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A treasured manuscript in a college library that was believed to have been written by Galileo is a forgery, university says
by Aya Elamroussi
Contributors Claudia Dominguez
CNN
Published 24th August 2022

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-- Noble lie [Pious Fiction] [Pious Fraud] [Pious Invention], by Wikipedia
-- Outline of forgery, by Wikipedia
-- Literary forgery, by Wikipedia
-- False document, by Wikipedia
-- Pseudepigrapha, by Wikipedia
-- Donation of Constantine, by Wikipedia
-- A treasured manuscript in a college library that was believed to have been written by Galileo is a forgery, university says, by Aya Elamroussi
-- The Artist Who Got Rich Forging Picasso & Matisse: Real Fake: Elmyr de Hory, by Perspective
-- Forgery, by Wikipedia

Among the heavenly bodies the ancients worshipped chiefly the sun not, thinks Herbert, 'in itself', but, like Plato, as the 'sensible simulachrum' of God.4 [Herbert, De Rel. Gent., p. 19: ' ... quamvis superius Sole numen sub hisce praesertim vocabulis coluerunt Hebraei, Solem, neque aliud numen, intellexerunt Gentiles, nisi fortasse in Sole, tanquam praeclaro Dei summi specimine, et sensibili ejus, ut Plato vocat, simulachro, Deum summum ab illis cultum fuisse censeas: quod non facile abnuerem, praesertim quum Symbolica fuerit omnis fere religio Veterum ...', (Google translate: ... although above the Sun the god under these particular terms The Hebrews worshiped the Sun, and no other god, the Gentiles understood, except perhaps in the Sun, as the glorious image of the supreme God, and his sensibility, as Plato calls in a pretense, you may think that God was the highest worship by them: which is not easy I would refuse, especially since almost all the religion of the Ancients was symbolic...') Plato, Republ., VI, 508 B-C.] This sunworship was then, in Herbert's terms, a cultus symbolicus [symbolic worship], not a cultus proprius [proper worship]; and throughout his treatise he insists that the pagan cult of natural objects, and of men, was of this symbolic nature, at least among educated people.5 [ ibid., pp. 183-4, 222.] 'That the cult of the sun was both very ancient and universal' is witnessed by all ancient historians; men received it 'from the very dictate of Nature'.6 [ibid., p. 20: 'Solis cultum tum antiquum maxime, tum universalem fuisse, testantur non solummodo S. S. sed Homerus, et Hesiodus, ipsi quoque veteres Historici ... Ad Coelos igitur, ex ipso Naturae dictamine, non maximis in periculis tantum, sed in rebus secundis, oculos supplicesque manus tendebant ...' (Google translate: The ancient worship of the sun especially, and that it was universal not only St. S., but Homer and Hesiod, themselves ancients, testify Historians ... To the Heavens therefore, from the dictates of Nature itself, not in the greatest perils so much, but in secondary matters, they stretched out their eyes and their supplicating hands.)] Herbert then proceeds to demonstrate, with a considerable show of erudition, that the names of most of the pagan gods originally referred to the sun, and that the Hebrew names for God were taken by the Gentiles to mean the sun, so that we have a series of equations, such as Jehovah = Iacchus or Bacchus = sun, or Adonai = Adonis = sun.1 [ibid., pp. 16-9, 20-31.] An Orphic hymn is quoted to show that Priapus was one of the names given to the sun;2 [ibid., p. 25; Orphei Hymni, ed. G. Quandt, Berolini, 1955, p. 7 ([x], 1. 8-9).] and a chapter is devoted to showing that the names of the planets originally referred to the sun.3 [ibid. pp. 29-31.]

In spite of the primacy given to the sun, the other planets and stars were not neglected in the ancient religion; for Plato, in the Cratylus, says that the most ancient Greeks 'believed, like many present-day barbarians, the only gods to be the sun and moon, earth, stars and sky', and, in the Timaeus and Laws, he states that the world, sky and stars are gods. Many other 'egregious philosophers', especially Stoics, were of this opinion.4 [ibid., pp. 39-40; Plato, Cratylus, 397 C- D, Timaeus, 39 E-40 C, Laws, 899 A-B.] Some modern philosophers believe the planets to be animated, and indeed 'the most approved Christian authors, among them Thomas Aquinas, consider that the stars are alive'. Herbert goes on:5 [ibid., p. 40: 'Et sane vivere astra, probatissimi Authores Christiani censent; et cum primis Thomas Aquinas, et alii, quorum catalogum in Vossio lib. 2 de Idol. videre est ... Verum enimvero si vivunt, coli posse aliquo cultu sacro et religioso, qualis hominibus sanctis convenit, doctissimus Jesuita in dissertatione sua de Caelo 4. putat: Majorem quippe honorem, et cultum supera, quam infera, aeterna quam caduca, mereri videntur, tum praesertim inter illos, qui post hanc vitam transactam, faelicitatem sempiternam in Caelo et Astris dari statuebant. Turpe et indecorum enim existimaverant, non advenerari ea, unde ortum ducere, et in quae redire animas suas (Deo summo ita volente) crederent antiquitus Philosophi Sacerdotesque Gentiles.' (Google translate: And of course the stars live, the most approved Christian authors consider; and with the first Thomas Aquinas, and others, whose catalog is in Vossio lib. 2 of Idol. it is to be seen ... It is indeed true that if they live, they can be worshiped with some sacred worship and religious, such as befits holy men, the most learned Jesuit in his dissertation 4. He thinks of his own from Heaven: For greater honor and worship is higher than hell, eternal rather than ephemeral, they seem to deserve, and especially among those who are after this they decided to give eternal happiness in heaven and the stars after the life was spent. For they had thought it shameful and unseemly not to arrive at the thing from which it arose to lead, and into which they would return their souls (so willing to the supreme God) of ancient times Gentile Philosophers and Priests.')]

Verily indeed, if they are alive, they can be worshipped with some sacred and religious cult, such as is fittingly given to holy men; which is the opinion of a most learned Jesuit in his 4th dissertation on the heavens; since those things that are higher seem to deserve greater honour and worship than those that are lower, the eternal than the corruptible, especially among people who considered that, after this life is over, sempiternal felicity is enjoyed in the heavens and stars.

Among the planets Jupiter is particularly important, since under this name the ancients worshipped a pantheistic God, witness Orpheus' Hymn of Jove and the Stoics.1 [ibid., p. 47: 'Altius tamen quiddam quam Stellam hanc, nedum numen animale ex Iove, intellexerunt olim Philosophi. Ideo Orpheus Iovem omnium primum atque postremum appellabat, eumque omnia tempora, quae unquam fuere, praecessisse, permansurumque post cuncta quae futura sint; illum supremam mundi partem colere, infimam quoque omnium attingere, totumque ubique esse dixit.' (Google translate: 'However, there is something deeper than this Star, let alone an animal god from Jupiter, as the Philosophers once understood. Therefore, Orpheus Jupiter first of all and he called it the last, and that all the times that ever were had preceded him, and will continue after all things that are to come; that supreme of the world He said to worship a part, to reach also the lowest of all, and to be the whole everywhere.') cf. supra, p. 86.] Moreover, as a planet, Jupiter's influence was believed to be especially benign, being intermediate between 'the fervour of Mars and the frigidity of Saturn'; and indeed, so efficacious was its influence, that in certain conjunctions it enabled men to obtain everything they prayed for -- 'of which Peter of Abano writes that he has found it to be most true'.2 [ibid., pp. 46- 8: 'Quum enim id temperamenti huic Stellae misti crederetur, ut medium quid inter Martis fervorem Saturnique frigiditatem obtineret, benigna prorsus Stella habebatur ... non solummodo salutaris ad omnia existimatus fuit Planeta hiC, sed ita efficax, ut si Luna ilLi jungeretur cum Capite Draconis omnia impetrari possent, quae a Deo postulantur; quod et Petrus Aponensis scribit se comperisse verissimum'; Petrus Aponensis, Liber Conciliator, Venetiis, 1521, Diff. 113, 156, fos 158 vo, 202 ro. (Google translate: For when it was believed that the temperament of this star was mixed, so as to obtain a medium between the heat of Mars and the coldness of Saturn, kind He was regarded as a total star ... not only was he considered a savior for all things This planet, but so efficacious, as if the Moon there were united with the Dragon's Head they could obtain what is required of God; which also Peter of Aponensis writes himself to have discovered the truest thing'; Peter Aponensis, Liber Conciliator, Venice, 1521, Diff. 113, 156, fos 158 vo, 202 ro.)] Immediately after this casual reference to dangerous mediaeval magic, Herbert, passing to Saturn, mentions Galilei's Medicean satellites3 [ibid., p. 48.] (he had already for Mars referred us to Kepler and Scheiner),4 [ ibid., p. 46.] and then discusses the poetic fables about Saturn. Some of these do conceal a solid truth, such as that of Saturn being bound by Jove, which means that the 'malignant power of Saturn may be corrected by the salutary star Jupiter'. Saturn, according to the Platonists, produces contemplative characters and melancholics; and according to 'our Roger Bacon', the Jews chose Saturday as the Sabbath, because Saturn, being 'idle and slow, is not fortunate or suitable for doing things'. Finally, to wind up the chapter on planets, we are told, for 'the harmonious proportion of the planets to consult, after Pythagoras, Kepler'.5 [ibid., p. 48: 'Ita ubi Saturnum a Iove in vincula conjectum, et in Tartara paecipitem datum, narrant Poetae, id ita intelligunt Mythologi, ut Saturni vis maligna a Iovis salutari sydere castigetur, et corrigatur, ingensque aeris altitudo, ubi primitus eorum operationes perficiantur, Tartarus hic sit. Saturnus quoque contemplationis author esse existimatur a Platonicis, tum quod Caelo supremo proximus, vim illam inderet animis, tum quod animas ita ad primordia sua revocet ... In anno quoque eum praefecere [sic] Autumno, in Hebdomade Diei Septimae, ut ideo noster Rogerus Bacon scribere non dubitaverit, Iudaeorum more tum temporis feriandum, quia segne et tardum sydus Saturni parum sit foelix, et idoneum rebus agendis . . . De harmonica Planetarum proportione consulatur post Pythagoram Keplerus.' (Google translate: Thus, when Saturn was thrown into chains by Jupiter, and into Tartarus the poets tell us that he was given a sword, and the mythologists understand it in this way, as the force of Saturn the wicked will be punished by Jupiter's salutary star, and he will be corrected, and the great height of the air, where at first their operations were accomplished, let Tartarus be here. Saturn too It is thought by the Platonists to be responsible for contemplation, as well as for the highest heaven next, he would impart that power to the souls, and that souls thus to their beginnings he will call back ... In the year also to preside over him [sic] in the Autumn, in the Week of the Day Seventh, as our Roger Bacon did not hesitate to write, of the Jews to be celebrated at the same time, because the slow and slow star of Saturn is small happy, and fit to do things. . . On the Harmonic Proportion of the Planets Kepler is consulted after Pythagoras.')]

-- The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteen Century, by Daniel Pickering Walker (1914-1985)

[A]s I said before, since at that time no laws were yet administered, nor punishment suspended over evil deeds, they recorded as rightful and brave deeds, adulteries and sodomy, and incestuous and unlawful marriages, and bloodshed and parricides, and murders of children and brethren, and moreover, wars and seditions actually carried on by their own champions, whom they both accounted and called gods, and bequeathed the remembrance of them as worshipful and brave to later generations.

Such was the ancient theology which was transformed by certain moderns of yesterday's growth, who boasted of having a more reasonable philosophy, and introduced what they called the more physical view of the history of the gods, by devising more respectable and ingenious explanations for the legends: yet they neither escaped altogether the fault of their forefathers' impiety, nor, on the other hand, could endure the self-manifested wickedness of their so-called gods.

So, in their eagerness to palliate the fault of their fathers, they changed the legends into physical narratives and theories, and boasted, as the more mystical view, that the things which give nourishment and increase to the nature of the body are those which the legends set forth.

Going on from this point, these men also gave the title of gods to the elements of the world, not just merely to sun and moon and stars, but also to earth and water, and air and fire, and their combinations and resultants, and moreover to the seasonable fruits of the earth, and all other produce of food both dry and liquid: and these very things, regarded as causes of the life of the body, they called Demeter, and Kore, and Dionysus, and other like names, and, by making gods of them, introduced a forced and untrue embellishment of their legends.

But it was in a later age that these men, as if ashamed of the theologies of their forefathers, added respectable explanations, which each invented of himself, to the legends concerning their gods; for no one dared to disturb the customs of their ancestors, but paid great honour to antiquity, and to the familiar training which had grown with them from their boyhood.

Their elders, however, besides their deifications of men, gave equal rank to their consecrations of brute animals, because of the benefit derived from them also for the causes previously assigned; and they devoted equal religious worship to the brutes, and with libations, sacrifices, mystic rites, and hymns, and songs, exalted the honours paid to them, in the same manner as to the men who had been deified. And so they marched on to such a pitch of evil, that, through excess of unbridled lust, they consecrated with divine honours those parts of the body that lead to impurity, and the unrestrained passions of mankind, while their so-called theologians declared that in these things there is no need at all to use solemn phrases. We must, then, hold it to have been proved on the highest testimony, that the oldest generations knew nothing more at all than the history, but adhered to the legends only. Since, however, we have once begun to glance at the august and recondite doctrines of the noble philosophers, let us go on and examine these also more fully, that we may not seem to be ignorant of their wonderful physical theories.

But before we make our exposition of these doctrines, we must first indicate the mutual contradiction even here of these admirable philosophers themselves. For some of them make random statements, and set forth their opinions according to what comes into the mind of each individually: for they do not agree one with another even in their physical theories. While others more candidly sweep away the whole system, and banish from their own republic not only the indecent stories about the gods, but also the interpretations given of them; though sometimes they speak softly of the legends through fear of the punishment threatened by the laws.

Listen then to the Greeks themselves speaking by the mouth of the one noblest of them all, now banishing and now again adopting the legends. Thus their admirable Plato, when he lays bare his own preference, with great boldness forbids altogether the thinking or saying such things concerning the gods, as had been said by them of old, whether they contained anything latent indicated in allegorical meanings, or were spoken without any allegorical meaning at all. But at other times he speaks softly of the laws, and says that we ought to believe the legends about the gods, though there is nothing indicated by them in allegorical meanings.

But when at last he has dissociated his own theology from the ancient legends, and has stated his physical theories about the heaven, and sun, and moon, and stars, and moreover about the whole cosmos, and the parts of it severally, he again specially and separately goes through the ancient genealogical accounts of the gods just as follows word for word in the Timaeus....

Such, we see were the opinions entertained by the best philosophers, and by the ancient and most eminent men of the Roman empire concerning the theology of the Greeks----opinions which give no admission to physical theories in their legends concerning the gods, nor to their gorgeous and sophistical impostures...

Now much labour has been spent upon these subjects by numberless other professors of philosophy, who have made different subtle explanations of the same, and strongly insist that the opinion which occurred to each was the exact truth. But for my part I am content to bring forward my proofs from the most illustrious authors who are well known to all philosophers, and have carried off no small reputation for philosophy among the Greeks.

Of whom take first and read the words of Plutarch of Chaeroneia on the questions before us, wherein with solemn phrase he perverts the fables into what he asserts to be mysterious theologies....

But why need I thus anticipate, when we may hear the man himself, in the essay which he wrote On the Daedala at Plataea, expounding as follows what was hidden from the multitude in the secret physiological doctrines concerning the gods.

[PLUTARCH] 'THE physiology of the ancients both among Greeks and Barbarians was a physical doctrine concealed in legends, for the most part a secret and mysterious theology conveyed in enigmas and allegories, containing statements that were clearer to the multitude than the silent omissions, and its silent omissions more liable to suspicion than the open statements. This is evident in the Orphic poems, and in the Egyptian and Phrygian stories: 'out the mind of the ancients is most clearly exhibited in the orgiastic rites connected with the initiations, and in what is symbolically acted in the religious services.

'For instance, not to digress far from our present subjects, they do not suppose nor admit any intercourse between Hera and Dionysus; and they guard against combining their worship; and their priestesses at Athens, they say, do not speak to each other when they meet, nor is ivy ever brought into the precincts of Hera, not because of their fabulous and nonsensical jealousies, but because the goddess presides over marriage and bridal processions, and drunkenness is unbecoming to bridegrooms, and most unbefitting to a marriage feast, as Plato says: for the drinking of strong wine causes disorder both in body and soul, whereby what is sown and conceived being shapeless and misplaced does not take root well. Again, those who sacrifice to Hera do not consecrate the gall, but bury it beside the altar, meaning that the wedded life of wife and husband ought to be free from anger and wrath, and undisturbed by rage and bitterness.

'This symbolical style is more common in the tales and legends. As for instance, they relate that Hera ...

'Such then is the legend: and the explanation of it is as follows. The variance and quarrel of Hera and Zeus is nothing else than the distemper and confusion of the elements, when they no longer bear a due proportion to each other in the cosmos, but disproportion and roughness arise, and they have a desperate fight and dissolve their connexion, and work the ruin of the universe.

If then Zeus, that is, the force of heat and fire, gives occasion to the variance, a drought overtakes the earth: but if it is on the part of Hera, that is, the element of rain and wind, that any outbreak or excess takes place, there comes a great flood, and deluges and overflows everything. And as something of this kind occurred about those times, and Boeotia especially had been deeply flooded, as soon as ever the plain emerged and the flood abated, the order which followed from the tranquillity of the atmosphere was called the agreement and reconciliation of the deities. The first of the plants that sprang up out of the earth was the oak; and men welcomed this, because it gave a permanent supply of food and safety....

THIS is what Plutarch says; and we learn from the statements which he sets before us, that even the wonderful and secret physiology of the Greek theology conveyed nothing divine, nor anything great and worthy of deity, and deserving of attention.

For you have heard Hera called at one time Gamelios, and a symbol of the joint life of husband and wife, and at another time the earth called Hera, and at another the element of water; and Dionysus translated into drunkenness, and Latona into night, and the sun into Apollo, and Zeus himself into the force of heat and fire.

So then the original indecency of the legends, and the physiological explanation, which is thought to be more respectable, led not up to any heavenly, intellectual, and divine powers, nor yet to rational and incorporeal essences, but the explanation itself led down again to drunkenness, and marriage feasts, and human passions, and reduced the parts of the cosmos to fire, and earth, and sun, and the other elements of matter, without introducing any other deity.

And Plato too knew this. In the Cratylus, at least, he expressly acknowledges that the first inhabitants of Greece knew nothing more than the visible parts of the cosmos, and supposed the luminaries in the heaven and the other phenomena to be the only gods.

So he speaks as follows word for word:

'It appears to me that the first inhabitants of Greece acknowledged no other gods than those whom many of the barbarians acknowledge now, namely, sun, and moon, and earth, and stars, and heaven.'...

Now we might reasonably ask, to which set of gods, will they say, do the forms belong which are engraven on their statues. Are they those of daemons? Or those of fire, and air, and earth, and water? Or likenesses of men and women, and shapes of brute animals and wild beasts?...

[S]urely true reason shouts and cries aloud, all but in actual speech, and testifies that they of whom we speak have been mortal men. And Plutarch with superabundant pains describes the particular character of their bodily shapes, in his work On Isis and the Gods of Egypt. Speaking as follows:

'The Egyptians narrate that in body Hermes was short-armed, and Typhon red in complexion, and Horus fair, and Osiris dark-skinned, as having been by nature men.'

Thus speaks Plutarch. So then their whole manufacture of gods consists of dead men; and their physical explanations are fictitious. For what need was there to model figures of men and women, when without them they could worship the sun and moon and the other elements of the cosmos?

To which of these two classes did they assign names of this kind, and with whom did they begin? I mean, for example, Hephaestus and Athena, and Zeus, and Poseidon, and Hera.

Were these in the first place names of the universal elements, which they have since ascribed to mortals, making them of the same name as the heavenly bodies? Or on the contrary, have they transferred the names in use among men to the natural substances?

But why should they address the natural elements of the universe by names of mortal men? And the mysteries belonging to each god, and the hymns, and songs, and the secrets of the initiatory rites,----do these introduce the symbols of the universal elements, or of the mortal men of old who had the same names with the gods?

Then as to wanderings, and drunken fits, and amours, and seduction of women, and plots against men, and countless things, which are in truth shameful and unseemly practices of mortal men, how could any one refer these to the universal elements, acts which bear upon their very face mortality and human passion?

So that from all these proofs this wonderful and noble physiology is convicted of having no connexion with truth, and containing nothing really divine, but possessing only a forced and counterfeit solemnity of external utterance...

After we have given so many proofs in confutation of their inconsistent theology, both the more mythical so-called, and that which is forsooth of a higher and more physical kind which the ancient Greeks and Egyptians were shown to magnify, it is time to survey also the refinements of the younger generations who make a profession of philosophy in our own time: for these have endeavoured to combine the doctrines concerning a creative mind of the universe, and those concerning incorporeal ideas and intelligent and rational powers,----doctrines invented long ages afterwards by Plato, and thought out with accurate reasonings,----with the theology of the ancients, exaggerating with yet greater conceit their promise concerning the legends. Listen then to their physiology also, and observe with what boastfulness it has been published by Porphyry.

-- Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel), by Eusebius of Caesarea

Annotations recording Galileo's discovery of the four moons of Jupiter, from the single leaf manuscript in our collection. (University of Michigan Library) Credit: University of Michigan Library

A prized manuscript in the University of Michigan library that was believed to have been written by the famed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei is a forgery, the university said.

The one-page document known as the "Galileo manuscript" can't be traced to any earlier than 1930 and was likely written by the notorious Italian forger Tobia Nicotra, it said in a statement.

Tobia Nicotra was a prolific Italian forger who produced counterfeit works of artists in various disciplines. In 1937, he was described as "the most proficient forger of autographs".  He may have produced as many as 600 forgeries before he was caught.

During the 1920s, the works of Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini were popular in the United States and had "so important a role in the country's musical life" that during Nicotra's visit to the United States starting in the late 1920s, he capitalized on the popularity by writing a biography of the conductor. His 1929 manuscript was in Italian, but it was published only in English: chapter 22  by Alfred A. Knopf with translation provided by Irma Brandeis and H. D. Kahn.  It was rife with mistakes and has been described as "superficial" and containing "invented conversations". In 1932, he returned to the United States leading a salon orchestra impersonating Riccardo Drigo, an Italian composer who had died in 1930.

Nicotra produced forged manuscripts for various artists, including a poem by Torquato Tasso,  the four-page musical manuscript Baci amorosi e cari attributed to Mozart, and works by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. He attributed four of his forged manuscripts to Pergolesi, though his attempts to imitate the composer's handwriting were not entirely successful.  Two of these were described by music historian Barry S. Brooks as "awful" and written by a "totally unmusical" forger.  He forged at least two manuscripts he ascribed to Handel: an aria he stated was from Handel's Italian period; and an air from the 1741 oratorio Messiah. Other musical forgeries he created were attributed to Gluck, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Richard Wagner.

His forgeries of composer autographs were described as "convincingly executed" by Harry Haskell.  He achieved this by visiting libraries in Milan housing historical manuscripts, tearing out flyleaves (blank pages at the front or back of books) on which he would then add autographs.  He wrote on this laid paper with a quill using iron-gall ink, which imparted the forged documents with an air of legitimacy.  He brought the poem manuscript he forged and attributed to Tasso to an expert, stating he thought it might be a forgery; he was told it was authentic.

He also created forgeries of letters and other documents purportedly written by famous historical figures, including Christopher Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, the Marquis de Lafayette, Martin Luther, Michelangelo, and George Washington. Major institutions purchased some of his forgeries, including the Library of Congress which in 1928 bought several Mozart autographs for $60 (equivalent to $947 in 2021) that experts had "accepted as genuine".

With the income he earned from the sale of his forgeries, Nicotra rented seven apartments in Milan, each for a mistress.

Many of his forgeries were sold in the United States during his visits in the 1920s and early 1930s. Forged Pergolesi autographs were sold to the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Opera, and even to the library in Pergolesi's hometown of Pergola. Walter Toscanini, son of Arturo and an authority in antiquarian manuscripts, bought a Mozart manuscript from Nicotra for 2,700 lire. Upon inspection, he suspected it to be a forgery and sent it to Mozarteum University Salzburg, where an historian verified it as authentic.  Toscanini later determined it was a forgery, and with Milanese detective Giorgio Florita was able to catch Nicotra selling forgeries to Milanese publishing house Hopeli.  Nicotra was eventually arrested for failing to provide an identity document upon request; a search yielded a forged identity document with his photograph and Drigo's name.

On 9 November 1934 he was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 2,400 lire (equivalent to £5,698,202 in 2020),  based on testimony by Walter Toscanini and librarians from Milan whose testimony described the ruined manuscripts in their libraries.  Police who had arrested him testified that at the time of his arrest he had autograph forgeries in progress at his workshop, including those for Christopher Columbus, Warren G. Harding, Tadeusz Kościuszko, Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, the Marquis de Lafayette, Martin Luther, Michelangelo, and George Washington. Nicotra was paroled early by the National Fascist Party that ruled the Kingdom of Italy to forge signatures for them.

In August 2022, a Galileo Galilei manuscript at the University of Michigan Library that had been described as "one of the great treasures" held in its collection was identified as a Nicotra forgery.

-- Tobia Nicotra, by Wikipedia

An investigation was launched after Nick Wilding, a professor of history at Georgia State University, contacted the university's curator, Pablo Alvarez. Wilding questioned the manuscript's watermark and provenance and shared serious doubts about its authenticity.

"Wilding concluded that our Galileo manuscript is a 20th-century fake executed by the well-known forger Tobia Nicotra," the university said. "After our own experts studied his most compelling evidence -- about the paper and provenance -- and reexamined the manuscript, we agreed with his conclusion."

Among the aspects Wilding questioned was the paper itself, particularly the monograms in the paper's watermark which date the paper to no earlier than the 18th century, the university said.

Nicotra was jailed for two years in 1934 for forgery, including Galileo documents, the statement noted.

The university is now reconsidering the manuscript's role in its collection.[!!!]


A portrait of Galileo Galilei painted in 1636. Credit: Imagno/Getty Images

Before the forgery determination, the document was described by the university as "one of the great treasures of the University of Michigan Library."

It purported to show notes recording Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's four moons.

"This was the first observational data that showed objects orbiting a body other than the Earth," the university's description of the manuscript states. "It reflects a pivotal moment in Galileo's life that helped to change our understanding of the universe."

The astronomer, who died in 1642, invented the telescope -- among many other achievements -- which enabled him to discover that Jupiter has moons. He became the foremost advocate of Copernican astronomy, which denied that the earth was the fixed center of the universe.

The University of Michigan acquired the manuscript in 1938 after it was bequeathed to the library by a Detroit businessman, Tracy McGregor, who was a collector of books and manuscripts, it said.

When McGregor obtained it, the document had been authenticated by Cardinal Pietro Maffi, who was the Archbishop of Pisa and who "compared this leaf with a Galileo autograph letter in his collection," the university said.

His Eminence Pietro Maffi, Archbishop of Pisa

Pietro Maffi (12 October 1858 – 17 March 1931) was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Pisa from 1903 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1907.

Born in Corteolona, Pietro Maffi studied at the seminary in Pavia (from where he obtained his doctorate in theology) before being ordained to the priesthood in 1881. He was raised to the rank of Privy Chamberlain of His Holiness that same year, and taught philosophy and sciences at the Pavia seminary, of which he was also rector. Maffi founded the meteorological observatory and the Museum of Natural History of Pavia, as well as serving as editor and director of Rivista di scienze fisiche e matematiche. Maffi was later named Pro-Vicar General of Pavia and pro-synodal examiner, doctor honoris causa of theological college of Parma, and a supernumerary member of its scientific academy. In 1901, Maffi was made Vicar General of Ravenna and the prefect of its seminary's studies, becoming Apostolic Administrator of the archdiocese on 26 April 1902.

On 9 June 1902 Maffi was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Ravenna and Titular Bishop of Caesarea in Mauretania by Pope Leo XIII. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 11 June from Cardinal Lucido Parocchi, with Archbishops Felix-Marie de Neckere and Diomede Panici serving as co-consecrators, at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. Maffi was later advanced to Archbishop of Pisa on 22 June 1903. In addition to his pastoral duties, he was named director and administrator of the Vatican Observatory on 30 November 1904.

Pope Pius X created him Cardinal Priest of San Crisogono in the consistory of 15 April 1907. Maffi participated in and was a chief candidate in the 1914 papal conclave, which selected Pope Benedict XV.

During World War I, Maffi was known as the "War Cardinal" for his support of a fight-to-the-finish policy.

He also participated in the 1922 conclave, which selected Pope Pius XI. In a 1925 pastoral letter, the Archbishop issued a scathing attack on the Fascist government, which subsequently halted the letter's publication.

A close friend of the Royal Family, in 1930, he presided at the marriage of Crown Prince Umberto of Italy and Princess Marie-José of Belgium. The Cardinal continued to write numerous scientific and astronomical works, the best known of which is Nei cieli. His love for science once provoked Pisa's outrage, when Maffi proposed to erect a statue of Galileo Galilei, the scientist condemned by the Inquisition as a heretic.

Maffi died in Pisa, at age 72. He is buried at the Cathedral of Pisa.

-- Pietro Maffi, by Wikipedia

'Ptolemy too, the son of Agesarchus, in his first book concerning Philopator says that Cinyras and the descendants of Cinyras are buried in Paphos in the temple of Aphrodite.

'Were I, however, to go over all the tombs which are worshipped by you, "all time would not suffice for me to tell"; [Homer, Od. xx. 351] while you, if no shame for these audacities steals over you, may wander round with your faith in the dead, utterly dead yourselves:

"Ah! wretched men, what evil doom is this?"

A little further on he says:

'Another new god the Roman Emperor has deified with great solemnity in Egypt, and almost in Greece; his favourite Antinous, who was extremely beautiful, was deified by him, as Ganymede was by Zeus.

'For lust, when free from fear, is not easily restrained: and men now celebrate the sacred nights of Antinous, the shame of which was known to the lover who shared his vigils.'

He also adds:

'And now the favourite's tomb is the temple and city of Antinous: for just as temples are held in reverence, so, I suppose, are tombs, pyramids, mausoleums, and labyrinths----other temples these of the dead, as those before mentioned were tombs of the gods.'

And again, a little further on:

'Come then, let us also briefly make the round of your games, and put an end to these great sepulchral festivals, the Isthmian, Nemean, and Pythian, and besides these the Olympian. At Pytho the Pythian dragon is worshipped, and the festival of the serpent is proclaimed as the Pythia. At the Isthmus the sea cast up a miserable carcass, and the Isthmian games are a lamentation for Melicertes: at Nemea another child Archemorus is buried, and the boy's funeral games are called Nemea. Pisa is the tomb in your midst, O Panhellenes, of a Phrygian charioteer, and the Zeus of Phidias claims as his own the Olympian games, which are the funeral libations of Pelops.'

So speaks our author.

-- Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel), by Eusebius of Caesarea

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Part 1 of 2

Degrassis' Edition of the Consular and Triumphal Fasti*
by Lily Ross Taylor
Classical Philology, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Apr., 1950), pp. 84-95
Apr., 1950

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[*In the preparation of this article I have depended, particularly for architectural details, on a joint paper written in 1945 by Professor L. B. Holland and me, but not published for reasons explained in the article. I was also aided by a discussion in the Forum which he and I and Professor Frank Brown had in July 1949 with Professor Degrassi, and with the Director of Antiquities of the Forum aind Palatine, Dr. Pietro Romanelli, and the architect Italo Gismondi. Professor Holland will publish a note elsewhere on the results of that discussion and of the investigation of the foundations of the Arch of Augustus carried out at that time. For suggestions on other points in the article I am under obligation to Professor Degrassi and also to my colleague Professor T. R. S. Broughton.]

A PLAN for a complete new publication of all Latin inscriptions of the classical period found in Italy was announced by the Union of Italian Academies twenty years ago. The publication was to provide full photographic reproductions such as are available only in the most recent issues of the Corpus of Latin Inscriptions. Of the volumes of this new Inscriptiones Italiae, numbered according to the Augustan regions of Italy, a few fascicles from certain sites have appeared --- from Volume I, Tibur (1936); from Volume IX, Augusta Bagiennorum and Pollentia (1948); from Volume X, Parentium (1934), Histria Septentrionalis (1936), Pola and Nesactium (1947); from Volume XI, Eporedia (1931), and Augusta Praetoria (1932). Further material from Volume X and from one or two other sites is now ready for publication, but there are no plans in prospect now for the completion of the whole project.

By far the most important and difficult material in the entire undertaking was presented by the consular and triumphal fasti, the calendars, and the elogia, first brought out in CIL, I by Mommsen and Henzen in 1863 and later published in a second edition by Mommsen and Huelsen in 1893. In later years there have been significant new discoveries, and there was a crying need for a new edition illustrated by photographs.

The publication of these important documents, assigned to Volume XIII of the Inscriptiones Italiae, was entrusted to Professor Attilio Degrassi, who had already prepared for the series a portion of the inscriptions of his native Istria (Parentium and Histria Septentrionalis). There could not have been a more fortunate choice of editor, for Degrassi is a remarkable epigraphist, trained in the traditions of the most extraordinary work of co-operative scholarship in the classical field, Mommsen's great Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum. Both at the University of Vienna and in the field Degrassi worked under one of Mommsen's ablest coadjutors, Eugen Bormann, editor of CIL, XI, and he has been able to combine the care and ingenuity that has characterized the best of Latin epigraphists with the modern methods made available through the resources of the Italian Academies.

Degrassi began his task in 1935. Not having a university appointment (which is to be regretted, for he ought to be training a new generation of epigraphists), he was able to put his entire time on the investigation. He read every stone himself and searched out every manuscript record of lost stones. He mastered the vast scholarly literature on the inscriptions. The elogia, increased in scope by the discoveries in the Forum of Augustus, came out in 1937. The work on the calendars is completed but still awaits publication. The fascicle dealing with consular and triumphal fasti, with which I am concerned in this paper, came out late in 1947. Fascicle is a very modest term for this large publication issued in two parts which should, for convenient use, be bound separately.1

The fascicle is beautifully printed on good paper, imported, Degrassi tells me, from the United States. The printer has done his difficult job well, though Degrassi states that in some particulars the art of printing inscriptions has declined. I remembered that many years ago Dessau had made a similar comment to me about the problem of printing CIL, XIII in Germany, and I asked Degrassi for an explanation. The difficulty, he says, is not with the printer's art but with the funds available for the printer's work.

There are excellent photographs of all the inscriptions and sometimes photographs of squeezes which show the letters more clearly than the stones do. There are also numerous drawings in the text and plates, a valuable adjunct to the photographs. The architectural drawings are in most cases the work of Dr. Guglielmo Gatti, architect and archaeologist, now Inspector of Antiquities in Rome. Other drawings are the work of Achilles Capizzano, Rosa Falconi, and Severino Brusa. These illustrations are supplemented by full information on measurements and character of the stone or marble used for the inscriptions-important details that were ignored in the earlier volumes of CIL.

The text, written in easy intelligible Latin, has full commentaries on all the inscriptions, with bibliography that is up to date until the beginning of the war and includes German and Italian publications after that date.2 The views of other scholars are considered fairly and dispassionately, and the conclusions are independent and worthy of the most careful consideration. I would note for instance the explanation (p. 142) of the omission of the praenomen of M.' Aemilius' grandfather. The material is arranged with remarkable understanding of the needs of the reader. One of the most valuable features of the volume is the new version of Mommsen's conspectus of the evidence for consuls under each year. In addition to the material from the stones, from the derivatives of the Fasti Capitolini, and from the historians, all of which was presented by Mommsen, there is a heading, alia testimonia, which gives, besides most of the available literary evidence, quotations from inscriptions, many of which have come to light since 1893.3

Of no less importance for the scholar are the indices that seem to have foreseen every need for which I have so often gone through CIL, I. In addition to lists of nomina [GT: appointment] and cognomina [GT: last names] there are both alphabetical and chronological lists (in which it is a pleasure to have B.C. dates given preference over a.u.c.) of chief magistrates, including consules suffecti [GT: the consuls were overpowered], of magistrates who died in office, who abdicated, who were vitio creati [GT: created by vice], of the various types of magistrates who triumphed, of dates of triumphs, and of contradictions between various sets of records.

Naturally the greatest interest attaches to the consular and triumphal lists inscribed under Augustus on a building in the Roman Forum. These lists, known from the fact that they are in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill as the Capitoline Fasti, far surpass in extent and significance any other inscribed list of magistrates. It is with Degrassi's view of the monument to which these Fasti belonged and with the date when they were inscribed that I am mainly concerned in this article. But before proceeding to the discussion I shall consider briefly other consular4 and triumphal fasti published by Degrassi.

Whereas in the second edition of CIL, I Mommsen and Huelsen included with the Capitoline Fasti seventeen other consular and triumphal lists, Degrasssi includes thirty-five. Not all of them are new, for he did not, like the editors of CIL, exclude from his volume post-Augustan records. But there is also a good deal of material both from new lists and from new fragments of old lists discovered since 1893. The most significant new records are the consular lists (and calendar) from Antium, painted on plaster, the Fasti Ostienses and the fasti set up in Rome by vicorum magistri of the Aventine [GT: the masters of the streets of the Aventine.]. The painted fasti of Antium, the only republican consular lists that we possess, are a valuable record of consuls and censors of many years in the period 164-84 B.C. Particularly on the censors they provide important new information. The Fasti Ostienses, a few fragments of which were known before 1893, now number forty-two fragments, (including the fragment in Degrassi's "Additamenta," pp. 571 f.), most of which have come to light in the excavations of Ostia during the last forty years. They cover large sections of the period from 49 B.C. to A.D. 160. These inscriptions are a mine of information for imperial chronology, particularly for the period from Domitian to Antoninus Pius. Degrassi has presented the first complete collection of the inscriptions accompanied by an admirable commentary. He is a master of imperial as well as of republican prosopography. The fasti from the Aventine have provided much new material on consules suffecti of the Augustan period.

Prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Research subjects are analysed by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis. The discipline is considered to be one of the auxiliary sciences of history. -- Prosopography, by Wikipedia

There is also a new fragment of a triumphal list, a stone from Urbisalvia, which, joined to a small fragment already known, covers certain years between 195 and 158 B.C. This is an important document, for it proves that municipalities sometimes set up lists of triumphatores as well as lists of chief magistrates. With good reason Degrassi (pp. 339 f.) disputes the view of Moretti and Altheim, who attributed these lists to an earlier period than the Fasti Capitolini. The use of Greek marble in these records provides strong reason for believing that they are not earlier than Augustus.

Nor are Degrassi's new contributions confined to new monuments. He has a very interesting discussion (pp. 143 f.) of the marble fragments of the Fasti feriarum Latinarum [GT: Latin holiday fast] which were discovered in the precinct of Juppiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount. He argues against Henzen's reconstruction of the monument to which these fasti belonged, and presents his own tentative restoration. Noting that the fragment covering the years 27-22 differs in form of presentation from the fragments covering earlier years, he concludes that the monument had been inscribed before 27, but probably not long before that date. He also notes the differences between these fasti and the Fasti Capitolini.

To go back to the Fasti Capitolini, Degrassi's work has involved a thorough study of the seven new fragments that have come to light since 1893 and also of all the old fragments belonging to this, the most important record of consuls and triumphs. There are new readings of some importance, for instance under the years 279 and 265 in the consular fasti and under 437 and 291 in the triumphal lists.

But the great discovery concerns the architectural character and the identification of the monument to which the Fasti belonged. The marble monument on which these lists were inscribed was found accidentally in 1546 somewhere between the temple of Antoninus and Faustina and the east side of the temple of Castor. It was discovered accidentally in 1546 in a search for marble to be used for lime. Cardinal Alexander Farnese heard about the inscribed fragments that were found, gathered together all of them that could be discovered, and had the site searched for additional stones. A decree of the Roman Consiglio of 1548, which Degrassi has found in the archives of the Campidoglio,5 charged the epigraphist Gentile Delphino and Tommaso Cavalieri with the arrangement of stones in the Palazzo dei Conservatori. In Degrassi's view Cavalieri was probably responsible for calling on Michelangelo, who designed the wall in which the fragments were placed. There were additional insertions of inscriptions in the wall after Carlo Fea in 1816-17 unearthed stones from both consular and triumphal fasti in an excavation beside the temple of Castor. Stones discovered later were placed in the Sala della Lupa, where the wall now is, or were stored in the magazzino of the Museum.

Through the co-operation of the Director of the Museum, Dr. Settimo Bocconi, Degrassi's work has resulted in a rearrangement of the material in the Museum. Stones from extraneous lists, erroneously inserted in the wall, have been removed and transferred to the Capitoline Museum.6 Various fragments discovered since 1816 have been placed in the wall, and the other existing fragments are all now collected in the room. Thus all the stones can be studied together.

It was a great gain for Degrassi's work that he was able for purposes of study to have certain fragments removed temporarily from the wall. The examination of these fragments, in which Gatti cooperated with Degrassi, has led to important results for the character of the monument.

It was recognized by epigraphists of the time that Michelangelo's wall did not represent the monument that was discovered in the Forum. Onofrio Panvinio makes it clear that four "tablets" of consular fasti were found, three in fragmentary state, but one, the third tablet, in a much better state of preservation. That third tablet, the lower part of which is intact in the central portion of Michelangelo's wall, consists of a central aedicula with lists inside it of chief magistrates of the years 292-154, and with flanking pilasters on which were inscribed the triumphatores from Romulus to the year 222. The fourth tablet also had flanking pilasters on which were inscribed the names of triumphatores through the year 19 B.C. Tablets one and two, with lists of kings, consuls, and chief magistrates from the beginning of the Roman state, were not flanked by inscribed pilasters.

