PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1515/phil-2023-0116
Vittorio Remo Danovi
{"title":"Was the Commentary on Vergil by Aelius Donatus Extant in the Ninth Century? A Reappraisal","authors":"Vittorio Remo Danovi","doi":"10.1515/phil-2023-0116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2023-0116","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract That the Vergilian commentary by Aelius Donatus – one of the most influential late-antique commentaries that have not survived – was extant in the ninth century and available to some Carolingian scholars is still a widespread belief. The evidence in support of this thesis is said to have been provided by the Harvard Servianist J. J. H. Savage in three articles published between 1925 and 1931. In these articles, Savage claimed that a few marginal notes in one of the ninth-century primary witnesses to the DS scholia, the so-called ‘Vergil of Tours’ (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Ms. 165), were drawn almost directly from Donatus’ commentary and that a marginal note in a roughly coeval Servian witness (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Ms. 363) provided information about a place where a copy of the commentary could be found. A re-examination of the two manuscripts shows that the evidence adduced by Savage does not stand scrutiny and that the terminus post quem for the loss of Donatus’ commentary should be antedated by at least one century.","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"51 1","pages":"156 - 172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85746105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1515/phil-2023-0121
C. Dowson
{"title":"The Social Networking Function of Cicero’s Prefaces to the Philosophical Works","authors":"C. Dowson","doi":"10.1515/phil-2023-0121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2023-0121","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The value of the prohoemia or ‘prefaces’ to Cicero’s later philosophical works, composed in the last years of his life, has not yet been settled. Two schools of thought have emerged somewhat more clearly in recent times: one places a greater value on the prefaces as tools for understanding Cicero’s philosophica as a whole, the other applies a more skeptical approach, using a degree of caution as to the nexus between the prefaces and the treatises to which they were affixed. The article advocates for the latter camp, however not only to temper the recent emphasis the optimists have placed on the prefaces as key interpretive elements to the dialogues, but to refocus their importance as extensions of Cicero’s personal and social networking with other Roman elites of his time. I rely on two main lines of argument: the anecdotal evidence from Cicero’s volumen prohoemiorum, “book of prefaces”, mentioned in a letter to Atticus in 44 bce, as well as a broader analysis of a deeper disconnect between Cicero’s prefatory rhetoric regarding Latin philosophical vocabulary compared with Greek and his translation practices in his treatises.","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"233 1","pages":"22 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86107509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1515/phil-2023-0117
R. Nünlist
{"title":"New Evidence on Nicanor’s Theory of Punctuation","authors":"R. Nünlist","doi":"10.1515/phil-2023-0117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2023-0117","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A concise summary of Nicanor’s theory of punctuation that has recently been discovered in a codex mixtus of the 15th century throws precious new light on a topic of some complexity. The general picture that emerges from the new extract does not substantially differ from that of the other known summary, which has been the starting point for all modern reconstructions of Nicanor’s theory. Therefore, these reconstructions need not be rewritten on a larger scale. The two summaries nevertheless display some telling differences in how they explain and present the details, not least when read against the backdrop of Nicanor’s actual practice that can be derived from the relevant scholia to Homer. The purpose of the present article is to assess the new discovery especially with regard to these differences and their effects on how Nicanor’s theory is to be reconstructed.","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"3 1","pages":"8 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87164265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2023-04-28DOI: 10.1515/phil-2023-0113
Gianluca Conte
{"title":"Verifica di un pregiudizio scettico","authors":"Gianluca Conte","doi":"10.1515/phil-2023-0113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2023-0113","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The author returns to a much debated topic, the so-called “Episode of Helen”, which has come to us only through indirect transmission, and endeavors to dismantle the prejudice against Virgilian authorship. G. P. Goold’s pugnacious intervention, dating back to more than half a century ago, contributed decisively – in fact, more than it should have – to the thesis that the text is spurious. A critical analysis of the text will demonstrate this claim to be groundless while offering arguments that support the authenticity of the episode.","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"7 1","pages":"46 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82121245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1515/phil-2022-0106
Lorenzo Perilli
{"title":"Galeno sulla lunghezza di un’epitome da Didimo: De indolentia 24 a BJP (= 121–122 KS). ἐν ἑξακισχιλίοις στίχοις versus ἐν ἓξ βιβλίοις","authors":"Lorenzo Perilli","doi":"10.1515/phil-2022-0106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2022-0106","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article proposes a correction of a passage of Galen’s De indolentia, alternative to the one accepted so far. The correction ἐν ἓξ βιβλίοις (“in six books”) is proposed, as alternative to the text hitherto accepted, itself due to a conjectural intervention, ἐν ἑξακισχιλίοις στίχοις (“in six thousand lines”): the manuscript Vlatadon 14 bears an impossible ἐν ἑξακισχιλίοις βιβλίοις (“in six thousand books”). At issue is the length of the epitome made by Galen of the lexicographical works of Didymus on the terminology of ancient comedy. The paper argues that the error of the manuscript could be due to the habit of writing numerals as a single letter accompanied by an apex (here probably a digamma, or perhaps a stigma), and that, when referring to his own works, Galen normally uses the book as his unit of measurement. Finally, it is hypothesized that a length of six thousand stichoi might have been too short for an epitome of the work of Didymus.","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"444 1","pages":"13 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82892595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1515/phil-2022-0103
