14 VALÉRY BERLINCOURT
tarum ad Thebaida et Achilleida addidi. [...] Nihil exspectabis magni,
praesertim ab homine sic districto & direpto. (Gronovius to
N. Heinsius, Daventriae, XIII. Kal. Decemb. 1652 [= Burmann 1727,
III 303, n° 248])
At the request of Louis Elzevier, I have dedicated a very few days to
Statius; I have corrected some passages in the text: I have added my
remaining material on the Silvae, and a taste of my notes to the Thebaid
and the Achilleid. [...] You will not expect anything important, the
more so from a man so busy as I am, and so much torn in all directions.Gronovius’ edition was thus hardly an unsurpassable achievement.
This conclusion may seem unexpected to us. To at least a few earlier
readers, however, it would not have come as much of a surprise. In
addition to the praises that were regularly heaped upon this edition
(and that are often echoed by modern editors), occasional voices of
dissent can also be heard. In 1880 the bibliographer Alphonse Wil-
lems called Gronovius’ Statius a second-rate edition.^44 More explicitly
relevant to the present discussion are the words of Friedrich Dübner,
who, in the preface of his edition of 1835–6, criticized the shortcom-
ings of his text:
Is ad hanc recensionem codicibus pariter atque ingenio instructus, non
omnem Statii textum judicio suo subjecit, sed iis tantum locis mederi
est dignatus, qui Gronovium salvatorem requirere viderentur. Quare
haec recensio, ad hodiernum diem in edd. fere servata, perfunctoriae
solummodo nomen meretur. (Dübner in Paris 1835–6, xiii)
Though equipped to make this recension by manuscripts and talent
alike, he did not subject the whole of Statius’ text to his own judgment,
but deigned to bring succour only to such passages as seemed to be in
search of Gronovius as their saviour. Therefore, this recension, which
has been preserved until the present day in almost all editions, deserves
only to be called superficial.Dübner’s criticism, as well as the more detailed discussion in the pref-
ac e of Hand’s 1817 edition of the Silvae,^45 came too late to alter the
44 Willems 1880, n° 1166, quoting Gronovius’ letter to N. Heinsius cited above.
45 Hand in Leipzig 1817, XLIV “Hic enim [...], quum consilium novae recensionis
per plures annos animo versasset, et subsidia critica satis multa sibi comparasset, ut
ipse narrat in epistola ad Richterum p. 242. tamen talem editionem non confecit,
qualem antea meditatus erat, et qualis ab hoc viro exspectari poterat, sed in ea, quae
Amstelodami a. 1653 prodiit, multa vitiosa neque interpunctione expedita reliquit. In
textu igitur non ubique agnosces Gronovii sedulitatem. Verum adiecit ad Silvas Reli-
qua et Gustus ad Thebaidos libros, notas, ut ait Daumius in epist. ad Reinesium 58.
p. 151. in pondere non magno satis ponderosas.” Gronovius’ letter to Richter, De-