The careful work of Degrassi and Gatti has shown that Huelsen's calculations on the distribution of the material in the four tablets were incorrect in many details.7 It is now clear that, contrary to the view of Huelsen, the four tablets were of equal height, and that all of them, and not simply the third and fourth, were enclosed aediculae.

Degrassi's important new discovery concerns the building to which the Fasti belonged. It was not the Regia but the triple Arch of Augustus, whose foundations are preserved beside the temple of Divus Julius at the northeast corner of the temple of Castor. The inscriptions were in the two lateral openings of the triple arch; the third and fourth tablets with their inscribed pilasters are assumed to have been in the opening next to the temple of Divus Julius, while the first and second tablet are assigned to the other opening which was always at least partly blocked by the temple of Castor. Degrassi's discovery was not made until after the volumes were in proof. The evidence, briefly stated in the text, is fully discussed in the Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, XXI (1945-46), pp. 57-104; in an article that follows Degrassi's (pp. 105-22), Gatti discusses the reconstruction of the Arch of Augustus.

The suggestion that the tablets were on an arch is not new. It goes back to the architect, Pirro Ligorio, who as early as 1553 described the monument as a Iano [?]. Ligorio, whose imagination was never limited by the evidence he had observed, restored a Janus Quadrifrons [?] (Degrassi, Rendiconti, Figs. 1 and 2) inscribed inside the openings and outside with consular and triumphal records and other lists suggested to him by his active mind.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the creation of epigraphic forgeries became more and more frequent. Well-known forgers, like Annio da Viterbo and Pirro Ligorio, produced thousands of false inscriptions, both on paper and on durable materials, like stone or metal...

In a letter written to the young Danish scholar Olaus Kellerman, in 1835, the great Italian Epigraphist Bartolomeo Borghesi, complimented on the former's intention of setting up a corpus of Latin inscriptions. In the first place, because such a work would eventually help scholars to get rid of thousands of impostures and forged texts, which were still circulating in their days. Kellerman died young, and his project was revived by Theodor Mommsen, who gave way to a new science, namely "Epigraphic Criticism." Mummson fully described this method in his proposal for a Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, which he addressed to the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1847. A full paragraph of his text was devoted to the critique of authenticity. In Mommsen's view, there were three different kinds of epigraphic forgeries. 1) Those deceitfully produced by antique dealers, 2) those created by local scholars, usually just on paper, to celebrate their homeland, and 3) those fabricated by professional forgers, which were also the most difficult to detect. And this was the case of Ligorio, towards whom both Borghesi and Mommsen had developed a real aversion.

Mommsen put in place his principles in the addition of the Latin Inscriptions from the Kingdom of Naples, published in 1852. In his introduction to the work, which was dedicated to Borghesi, he developed his own set of rules for dealing with untrustworthy epigraphic documents. Mommsen's assumption was that inscriptions are, in the first place, fundamental documents for the study of the past. In his positivist view, history had to be an exact science. But in order to be so, it had to be written using objective and reliable primary sources. The latter included the text of Greek and Latin authors, but also, and perhaps above all, the text of ancient inscriptions which have come to us directly without the mediation of medieval copyists.

It is well worth reading the rules which Mommsen set in treating epigraphic forgeries, because after over 150 years, they're still very, very influential. So I will perhaps read them in English translation, but you have the original text in front of you.

The first I included in my corpus -- all the inscriptions -- the ones that I saw, and the ones that I did not see: the unpublished ones, and the ones that were previously published, no matter in what way. The genuine ones, the suspect ones, and the fake ones.

Second Rule: the very first goal of the volume was to separate genuine inscriptions from forgeries.

In the third rule, uh, Mommsen, who was a jurist, recognized the principle of the so-called presumption of innocence, dolum nom praesumi. But he also stated that once the deceitful intent of an author had been proven, his entire credibility as a source, was invalidated, and his whole production must be labeled as forged. This is really a crucial point, which comes in also in the following point.

In point number four, he says, "I did not prosecute single inscriptions, but single authors." Meaning, that he challenged the trustworthiness of the whole production of those who had transcribed inscriptions. We can call it the principle of the "unreliability of the first witness." If the earliest transcription of an inscription comes from an author who had been identified as a forger, then no matter its contents, such an inscription must be false. So, in other words, Mommsen discarded the whole production of certain authors, like Ligorio, because he simply had no time for checking that all the inscriptions that these authors had copied, were genuine, or or false. He states that very clearly. And his conclusion is semel fur, semper ful: once a thief, always a thief. And also that it is better to to keep a genuine inscription among the forgeries, than the other way around.

-- Epigraphic Criticism and the Study of Forgeries: A Historical Perspective, by Lorenzo Calvelli

The epigraphist Onofrio Panvinio also attributed the fragments to a Iano, but abandoned the idea in favor of his theory that the monument was the hemicycle of Verrius Flaccus.8 The illustration that he published, of which I shall speak later, provides support for the theory of an arch. Carlo Fea, in the publication of his discoveries of 1816-17, accepted the view that the inscriptions belonged to an arch.9 The Italian architect Luigi Canina took up the idea and published a reconstruction of the arch (Gatti, Rendiconti, Fig. 6). He placed the inscriptions on the outer face.

But the attribution of the Fasti to the Regia practically obliterated the memory of these earlier assignments of the inscriptions to an arch. This attribution, first proposed by Piale in 1832, was not seriously considered until Detlefsen, without knowledge of Piale's work, suggested it to Henzen when the two men were working on the first edition of CIL, I. Detlefsen was himself skeptical, but Henzen took up the idea and set forth his arguments fully in CIL, 1, published in 1863. His views obtained general acceptance after Mommsen added his authority to the attribution. The Regia, where the pontifex maximus in earlier times posted each year a tablet giving names of magistrates and lists of important events, seemed eminently the right place for the official annalistic record of Rome. When in 1886 Nichols identified the remains of the Regia in front of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, Huelsen, who had been working with Henzen on the revision of CIL, I and assumed charge of the work after Henzen's death, held firmly to the Regia as the place for the Fasti, and decided that Carlo Fea's discoveries beside the temple of Castor represented a dump of material that was not in situ [situated in the original place]. In the second edition of CIL, I and in subsequent articles published after new fragments of the Fasti were found, Huelsen presented his restorations of the Regia. There were, to be sure, some differences of opinion between Huelsen and Schon on the position that the Fasti were thought to occupy on the Regia, but no one any longer questioned the attribution. The inscriptions are constantly referred to as the Fasti of the Regia, and Huelsen's curious restorations of the Regia's wall have been widely reproduced in handbooks.

As far as I know, the first person in this century to doubt the attribution was Professor Frank Brown, and he did not put his doubts into print. As Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in 1931-33 Brown undertook a study of the Regia. Although he said nothing of the Fasti in his publication,10 the careful reader can see that there is no place for the inscriptions on his reconstruction of the monument. Degrassi proved to be a very careful reader, and Brown's work on the Regia was important in leading him to his new view. Meantime I had had indirect reports of Brown's work and knew that he was disposed to assign the Fasti to the Arch of Augustus. My knowledge of Brown's ideas, confirmed by correspondence with him, contributed to the new dating of the Fasti (21-17 B.C.) which I proposed in a paper presented at the Philadelphia Archaeological Society in May 1945 and published in this journal in 1946.11

Professor Leicester B. Holland became interested in the architectural problem of the monument to which the Fasti could have belonged. He and I had prepared a joint article in which, with acknowledgment to Brown, we argued for the attribution of the Fasti to the arch, when in September 1945 I received a letter from Degrassi informing me of his new results. They had been announced the previous spring at the Pontifical Academy, and thus had priority over our findings, as well as the advantage of work on the spot and in archives not available to us. Our paper was not published; our work and Brown's contribution to it were referred to in generous terms in a note that Degrassi added to the proof of his article (Rendiconti, p. 104).

In reaching the conclusion that the Fasti were on the arch and not on the Regia, Degrassi, with more definite evidence than we had, was influenced by much the same considerations that led Holland and me to the same result:

1. There is no place for the Fasti on the Regia as interpreted by Brown. Huelsen's familiar restoration cannot be adapted to the remains of the building.

2. Two groups of fragments of the Fasti, for the discovery of which we have specific evidence, were found at the northeast corner of the temple of Castor. These include the fragments found by Carlo Fea in 1816-17 (the stones that Huelsen argued were not found in situ) and several other fragments discovered in 1872-73. For the spot where the first group came to light Degrassi cited a drawing of the architect Gau in a communication of Niebuhr to the Prussian Academy, dated March 26, 1817.12 He might also have cited the star by which Fea on Plate II of his Frammenti dei Fasti consolari e trionfali [GT: A fragment of the fast god to be comforted from the triumphal] (Rome, 1820) indicated the site of his finds.13 For the discoveries of 1872-73 Degrassi has been able to produce unpublished archival material which proves definitely that the stones, including a fragment that Henzen and Huelsen attributed to the site of the Regia, were found close to the northeast corner of the temple of Castor.14

3. On no building to the northeast of the temple of Castor except the Arch of Augustus is it architecturally possible to restore the Fasti.


FIG. 1

4. The foundations of the Arch of Augustus are on the very site where fragments of the Fasti were found in 1816-17 and again in 1872-73. Gau's drawing and Fea's star indicate that the spot where the stones came to light in 1816-17 corresponds to the north lateral opening of the arch. In 1546-47 sculptured decorations that would fit an arch were found in the excavation. Panvinio speaks of ornamental details15 and Metellus is more explicit in his description of sculptures: tanquam tropaea quaedam barbarorum, scuta pugiones et galeae et alia ornamenta [GT: as some trophies of the barbarians, shields, daggers, and helmets, and other ornaments.].16 The section of the third tablet, with flanking pilasters, that forms the center of Michelangelo's wall, does not appear to be a part of a long wall such as he constructed or such as Huelsen posited for the Regia; it is rather an independent unit such as was assumed by Ligorio and also, as Holland realized, though Degrassi and Gatti did not, by the unknown man who made the drawing in Panvinio's publication of the Fasti (Fig. 1). The illustration is adapted to the idea that Panvinio originally had that the building was a Iano, and not to his later view that it was a hemicyclium [sundial].17 The reproduction clearly shows a pylon with an engaged column just beyond the inscribed pilasters on either side.

As Degrassi and Gatti discovered, and as Holland concluded independently, the only place for the Fasti is inside the openings of the arch. As Gatti has shown, the width of the third tablet fits the lateral openings of the arch.18 As Degrassi has recently pointed out,19 a parallel for such inscriptional adornment of the passage-way of an arch is to be found in the quadrifront arch of A.D. 203 at Theveste.

Degrassi, aided by the important architectural contribution of Gatti, has proved beyond doubt that the Capitoline Fasti were in the lateral openings of the Arch of Augustus whose base stands beside the temple of Divus Julius. I have thought it worth while to add to the evidence he has presented the confirmation of the attribution which Holland found in the published work of Panvinio and Fea. The credit for the new discovery belongs partly to Brown. His study of the Regia, which, with the report of his unpublished results, formed the basis on which Holland and I worked, also contributed indirectly to Degrassi's investigation.

Now that the attribution of the Fasti Capitolini to the arch is definitely established, it seems curious that, in spite of the views of Ligorio, Panvinio (in his first interpretation of the monument), Fea, and Canina, the mistaken assignment of the Fasti to the Regia should have been so long accepted. Topographers and architects who have puzzled over the problem of the arch or arches of Augustus might well have shown the right way, for they have quoted Metellus on the discovery, with the inscriptions, of architectural ornaments that might have belonged to an arch.20 The real obstacle to a proper understanding of the facts was that lists of consuls seemed entirely suitable as inscribed decoration of the Regia. That was the basis of Huelsen's strange obstinacy in interpreting the evidence of the stones, and that was the reason why Schon, who saw the impossibility of Huelsen's reconstruction,21 never questioned the attribution of the Fasti to the Regia.22

The dating of the arch and the inscriptions is discussed by Degrassi very briefly in the volume (19 f.) and in great detail in the Rendiconti. The foundations beside Divus Julius have been attributed to two different arches, to the one which the senate voted to erect in 31-30 after Actium, and to the arch with which Augustus was honored after the return of the Parthian standards in 20.23 A Vergilian scholiast makes it clear that the arch commemorating the success over the Parthians stood iuxta aedem divi Iulii [GT: next to the house of the god Julius ],24 and that would have settled the date of the arch if there were not conflicting evidence from coins.

Triple arches that differ from each other in important details are represented on two series of Augustan coins;25 one of these arches on a coin from a Spanish mint is clearly associated by its inscription with the return of the standards from Parthia. The other arch, of a very peculiar type, found on a coin of the Roman mint, has no such definite association. The arch represented on it would seem to be better suited for the base found beside Divus Julius. 26 Richter solved the problem by restoring a second arch north of Divus Julius, but when no traces of that arch were found in the region he abandoned his restoration.27 Since then topographers have puzzled over the question of the arch or arches of Augustus in the Forum. On the whole, the weight of opinion has been in favor of the view that the Spanish coins contain architectural inaccuracies, that the arch decreed in 31-30 never was erected, and that the foundations we have belong to the Parthian arch.28

Degrassi and Gatti have revived Richter's earlier view of two arches close to Divus Julius, though in the absence of recognizable remains they make no attempt to fix the location of the second arch. For them the arch whose foundations we have is the one voted by the senate after Actium.29 This identification of the arch accords with the date which Degrassi assigns to the inscriptions.

The date of the inscriptions is to be determined by the time when the names of the Antonii [GT: Anthony] were cancelled in the consular lists. Holding to a view first proposed by Borghesi and since then generally accepted, Degrassi believes that the Antonii were cancelled when by decree of the senate Antony's honors were annulled in September or October of 30. Degrassi rejects my suggestion30 that the names of the Antonii were removed after the disgrace and death of Mark Antony's son Iullus in 2 B.C. The reason for the rejection is that the Antonii were left intact in the triumphal lists.31 Those lists, as Hirschfeld showed, were inscribed between 19 and 11 B.C., for they are carefully planned to fill the space, and they end with a triumph of 19 B.C. and do not include the ovatio of Drusus in 11 B.C. Degrassi accepts the view of Mommsen that the pilasters were not inscribed until after the names of the Antonii had been erased and then restored in the consular lists.

In support of this dating Degrassi and Gatti find slight palaeographical differences that indicate a change of hand between the sections of the Fasti dealing with the period immediately before and after the year 30. From the form of the letter V, clearly shown on photographs of squeezes (P1. XLIV-XLVII), they hold that the fragment dealing with the years 26-22 was not inscribed by the stone cutter who was responsible for the years 44-36. Degrassi emphasizes the slightness of the differences and suggests that the stone cutters who carried on the work after 30 came from the officina charged with the original inscription. I agree with him about the change of hand, but, as he points out, several men seem to have worked on the inscriptions, and I find a similar V in earlier sections.32 The difference may mean nothing more than that one workman from the officina was replaced by another to finish the job.

When the Fasti were assigned to the Regia, rebuilt from the spoils of Domitius Calvinus' victory, for which he triumphed in 36 B.C., there was a period of six years during which the monument could have been built and the inscriptions could have been placed on it. That period, as Degrassi recognizes, must be radically reduced if the inscriptions were on an arch built in 31-30.

Degrassi assumes that the senators, as soon as they heard the news of Actium, fought on September 2, 31, passed a decree voting the erection of an arch to Octavian, and that work was begun at once on the arch. Although all the decoration may not have been in place, Degrassi holds that the arch had been erected and its lateral openings had been inscribed with the consular lists before the senate received news of Antony's death and voted to annul his honors. That vote took place when Cicero's son Marcus was consul suffectus, between September 13 and November 1 of 30 B.C.33 At that time, in Degrassi's view, the names of the Antonii were erased.

Thus only about a year would have been available for the work, and, while that might have been adequate for the actual building, it would hardly have been sufficient for the planning of the monument and the preparation of the lists. The responsible authorities in Rome34 would have had to obtain the permission of Octavian for the erection of a structure that altered radically the character of the region beside the temple that he was building for his deified father. It would have taken time to obtain Octavian's approval, for, except for a brief stay at Brundisium early in 30,35 he was in the East during this year. Even if Octavian gave his approval promptly, and the construction of the monument could proceed at once, the adornment of the arch would have required time. Degrassi does not think that the adornment would necessarily have been completed by 30; in fact, there is an inscription dated in the year of Octavian's triumph, 29, that may, in Degrassi's view, have been placed over one of the lateral arches.36 Yet he would have us believe that, although the space over the lateral openings in the front of the arch was left vacant, the more inconspicuous interior of the openings was hastily inscribed with the consular lists. The preparation of the consular lists would have taken a great deal of time. Even if, as Degrassi believes, a list that had already been prepared was adopted, there would have had to be additions and adaptations to present the offices and titles of Octavian and also of Caesar. The period from 49 to 30 was treated in great detail in the Fasti, and one may be sure that the text was not inscribed without the full consent of Octavian. And that could not have been secured without considerable delay.

What, it may be asked, was the reason for hurry in the completion of the monument? Degrassi believes (Rendiconti, pp. 95, 97) that the arch had to be ready in order that Octavian might pass beneath it in his triumph. It is true that the decree passed after Actium, as reported by Dio, provided at the same time for triumph and arch.

But it is also true that there is no evidence that any of the so-called triumphal arches (better described by the German term, Ehrenbeigen) was erected for a triumphal procession. The general in triumph passed through the Porta Triumphalis. If he was also honored with an arch, the monument in every case for which we have specific information was set up afterwards in commemoration of the event.37 The relation of the arch to the triumphal return of the victorious commander is well illustrated by the Parthian arch. That was apparently voted as soon as news came of the restoration of the standards, presumably in the summer of 20. At the same time Augustus was voted an ovatio [GT: standing ovation] which he did not accept.38 But, although his return on October 12, 19 B.C. was celebrated with pomp and ceremony worthy of a triumph, the arch was not dedicated until many months later. The inscription on the Spanish coin, which has been recognized as a copy of the inscription on the arch, fixes the dedication in the sixth tribunitial power of Augustus, that is, between June 26, 18 and June 25, 17.39

That is the arch to which I assign the Fasti and the foundations beside Divus Julius. The identification is supported by the Vergilian scholiast. If the legend on the coin records the dedication of the arch, the Fasti were inscribed during Augustus' sixth tribunitial power. That is a more exact dating than the limits 21-17 which I proposed before the Fasti were assigned to the arch.40

As for the name of the Antonii, I am still convinced that they were erased by unauthorized action after the scandal attending the death of Iullus Antonius. I concede the validity of Degrassi's criticism that, if my date were correct, the Antonii should have been removed from the triumphal lists, which were written in larger letters than the consular records. But in a damnatio memoriae [GT: damnation of memory], official or unofficial, the main point was to remove the names from the fasti, ex fastis evellere [GT: to pull out of the fasts], and the triumphal lists are never in ancient terminology described as fasti. As Mommsen recognized, there can be no doubt from Tacitus' statement about Iullus (Ann. iii. 18) that the erasure of his name was considered.41

Iullus Antonius (43–2 BC) was a Roman magnate and poet. A son of Mark Antony and Fulvia, he was spared by the emperor Augustus after the civil wars of the Republic, and was married to the emperor's niece. He was later condemned as one of the lovers of Augustus's daughter, Julia, and committed suicide.

Early life

Born in Rome, and named after his father's benefactor Iullus and his elder brother had a disruptive childhood. His mother Fulvia gained many enemies including Octavian (nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar). His half-sister, Claudia, had been Octavian's first wife; however, in 41 BC, Octavian divorced Clodia without having consummated the marriage and married Scribonia, the mother of Julia the Elder, Octavian's only child. Fulvia saw this as an insult on her family and, together with Iullus' uncle Lucius Antonius, they raised eight legions in Italy to fight for Antonius' rights against Octavian. The army occupied Rome for a short time, but eventually retreated to Perusia (modern Perugia). Octavian besieged Fulvia and Lucius in the winter of 41-40 BC, starving them into surrender. Fulvia was exiled to Sicyon, where she died of a sudden illness.

In the same year of Fulvia's death, Antonius' father Mark Antony married Octavian's full sister, Octavia Minor. The marriage had to be approved by the Senate as Octavia was pregnant with her first husband's child at the time. The marriage was for political purposes to cement an alliance between Octavian and Mark Antony. Octavia appears to have been a loyal and faithful wife who was good and treated her husband's children with the same kindness as her own. Between 40 BC–36 BC, Octavia lived with him in his Athenian mansion. She raised both of Mark Antony's sons and her children by her first husband together for the years of her marriage to their father. They all traveled with him to various provinces. During the marriage Octavia produced two daughters, who became Iullus' half-sisters, Antonia Major and Antonia Minor. Antonia Major was the paternal grandmother of the Emperor Nero and maternal grandmother of the Empress Valeria Messalina. Antonia Minor was the sister-in-law of the Emperor Tiberius, paternal grandmother of the Emperor Caligula and Empress Agrippina the Younger, mother of the Emperor Claudius, and maternal great-grandmother/paternal great-aunt of the Emperor Nero.

