After Stephanus
After Stephanus
Abstract and Keywords
The epitomised Stephanus is the only text of an Ethnika surviving from antiquity. Consequently we cannot speak of his successors in the same way that he himself may be regarded as successor of Oros, or at a further remove, of Alexander Polyhistor or Herennius Philon. There survive a number of unnamed quotations regarding ethnic forms in various Etymologica and elsewhere, which sometimes provide more information than the corresponding entries in Stephanus, but it is a manifest oversimplification to suppose that all these entries derive from the full text of Stephanus. Stephanus and the Epitome were subsequently used by a few Byzantine writers, notably by Constantine Porphyrogennetus and the Continuators of Theophanes, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and above all, though last in time, by Eustathius in the twelfth.
Keywords: Epitome, Ethnika, ethnic forms, Etymologica, Constantine Porphyrogennetus, Eustathius
THE EPITOMISED STEPHANUS is the only text of an Ethnika surviving from antiquity. Consequently we cannot speak of his successors in the same way that he himself may be regarded as successor of oros, or at a further remove, of Alexander Polyhistor or Herennius Philon. There survive a number of unnamed quotations regarding ethnic forms in various Etymologica and elsewhere, which sometimes provide more information than the corresponding entries in Stephanus, but it is a manifest oversimplification to suppose, as Geffcken did, that all these entries derive from the full text of Stephanus (see below, p. 315). It is clear that Stephanus and the Epitome were subsequently used by a few Byzantine writers, notably by Constantine Porphyrogennetus and the Continuators of Theophanes, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and above all, though last in time, by Eustathius in the twelfth (ob. c.1192).1 Constantine has three passages in his De Imperio Administrando,2 one of which reproduces (p.314) the long and complex entry of Stephanus s.vv. “Iβηρ and Iσπανία, without naming him, while in his De Thematibus there are some ten entries, one of which, that on Sicily, quotes him by name; all these passages derive from the full text of the Ethnika,3 while there is also a large number of entries in the De Thematibus which coincide with the Epitome. The ‘Continuators of Theophanes’, with their own successors, are a collection of minor Chronicles, of which the last, sixth, book forms an independent narrative.4
Eustathius’ paraphrases of the Iliad and the Odyssey and of Dionysius the Periegete, the geographical versifier of the later first century AD, show more clearly the frequent use of a text of Stephanus close to, but not identical with, that which survives. There seems to be no good reason to suppose that the variations between them point to the use by Eustathius at any specific point of a complete text of the Ethnika. The items frequently differ from Stephanus, mostly by an introductory phrase, or another addition by Eustathius himself, but this does not suffice to indicate use of the full text. He takes material from the Epitome as he chooses, and often expands (most often by adding further grammatical information) or contracts it. He also adds other sources, notably and naturally Homer and Strabo, to those which he found in the Epitome, usually (except for Strabo) without naming them, but it does not follow on that account that he had access to (or, at all events, used) the full text of the Ethnika. The author of the Epitome is expressly quoted independently of the complete text.5 Eustathius quotes Stephanus only once by
(p.315)
name (on Z 397 = Steph. s.v. 
(α 60 Bill.), with additions by the Archbishop), and normally calls him 
—as opposed to Strabo, quoted most frequently as 
or even, pinacographically as ‘the list of ethnics’, 
6 This unique row of periphrastic descriptions suggests in addition that Stephanus’ 
was the only work in this category known to Eustathius.7
The relationship between the various Etymologica, which may probably be assigned in their surviving form to the twelfth century, and Stephanus is more complex.8 Geffcken regarded the geographical entries in the so-called Etymologicum Magnum as essentially quotations from a more complete Stephanus, and he argued for the insertion of these in the
(p.316)
text of the Epitome, where he felt that to be appropriate.9 There are undoubtedly a great many entries in the Etymologicum Magnum which contain information which can hardly be expanded quotations from the Epitome, since they contain different, or differently arranged, information, and within the range of the tri-literal lemmata of the letter Alpha in the Etymologicum Genuinum they are attributed largely to a lexicographer named Methodios,10 who is not quoted in Stephanus, to Oros’ 
to Orion’s 
and, particularly concerning tonic accentuation, to Herodian. The geographical entries suggest that the information in the texts of Stephanus and Methodios developed along independent lines, before both were compressed into the epitomised form in which they both survive today: compare, for example, EM s.v. 
