘véritable témoins... de la tradition directe, c’est-à-dire que les vers qu’elles citent sont tirés d’un témoin manuscrit perdu (vraisemblement du Patavinus perdu)’. If so, this is a discovery on a par with Fogelmark’s of the interaction of Callierges and Musurus in the 1515 Pindar. Together, these massive works illuminate remote and unfamiliar aspects the works of two authors who have engaged the attention of scholars ever since 16th century.
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