Civil war

In 36 BC Mark Antony abandoned Octavia and her children in Rome and sailed to Alexandria to rejoin his former lover Cleopatra VII (they had already met in 41 BC and were parents of twin children). Mark Antony divorced Octavia circa 32 BC. Iullus and his half-sisters returned to Rome with Octavia while Antyllus remained with his father in Egypt. Antyllus was raised by Cleopatra beside his father's children by her, Ptolemy Philadelphus, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene II, and their stepbrother Caesarion.

In the Battle of Actium the fleets of Antony and Cleopatra were destroyed, and they fled to Egypt. In August 30 BC Octavian, assisted by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, invaded Egypt. With no other refuge to escape to, Mark Antony committed suicide by falling on his sword, having been tricked into thinking that Cleopatra had already done so. A few days later, Cleopatra did actually commit suicide.

Octavian and his army seized control of Egypt and claimed it as part of the Roman Empire. While Iullus' elder brother Marcus Antonius Antyllus and his stepbrother Caesarion were murdered by Octavian, he showed some mercy to the half siblings Alexander Helios, Cleopatra Selene II and Ptolemy Philadelphus. They were given to Iullus' first stepmother Octavia to be raised as Roman citizens. In 27 BC they returned to Rome, and Octavian was given the title of Augustus.

Career and marriage

Following the civil wars, Iullus was granted high favours from Augustus, through Octavia's influence. In 21 BC Augustus wanted his daughter Julia the Elder to marry Agrippa, who at the time was married to Iullus' stepsister Claudia Marcella Major. Agrippa agreed to the marriage and so divorced Marcella. Marcella consequently obliged Iullus to marry her. Iullus and Marcella's children were the sons Iullus Antonius, Lucius Antonius and a daughter Iulla Antonia.

Iullus became praetor in 13 BC, consul in 10 BC, and Asian proconsul in 7/6 BC, and was highly regarded by Augustus. Horace refers to him in a poem, speaking of an occasion when Iullus intended to write a higher kind of poetry praising Augustus for his success in Gaul. Iullus was also a poet and is credited with having written twelve volumes of poetry on Diomedia some time before 13 BC, which has not survived.

Scandal and death

Although when their relationship began is uncertain, Iullus Antonius became a lover of Julia the Elder. Agrippa died in 12 BC and Julia had been forced to marry her stepbrother, Tiberius. Julia's marriage to her stepbrother had become a disaster and she was desperate to divorce him if not satisfy her desires, and Iullus was open to do so. Tiberius had left Rome in 8 BC leaving Julia and her five children by Agrippa, Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Julia the Younger, Agrippina the Elder, and Agrippa Postumus, in Rome. Julia felt that her children were unprotected and may have approached Iullus to be a protector for her children, especially her two elder sons, Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar, who were Augustus' joint heirs.

Both contemporary and modern historians have suggested Iullus had designs upon the monarchy and wanted to marry Julia before her children Gaius and Lucius came of age possibly to form some sort of regency. It is unlikely, however, that Julia would have put her father or her sons at risk. It is possible that she planned to divorce Tiberius and make Iullus Antonius protector of her sons.

The scandal finally broke in 2 BC. When Augustus took action on his daughter Julia's copious promiscuity, Antonius was exposed as her prominent lover. The other men accused of adultery with Julia were exiled but Iullus was not so lucky. He was charged with treason and sentenced to death; subsequently, he committed suicide. Modern scholars have speculated that Iullus Antonius is one of the figures represented on the north face of the Ara Pacis, a Roman altar.

-- Iullus Antonius, by Wikipedia

I have questioned Degrassi's dating of the arch because a year, though perhaps adequate for the construction and inscription of the arch, does not seem long enough if one takes into account the planning, of the monument and the preparation of the lists. I have questioned it also because it is based on a mistaken idea of the purpose of the monumental arch. But in this paper I have not considered the evidence on date supplied by the text of the Fasti. Before the Fasti were shown to have been on the arch that evidence led me to assign the inscriptions to a period after Augustus had consolidated his power. Degrassi and I differ only about a decade in our dates, but it is a very important decade. If Degrassi is right, the Fasti represent not an official Augustan list but an earlier list, which, with some adaptation, was based on the Liber annalis of Atticus.42 If I am right, the Fasti are an official Augustan version of Roman annals. In the paper published in 1946 I presented arguments from the text of the Fasti for my view. Now I have additional evidence which I expect to present in a subsequent paper.

It is to Degrassi's splendid publication of the stones and to his masterly presentation of the material that I owe the fresh evidence. From intensive study of Degrassi's text I can testify that the student of these great records of the Roman past will find in his pages a clarity and an objectivity that are beyond all praise. Here is an enduring work of a great scholar.43

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

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Part 2 of 2
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Notes:

1 Inscriptiones Italiae, Vol. XIII, Fasc. 1: Fasti consulares et triumphales (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1947). [Google translate: Italian Inscriptions, Vol. XIII, Fasc. 1: Consular and triumphal fasts (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1947).] Part 1, pp. 572; Part 2, Tabulae CIV, Indices, pp. 581-678.

2 As a, minor criticism I would suggest that much space could have been saved by use (as in CIL) of Arabic instead of Roman numerals and by abbreviation in the form of references, notably to the Real-encyclopddie. Except for the supplementary volumes the use of volume numbers in referring to that work should be abolished. Scholars usually consult it by the aid of the alphabet.

3 For the historians there are full citations of manuscript variants available in recent editions, such as the Conway-Walters Livy and Drachmann's text of the Roman annals of Diodorus. In preparing the section headed alia testimonia Degrassi (see p. 347) has used the works of Costa and Vaglieri and has added much material from inscriptions.

4 For the sake of brevity I shall use the term consular fasti for the list of chief magistrates, recognizing that the list also includes decemviri, military tribunes with consular power, dictators, masters of horse, and censors. I also use the term fasti for the triumphal lists, recognizing, as Degrassi does, that there is no ancient authority for the use.

5 See his paper "Le sistemazioni dei Fasti Capitolini," [Google translate: "The accommodations of the Capitoline Fasti,"] Capitolium, XVIII, 2 (1943), 327-35.

6 The Fasti Colotiani and Biondiani. See pp. 273, 291. The arrangement of the room in the Conservatori is fully discussed in the article cited in note 5.

7 Degrassi prepared a restoration of the four tablets for the celebration of the Augustan Bimillenium in 1938. His reconstructions, which he would now alter in certain minor details, are reproduced on Plates XXIII-VI of the volume. Here too Gatti collaborated with Degrassi, and they have shown that Michelangelo's reconstruction was architecturally incorrect in various details.

8 Fastorum libri V a Romulo rege usque ad imp. Caesarem Carolum V Austrium Augustum, [Google translate: Book 5 of the fasts from King Romulus until the imp. Caesar Charles V Austrium Augustus] Venice, 1,558. (Copies of this rare book are to be found in this country in the libraries of the University of Illinois and of Bryn Mawr College.) Following the dedicatory letter to Cardinal Alexander Farnese, Panvinio discusses the authorship of the "tabulae Capitolinae." He decides on Verrius Flaccus. He accepts Pantagathus' emendation of Praeneste to Vestae in Suetonius, De gram. 17 ("statuam habet (Verrius) Praeneste in superiore fori parte circa hemicyclium in quo fastos a se ordinatos et marmoreo parieti incisos publicarat" [Google translate: "He (Verrius) has a statue of Praeneste in the upper part of the forum, around the hemicycle, in which he published the flags ordered by him and cut into the marble wall."]). Panvinio, therefore, concludes that the fasti were on the hemicycle of Verrius Flaccus. In a passage overlooked by Henzen, Huelsen, and Degrassi, but noticed by Holland (see below), Panvinio makes it clear that he had originally shared the idea that the monument was a Ianus: "Atque hac ratione Fastorum Capitollnorum Auctor, formaque aediflci,l quae in Hemicycli speciem erat, non Iani pervii, ut quibusdam placet, et ego aliquando credidi." [Google translate: "And on this account the Author of the Capitoline Fasts, and the form of the building which was in the form of a Hemicycle, I did not reach Janus, as some people like, and I sometimes believed."]

9 For Henzen's misleading account of Fea's views see Degrassi, Rendiconti, p. 60, n. 10.

10 Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, XII (1935), 67-88.

11 "The Date of the Capitoline Fasti," CP, XLI (1946), 1-11.

12 A. Harnack, Geschichte der preuss. Akademie, II (1900), 389 ff.

13 On this plate, as Holland notes, the figure 2 appears twice on the earth which covers the front line of the temple. In the description of the plate (p. cxxii) we find: "2. 2. Facciata del Tempio, unica versa la Via Sacra; e scala di nuova idea, a tre partite, la principale dritta nel mezzo; e due laterali, che poi andavano a riunirsi in alto. Incontro a questa furono trovati i primi Fasti. Ivi, e alquanto di fianco al piedestal lo destro *, notai le terre, o calcinacci quasi crivellati." [Google translate: "2. 2. Facade of the Temple, the only one facing the Via Sacra; and a new concept staircase, with three sections, the main straight in the middle; and two lateral ones, which then joined together at the top. Fasti. There, and somewhat next to the pedestal on the right *, I noticed the earth, or almost riddled rubble."]

14 See p. 6, note on Frag. XXVI; cf. Rendiconti, p. 87. Degrassi quotes the Rapporto degli scavi del Foro Romano in the Archivio di Stato. [Google translate: Report of the excavations of the Roman Forum in the State Archives.] For a summary of all the evidence on the places where fragments were discovered see Rendiconti, p. 88.

15 Op. cit., 4th page, unnumbered, of introductory essay on the authorship of the Fasti: "Quum autem marmora illa crassissima fuissent, reliqua eorum pars quae ignem effugerat, in subtiles tabulas dissecta fuerat. In quibus quaedam barbara et penitus inepta ornamenta, avium, florum, pentagonorum, quos nodos Solomonis vocant, et similia incisa erant." [Google translate: "And whereas those marbles had been very thick, the rest of them which had escaped the fire had been cut into fine plates. In which were cut some barbarous and utterly absurd ornaments, birds, flowers, pentagons, which they call Solomon's knots, and the like."]

16 For quotation of Metellus' statement, Cod. Vat. Lat. 6039, f. 13, see Degrassi, Rendiconti, p. 90, n. 149; cf. Huelsen, CIL, I, 12, p. 3.

17 For illustration and description Panvinio depended on peritissimi architecti [Google translate: the most skilled architects] who saw the monument in situ. His statement is quoted in CIL I, 12, p. 4.

18 Rendiconti, pp. 106 f. The outside base of the side arches measures 4.50 m., and the width of the third tablet in Michelangelo's wall is 3.86 m. For the adaptation of this width of the pylon to the bases see Rendiconti, pp. 91, 115.

19 "Epigraphia Romana, I, Roma (1937-46)," in Doxa, II (1949), 50.

20 See Kahler, s.v., "Triumphbogen," RE, pp. 380 f.

21 Wiener Studien, XXIV (1902), 332 ff.

22 Degrassi and Gatti do not discuss the reasons why the Fasti were placed on an arch. In a forthcoming article on "Janus and the Fasti" my colleague Dr. Louise Adams Holland and I expect to suggest an explanation.

23 Both reports come from Dio. The first one (i. 19. 1) appears under the year 30 in a series of decrees of 31-30: [x]. I agree with Degrassi that this decree may have been passed as soon as the news of Actium was received -- perhaps in the second half of September 31. Under the year 20, when the standards were restored from Parthia, Dio lists a series of honors given to Augustus in this and succeeding years. After stating that Augustus on his return was honored with an ovatio, Dio adds (liv. 8. 3): [x]. The report on the ovatio is incorrect, based, Mommsen suggested (RG2, p. 19), on a senatorial decree bestowing an honor that Augustus refused.

24 Schol. Ver. on Aen. vii. 606 (Parthosque reposcere signa): "quae Licinio Crasso interfecto interceperant Parthi haec (reportavit) Augustus. Huius facti Nicae repraesentantur in arcu qui est iuxta aedem divi lulii." [Google translate: (And the Parthians put back the signs): "which Augustus (reported) to the Parthians had intercepted when Licinius Crassus was killed. This deed is represented at Nicaea in the arch which is near the house of the god Lulius."]

25 See Mattingly, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, I (1923), p. 14, No. 77, P1. 3. 4: p. 73, No. 427, P1. 10. 2.

26 See Gatti, Rendiconti, pp. 114 f.; Holland, AJA, L (1946), p. 56. The essential difference between the arches on the two coins is that while the side openings are vaulted on the Spanish coin, they are not on the Roman coin. According to both Gatti and Holland, the narrow outside bases might have been inadequate to sustain the thrust of a vault.

27 Jahrb. d. arch. Inst., IV (1889), 151-58; Topographie der Stadt Rom (Munich, 1901), pp. 93 f. and, for his revised view, the Nachtrag to that volume, pp. 360 f.

28 This was Huelsen's view, and it is suggested as probable by Kahler in the most recent study (1939) of the triumphal arch, "Triumphbogen," RE. He presents the evidence for all the known arches in the Roman world. On the arches of Augustus in the Forum, see pp. 379 ff. Degrassi, Rendiconti, pp. 100 f., holds that the senate could not have failed to carry out the decree of 31-30. But the emperor regularly decided whether he would accept honors offered by the obsequious senate, and, as his Res gestae show, he refused many of them. (See note 23 for an instance). Holland (op. cit. in n. 26) suggested as a solution of the problem that the central section of the arch may have been built in 30, and that the side openings may have been added after the return of the standards in 20. Examination of the foundations has now convinced him that the suggestion is impossible.

29 If Degrassi and Gatti are right in this identification, there may be another explanation of the Vergilian scholiast which would not make it necessary to assume the existence of one more arch in this well excavated region. The arch might have been erected in 31-30, and then after 20 B.C. it might have been decorated with Parthian symbols. Degrassi and Gatti do not make this suggestion, for they evidently have confidence in the architectural details presented on the coins.

30 See CP, XLI, 1 ff.

31 See p. 51 of the article cited in note 19. There is also a brief statement in the Additamenta to the volume, p. 571.

32 See Degrassi, P1. XXVII, Frags. I and II from tablet 1; P1. XXXIII, Frag. XII from tablet 2. Other sections of these two tablets, to judge from the V, should be attributed to a different hand. On the variety of hands, see pp. 19, 22, and the discussion of the Fasti Ostienses, p. 174. Cf. Rendiconti, p. 96.

33 Dio li. 19. 4; Plut. Cic. 49. 4. For the evidence that Cicero's son held the office from September 13 to November 1, see Degrassi, p. 510.

34 The consul suffectus of 31, Cn. Pompeius Rufus, who served from the first of October (Degrassi, p. 510), may have been in Italy. Maecenas was in general charge in Octavian's absence and Agrippa was temporarily recalled. See Dio li. 3. 5; Plut. Anton. 73.

35 Octavian was recalled to quell a mutiny of soldiers. See Dio li. 4; cf. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1891), I, 397 f.; II, 211 f.

36 CIL, VI, 873 (cf. 31188 a), Dessau, 81: "Senatus populusque Romanus imp. Caesari divi Iull f. cos. quinct. cos. design. sext. imp. sept. re publica conservata." [Google translate: "The senate and the Roman people imp. of the divine Caesar Iull f. cos. quinct. cos. design. sext. imp. sept. re publica preserved."] Ligorio is the sole authority that this inscription was discovered in the building to which the FC belonged. Smetius and Pighius say that it was found near the three columns (of Castor); Manutius gives the place of discovery as innanzi il portico di Faustina. See Degrassi, Rendiconti, pp. 81, 97. The stone is lost. The measurement given for its width, nine feet, is of course only approximate, but the stone seems certainly to have been too narrow for the central opening. I agree with Kahler, loc. cit., that its attribution to the Arch of Augustus is uncertain.

37 See Huelsen's vigorous protest against the view that arches were erected for the triumph, Hirschfeld Festschrift (Berlin, 1903), pp. 423 ff. See Kahler, Op. cit., pp. 470 ff; cf. also 374 ff., 464 ff., 488 ff.

38 See n. 23 above. The date of the return of the standards was probably May 12, 20. Cf. Gardthausen, Op. cit. II, 476 f.

39 The inscription is: (on the obverse) "S. p. q. r. imp. Caesari Aug. cos. XI tr. pot. VI"; (on the reverse) "civib. et sign. milit. a Part. recup." Dressel made the suggestion that this inscription came from the arch. See Kahler, op. cit., p. 380; Degrassi, Rendiconti, pp. 100 ff.

40 In a later article I shall discuss the validity of my earlier terminus ante quem, the date of the secular games, which were celebrated from May 31 to June 3 of 17 B.C.

41 See CP, XLI, 4. Whether or not I am right about my dating of the erasures in the FC, there seems to me no doubt that the Antonii were removed from the Fasti Colotiani (Degrassi, pp. 273 ff.; P1. LXXXV) after the death of lullus. These lists end with the year 12 B.C. and the surviving fragments cover the years 45-40, 23-12. They clearly exhibit the same hand for all the entries. The only difference that has been discovered in the writing is the frequent omission of periods dividing words in the upper half of the second columni, a very weak objection in view of the uniform character of the writing.

42 See the brief statement, Rendiconti, p. 104; for the use of Atticus' work in the Fasti, see Degrassi's Praefatio to the volume, pp. xiv f.; cf. p. 110.

43 After this paper was in proof I received a letter from Mrs. Joyce Gordon, who is collaborating with her husband, Professor Arthur E. Gordon, on a study of paleographical criteria for dating Latin inscriptions. On the date of the FC Mrs. Gordon had independently reached conclusions that anticipated the results of this article. She has now read the article, and I am glad to be able to report that she agrees with my views on paleographical details in the FC and also with my dating (see n. 41 above) of the Fasti Colotiani.

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Part 1 of __

Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity: Problems of Authority from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance
Edited by Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, and Davide Massimo
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Contents:

• Roberta Berardi: Acknowledgements
• Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, Davide Massimo: Introduction
• 1 Auctor est aequivocum
• 2 Outline of the Volume
o 2.1 part 1: Attribution
o 2.2 Part 2: Authorship
o 2.3 Part 3: Authenticity
• Part 1: Attribution
• Elisa Nuria Merisio: Semonides or Simonides? A Century-Long Controversy over the Authorship of a Greek Elegiac Fragment
o 1 Introduction
o 2 A Century-Long Authorship Controversy
o 3 Style and Content as Attribution Criteria
o 4 P. Oxy. 59.3956: A Turning Point in the Authorship Controversy
o 5 Conclusions
• Linda Rocchi: Greek Readers' Digests (Again)? Some Lysianic [x] on P. Oxy. 31.2537
o 1 Introduction
o 2 The Papyrus
o 3 The Contents
o 4 Some Instructive Examples
o 5 Further Evidence: The Speeches For Euthynus against Nicias (II. 18-24 verso)
o 6 Conclusions
o 7 Appendix: Texts
• Davide Massimo: Defining a 'Pseudo-Plato' Epigrammatist
o 1 Introduction
o 2 The Authenticity of the Epigrams
o 3 The Anecdotes about Plato the poet
o 4 Diogenes Laertius and Pseudo-Aristippus
o 5 Apuleius
o 6 The Greek Anthology
o 7 Conclusions
• Pietro Zaccaria: Distinguishing Homonymous [Having the Same Name] Writers, Detecting Spurious Works: Demetrius of Magnesia's On Poets and Authors with the Same Name
o 1 Introduction
o 2 Demetrius' On Poets and Writers with the Same Name
o 3 Xenophon's Constitution of the Athenians and the Spartans (fr. 14 Mejer)
o 4 Epimenides' Letter to Solon (fr. 10 Mejer)
o 5 Dinarchus' Against Demosthenes (fr. 1 Mejer)
o 6 Conclusions
• Anna Dorotea Teofilo: 'On Sail-Flying Ships Did I Roam the Great Sea ..."
• Rosa Lorita: When the Author Is Not Identifiable
• Part 2: Authorship
• Sara De Martin: Theognis the Author, Traditional Wisdom, and Some Side Effects of Authority
o 1 Theognis Between 5th and 4th Century BC
o 2 Two Cases of Later Reception
o 3 Conclusions
o Federica Nicolardi: Beyond the Scribal Error
o Elena Bonollo: The 'Co-Authorial' Role of Ancient Pupils, Excerptores, and Copyists in the Genuinely Menandrean [x]
 1 An Authorial Perspective on the Corpora: Their Ascription to the Authority of Menander and the Contribution of 'Co Authors'
 2 From Menander's Comedies to the Collections of Monostichs: variae lectiones as Consequences of Re-Adaptation
 3 Conclusions
o Nicola Reggiani: [x]! Book Format, Authority, and Authorship in Ancient Greek Medical Papyri
 1 Introduction
 2 Book Authority in Ancient Medicine
 3 Authority in the 'Therapeutic Literature'
 4 Conclusions
o Gianmario Cattaneo: Defensio Bessarionis: Giorgio Benigno Salviati and the Concept of Authorship in Cardinal Bessarion's Circle
 1 Giorgio Benigno Salviati and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy in the Quattrocento
 2 Giorgio Benigno Salviati, Domizio Calderini, Niccolo Perotti and Their Treatises in Defence of Cardinal Bessarion
 3 Traces of the Defensio Bessarionis in Perotti's Refutatio
o Part 3: Authenticity
o Pietro Bertocchini: Can Virtue Be Taught?
 1 Introduction
 2 The Motif in the Socratics
 3 The Motif in the Spurious and Dubious Dialogues
 4 Conclusions
o Marco Donata: Reshaping Socrates' Authority in the Pseudoplatonica
 1 Socrates in the Academy
 2 Socratic Dialogues in the Academy
 3 Setting Socrates in Motion: A Survey
 4 Conclusions: Socratic Authority and Platonic Authorship
o Roberta Berardi: Letter 1 of Demosthenes and the Prayer to the Gods
 1 The Chronology of the Letters
 2 The 'Prayer to the Gods'
o Anna Mambelli: The Second Epistle of Peter: A Different Approach to Lexical Analysis
 1 Classification of the Uncommon Terms of 2 Peter: Problems of Terminology and Methodology
 2 Analysis of Rare Words Used in 2 Peter
 3 The Style of 2 Peter
 4 Conclusions
o Chiara Calvano: Forged Inscriptions in Early Epigraphic Corpora
 1 The Intellectual Context: Expectations of an Epigraphic Corpus in the 16th Century
 2 The Genesis of the Gruterian Corpus
 3 The spuriae ac supposititiae
 4 The Sources of the spuriae
 5 The Gruter-CIL Concordances: Proposals for Integration
 6 Conclusions
o Bibliography
o Abbreviations
o Online Databases and Resources
o References
o List of contributors
o Index
o Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity
o Beitrage zur Altertumskunde
o Herausgegeben von
o Susanne Daub, Michael Erler, Dorothee Gall, Ludwig Koenen und Clemens Zintzen
o Band 385