(p.317)
However, until more of the many lexica have been published synoptically and their contents and ancestry compared, we cannot expect a final solution regarding the survival of Stephanus in another form than that of our Epitome, even if it be only in the form of discrepancies in quotations.11
The difference between the entries in Stephanus’ Epitome and the transmitted versions of the Genuinum, the so-called Gudianum, and the Magnum, all of which survive in different versions in different degrees of epitomisation and interpolation with humanistic marginalia, is in one important respect very marked. The lexica all quote lavishly from Methodios, the grammarian or lexicographer of whom we know little, save what we can infer from them.12 He is regularly quoted in entry after entry in the usual alphabetical manner, normally at the end of the item, throughout the lexicographical tradition, in the barest form, as 
or simply 
It seems probable that he compiled his lost lexicon, the name of which is unknown, in the fifth century, since quotations which are based on information provided by him do not refer to Orion, otherwise a prolific source for the lexica. While we cannot say that his lexicon did not, like all the surviving manuscripts of the lexica, contain geographical items, there is no quotation from either Orion or Methodios in the Epitome of Stephanus, and the possibility of his use in the original text of Stephanus is, on that account, wholly hypothetical.
Problems such as this do not assist us very far in finding a later use of Stephanus, and we may have to accept the fact that—at least at present, for Stephanus may perhaps, in spite of the use made of him from the sixteenth century onwards, still be regarded as a Wartetext—there are very few references to Stephanus other than in Eustathius. Two manuscripts, however, deserve notice as a sign of a continued use of the Epitome at a later date. The first is a short manuscript text in Munich quoted, alongside Plutarch and one or two other writers, as evidence for a particular word-form.13 The second is a MS of the Etymologicum of (p.318) Symeon, dated to the end of the thirteenth century.14 Symeon has a number of references to Stephanus, but to a version of his Epitome different in several ways from that used by the Etymologicum Genuinum and the Etymologicum Magnum, but resembling that preserved in the Aldina of the existing Epitome of Stephanus himself.15 Once more, however, until a full text of Symeon is available it is not possible to estimate the relationship between him and our Epitome or any possible alternative epitome.16 In view of the dessicated condition of Symeon it seems unlikely that any significant new information will be won from that source.
Reference must finally be made to the remarkable list of ethnics preserved in several manuscripts of Longibardos, ‘the Wise’.17 These contain, among other grammatical or moralising tracts, a twofold list described as a 
(digression) of cities that had suffered destruction in the past, preceded by a warning to the reader that he must be careful to avoid such a fate for his own city. The lists of ethnics whose names follow, all in the genitive plural, governed by the noun 
‘the destruction of the cities’, fall into two sections, first those in -αί̑oι, then those in 
and no purpose is stated for the arrangement. However, we may agree with Reitzenstein that its purpose is to act as an orthographic guide to the correct declension of such ethnics, in other words, that it is an example of the current method of teaching by rote, 
The list, which consists of some three hundred entries under this apocalyptic rubric, may suggest that other ethnic lists than
(p.319)
Stephanus’ Epitome were known in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which may have provided scholiasts and others with information that the Epitome, unlike the original 
lacked. The list of Longibardos, however, unlike the lexica, is not compiled in alphabetical order, and shows no obvious links with the 
At the same time, the prescriptive use of that term by itself to describe Stephanus shows that he alone could be, and was, identified by it.
To about the same approximate date as Longibardos’ list of destroyed cities we may assign a group of three or four closely related manuscripts, which contain lists of metonomasies. These, found in manuscripts dating from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, are related conceptually to Stephanus, though the actual substance of them is very different, since many of the metonomasies are Slavonic. They were published most recently by Diller.18
With Longibardos our analysis of the tradition concerning Greek ethnic forms may suitably end. But the reader should keep in mind the surviving force of local ethnics in Greece today. This may be at any level from the nation through the region to the city and finally to the village, and today a man may say 
or, to return to our starting-point: 
as a burly 
accompanying his 
to see the same doctor as I was waiting to see in Argostoli, said to me a few years ago, thus repeating the words attributed to Odysseus.
(p.320)
Notes:
(1) The two articles by Aubrey Diller, ‘The tradition of Stephanus Byzantius’, TAPA 69 (1938), 333–48, and ‘Excerpts from Strabo and Stephanus in Byzantine Chronicles’, TAPA 81 (1950), 241–53, cover much of the substance of this chapter, with characteristic acuteness and clarity, and give one or two other Byzantine references to Stephanus, but he does not quote many examples of the parallel texts. His ‘The manuscripts of Eustathius commenting on Dionysius Periegetes’, in id., The Textual Tradition of Strabo’s Geography (Amsterdam, 1975), is a very full analysis of Dionysius, of which the text is still as in Müller, GGM, ii, pp. 103 ff. For the text of Porphyrogennetus, De Imperio Administrando see Moravcsik (text) and Jenkins (translation) (Budapest, 1949–67); for the De Thematibus see below, n. 3, and for Theophanes Continuatus see n. 4 below. The known passages from Constantine and Eustathius are quoted by Westermann in the Praefatio of his edition of Stephanus: see below, nn. 5 and 7.