Martin M. Bauer
{"title":"Schulübungen oder Kalenderblätter? Zur Interpretation einer Gruppe spätantiker Kulthymnen in der Appendix Claudianea","authors":"Martin M. Bauer","doi":"10.1515/phil-2022-0103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2022-0103","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Until now, the short cult hymns to Liber, Mars and Juno in the Appendix Claudianea have mostly been seen as rhetorical school exercises. Yet a philological-historical analysis shows that they could be remains of occasional poetry from everyday life. The hymns are structured according to the Roman festival calendar and, on the basis of language and content, should probably be dated to the final phase of public non-Christian cult practice in the fourth century. The anonymous poet was familiar with classical Greek and Latin poetry, but reveals weaknesses in Latin prosody and metre. It can therefore be supposed that he should be identified as one of the many Graeco-Egyptian ‘wandering poets’, but probably not as Claudian himself.","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"166 1","pages":"134 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85767740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1515/phil-2022-0108
Francesca Boldrer
{"title":"Tra gli Inferi e le stelle: un problema testuale nel mito di Orfeo in Virgilio (georg. 4,509) e il Leitmotiv astronomico nelle catabasi da Omero a Dante (con echi di Apollonio Rodio)","authors":"Francesca Boldrer","doi":"10.1515/phil-2022-0108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2022-0108","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article treats the presence of stars in terrestrial landscapes, in opposition to the Underworld and in connection to the topos of katabasis, above all in order to pursue in more depth a textual problem in the fabula Orphei of Vergil’s Georgics (4,509 astris / antris). The philological question is approached both on the basis of context and in relation to the descent into Hades of Aeneas, as well as in diachronic comparison with the earlier Homeric katabasis of Odysseus and the later otherworldly voyage of Dante in the Commedia. This internal and intertextual investigation reveals multiple functions of the celestial bodies in similar stories, as well as analogies between Homer, Vergil and Dante, linked by interests in nature and astronomy and by reciprocal influences. In fact, the Greek model and the Italian emulator seem to help clarify the contested passage in the Vergilian katabasis of Orpheus, while the Latin poet and Dante (who also share echoes of Apollonius Rhodius) rework a celestial detail already present in the νέκυια of Homer. Finally, both these classical authors, as well as Ovid, are subtly present at the ends of the three parts of the Commedia, each of which closes with the suggestive and symbolic image of “stars”, which evokes and renews an ancient tradition.","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"149 1","pages":"63 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74291133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1515/phil-2022-0109
H. Weidemann
{"title":"Ein überflüssiger und ein nur ansatzweise richtiger Eingriff in den überlieferten Text von Ciceros Schrift De fato","authors":"H. Weidemann","doi":"10.1515/phil-2022-0109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2022-0109","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the present article, proposed corrections to two passages of Cicero’s treatise De fato are examined. It is shown that, on the one hand, a widely accepted correction for §27 that replaces the well attested reading vera fuerunt instantia ... vera erunt instantia with vera fuerit instantia ... vera erit instantia is unnecessary, and that, on the other hand, my recently suggested correction for §48, which replaces the obviously false reading Nam si atomis ..., illud quoque ... with Aut num, si atomis ..., illud quoque ...?, is deficient and should be improved to Nam si atomis ..., num illud quoque ...?","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"15 1","pages":"45 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85446253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PHILOLOGUSPub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1515/phil-2022-0107
Nicolò Campodonico
{"title":"Doctus Amyclas. I presagi della tempesta in Luc. 5.539‒560 tra epica, poesia didascalica e retorica","authors":"Nicolò Campodonico","doi":"10.1515/phil-2022-0107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/phil-2022-0107","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In response to Caesar, who intends to reach Antonius in Italy, the boatman Amyclas sets out the celestial and terrestrial signs that foretell a storm and advises against putting out to sea (Luc. 5.539‒560). In this speech Lucan draws on the treatment of such phenomena in the didactic poems of Aratus and Vergil, but the allusions are remodelled in epic language and adapted to the narrative context of the episode. Further, in the story of Amyclas Lucan develops dramatic ideas mentioned in the specific passages in which Aratus and Vergil reflect on the utility of their teachings. Thus the boatman’s meteorological doctrina is highlighted, though he is unable to gain any advantage from it. In fact, in contrast to Palinurus with Aeneas in Aen. 5 and to the rector ratis with Pompey in Luc. 8, Amyclas does not try to dissuade Caesar from the voyage and agrees to accompany him. His speech shows affinities with declamations on the theme of sailing and the presence of adverse omens; however, the speech of Amyclas sounds like a suasoria that has been interrupted. This aspect focuses the impossibility of communication between the two characters: Amyclas, powerlessly external to the civil wars, can only appeal to the force of nature, which Caesar impiously defies.","PeriodicalId":44663,"journal":{"name":"PHILOLOGUS","volume":"14 1","pages":"85 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89506762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}