Acknowledgements

Conceiving, assembling, and editing this volume has constituted a long and challenging journey, one which started in October 2017, on the occasion of the 2nd International Prolepsis Conference Auctor est Aequivocum, and carried on until Spring 2020. This was a spring that most of us will remember as one of the peaks of a pandemic that forced most of the world to go into lockdawn. Despite the hard times and the difficulty in accessing resources (especially libraries), we did our best to commit to the goal of finishing our work on this book, for which we deeply thank our authors, who have always been receptive to our requests. Furthermore, we would like to thank our peer-reviewers, Luciano Bossina, Laura Carnevale, Guglielmo Cavallo, Daniela Colomo, Antonio Felle, Tristano Gargiulo, Valentina Garulli, Margherita Losacco, Massimo Magnani, Roberta Marchionni, Maria Chiara Martinelli, Rosa Otranto, Massimo Pinto, Claudio Schiano, for their invaluable help. Composing this volume in English has not been an easy choice, but was done with the aim of making it more accessible to the international scholarly community, while remaining faithful to the international nature of the original conference, which benefitted from the attendance and papers of many international graduate students and early career researchers. We are deeply grateful to the proof-readers who helped to significantly improve parts of the manuscript with great professionalism and availability, namely Marcus Chin, Thomas Coward, and the others who have been acknowledged in single chapters. We would also like to thank the staff at De Gruyter for their continuous assistance at such a difficult time, and, especially in this regard, Martin Hallmannsecker and Simone Hausmann. We are grateful also to Gregory Hutchinson and Claudia Sode for their support and encouragement. On a more personal note, we would also like to thank the loved ones who continuously supported us in our work: Alessio, Heidi, Jenicek, Lidia, Mesi, as well as all of our respective families. Finally, a special thanks goes to the other members of the Cultural Association Prolepsis for organizing the conference from which this volume originates, and to all the speakers who contributed to making it a precious moment for sharing knowledge and research on the themes of authorship and authenticity. In particular, we owe an immense debt of gratitude to Luisa Fizzarotti, who has provided constant impetus to the intellectual project underpinning this book, and participated keenly in the early stages of its assemblage.

Introduction
by Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, Davide Massimo

En attendant, etudions les choses qui ne sont plus. Il est necessaire de les connaitre, ne fut-ce que pour les eviter. Les contrefacons du passe prennent de faux noms et s'appellent volontiers l'avenir. [GT: In the meantime, let us study the things that are no more. It is necessary to know, if only to avoid them. Forgeries of the past take false names and willingly call themselves the future.] -- (Victor Hugo, Les Miserables)

1 Auctor est aequivocum [GT: The author is equivocal]

The present volume further examines the themes studied in BzA 375, On the Track of the Books,1 as part of a project of coordinated conferences organized by the Cultural Association Prolepsis. Book circulation, one of the main topics of On the Track of the Books and the colloquium from which it originated, has often been the only way in which certain books have survived, where these were lost in their original place of production, and later re-discovered elsewhere -- far away, even -- wherever book trade took them. The second Prolepsis' International Conference, Auctor est Aequivocum: Authenticity, Authority, and Authorship from the Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Bari, October 26-27, 2017), has delved further into the subject and, among other topics, focussed on texts which have survived to our day only because of their erroneous, but in the end fortunate, misattribution to a 'more important' author. Authorship and authenticity have indeed played crucial roles in the survival and persistence of literary and historical works that would otherwise have been regarded only as works of 'minor' significance. The survival and circulation of books, and the dynamics governing these processes, hence form a fil rouge [GT: Red string] uniting the present collection with BzA 375, On the Track of the Books.

The title of the conference from which this volume derives is a quotation by Honorius of Autun, a 12th-century Christian theologian, who declares in his Expositio in Cantica Canticorum (prol., PL 172, 348) that 'Auctor est aequivocum', thereby underlining the ambiguity of the term 'auctor'. This quotation presents a useful starting point for discussion of the vast number of issues arising from the concepts of authority, authorship, and authenticity. and of the problems that relate to their -- often controversial -- definitions. The contributions in the present volume address a number of these themes through studies focussed on particular aspects: the problem of homonymous (or near-homonymous) authors, the role of authorial voices, the presence of spuria in the literary corpora of ancient authors (Plato, above all), the difficulties posed by anonymity, and, finally, the challenges posed by deliberate forgery, ancient and modern. Forgery happened in literature, but not exclusively so; when one considers epigraphical forgeries and the problems of authenticity and authorship associated with these, for example, it is necessary to take into account not only the text, but the physical monument bearing the text as well. These problems are not new, and neither is reflection on them. Since antiquity, scholars have thought about authenticity and authorship: establishing the authenticity of texts was, indeed, one of the principle tasks of the industrious philologists at Alexandria. Moreover, doubts about the attribution of certain works remained a crucial topic in ancient, Late-antique and Mediaeval scholarship, as shown for instance by the many occurrences of the expression [x], 'if genuine', in the works of the major lexicographical works of these periods, and indeed later on, too. Debates surrounding authenticity have not found their conclusion, but rather only further points of departure, in the modern 'obsession' for unveiling forgeries (epistolary [letter] forgeries, above all), of which Richard Bentley's life and scholarly activity represents but the tip of the iceberg. On the whole, the inherent ambiguity of literary authorship will never cease to be a part of reflection on literature of all time and genres -- one thinks of the never-ending debate of authorship in Shakespeare, to give just one illustrious example -- but it is a fact that this reflection is true in the present time more than ever. Moreover, misattribution may itself originate in a learned and literary act, and is worth studying for that reason. A clumsy reader might recall the beautiful-sounding famous line of Augustine on love, 'Amo, volo ut sis.' [I love you: I want you to be.] But Augustine actually never wrote anything of the sort: it was in fact Martin Heiddeger, writing a letter to his beloved pupil Hannah Arendt,2 who attributed these words to the Christian philosopher, and made them memorable, by conferring on them the remarkable authority of Augustine. Was this a fraud, a forgery, or a trick of the memory or ego?

'Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?' was Michel Foucault's question in an article of 1969.3 where he questioned the very necessity of identifying an author in modern literature, in a pronouncement not too different in tone from that of Roland Barthes, who a year before provocatively had claimed the death of the author.4

We are aware that what we offer in this volume is just a small specimen of the many topics encompassed by a study of authenticity and authorship in antiquity; among others not coming under its purvey one might name, for instance, the complications arising from the difference between oral and written traditions, ancient forms of intellectual property, the role of scribes,5 or the problem of textual and editorial variants: these are all issues which have been, however, already treated at length in the past by authorities on these specific issues. This is why this book is conscious to place itself within a long, but continuously lively, tradition of studies on the subject.

A few crucial titles have been key within this tradition. Landmark studies are constituted by the works of W. Speyer and N. Brox on pseudepigraphical literature.6 The field was then explored by several Italian scholars, and in this context it is worth mentioning the volume edited by F. Roscalla, L'autore e l'opera,7 in which the contribution by D. Lanza (11-19), in particular, bearing the same title, provides a theoretical framework (taking into account anonymity, pseudepigraphy, transmission, and attribution) for the other case studies in that volume. This need for a theoretical framework also emerged strongly from F. Condello's review of Roscalla's volume.8 Beginning with Foucault's provocative question, Condello, on the basis of the premises underpinning Lanza's introductory essay to Roscalla's volume, discusses the identity and role of 'the author'.9 More recently, two volumes edited by J. Martfnez10 have dealt with the theme of fakes and forgeries, acknowledging the changed attitude towards this type of literature: scholarly focus has shifted from concern with problems of textual authenticity, and hence with isolating fakes and condemning forgers, to an interest in the cultural historical contexts and dynamics of textual production from which they emerged.

The study of authenticity, authorship, and literary authority has become a broad and diverse field encompassing subjects of wide-ranging time periods and themes; the lively scholarly attention it continues to attract is reflected in the ongoing and burgeoning activity of conferences and publications. In the so-called era of 'fake news' -- perhaps a misleading label -- and therefore the era of 'fake literature', when an erroneous attribution and the click of a mouse are enough to misdirect thousands of readers as to the authorship of a statement or even of an entire poem, a reflection on the blurring borders between non-authenticity and mistaken authorship needs necessarily to start from the Classical and Mediaeval worlds -- worlds which often had no more effective technology for defending the authority of a writer than a mere seal, a [x].11 It is in light of this contemporary concern around literary authenticity, and the long tradition of studying it, that this volume hopes to make further contributions to the wide-ranging debates on ancient authenticity and authorship.

2 Outline of the Volume

The book is divided into three sections: 'Attribution', 'Authorship', and 'Authenticity'. The chapters within each section broadly follow the chronological order of their subject-matter, although the complexity of pseudepigraphical literature, of course, prevents clear-cut chronological specificity, and many chapters necessarily deal with material stretching over several centuries. Anonymous texts, moreover, often elude sound dating. For these same reasons, the three sections have been structured primarily on thematic lines, even if this has inevitably resulted in overlapping content.

2.1 Part 1: Attribution

The first section, 'Attribution', deals with the process of ascribing a particular work to a particular author, and the reasons for doing so, from ancient to modern times: debates about ascription can be detected already in antiquity, sometimes begin to emerge only later, and in some cases continues to puzzle scholars to this day.

'Semonides or Simonides? The century-long controversy over the attribution of a Greek elegiac fragment' is Elisa Nurla Merisio's (La Sapienza-University of Rome) starting point for deeper reflection on authorship and the attribution of authorship in Archaic Greek fragmentary lyric poetry.

The paper by Linda Rocchi (University of Edinburgh) deals with the intriguing case of P. Oxy. 31.2537 (2nd/3rd century AD), a papyrus codex containing 22 lysianic [x]. In her paper, she argues that this papyrus might have been a sort of annotated catalogue of all available Lysianic speeches -- regardless of their authenticity -- and may therefore be regarded as a snapshot of the Lysianic corpus as it was known to X orat. 836a and Phot. Bibl. 262, 488b; namely, at the beginning of its formation.

Davide Massimo's (University of Oxford) paper investigates the viability of applying the label 'pseudo-Plato' to a series of epigrams variously ascribed to the philosopher Plato in ancient times, and which are now generally believed to be spurious. Focusing on the sub-group of erotic epigrams, the paper analyzes the various factors which influenced how the corpus has been slowly shaped over the centuries, and the misunderstandings, erroneous readings, and possible forgeries that have led to the ascription of these epigrams to Plato.

The aim of Pietro Zaccaria's (KU Leuven) paper is to determine the criteria used by ancient textual critics, as outlined in the lost work of Demetrius of Magnesia -- a 1st-century BC scholar, who authored a pinacographical and biographical work entitled On Poets and Writers with the Same Name -- for distinguishing homonymous writers and detecting spurious works, as well as his method of detecting pseudepigraphical works.

Latin metrical inscriptions, their authors as well as the literary works quoted in them form the core of Anna Dorotea Teofilo's (Independent Researcher) paper. She closely analyses the epitaph of an anonymous merchant found in Brundisium, Apulia [CIL IX 60 = CLE 1533] and outlines a profile of its remarkably skilled and competent -- albeit anonymous -- author.

Rosa Lorita (Independent Researcher) shows in her paper the importance of identifying composers of epigraphic texts -- especially when these relate to the government of the Roman Empire. She does so by thoroughly examining the so-called Volcei land-register [CIL X 407], a fragmentary list of properties on stone.

2.2 Part 2: Authorship

The second section. 'Authorship', explores the conceptual boundaries of the notion of authorship and the role that figures such as pupils, collaborators and scribes play in many different texts -- a role that is very often more difficult to trace than that of the original 'author' itself.

The riddle of the Theognidea is the focus of Sara De Martin's (King's College London) paper. By analyzing Theognis' place in the literary culture of the 4th century BC, as well as the reception of the Sylloge Theognidea in the imperial and Byzantine periods, the author underscores the benefits of the diachronic reception-based approach to Theognis and the Theognidean corpus, and looks at the Theognidean text as a repository for traditional wisdom.

Federica Nicolardi (University of Naples 'Federico II') explores the problem of authorship within the library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum. A detailed analysis of P. Herc. 1427, which contains the inner portion (the so-called midollo) of Philodemus' On Rhetoric Book 1, leads her to a reconstruction of the history of this text. The formal aspects of this papyrus would suggest that it be included among the definitive copies preserved in the Villa; however, the much-discussed term [x] can be read in its subscriptio, as in the subscriptiones to other rolls, which would suggest it was a provisional copy.

The collection of Menandrian maxims, the Menandri Sententiae, are at the core of Elena Bonollo's (University of Udine) paper. The author aims to shed light on the interpretation of the variae lectiones characterizing the maxims that have been differentiated from their original texts, which had traditionally been all gathered under the name of the much-appreciated comic poet Menander.

Book format, authority and authorship in so-called therapeutic (medical) literature are the focus of Nicola Reggiani's (University of Parma) research. Through the investigation of medical papyri, ostraca, and parchment 'notebooks', the author analyses the concepts of authority and authorship in relation to different text-bearing objects.

Gianmario Cattaneo's (University of Turin) contribution identifies some of the authors of the Refutatio deliramentorum Georgii Trapezuntii Cretensis, a treatise attributed to Niccolo Perotti, a member of the literary circle of Cardinal Bessarion, whose famous treatise In calumniatorem Platonis was the product of a collection of authors. With the aid of other texts and epistles, Cattaneo shows clearly that the Refutatio belongs to Bessarion's 'familia', and also demonstrates the extent to which the concepts of author and authorship were blurred within the Academia Bessarionis.

2.3 Part 3: Authenticity

The third section, 'Authenticity', deals with the thorny issue of the authenticity of texts or portions of texts, and problems associated with spurious texts and forgeries.

Pietro Bertocchini (University of Padua) studies the so-called pseudo-Platonic dialogues, trying to find -- despite their heterogeneity -- potential common threads running through them. He identifies one of these commonalities in the motif-like interest in the possibility of acquiring virtue (by birth, by learning, by training or by other means) and explores the different ways in which pseudo-Platonic or spuriously Platonic dialogues deal with this highly debated Socratic theme.

Socratic authority and Platonic authorship are also the subject of Marco Donato's (Aix-Marseille University) work. The 'return to Socratism', as well as the imitatio Socratis promoted by the Academy from the last quarter of the 4th century BC, are to be sensed both in the school's work of exegesis, and in the collection of the corpus of Plato's Socratic dialogues. In order to investigate these topics, the author closely examines three pseudo-Platonic dialogues: Eryxias (or Erasistratus), Theages, and Clitophon.

Roberta Berardi (University of Oxford) investigates the much-discussed authenticity of the six epistles attributed to Demosthenes, with particular attention to the proemium to Letter 1. In order to do so, she examines the order in which the letters 1-4 (the ones explicitly composed during the exile of the orator) are preserved in the manuscript tradition, and investigates some similarities between the first introductory paragraph of Letter 1 and other proemia of Demosthenes, and also to the peculiar introductory letter to the collection of epistles attributed to Brutus.

The research of Anna Mambelli (FSCIRE Bologna/University of Strasbourg) explores pseudonymity, forgery, and pseudepigraphy within the New Testament. In her paper she analyzes the Second Epistle of Peter with a new methodological approach -- a text which was accepted into the canon of the New Testament late in the 4th century with greater hesitation than any other book, because many felt that Peter was not the original author of the work (e.g. EUs. Hist. Eccl. 3.25.3; 6.25.8).

Finally, Chiara Calvano's IIndependent Researcher) paper deals with epigraphic forgeries and the first attempts at their categorization, following increasingly rigorous epigraphic criticism in mid-16th century. The authors stresses, moreover, the importance of a new methodological approach in Jan Gruter's Corpus -- the first comprehensive publication to acknowledge the existence of epigraphic forgeries.

_______________

Notes:

1 Berardi et al. (2019).
2 The letter is dated to March 1925, and the attribution is explicit in Arendt (1963 3).
3 Foucault (1969).
4 Barthes (1967).
5 Very famous is the expression invented by Canfora: 'il copista come autore' ('the scribe as the author'), in Canfora (2002).
6 Speyer (1971) and Brox (1975).
7 Roscalla (2006).
8 Condello (2011). Excellent tools to study the topic of authenticity and authorship in antiquity from a theoretical point of view are also Ronconi (1955), Cerri (2000), D'Ippolito (2000), which discuss the terminology necessary for talking about these subjects, but also other crucial problems, such as the intentions of the author/forger in creating a pseudepigraphical work, and, further, the interesting problem of ancient and modern approaches to pseudepigraphical literature.
9 An interesting volume on the role of the 'author' is Marmodoro/Hill (2013).
10 Martinez (2012) and Martinez (2014).
11 It is difficult here not to mention the example of Galen, always very careful to claim the authorship of his own works, even to the point of composing a treatise entitled 'On my own books'.

[admin]

Part 2 of __

Part 1: Attribution

Semonides or Simonides? A Century-Long Controversy over the Authorship of a Greek Elegiac Fragment
(Simonides, fr. 8 W. = frr. 19-20 W.2)
by Elisa Nuria Merisio
From Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity: Problems of Authority from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance
Edited by Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, and Davide Massimo
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

1 Introduction

The attribution of Archaic Greek lyric fragments proves to be complicated because of the very nature of these poems and of the way they have come down to us. The fragmentary condition of most poems -- which is often quite apparent but sometimes cannot be safely assumed because the fragment seems to be complete -- is the main difficulty in determining their authorship, both in the case of verses preserved in Late-antique anthologies or in other authors' works and in the case of the ones included in papyri discovered many centuries later, which are often incomplete and full of lacunae [gap]. An additional difficulty lies in the peculiar character of Archaic Greek poetry, which often makes modern style and content-oriented criteria unsuitable.

An elegiac fragment quoted in a Late-antique anthology and included in a papyrus found at the end of the 20th century is a case in point. The attribution process of this fragment has turned out to be complicated and highly controversial and perhaps it has not yet come to an end.