(2)
See especially §§23–4 (Bonn = Jenkins-Moravcsik, pp. 98 ff. with variants in the order of the text). Constantine quotes the long entry in Stephanus, which is devoted to involved quotations on the declension of the proper names and geographical and historical references: see the commentary on this passage by Jenkins (ii, pp. 80–1). The passage had originally been intended for Constantine’s unwritten 
(cf. ibid., pp. 1 ff., where the purpose of Constantine’s excursus is analysed). The passage from Artemidorus of Ephesus regarding the Roman organisation and nomenclature of Spain (p. 324, ll. 4–9) exists in a papyrus fragment, Archiv für Papyrusforschung, 44 (1998), 189 ff.: 
(3)
For De Thematibus see the edition of A. Pertusi, Costantino Porfirogenito de Thematibus, Studi e Testi, 160 (Vatican City, 1952). Constantine takes his text from Stephanus without naming him in nine passages, including part of his entry on Dyrrachion 
pp. 56–7, which agrees closely with that of Stephanus’ full text as preserved in MS S, but does not mention him, and on Sicily 
pp. 58–9, quotes the full Stephanus as 
Of these two passages the former is inserted by Mein. into his text in brackets alongside the jejune entry of the Epitomator, while the long section in Constantine on Sicily is quoted in brackets in his text (Westermann, op. cit. (n. 1, above), p. xi, preferred to omit it).
(4) See the brief analysis by K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur von Justinian bis zum Ende des oströmischen Reiches, 527–1453 (2nd edn., Munich, 1897), pp. 347–9.
(5)
The fullest investigation of the use made of Stephanus by Eustathius is that of W. Knauss, ‘De Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum exemplo Eustathiano’ (diss. Bonn, 1910), which carefully analyses the range of possibilities. The passages of Constantine and Eustathius ad Iliadem referring to Stephanus are given in full by Westermann (n. 1, above) in the excellent Praefatio to his edition, pp. x ff. (those on Eustathius on pp. xiii ff.). Having recorded (p. xvi) the numerous discrepancies between the MSS of the Epitome and of Stephanus, as quoted by Eustathius, Westermann concluded: ‘nihil iam reliquum esse videtur quam ut ponamus, Eustathium promiscue prout scribendi ad manus essent libri nunc integrum nunc decurtatum adhibuisse.’ In his 
to Dionysius (GGM, ii, pp. 201–407) Eustathius makes similar use of Stephanus, but does not refer to him either by name, or by one of the descriptive titles. Of the other scholiastic commentaries to Dionysius, the acephalous 
(ibid., pp. 409–25) contains no references to sources, but the scholia (ibid., pp. 427–57), allegedly the work of one Demetrios of Lampsakos (ibid., p. 427, n.), contain a large number: apart from those to Homer, there are references to Hesiod, Herodotus and Charax (FGrH 103 F35 and F36), frequently to Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius and Lycophron, occasionally to Theocritus, Euphorion and Rhianos, to Euripides and Aeschylus, to Euclid (!), Eratosthenes and Ptolemy, and one to 
but no reference to Stephanus nor to any anonymous passage which corresponds with the Epitome or a fuller text. The author of the scholia has collected an extraordinary range of material, not all of which is likely to be at first hand; he had a liking for pinacography, for he gives us several 
—a list of the 
(on l. 132), a list of the provincial units of Asia Minor (on l. 138), a list (probably unique) of the names of the Athenian oikists of the Cyclades (on l. 525, apropos of the inclusion of the islands in the province of Asia by Vespasian, see Müller’s note on GGM, ii, pp. 136–7), a short list of Aeolian communities (l. 820), a list of Carian (in fact, Ionian) cities (l. 822), and at the end of the scholia (p. 457) some random jottings, taken in part from the pseudo-Plutarchan De Fluviis, a list of twelve winds (cf. above p. 31, n. 65, for the 
distances between places around the Bosporus and the Euxine, the names of the seas and gulfs, and, finally, after having described the twelve winds at the beginning of the list, he concludes very satisfactorily 
There is a resemblance with Ps.-Plut., op. cit. (see the text, reprinted by Müller, GGM, ii, pp. 637–65; cf. ibid. pp. lii ff. = Plut. ed. Bernadakis, vii, pp. 282–328), but the whole range of learning, individual or transmitted, is very remarkable.