Joannes Stobaeus, a 5th-century learned compiler, quotes a poem consisting of elegiac couplets and having the lemma [x] (4.34.28) in Book 4 of his Anthologium under the rubric [x] (How life is short, miserable and full of concerns). The text, included by M.L. West in the section dubia of the first edition of Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati (West [1972]) as fr. 8 of Simonides, is quoted below:

[x]

The man from Chios said one thing best: "As is the generation of leaves, so is the generation of men". Few men hearing this take it to heart, for in each man there is a hope which grows in his heart when he is young. As long as a mortal has the lovely bloom of youth, with a light spirit he plans many deeds that will go unfulfilled. For he does not expect to grow old or die; nor when healthy does he think about illness. Fools are they whose thoughts are thus! Nor do they know that the time of youth and life is short for mortals. But you, learning this at the end of your life, endure, delighting in good things in your soul.1

At first glance, the poem seems to be complete, but the unusual presence of a pentameter at the beginning has led scholars from the Renaissance onwards to assume that at least one initial hexameter was lost. Camerarius attempted to reconstruct exempli gratia the allegedly lost line as follows: [x]2. Moreover, the particle [x] at the beginning of the first line seems to fulfil a connective function, either continuative or adversative, and not an inceptive one.3 The suggestion that one or more initial lines were discarded by Stobaeus when quoting the passage is well-grounded, since his quotations are grouped by themes and such poems often featured some 'private' information at the beginning that was not relevant considering the general character of the Anthologium.4

2 A Century-Long Authorship Controversy

However, until the publication of P. Oxy. 59.3965 in 1992 (see section 4 below), the main problem associated with this poem did not lie in its fragmentary nature but rather in its authorship. As noted above, the poem was included by West as fr. 8 of Simonides in the section dubia,5 but since the 16th century this fragment has been assigned to many different poets, leading to a century-long authorship controversy. The main reason behind this controversy lies in the name attributed by Stobaeus to the author of the couplets, i.e. [x]. The phonetic similarity of the names of two Archaic Greek poets called [x] and [x] -- the former, Semonides of Amorgos [7th century BC], being a iambic poet6 thought to have lived earlier than the latter, Simonides of Ceos [556-468 BC],7 the author of poems covering a variety of genres, including monodic poetry and epigrams -- has caused the two poets to be confused since Antiquity. While their names are still clearly distinguishable in a 1st-century BC papyrus that features works by Philodemus of Gadara,8 they overlapped at least from the 2nd century onwards, probably also owing to the phonetic phenomenon known as itacism, which began in the Hellenistic period and spread widely during the Roman Empire.9 In his Anthologium, Stobaeus himself associates the lemma [x] with both fragments for which Semonidean authorship has been firmly established (e.g. Stob. 4.34.15 = fr. 1 W. and Stob. 4.22.193 = fr. 7 W., the well-known satirical account of different types of women) and fragments which are unquestionably from works by Simonides (e.g. PMG 521 = Stob. 4.41.9 and PMG 522 = Stob. 4.51.5). Even though in the 9th century AD George Choiroboskos, a Byzantine grammarian, had pointed out the different spelling of the names of the two poets,10 the two continued to overlap over the subsequent centuries. Nor did the editors of the earliest printed collections of ancient Greek lyric poets make any distinction between the two. Stephanus ascribed all the poems having the lemma [x], including iambs, to Simonides of Ceos11, whereas Crispinus, followed by Winterton, explicitly placed the iambic poems along with the elegiac fragment among the works of the iambographer of Amorgos.12

It is worth mentioning that in 1823-1824 Giacomo Leopardi translated fr. 1 W. by Semonides and the elegiac fragment handed down by Stobaeus. The two poems, respectively Dal greco di Simonide (no. 40) and Delio stesso (no. 41),13 are included at the end of Leopardi's Canti, the collection of his poems. Following Stephanus' edition, the Italian poet always identifies 'Simonides' with the poet of Ceos, as E. Pellizer has convincingly demonstrated (see Pellizer [1976]).

In the 18th century the two poets were still confused and only in the 19th century, following the development of Classical philology in Germany, was the distinction between them more clearly established. T. Bergk once again made a conscious attempt to ascribe the disputed fragment to the iambic poet Semonides of Amorgos14 (fr. Sim. 85 in his collection Poetae lyrici Graeci). This attribution was supported by U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who strongly argued for a Semonidean authorship in Homerische Untersuchungen (1884)15 and in Sappho und Simonides (1913),16 where he further elaborated on the topic. H. Diehl included the poem as fr. Sem. 29 in his Anthologio lyrica Graeca and W. Jaeger spoke of Bergk's attribution as 'one of the unquestionable achievements of Classical philology' in a footnote to Paideia.17 The two criteria followed by those arguing in favour of a Semonidean authorship are clearly summarized by Wilamowitz in a footnote to his 1913 work:18 (a) the thematic similarity between the disputed fragment and fr. 1 W. by Semonides - a iamb dealing with the contrast between human illusions and the griefs of life in the same protreptic tone -- that is preserved in the chapter of Stobaeus' Anthologium (4.34.15) devoted to the brevity of life, just like the elegiac fragment; (b) a style deemed 'unworthy' of Simonides.

Conversely, in the early 1930s, W.J. Oates argued strongly in favour of Simonidean authorship in his study on the influence of Simonides on Horace's poetry.19 He questions Wilamowitz's and Bergk's opinions by convincingly arguing, inter alia, that the style of elegiac poems must be investigated from different perspectives20 (this topic will be further expanded in section 3 below).

Since the 1950s, several scholars have reached widely different conclusions about the attribution of this fragment. Some have continued to argue in favour of a Semonidean authorship, including D. Babut who resorts once again to the criterion of thematic similarity, even though he admits that there are differences in style between the iambic fragment by Semonides and the disputed elegiac fragment.21 Other scholars have tried to find a solution alternative to the Semonides-Simonides pair. V. Steffen assigns the fragment to Mimnermus on the basis of the style and content similarity between this poem and the elegiac fragments by the poet of Colophon;22 J.A. Davison leaves the question unsettled and, what is more, reverses the perspective by maintaining that the thematic similarity between the two fragments might be the reason behind their attribution to the same author;23 H. Frankel (followed by H. Lloyd-Jones)24 believes that the fragment's linguistic facies is too modern to be ascribed to Semonides and assumes that it is an epigraphic funerary epigram which was assigned to Simonides, along with many others, back in Antiquity.25 As noted above, West includes the poem as fr. 8 of Simonides in the dubia section and ascribes it to a poet contemporary to Simonides of Ceos. West expands on this topic in Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus: 26 despite the Suda's testimony,27 only iambic poems have been transmitted under Semonides' name, whereas we know for sure that Simonides wrote poems in a variety of genres, including elegy. Then, West offers an objective review of all the arguments put forward in favour of a Semonidean authorship up until the early 1970s, and his analysis of the style and of the expressions used in the fragment leads him to conclude that it cannot be dated earlier than the 5th century BC.28

3 Style and Content as Attribution Criteria

The publication of P. Oxy. 59.3965 by P. Parsons in 1992 opened up new perspectives in the assessment of the elegiac fragment29 even though in some scholars' opinion the authorship question is still far from being settled. Before dealing with this new chapter in the authorship controversy related to fr. 8 W., it is worth making a few remarks about the attribution criteria followed by scholars before the publication of P. Oxy. 59.3965.

Special attention must be paid to the stylistic and formal criteria that were often used to rule out a Simonidean authorship in the late 19th century and in the early 20th century. Such criteria are based on a modern concept developed by Romanticism whereby each poet has his own individual style. In Archaic Greek poetry, however, individual style was clearly subordinated to poetic genres and, consequently, to performance occasions. In particular, as Oates pointed out,30 archaic elegy was deeply influenced by epic language31 on the one hand and by sympotic performance settings on the other32. As a result before considering the individual style of a poet, the poem in question has to be analyzed within the framework of the relevant genre. In this case, Simonides' versatility in composing in a variety of genres, forms and styles speaks for an attribution to the poet of Ceos despite the difference in style of this elegiac fragment compared to other poems whose Simonidean authorship has been firmly established. Conversely, the identification of expressions and concepts that are not attested before a given period33 is a useful criterion allowing to establish at least an approximate dating, even though it may prove misleading: for instance, the noun [x] in fr. 1 W. by Semonides is subsequently attested as late as the Imperial period.

Content was another criterion of paramount importance in trying to establish the authorship of the disputed fragment. As noted above, the thematic similarity between fr. 1 W. by Semonides and the elegiac fragment handed down by Stobaeus has been considered to be conclusive evidence in favour of a Semonidean authorship by many scholars. However, if this perspective is reversed, as Davison has done, it is worth pointing out that Archaic Greek poetry featured topoi that were reused and readapted to different performance occasions. Original topics were not an essential feature, and the authority of poetry lay in drawing upon tradition.34 Even poets like Simonides, who conveyed new messages, resorted to well-established forms and registers between the 6th and 5th century BC. Archaic poetry had a parenetic and gnomic function: the misery and 'ephemeral' nature of human existence are frequent topics, as well as human weakness vis-a-vis destiny and the gods. A pitiless picture is painted of human hopes and illusions that are bound to be soon dispelled35 to urge men to have a disillusioned view of reality and to bear the griefs of life, but this 'pessimistic' view of the human experience is combined with the celebration of bravery, art and poetry and with an invitation to enjoy the present while being aware of the precariousness of life. Although both the elegiac fragment considered and Semonides' iambic poem surely share the former perspective -- we do not know for sure whether Semonides' composition included the latter --,36 this thematic similarity must lead us to conclude not that they were written by the same author or that the two poems refer to each other, but rather that they share a common cultural background.

The poetic reuse of the well-known simile of the leaves must be read against this backdrop. The famous words uttered by Glaucus in book 6 of the Iliad37 are the first know attestation of the image. The same comparison was used by Mimnermus in fr. 2 W. and the disputed elegiac fragment features the first line of the Iliadic simile. Subsequently, this image was repeatedly reused by Greek and Latin poets.38 Interestingly enough, out of the many examples of the reuse of the Homeric simile, the elegiac fragment is the only text to quote its opening line word by word. Such feature has been sometimes regarded as evidence of a Simonidean authorship, since Simonides is known to have quoted verses by earlier poets, often for polemic purposes.39 Even though this argument sounds convincing, it does not appear conclusive.

4 P. Oxy. 59.3956: A Turning Point in the Authorship Controversy

As noted above, the publication in 1992 of P. Oxy. 59.3956, which dates back to the 2nd century AD, marked a significant turning point in the century-long controversy. Fr. 5 of the papyrus overlaps with an elegiac couplet by Simonides quoted by Plutarch.40 This detail, along with the similar content of the poems and the fact that two more passages featured in P. Oxy. 59.3965 overlap with other passages contained in P. Oxy. 22.2327, has allowed for an almost certain identification of Simonides as the author of the verses included in the two groups of papyrus fragments.41 What is more, fr. 26 of the papyrus contains eight of the 13 lines of the elegiac fragment quoted by Stobaeus. The text of fr. 20 W. 2, which contains the papyrus passages, included in the second edition of Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati by West, is quoted below:

[x]

The first five lines of the fragment handed down by Stobaeus, which are included as fr. 19 assigned to Simonides, just like fr. 20 above, in the second edition by West, are quoted below:

[x]5

The discovery of P. Oxy. 59.3965 seems to have settled the authorship controversy in favour of Simonides, although some scholars still disagree (see below). However, it has raised two additional questions. First, what is the relationship between the first five lines quoted by Stobaeus (fr. 19 W. 2) and the remaining eight lines making up the previous fr. 8 W.? In the papyrus, the latter lines are preceded by traces of verses that do not match those quoted in the Anthologium and, what is more, they are followed by at least eight more lines that are full of blanks (see the transcription above). Secondly, what is the relationship between this fragment and the remaining verses contained in the papyrus?

As far as the first issue is concerned, scholars agree that frr. 19 and 20 W. 2 belong to the same poem. The few readable words in the lines following the last eight lines of the fragment handed down by Stobaeus (West tried to reconstruct them by way of example)42 seem to refer to Homer again. The poet is celebrated as someone who succeeded, by means of his poetry, in defeating 'Time who tames everything' (l. 15 as reconstructed by West) and in countering the ephemeral nature of human existence, as this is described in the preceding lines by the very use of a Homeric reminiscence. Sider believes that the lines have been handed down in the right order and assumes that there has been an omission of the lemma that introduced the second group of lines in Stobaeus' manuscript tradition, an omission that led to the combination of the two passages that originally did not follow each other.43 West instead thinks that the two passages were originally inverted, with fr. 20 preceding fr. 19. 44

Several assumptions have been made concerning the relationship between these verses and the remaining verses contained in P. Oxy. 59.3965. The main contribution made by the papyrus discovery is related to the verses assigned to the Plataea elegy composed by Simonides (frr. 10-18 W. 2) and to other verses belonging to the same genre of historical elegy,45 whereas frr. 19-22 W. 2 seem to be intended for sympotic performance. As a consequence, the papyrus may contain either an anthology that includes poems belonging to various genres or passages of an edition of Simonidean works made by Alexandrian grammarians, but the whole matter is highly controversial and open to conjecture.46 Conversely, Sider suggests that frr. 19-20 W. 2 too may belong to the historical Plataea elegy, where Simonides would be acting as a new Homer who celebrates the military deeds of the Greek army by means of lasting verses, in stark contrast to other poets like Mimnermus who fail to understand the importance of this poetic genre.47

The above issues rest on the assumption of a Simonidean authorship. However, T.K. Hubbard,48 who argued in favour of a Semonidean authorship before the discovery of the papyrus -- in his opinion, the poet of Amorgos lived later than is generally believed49 -- does not think that P. Oxy. 59.3965 is conclusive evidence to assign the fragment to Simonides. The fragments contained in the papyrus cover different genres, which points to a possible post-Alexandrian anthology, considering the taxonomical precision of Alexandrian philologists. If this is the case, in all likelihood the compiler of the anthology confused the names of the two poets; alternatively, the Alexandrian compilers themselves might have confused them. Finally, the Suda's testimony that Semonides wrote elegies as well, the similarity between Semonides' fr. 1 W. and the elegiac fragment, and the close relationship between the two passages (Simonides would never 'copy' a poem by Semonides, whereas the iambographer is more likely to have turned the trimeters into elegiac meter) are all arguments in favour of Semonides' authorship put forward by Hubbard.

5 Conclusions

What, then, is the real contribution made by the papyrus? Hubbard resorts to the same criteria followed by philologists before the publication of the papyrus, criteria which have been already discussed. In this regard he wrote:

[ ... ] with the discovery of an important new literary papyrus, there is often in the rush of scholarly excitement a tendency to conclude that old controversies have been settled or that the new discovery may be of greater importance for some questions than it actually is.50

Papyri in turn raise interpretation-related issues: even when the author is mentioned, or the papyrus contains a passage preserved in the indirect tradition and whose authorship has been firmly established, or the papyrus partially overlaps with another one that features passages whose author is known,51 the papyrus sheets are highly fragmented, and it is hard to establish whether they come from the same roll. Furthermore, the transcription and reconstruction of the text are somewhat subjective and, as a result, a given interpretation of the passages cannot be based on completely certain scientific evidence.52 At any rate, common sense and a moderate degree of confidence in the available evidence, however weak, are very much needed. The reasonable words written by Parson in relation to this authorship controversy read:

It had for long been argued by some that the ascription in Stobaeus, [x], might refer to Semonides of Amorgos, known otherwise for his iambs; it was thought that the style and subject -- recalling Mimnermus -- pointed to a date earlier than the sophisticated Simonides of Ceos. Now it seems that the question is settled -- or is it? You can wriggle: perhaps these papyri represent an anthology of elegy, not the elegies of Simonides; failing that, perhaps the Alexandrian editors mixed up the two Simonides. Well, yes, perhaps and perhaps. But why struggle? The evidence of fact, however weak, should carry more weight than the evidence of style, however strong. Here, it seems to me, two factors come into play. One is the dead hand of the past. The nineteenth century created the science of antiquity; what survived of Greek literature was built into that towering positivist structure. Genres were defined, allusions recognized, literary movements constructed -- all on the basis of a few flyspecks. Now, in that general crumbling of certainties which began in 1914, we have questioned many of those categories. And yet there remains a certain attachment to the fable convenue, the painful squeezing of maximum certainty from minimum evidence. A second factor forms part of that inheritance: the romantic belief that a poet is an individual, and an individual is a style. Once again, we think in general that we know better: not style, but manner; and manner relates to genre, genre to performance, performance to occasion. But it seems to me that there continues to be an underlying assumption of unity. Now Simonides should stand as the counter-example: not one manner, but several, according to circumstance. Why should one of those manners not be a nice old-fashioned bow to Mimnermus?53

The elegiac fragment considered is a significant example of the issues associated with the attribution of Archaic Greek poems in general. Uncertainties surrounding ancient poets and their timeframes, the supremacy of poetic genres over individual styles, the recurrence of traditional topics and the highly fragmented nature of most poems must be taken into account when attempting to establish the authorship of a poem. As far as Archaic elegy is concerned, the reuse of poems in sympotic [historical] settings makes the concept of authorship even more blurred.

Keeping the above observations in mind, it is nevertheless useful to try to ascribe a poem to an author while accepting the real possibility of error. At the same time, more attention should be paid to the contribution made by each fragment to our knowledge of Archaic Greek literature at large.

_______________

Notes:

1 Transl. D. Sider.
2 Camerarius (1551). The line, freely reconstructed by the editor, was permanently included in the fragment and reprinted by most editors before Diehl: cf. Pellizer/Tedeschi (1990) 62 (in app.).
3 Denniston (1970 2) 162-3.
4 Sider (2001) 275, n. 4.
5 'Ego si non manum, at aetatem Cei sentio' [GT: 'I, if not the hand, but I feel the age of Cei'](in app.).
6 According to Suda (0446), the poet of Amorgos also wrote two books of poems in elegiac meter, but only iambic poems have been transmitted under Semonides' name.
7 Semonides is thought to have lived between the mid-8th century and the late 6th century BC; most scholars agree that he lived some time between the late 7th century and the early 6th century but, based on the scanty evidence available, Pellizer/Tedeschi (1990) ix-xvii argue that the iambographer lived in the first half of the 7th century.
8 Cf. Phld. De poematis tractatus tertius, P. Herc. 1074, fr. f, col. 31. 5 (Sbordone [1976] II 212-3): in this passage the iambographer is referred to as [x]; cf. Sider (2001) 276, n. 7.
9 Authors such as Plutarch, Strabo and Pollux do not seem to draw any distinction between the two: cf. Babut (1971) 23, n. 36.
10 Cf. Etym. Magn. 713. 16-19:[x].
11 Stephanus (1560).
12 Crispin us (1569); Wintertonus (1635). The Greek scholar and theologian Leo Allatius stands out in this attribution controversy: in the mid-17th century he carried out research about Semonides and was one of the first scholars to argue in favour of his correct identity and to distinguish him from the poet of Ceos: cf. Allatius (1664) 205-17.
13 The first line of Leopardi's translation 'Umana cosa picciol tempo dura' [GT: A human thing for a little while tough ] translates the line added by Camerarius (see section 1 above) and included by Stephanus in his own edition.
14 Whereas in the first edition (1843) the fragment is ascribed to Simonides of Ceos without any further comment (it is worth pointing out that Bergk himself never spells the names of the two poets differently, even though he draws a clear distinction between them), in the fourth edition (PLG III 425) the scholar wrote in the apparatus: 'Elegiacum hoc carmen, quod plenum atque integrum esse videtur, non dubitaverunt homines docti Ceo poetae vindicare, mihi a melici consummata arte et ingenio prorsus abhorrere videtur, itaque nescio an potius sit Amorgini, quem praeter iambos etiam elegias scripsisse constat'. [GT: This elegiac poem, which seems to be complete and complete. The learned men did not hesitate to claim the poet Ceos, me from the navel. He seems utterly abhorrent to finished art and talent, so I don't know or rather Amorginus, who besides iambics also wrote elegies it is agreed.] The same opinion is expressed in the introduction to the iambic poet's fragments (PLG II 441).
15 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1884) 352, n. 34: 'fgm. 85 des Simonides, aber von Bergk mit Recht dem Semonides zugewiesen'. [GT: 'fgm. 85 of Simonides, but rightly assigned by Bergk to Semonides'.]
16 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1913) 273-4, n. 3: 'An der Identitat des Verfassers lasst schon die innere Obereinstimmung keinen Zweifel; dass die Elegie bei Stobaeus 98,29 steht, spricht auch dafur. Und die Form ist des Keers unwurdig. Gefuhlt hat die Verwandtschaft Leopardi, der beide Stucke nebeneinander ubersetz hat'. [GT: 'On the identity of the inner agreement alone leaves no doubt about the author; the fact that the elegy is in Stobaeus 98.29 also speaks for it. And the form is unworthy of the keer. The relatives felt Leopardi, who translated both pieces side by side'.] The 'innere Ubereinstimmung' mentioned in this text refers to fr. 1 W. by Semonides. Interestingly enough, Wilamowitz considers Leopardi's translation to be evidence of a Semonidean authorship, whereas Leopardi assigned both fragments to Simonides.
17 Jaeger (1936 2) 176, n. 4: '[ ... ] die Zuruckfuhrung des Gedichts durch Bergk auf den Amorginer Semonides - es ist bei Stobaios unter dem Namen des beruhmteren Simonides von Keos uberliefert - gehort zu den gesicherten Ergebnissen philologischer Kritik'. [GT: '[ ... ] the return of the poem by Bergk on the Amorginer Semonides -- it is at Stobaios under the names of the more famous Simonides of Keos handed down -- belongs to the assured results of philological criticism'.] For an extensive bibliography on the fragment attributions until 1970 see Babut (1971) 23, n. 36.
18 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1913) 273-4, n. 3 for which see above.
19 Oates (1932) 78-79, 84-90.
20 'Wilamowitz also sees in the epic forms [x] and [x] evidence for assigning the poem to the writer of iambics. This point does not seem to be very conclusive, in that any author who was casting his composition in the elegiac form was bound to use epic word-formation, because of the close connection between the two genres of epic and elegy' (Oates [1932] 85); other less convincing arguments in favour of a Simonidean authorship advanced by Oates and previously put forward by Crusius include the information contained in two Homeric biographies that according to [x], the epic poet was born in Chios -- which does not constitute corroborative proof for several reasons -- and the fact that Homer could not have been referred to as 'the man of Chios' before Simonides' time. Oates adds one more argument, i.e. an allusion made to the elegiac fragment in Theoc. Id. 16.24, an idyll where the poet of Ceos is explicitly mentioned in the subsequent lines.
21 Babut (1971) 23-30.
22 Steffen (1955) I 35-41. He states: 'Cum Mimnermus in elegiis suis, quae amatoriae dicuntur, easdem res saepius tangere et repetere similibusque coloribus iterum atque iterum describere videatur, facile oriri potest suspicio etiam elegiam de brevitate iuventutis vitaeque agentem et vitam voluptuariam commendantem non a Semonide, sed a Mimnermo scriptam esse. Sermo pro antiquitate carminis venustus gratiosaque narratio longe abhorrent a Semonidis stilo sicco pressoque et Mimnermum potius quam Semonidem prodere videtur' (38). [GT: When Mimnermus in his elegies, which are called amorous, touching and repeating the same things often and in similar colors he seems to describe again and again, suspicion can easily arise even an elegy about the brevity of youth life agent and life recommending tourism not a Semonides, but that it was written by Mimnermus. A word for antiquity the charm of the poem and the charming narrative are far removed from Semonides with a dry and pressed style, and Mimnermus rather than Semonides seems to betray] Conversely, a Simonidean authorship is ruled out for the same reasons advanced by Wilamowitz, namely an alleged emulation of the iambographer by the poet of Ceos and a style deemed 'unworthy' of Simonides, 'cum multo ingeniosior fuerit poeta, quam ut cogitationes apud alios poetas expositas fere ad verbum repeteret' (40). [GT: when he was much more ingenious a poet, as the thoughts of other poets are expounded almost ad repeat the word]
23 Davison (1955), especially 128-40; furthermore, he doubts whether there is any direct relationship between the quotation in the elegiac fragment and the Homeric simile included in book 6 of the Iliad (see section 3 below).
24 Lloyd-Jones (1975) 97.
25 Frankel (1962 2) 237, n.14: '[ ... ] Dies elegische "Simonides" -- Fragment hat eine Sprachform die fur Semonides zu modern ist. Vielleicht ist das Gedicht ein Grabepigramm (vgl. Vs. 12), ebenso wie viele andere Elegleen die, vom Stein kopiert, nachtraglich dem Simonides (von Keos) zugeschrieben wurden'. [This elegiac "Simonides" -- fragment has a language form too modern for Semonides. Maybe it is the poem a funerary epigram (cf. vs. 12), as well as many others Elegleen which, copied from the stone, was added later to Simonides (of Keos) were attributed'.]
26 West (1974) 179-80.
27 See above.
28 West took Into account the following linguistic and stylistic elements: the habit of quoting and commenting upon a famous passage, the reference to Homer as [x], the expression [x] at I. 13 and the use of [x] at I. 14.
29 It is fair to mention that the contribution made by P. Oxy. 59.3965 had already been highlighted by Lobel, who nevertheless did not manage to publish the fragment: cf. Parsons/Rea (1981) 23 and Pellizer/Tedeschi (1990) 62 (in the app. related to the fragment). The two editors include the fragment in the spuria section by Semonides and in the introduction they clearly state that: 'Il noto frammento elegiaco che Stobeo ci ha tramandato sotto il nome di Simonide senza ulteriori spiegazioni [ ... ], nonostante le argomentazioni addotte da illustri filologi (ma la piccola "quaestio semonidea" non pote mai essere risolta in un senso o nell'altro in modo convincente) non puo essere assegnato all'Amorgino' (xxiii-xxiv). [GT: 'The well-known fragment elegiac that Stobeo handed down to us under the name of Simonides without further explanation [...], despite the arguments adduced by illustrious philologists (but the small "quaestio semonidea" does not could never be resolved one way or the other in a convincing way) cannot be assigned to the Amorgino'] For the contribution made by papyri to our knowledge of Simonidean works see Parsons (2001) 58-59.
30 See section 2 above.
31 As far as the elegiac fragment is concerned, the influence exerted by epic language is clearly shown by the apparatus of loci paralleli included in Pellizer/Tedeschi (1990) 62-64; see also the list of similar expressions and of lexical and content-related parallels in Rawles (2018) 116-7. The dependence on the Homeric poems and on Hesiod had already been highlighted in Babut (1971) 24-30.
32 Among the sympotic features of frr. 19-20 W. 2, Rawles (2018) 117-20 mentions the beginning of fr. 19 W. 2 as the answer to a traditional sympotic question ('What is best?'), the presence of a single addressee (cf. fr. 20.11-12 W. 2; [x]) and in general its nature of reflective elegy dealing with age and death.
33 See West's analysis mentioned in section 2 above.
34 Cf. Ford (1985) 83-84.
35 In addition to fr. 1 W. by Semonides and the disputed elegiac fragment, several passages of Archaic Greek poetry may be mentioned, including Mimn. fr. 2 W., Simon. PMG 520 and 521. Pind. Pyth. 8.88-97.
36 Many scholars believe that fr. 1 W. by Semonides is not complete; In particular, Frankel (1962 2) 231 thinks that the missing lines at the end of the poem might have contained an exhortation to enjoy the pleasures being offered by the symposium.
37 Hom. Il. 6.146-9: [x].
38 For an overview of all the passages featuring the simile and an analysis of its various versions see Sider (2001).
39 Cf. Sider (2001) 282; he quotes, inter alia, PMG 542 where Pittacus is mentioned and PMG 581 where Simonides criticizes the famous epigram by Cleobulus for Midas' grave. Both Sider (2001) 281-3 and Hubbard (2001) 230 (who in n. 16 refers back to his 1994 study), while assigning the fragment to Simonides and to Semonides respectively (as for Hubbard's position see below), identify the fragment as a polemic response to Mimnermus. This would be suggested by the reuse of the Homeric simile and of other Homeric expressions and terms. This interpretation is followed and expanded by Rawles (2018) 120-9, who locates Simonides' disagreement with Mimnermus within the former's broader criticism of the traditional aristocratic educational system (paideia) that implied the transmission of wisdom from the elders to the younger generations.
40 Frr. 15-16 W. 2 = Plut. De Her. mal. 42.872d.
41 Cf. Parsons (2001) 59.
42 Ll. 13-19: .......(.)] [x]; cf. West (1993) 10.
43 Cf. Sider (2001) 275-80; as rightly pointed out by Sider (276), one out of the three manuscripts containing the disputed elegiac fragment, i.e. ms. S, which belongs to the best family of manuscripts, features the first five lines that make up fr. 19 W. 2 whereas the others only contain lines 6-13 of the previous fr. 8 W.
44 Cf. West (1993) 11-14.
45 West believes that frr. 1-4 W. 2 belong to the elegy composed for the battle fought at Artemisium and frr. 8-9 W. 2 to the elegy devoted to the battle of Salamis: cf. Rutherford (2001) 33-38.
46 Cf. Rutherford (2001) 33-34.
47 Cf. Sider (2001) 285-6. Rawles (2018) 111-3 has recently taken up again the issue of whether frr. 19 and 20 W. 2 belong to the Plataea elegy. He argues against their coming from the same poem as the Plataea fragments; conversely, he thinks that they are part of a sympotic composition unrelated to historical elegy [a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead].
48 Cf. Hubbard (2001).
49 In Hubbard's opinion the right dating is 'late sixth-century'; for Semonides' chronology see 2 above.
50 Cf. Hubbard (2001) 231.
51 For these 'objective' criteria see Gargiulo (2011) 70-71.
52 Cf. Parsons (2001) 60-61.
53 Cf. Parsons (2001) 62.

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Part 1 of 2

Greek Readers' Digests (Again)? Some Lysianic [x] on P. Oxy. 31.2537
Linda Rocchi
From Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity: Problems of Authority from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance
Edited by Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, and Davide Massimo
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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1 Introduction

Over the last two centuries, Egypt has been the scene of a great number of excavations which have enormously increased our knowledge of Greek literature and culture, and Attic oratory makes no exception. What immediately leaps out, however, is that this remarkable season was quite grudging of findings of works of the logographer Lysias, especially considering the number of papyri devoted to the work of the other two 'giants' of Classical Athenian oratory, Isocrates and Demosthenes.1

The copious number of speeches written by the most prolific among the ancient orators seems to have amounted to the astonishing figure of at least 233 orations.2 Nevertheless, during the history of its transmission, this collection suffered severe reductions, to the effect that only 35 of these speeches have survived to the present day.3

The extant Lysianic papyri, despite being only 10, have proven to be a unique source of information on what the corpus of Lysias might have been before it was cut down to what it is today:4 as Obbink (2005) 104 pinpointed, while the Demosthenic and Isocratic papyri preserve, for the vast majority, known speeches of these authors, among the papyri containing the work of Lysias known orations 'are significantly outnumbered by papyri of Lysian speeches that did not survive antiquity'.

The place of honour among papyri dealing with unknown speeches, at least in terms of numbers, is certainly held by P. Oxy. 31.2537:5 this leaf of papyrus codex, dated palaeographically to the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd century AD, contains the [x] of at least 18 Lysianic speeches which were previously unknown to us -- or known just from the title and small quotations in lexicographers -- plus the summaries of four other speeches6 preserved in Pal. gr. 88 as well, for a remarkable total of 22 items.

The aim of the present article, which is part of the work done on the original papyrus over a six-month period at the University of Reading, will be that of analyzing some relevant passages in order to make some inferences on the original purpose and readership of this document. We will seek, firstly, to understand how these summaries were composed, with the purpose of narrowing down the kind of information in which the compiler -- and thus his public -- appeared to be more interested. Secondly, through a comparison of the differences and similarities between this set of summary and other ancient works labelled as such, this study will attempt to put P. Oxy. 31.2537 in its right position within the broader category of the [x] as a (sub)literary genre.7

In the hope of having achieved a satisfactory result, it might be worth highlighting the only certain and fundamental point in this discussion: whatever the exact original purpose of this peculiar list of summaries was, neither the permanent loss of the rest of the codex, nor the dramatically damaged state of the only surviving leaf of this manuscript had been able to obliterate the fact that, from 5th-century Athens to the Graeco-Roman Egypt, the interest in the text of Lysias, the brilliant metic logographer [In anc. Gr. lit., a prose-writer; especially, a historian; a chronicler; one who writes history in a condensed manner with short simple sentences.] that more than any other orator had been capable of portraying the everyday life of his adoptive country, was alive and well. And, judging from the substantial amount of speeches summarized in this papyrus which did not make it to the Mediaeval tradition, even more prosperous and flourishing than it was ever going to be in the centuries to come.

2 The Papyrus

Before briefly exploring the contents of this papyrus, it appears necessary to say a few words on the material state of this document. The codex from which P. Oxy. 31.2537 derives was compiled by a clearly experienced hand in what Turner/Parsons ([1987] 22) define 'formal mixed'.8 This means that whoever commissioned the manuscript was able to pay a professional scribe to produce it. The papyrus is written both on the recto [the side of a leaf (as of a manuscript) that is to be read first; a right-hand page] and on the verso [the side of a leaf (as of a manuscript) that is to be read second; a left-hand page], as is normally expected for a codex, and is 24.5 cm in height and 9.5 cm in breadth, 'with margins of c. 0.5 cm at the top and c. 2 cm at the bottom' (Rea [1966] 23).

The recto is comparatively in better conditions than the verso, but the original number of lines -- 48 on the recto and 45 on the verso -- is preserved on both sides. The break which runs down the margin appears too clear to suggest that there was more than one column per page (cf. Rea (1966] 23), and although the possibility cannot be completely discarded, it should be noted that a format with two columns on each page 'is used somewhat rarely in papyrus codices' (Turner [1977] 35), and is on the contrary more commonly employed in parchment ones. Moreover, if the smudged spot of ink on the top margin of the verso is to be interpreted as a trace of a page number (cf. Rea [1966] 23), it is worth bearing in mind that the top centre of the page was a preferred position for this kind of information (cf. Turner/Parsons (1987] 16): if there had been another column, the page number would have probably been between the two columns, and it would have been now completely devoured by the wide lacuna on the top margin of the page.

3 The Contents

These 22 Lysianic summaries are divided into seven sections according to the legal procedure,9 and are grouped together regardless of the supposed authenticity of the speech: the first section, which realistically started in the now lost previous page and was probably concerned with trials [x], 'for violence', contained at least two speeches, while the second section deals with four speeches of the [x] type, 'for slander', none of which is indisputably attributed to Lysias. The third subdivision, devoted to five speeches [x]. 'for ejection', occupies the bottom section of the recto and the top one of the verso, and is followed by two speeches whose typology is unknown, but which possibly represent cases of [x], 'exchange of properties'. The two following sections encompass, respectively, five speeches [x], 'for deposit', and three ~[x], 'for usurpation of civic rights', while the last one contained seven speeches of unknown type, of which only one is partially readable at the end of the verso.

Despite its fragmentary state, then, it is clear that P. Oxy. 31.2537 presents many features of interest. As was briefly mentioned above, this papyrus contains the summaries of many speeches that, although evidently still circulating in 2nd century Egypt, were previously unknown to us, or only partially known by the title or brief quotations in ancient lexica. What is particularly interesting, however, is that among the material presented in this papyrus -- both known and unknown speeches -- there are several orations whose authorship is uncertain.

4 Some Instructive Examples

One subdivision in particular can help to illustrate the compiler's modus operandi in arranging the material, and to gather information on his summarizing style: the section containing speeches on slander (II. 6-29 recto). This section encompasses four speeches: two speeches [x], summarized together (II. 6-15), the speech [x] (II. 16-22), and the speech [x] (II. 23-29). These four speeches appear together also in Pal. gr. 88, but in the reverse order.10

Let us first consider the summary of the two speeches [x] (Lys. 10-11), As was only briefly touched upon earlier, this [x] is, strictly speaking, a Doppel-[x], dealing both with Lys. 10 and Lys. 11 as two distinct Lysianic speeches.11 Scholars generally agree in considering Lys. 11 the epitome of Lys. 10: 12 Harpocration himself seems to be aware of the existence of the longer version of the speech only,13 and he does not even regard it without suspicion as an authentic Lysianic work.14 It might also be noted, in passing, that the fact that both the speeches are included in this set of summaries indicates the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd century AD as the terminus ante quem [GT: term before he] for the undue inclusion of Lys. 11 in the corpus.15

The speech [x] (Lys. 9) is quoted once by Harpocration with the indication [x]16 and, although it is the second item in a series of orations under a heading that specifically reads as [x], it shines through the whole speech that this trial does not deal with a [x] at all.17

Similarly, the inclusion of the speech [x] 18 (Lys. 8) among the [x] is, as with Lys. 9, primarily a matter of vague thematic affinity.19 The oration is defined by Todd (2007) 541 'the oddest of the speeches in the corpus of Lysias, and possibly of any Attic Orator', not least because it does not appear to be a forensic speech at all, it is not likely to have been written by Lysias, and there are even solid reasons to doubt that it was written during Lysias' lifetime. Accordingly, then, the oration is never mentioned by Harpocration.

Valerius Harpocration, was a Greek grammarian of Alexandria, probably working in the 2nd century AD. He is possibly the Harpocration mentioned by Julius Capitolinus (Life of Verus, 2) as the Greek tutor of Lucius Verus (2nd century AD); some authorities place him much later, on the ground that he borrowed from Athenaeus.

Harpocration's Lexicon of the Ten Orators, which has come down to us in an incomplete form, contains, in more or less alphabetical order, notes on well-known events and persons mentioned by the orators, and explanations of legal and commercial expressions. As nearly all the lexicons [dictionaries] to the Greek orators have been lost, Harpocration's work is especially valuable. Amongst his authorities were the writers of Atthides (histories of Attica), the grammarian Didymus Chalcenterus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and the lexicographer Dionysius, son of Tryphon. The book also contains contributions to the history of Attic oratory and Greek literature generally.

The Collection of Florid Expressions, a sort of anthology or chrestomathy [a collection of selected literary passages (usually from a single author); a selection of literary passages from a foreign language assembled for studying the language; or a text in various languages, used especially as an aid in learning a subject.] attributed to him by the Suda, is lost, but elements of it survive in later lexica. A series of articles in the margin of a Cambridge manuscript of the Lexicon forms the basis of the Lexicon rhetoricum Cantabrigiense by Peter Paul Dobree.

-- Harpocration, by Wikipedia

Another speech, [x] (II. 8-11 verso), the fifth and last speech in the section devoted to [x], is also regarded as dubious by Harpocration.20 Moreover, if the supplement [x], tentatively put forward by Rea (1966) 37 and highly consistent with the traces on the papyrus, is accepted in I. 43 verso, there would be here yet another oration of unknown legal typology on whose paternity Harpocration ([x] 25 K.) was unsure.

As for the other speeches, either they are so fragmentary that it is not possible to link them to any (partially) known speech, or, when the title is readable, the speech does not seem to be mentioned by Harpocration at all. At this point it should be sufficiently clear that the papyrus features many speeches on which Harpocration was, at best, suspicious. The presence of these speeches, and of several new ones, raises questions not only on the substance of this manuscript when it was still intact, but also -- and perhaps more interestingly -- on the real nature of this papyrus and the purpose for which it was originally compiled.

The first impression is that the compiler is clearly not making a selection: the presence of new and dubious speeches suggests that he was not aware of -- or simply not interested in -- matters of authenticity. It seems, on the contrary, that he was compiling a list, some sort of annotated catalogue of all the speeches by Lysias which were available at his time.

The impression is reinforced by the presence, on II. 24-28 verso, of a [x]. The existence of a Lysianic speech homonymous [having the same name.] to Isocr. 17 is assured by Photius (a 2030 Th.), who quotes, in this respect, the verb [x], which does not appear anywhere in the Isocratic text.21 Whether there existed two different speeches -- one by Lysias and one by Isocrates22 -- written for the two parties in the same lawsuit, or not, is perhaps open to question, although enough evidence that this had actually been the case has been put forward quite conclusively by Trevett (1990). What matters most for the present purpose is that, since -- as will be further explored -- there does not seem to be any kind of critical approach from the part of the epitomizer [One who abridges or summarizes; a writer of an epitome.], it appears safe to assume that he had a [x], clearly labelled as the work of Lysias, available, and included it, as it seems, without questions. Furthermore, the impression that the compiler was indeed making a list appears to be encouraged also by the format of the document: the papyrus is organized in seven different sections, and each one is labelled under a heading, clearly stating the legal charge and the number of speeches summarized in each group.23 Evidently, therefore, this feature adds up to the others and inevitably makes this catalogue look even more like a list.

There is, however, another criterion that should be taken into account in analyzing the original purpose of this manuscript: the style. As a matter of fact, the way in which this papyrus is written and organized, and the decisions the compiler made on the kind of information that should have been included and the one that should have been left out, sharply distinguish this papyrus from any other work containing summaries of speeches. There are, indeed, quite a few other ancient documents, characterized as [x], related to rhetorical works, which ought to be analyzed to evaluate differences and similarities between them, and to consider whether P. Oxy. 31.2537 fully fits in this category or not. In her 1998 book, Van Rossum-Steenbeek analyzed a selection of ancient summaries, comparable under many aspects to the ones in P. Oxy. 31.2537, and came to the conclusion that the [x] she surveyed were meant to be read along with, and not instead of, the original texts. However, the possibility that the list of summaries contained in P. Oxy. 31.2537 was actually meant to function as a Greek Readers' Digest, thus sparing the ancient reader the struggle of reading the torrential work Lysias in its full-length version, cannot be completely discarded.

Strictly speaking, the first known [x] to a Lysianic speech is to be found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus' critical work on the orator,24 where the argument to the speech is given prior to the actual text of the oration 'to make it clear whether [Lysias] employed a proper and pertinent opening'.25 Perhaps even more significant for the present study -- due to the fact that they are, as P. Oxy. 31.2537, original ancient documents -- are the [x] to Dem. 21 in P. Lond. lit. 179 (1st-2nd century AD), which Gibson (2002) 201 aptly defines as 'a rhetorical prologue and commentary' which shows 'predominantly rhetorical interests",26 and the two[x] to Isocr. 1 and 2 placed before their respective speeches in P. Kell. 3 gr. 95 (4th century AD), probably the work of a schoolteacher,27 which "offer simplistic summaries of the speeches that would serve nicely as brief introductions to the speeches for early readers' (McNamee [2001] 907-8). Other later [x] are the ones put together by Libanius in the 4th century AD, whose 'scholarly and pedagogical agenda' (Gibson [1999]172) is clear, given the fact that the rhetorician himself describes his work as a preparatory reading, i.e. an introduction to Demosthenes' speeches; the [x] to Isocrates found in the extant Mediaeval manuscripts and ascribed to Zosimus (5th-6th century AD), whose context is plainly scholastic and introductory; and the ones in the Mediaeval tradition of Demosthenes28 and Isaeus, clear products of rhetorical schools, as the insistence on Hermagoras' stasis theory goes to show.29

Stasis-theory seeks to classify rhetorical problems (declamation forensic and deliberative situations) according to the underlying dispute that each involves.1 Such a classification is of interest to the practising rhetor, since it may help him identify an appropriate argumentative strategy; for example, patterns of argument appropriate to a question of fact (did the defendant do what is alleged?) may be irrelevant in an evaluative dispute (was the defendant justified in doing that?).