(6) See Eust. D.P. l. 382 = GGM, ii, p. 288, ll. 23–4; cf. also Eust. on Il. 1.35.3.
(7)
For these and other descriptions of Stephanus by Eustathius see the references in Westermann’s edition. Neither Stephanus nor Eustathius seems to have used Horapollon’s 
when referring to such forms; this was apparently the ultimate source of the list of 
in Cyril’s Lexicon: see Reitzenstein, Etym., pp. 312 ff., where the entries are listed.
(8) See the summary by Diller, TAPA 69 (1938), 333–48, at 335–6 (= Studies in Greek Manuscript Tradition, pp. 183–98, at 185–6).
(9) See his dissertation ‘De Stephano Byzantio capita duo’ (Göttingen, 1886), passim. His conclusions were dismissed by Honigmann, RE, s.v. Stephanos (12), col. 2394, in a few words: ‘Eine gleiche Untersuchung [as that of Knauss, on the relation of the text of Eustathius to that of Stephanus: above, n. 5] verdienen der geographischen Artikel des Etymologicum Magnum zu S. mit denen Geffcken in analoger Weise verfuhr…: voraussichtlich wird sie zu dem gleichen Ergebnis führen.’ Diller, op. cit. (1938), p. 335, accepts Knauss’s conclusions without question: ‘It was long supposed that he [Eustathius] had a fuller form of the work, but Knauss in 1910 showed that this was not the case.’ Westermann, op. cit., p. xi, was assured in the other direction regarding the EM: ‘Integrum item Stephanum ante oculos habuisse videtur auctor Etymologi magni.’
(11) For partial editions of some of the lexica see the survey by K. Alpers, Bericht über Stand und Methode der Ausgabe des Etymologicum Genuinum, Det kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. 44, 3 (Copenhagen, 1969), and Lasserre-Livadaras, pp. v–xxx.
(12) For Methodios see the edition of the fragments by G. N. Bonwetsch, Methodius, Griechische christliche Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, 27 (Leipzig, 1917) and the article by Wendel, RE, s.v. The analysis of the sources, especially the Homer-epimerisms in Cramer, Anecd. Ox., i, 71–85, quoted for AMA---AMΦ--- in the Genuinum, is given by Reitzenstein, Etym., pp. 45–7.
(13) This MS was first published by I. Hardt, Cat. codd. mss. graec. Bibl. Reg. Bavar., iv (1812), pp. 176 f., and I am grateful to the authorities of the Manuscripts Department of the Staatsbibliothek in Munich for sending me a photocopy of part of the text. The text is reproduced below, Appendix 4 (pp. 389 f.), where some of the points it raises are discussed. Note Diller’s comment, cited at Appendix 4, p. 390 below.
(14) See the original discussion by Reitzenstein, Etym., pp. 254 ff., who provides a substantial specimen of the letter α. Berger (op. cit. next note) provides the entries of the letter β.
(15) See Reitzenstein, Etym., loc. cit., with the modifications by G. Berger, Etymologicum Genuinum et Etymologicum Symeonis, Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie, 43 (Meisenheim am Glan, 1972), pp. xix ff. Berger shows clearly that the relationship between Symeon and the Etymologica is more complex than Reitzenstein had supposed; his conclusion is that while Symeon used Stephanus only directly, the EM used him both directly and through Symeon. The α-β sequence will now be found in its synoptic context in Lasserre-Livadaras.
(17)
See Reitzenstein, Etym., pp. 332 ff.; the work, entitled 
is attributed in the MS used by Reitzenstein, Vat. 883, of the 14th-15th centuries to 
The full text of the Vatican MS was published, as Mr Wilson pointed out to me, by N. Festa in Byzantion, 6 (1931), 112–63 (cf. also his previous study, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 16 (1907), 431–53). (The grammatical term 
occurs as the title of part of a treatise on 
see Reitzenstein, Etym., pp. 360 ff.).
(18) Diller, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 63 (1970), as quoted at p. 155, n. 22, above. The lists were previously published by Burckhardt, in his edition of Hierokles, pp. 61–9, which was used by M. Vasmer, in his Die Slaven in Griechenland (Berlin, 1941), an outstanding work of topographical lexicography, in which all known metonomasies from Greek to Slavonic (and at times Ottoman Turkish) are listed and discussed.