Ancient rhetoricians did not always agree on how to classify a given problem. Consider the case of the adulterous eunuch. A husband may kill an adulterer in the act; a man finds a eunuch in bed with his wife and kills him; he is charged with homicide. According to Hermogenes, the stasis is definition: the facts are agreed, and the dispute is about how to categorise those facts.2 Whatever the eunuch was up to, it was clearly not a fully-fledged instance of adultery; it (and indeed he) lacked something arguably essential to that crime. Is this 'incomplete' adultery nevertheless to be classed as adultery? If so, then the killing is covered by the law on adultery; if not, the killing is unlawful. But the case could also be interpreted as counterplea (antilepsis).3 Counterplea is a form of the stasis of quality, in which the defence maintains that the act for which it is charged is lawful in itself. For example: a rhetor's encomium on death is followed by a rash of suicides; he is charged with crimes against the public interest (demosia adikemata), and defends himself by arguing that he broke no law in practising his profession.4 On this analysis of the adulterous eunuch, the husband's appeal to the law of adultery is seen as determining the stasis as counterplea without further ado.

Disagreement over the classification of a rhetorical problem raises the question of how stasis is in general to be ascertained. According to Hermogenes, one must inspect the krinomenon: if that is unclear, the stasis is conjecture (36.8-9); if it is clear but incomplete, the stasis is definition (37.1-2); if it is complete, the stasis is quality (37.14-15), which in turn has manifold subdivisions. However, Hermogenes does not tell us what the krinomenon is or how one identifies it. The krinomenon also figures in the alternative analysis of the adulterous eunuch, where it is linked to two other concepts, aition and sunekhon, which make no appearance in Hermogenes. We know that the triad aition-sunekhon-krinomenon goes back to Hermagoras (fr. 18 Matthes); but the significance of the terms in his system is uncertain,5 and (as we shall see) in subsequent sources they are used in strikingly inconsistent ways. This paper attempts to trace the history of these and related terms, and conceptions of the fundamentals of stasis-theory from Hermagoras on.

_______________

Notes:

1 For an overview of stasis-theory see D. Russell, Greek Declamation (Cambridge, 1983), 40-73; G. Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors (Princeton, 1983), 73-86; L. Calboli Montefusco, La dottrina degli status nella retorica greca e romana (Hildesheim, 1986); and my commentary on Hermogenes [x] (Oxford, forthcoming).

2 See Hermogenes 60.19-61.3 Rabe. This case is found also in Sen. Contr. 1.2.23. A simpler variant in which the eunuch is prosecuted for adultery (RG 5.158.12-15, 7.217.21-4; Syrianus II 114.1 Rabe) is evidently definition.

3 See RG 5.158.8-159.6 Walz.

4 See RG 8.407.14-16; the same case with a philosopher is found in Fortunatianus, RLM 92.26-9 Halm.

5 See D. Matthes, 'Hermagoras von Temnos', Lustrum 3 (1958), 58-214, esp. 166-78 (with references to earlier literature). More recently: K. Barwick, 'Augustinus Schrift De Rhetorica und Hermagoras von Temnos', Philologus 105 (1961), 97-110; id., 'Zur Erklarung und Geschichte der Staseislehre des Hermagoras von Temnos', Philologus 108 (1964), 80-101; id. 'Probleme in den Rhet. LL Ciceros und der Rhetorik des sogenannten Auctor ad Herennium', Philologus 109 (1965), 57-74; J. Adamietz, M. F. Quintiliani Institutionis Oratoriae Liber III (Studia et Testimonia Antiqua 2, Munich, 1966), 206-21; L. Calboli Montefusco, 'La dottrina del KPINOMENON', Athenaeum 50 (1972), 276-93.
 
-- The Substructure of Stasis-Theory from Hermagoras to Hermogenes, by Malcolm Heath, The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 1 (1994), pp. 114-129, 1994

What all these texts -- slightly different in length,30 predominant interest, and target readership -- have in common is, without exception, their subsidiary nature in relation to the original text and a didactic tone which are, in more than one occasion, undoubtedly patent [patents: archaic: accessible, exposed]: two shared features that, despite the homogeneity shining through these sources, do not seem to be constitutive parts of P. Oxy. 31.2537 as well. In this document, in fact, there is nothing to suggest that a subsequent reading of the actual speeches was encouraged by this set of [x]: it does not seem to serve as an introduction which aims at a better understanding of the Lysianic text, and no pedagogical or explanatory purpose can be envisaged. As a matter of fact, they appear to be a product concluded in itself, created to give a thorough, clear, and succinct overview of Lysias' (presumed) production, with no other aim but completeness.

Once again, the section devoted to speeches on slander (II. 6-29 recto) can help to illustrate this point.

The summary of Lys. 8 (II. 23-29) is the least useful to the purpose of the present study, and this is mainly due to the poor conditions of the papyrus in this section. This is particularly unfortunate, since the compiler's approach to such difficult a text would have given us further hints on his working principles. Nevertheless, a few useful clues still manage to emerge. First, the scribe or his source evidently recognized the [x] as a key aspect of this controversy: Rea's (1966) 27 suggestion [x] at I. 24 seems, indeed, the only possible reading of the traces. Second, as was already noted by the editor princeps Rea (1966) 30, 'it is clear that the hypothesis states the situation in the most general terms and makes no attempt to explain the very tangled transactions which made the speaker resign from his club': no personal names -- which, contrariwise, abound in the second part of the speech -- seem to be stated, and there is no mention of the pledging of the horse, which was a quite decisive aspect in the speaker's gradual epiphany of his associates' dishonesty. As is seems, then, the compiler is trying to keep it simple and straight to the main issue: the speaker was slandered by his companions [x who apparently said that he was associating with them against their will ([x] at I. 26).31

The [x] of Lys. 9 (II. 16-22), the speech on behalf of the soldier, which is, to some extent, vague and necessarily poor in details, deserves nevertheless our attention by virtue of some intriguing and yet overlooked aspects. First of all, together with the [x] of the speeches [x] (II. 6-15), these seven lines form part of the best-preserved portion of the papyrus. Secondarily -- and more importantly -- this [x] is entirely concerned with the narration of the events, that indeed seems to have been, in light of what is possible to infer from the extant text, the chief concern throughout the whole papyrus. This favourable concurrence of events adds to the fact that the [x] at issue deals with an extant speech, making it possible to outline, on the one hand, the relationship between the summary and its respective speech, and on the other hand, the compiler's synthesizing techniques. Gathering this kind of information on a fragmentary text is extremely useful precisely because, although the results are thoroughly verifiable only in uncommon occasions such as the present one, the general recognizable guidelines can reasonably be extended to the rest of the text as well.32

What clearly emerges from the analysis of this summary is that, although precise verbal coincidences33 suggest that the compiler was working with a text of the speech which was, if not identical, at least closely related to the one that represented the origin of the existing Mediaeval tradition, there was at least one attempt to provide the reader with a slightly reworked version, whose main purpose was probably to make explicit aspects of the plot which were implicit in the narrative of the original speech.34 Evidence of this way of proceeding can be easily tracked down in the very first line of the [x], where the compiler makes clear that the speaker had just got back from a previous military expedition: this detail, central to the understanding of the soldier's rash reaction towards the magistrates, is never specifically stated in the speech, but it is, without much effort, deducible from the narrative. This seems to suggest that the compiler, albeit not interested in matters of authorship and authenticity, at least wanted to get the story straight.

It could be argued, at this point, that the scribe might have tried to make patent some details of the narrative as a way of helping the reader during the examination of the actual speech. But the details he underlines, as was said, are easily evincible [to display clearly: reveal]: he never adds new information. Although, admittedly, the compiler's remarks could help the reader reach a better understanding of the text of the orations, this appears to be more of a side effect than the chief purpose: the scribe's primary concern is not much to clarify the text, but rather to relate plainly the contents of the speeches in what appears to be a literary product conceived as a means of knowing what is in the speech without actually reading it.

Another possible clue which might corroborate this impression -- that of a compiler who sometimes deduces details from the speeches and inserts them in his own narrative to make it flow more smoothly and concisely -- could be glimpsed through a confusion on personal names in I. 17, the first of this summary, where the speaker, Polyaenus, is identified as Callicrates. This confusion, for once, could be not entirely the compiler's fault, but rather arise from an abstruse remark in Lys. 9.5, where the speaker informs the jury that the magistrates apparently threatened to imprison him, [x], 'saying that "Polyaenus has been in town for no less time then Callicrates"'.35 As it is, the sentence admittedly makes little sense and is undeniably easy to misunderstand: what the speaker is clumsily trying to say is that the magistrates found his complaints meaningless, because Callicrates, presumably a fellow-conscript, had been residing in the city after his last campaign for the same -- or even a shorter -- period of time as the speaker, Polyaenus.36 Evidently the compiler, while trying to extrapolate from the text the defendant's name in order to set it out in front of the wondering reader, jumped to the wrong conclusion.37

The summary of Lys. 10-11 (II. 6-15) -- which is the longest in the preserved section of this codex38 -- represents one of the most interesting sections of P. Oxy. 31.2537. The compiler, after a brief statement on the only relevant event,39 devoted the longer section of this [x] to highlighting the only notable discrepancy between the two speeches at issue. Half of this summary (II. 10-15) is indeed solely committed to the mention of the difference between father's and son's ages in the two speeches: in the first one, at the moment of his father's death the speaker was 13 years old and the father 67,40 whereas in the second one, the speaker was 12 and the father 70.41 None of Lysias' client's refutation of Theomnestus' argument and none of his rather detailed remarks on legal terminology (cf. §§16-19) -- which probably played a central role in his rebuttal -- has made it to the [x] of this speech. Nonetheless, this dearth of information does not feel particularly striking if the nature of the text provided by this papyrus is taken into account: even a brisk reading goes to show that this document is not primarily concerned with any kind of 'rhetorical analysis' (Rea [1966] 25), but rather it aims to underline the main elements of the plot, in order to help the reader understand the gist of the trial.

In light of what has been said, it might appear surprising that, in this instance, there appears to be an attempt to depart from the nitty-gritty of the situation and give some sort of comment on a detail in the text of the speeches. It should be noted, however, that this remark is connected to a discrepancy relevant not much in itself, as a textual feature separate from the recounted facts, but rather in its implications for the content of the speeches, namely the chronological frame enclosing the events. Moreover, the fact that the ages do not match in the two speeches (II. 12- 13 [x]) represents indeed the only difference between them, at least when considering the plot: this detail, then, could have been used as a sort of identifying mark to tell the speeches apart -- or even as a kind of 'trivia' information.

5 Further Evidence: The Speeches For Euthynus against Nicias (II. 18-24 verso)

The idea of a compiler chiefly interested in the narrative plot of the speeches, strongly suggested by the style of the summaries thus far examined, seems to be supported also by a very interesting parallel: that between the double [x] of the speeches [x] (II. 18-24 verso) and the summary of Isocr. 21, the speech [x], found in Stephanus Skylitzes' 12th-century commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric.42

As was probably the case with the [x],43 Lysias and Isocrates had acted as logographers44 for the two opposing parties in the same lawsuit -- Lysias for the defence and Isocrates for the prosecution. It is quite obvious, then, that the background story is the same for both speeches, as is confirmed also by the fact that Rea (1966) 36 was able to supplement the first three lines of the Lysianic [x] on the basis of Isocr. 21. This summary, as usual, does not strive to collect details useful for a rhetorical analysis of the text, but rather to relate plainly and straightforwardly the salient elements of this litigation. Interestingly, it seems possible that the last part of the [x] was devoted, as in the double [x] in II. 6-15 recto, to the mention of the most notable -- at least to the compiler's mind -- differences between the two speeches summarized here. Indeed, in I. 22 there seems to be a reference to the fact that in one of the speeches the orator, possibly Euthynus,45 spoke ill of Isocrates46 ([x]):47 once again, a nice 'fun fact' about the speech at issue. Leaving aside the implications of this remark on Isocrates, which would deserve a specific discussion of its own,48 it is important to notice, here, that the summarizing techniques employed by the compiler of P. Oxy. 31.2537 seem to share some revealing similarities with the summary of Isocr. 21 put together by Stephanus.

While commenting on a passage in Arist. Rh. 1392 b 14-15, a section embedded within a discussion on possible and impossible used in arguments from probability,49 Stephanus offers a brief summary of Isocrates' Against Euthynus50 to explain Aristotle's use of a quotation from this speech.51 Stephanus' summary, like the ones featured in our papyrus, is quite clearly mainly focused on the actual events from which the trial arose. Now, since Stephanus is commenting on Aristotle, and not on Isocrates, his summary of the speech probably did not aim to encourage or make easier a further reading of the Isocratic speech: its purpose was just that of giving to the reader an idea of the contents of the speech, without actually having to read it, to understand what Aristotle was talking about.

The fact that the information, the wording, and the structure of Stephanus' summary are quite similar to the ones presented by the summary of the Lysianic speech encompassed in these lines could represent further evidence for the fact that the list of [x] compiled here might be a sort of annotated catalogue, whose purpose was the same as Stephanus' summary: make the reader aware of the contents while saving him the struggle of reading the original work, just like the modern Readers' Digest.

6 Conclusions

When it was still intact, P. Oxy. 31.2537 must have been a truly remarkable document. As a matter of fact, when one considers that only one leaf of that codex, retrieved by chance from a rubbish heap in Egypt, has handed down to posterity the plot of 22 speeches by Lysias,18 of which were previously unknown, it seems quite likely that almost all the other pages had been equally rich in new information on the work of the logographer.52

But 'quantity' does not necessarily mean 'quality', and the fact that the compiler of P. Oxy. 31.2537 does not seem concerned with '[x]-related' problems has been repeatedly pinpointed during the examination of this material: at least four [x], and potentially even more, were not furnished with Harpocration's seal of approval, and were nonetheless featured in this collection.

Rea (1966) 24-25 rightly pointed out that there is a possibility for Harpocration to have been in Oxyrhynchus during the rule of Marcus Aurelius. It is also likely that, along with his host, Valerius Pollio, and his host's son, Valerius Diodorus, the lexicographer had been part of a coterie of intellectuals with a strong interest in Attic oratory53 which revolved around the middle-Egyptian region. The presence of this 'centre for oratorical studies' right in 2nd-century Oxyrhynchus could lead the reader into thinking that there could have been a link between that group of scholars and the set of [x] collected in P. Oxy. 31.2537. This, however, does not seem to be the case. As Turner (1952) 92 clarifies, in fact, 'for their work such persons would not be content with less than the best available texts of Classical authors', and the summaries presented in this papyrus not only do not seem to fit in this description themselves, but also appear to be derived from a collection of Lysianic speeches which had nothing to do with the erudite discussions on authenticity that were realistically going on in Valerius Pollio's house.

Valeri Pollio (in Latin Valerius Pollio) was a Greek philosopher of the School of Alexandria.

He lived in the time of the emperor Hadrian and was the father of the philosopher Diodorus of Alexandria. It appears mentioned in the Suides as Πωλίων.

-- Valeri Pollio, by Wikipedia

Moreover, along with the fact that the compiler of these [x] seems completely oblivious of questions of authorship, he also appears to neglect any kind of rhetorical analysis of the speech at issue. This lack of interest is particularly intriguing precisely because, on the contrary, a rhetorical examination of the key aspects of the speeches manifests itself as a prominent feature of other known summaries of rhetorical material: for instance, Libanius' [x] to the speeches of Demosthenes, put together for 'the elderly and ill-fated proconsul of Constantinople, Lucius Caelius Montius' (Gibson (1999] 173) around 352 AD, and the summaries found in the Mediaeval manuscripts of the works of Isocrates, Isaeus, and Demosthenes all appear to be introductory works, clear products of the rhetorical school, and influenced deeply by the rhetorical stasis theory outlined by Hermagoras (mid-2nd century BC). It could be argued that perhaps the [x] as a genre developed over time, and that the summaries contained in P. Oxy. 31.2537, being older than the ones just mentioned, were also, in a way, more rudimentary. Nevertheless, to undermine this assumption it is sufficient to examine P. Lond. lit. 179, a papyrus dated to the end of the 1st or the beginning of the 2nd century AD which contains the summary of the Dem. 21 and shows interests similar to the one presented by the later [x] mentioned above. P. Kell. 3 gr. 95 (4th century AD) is, under many aspects, similar to P. Oxy. 31.2537, and seems to have been produced in a school context, a fact that could suggest a similar context for our papyrus as well. Nevertheless, despite its similarities with P. Oxy. 31.2537 -- namely, the codex-format and the brevity of the summaries -- P. Kell. 3 gr. 95 is remarkably different precisely in those characteristics which make it more likely to be a school text aimed at encouraging a subsequent reading of the speeches it summarizes: the [x] are followed by the original speeches, and the speeches themselves are accompanied by some simple marginal comments.54 Moreover, P. Kell. 3 gr. 95 seems to share with the other documents containing [x] a subsidiary nature in relation to the original text and a patent pedagogical intention: two features that, as was highlighted above, do not seem to be sought for by the compiler of P. Oxy. 31.2537. 55

The only elements that appear to interest him, in fact, are the ones connected to the plot, the relation of the events relevant to the trial: once again, the section on [x] has been particularly helpful in understanding this point, mainly because the conclusions drawn on the summarizing method of the compiler had been positively verified on the original version of the text -- or at least a version that was really close to the text as it was transmitted thanks to Pal. gr. 88 56 -- and consequently applied more in general to the remaining [x].

The impression that the compiler was particularly keen on relating, plainly and simply, only the facts relevant to the trial seems supported by the fact that even in the (very few) instances in which some sort of departure from the heart of the matter can be detected, the information provided could be explained as a sort of curiosity, a 'fun fact' that manifests itself as the most notable aspect of the situation. Interestingly, these remarks appear precisely in the two couples of 'double-[x]' featured in this collection: on the one hand, the discrepancy in the ages of father and son in the two speeches [x] (II. 11-16 recto), which represents, in practice, the only real difference between the two (at least with regard to the plot); on the other hand, in the speech [x] (II. 18- 23 verso), the curious remark that someone apparently spoke ill of Isocrates the speechwriter (II. 22-23 verso). These details, then, could easily be explained as a service to the reader to distinguish between two speeches which dealt with the exact same situation.

However, once the structure of these summaries has been examined and a subsidiary or introductory nature in relation to the full-length versions of the speeches is ruled out, a central question, that of the original purpose and destination of this collection of summaries, is still left unanswered. If the aim that Van Rossum-Steenbeek (1998) 161 identified for the selection of [x] she analyzed was, consistently, that of accompanying, clarifying, and commenting on the texts they were related to, but P. Oxy. 31.2537 does not fit in this category, in which category does it fit instead?

The short and honest answer to this question is, of course, that it is impossible to know for sure. What is possible, however, is to try nonetheless and sift through some tentative suggestions. One of the most striking aspects that comes to mind, while considering P. Oxy. 31.2537, is undoubtedly its relative similarity with the inventories of books on papyri analyzed by Puglia (2013) which, in fact, 'sono quasi sempre modesti e semplici' [GT: 'I am almost always modest and simple'], and reveal 'scopi per lo piu pratici e non filologici' [GT: 'scope for the most practical and non-philological'] (p. 4), just like the [x] collected on P. Oxy. 31.2537. Moreover, although many of them appear to have been produced for private use, thus presenting a slapdash format which has nothing to do with the neat arranging of the material on P. Oxy. 31.2537, there are nevertheless some notable exceptions such as, for instance, P. Ross. Georg. 1.22, which is written more roughly but, as our document, appears to be featured on a piece of papyrus that was not re-used, but was meant exactly for the purpose of compiling these inventories.57 The idea of an inventorial destination for P. Oxy. 31.2537 could indeed be fitting, also because the compiler, as was said, does not appear to be making a selection, but rather a list of all the putative works of Lysias at his disposal, since he includes a great deal of items regardless of their authenticity (cf. above). As Canfora (1995) 166 emphasizes, for the speeches of the Attic Orators 'non c'era stata [ ... ] la determinazione [ ... ] di un testo "ufficiale"' [GT: 'Not there had been [...] the determination [...] of an "official" text '], and the fact that in 2nd-century Egypt there could have been corpora of Lysianic speeches resembling what Dover (1968) 2 denominates 'Corpus G', i.e. the collection of works on which Pol. gr. 88 was drawn -- or indeed the elusive 'Corpus A', the (alleged) opera omnia of the metic logographer58 -- is indeed quite likely, and it does not seem improbable that, at some point, there might have arisen a need or a desire to catalogue that astonishing amount of material. This was probably being circulated in single collections of speeches arranged thematically around the same legal issues, a mode of circulation that would be mirrored in the subdivisions in which this papyrus is organized.59 Nevertheless, if this is really the case, it would seem improbable that such a huge number of speeches of Lysias could be contained in one single private library. Judging from this, and from the relative elegance of the format of P. Oxy. 31.2537, this leaf of papyrus codex could perhaps be seen as part of the catalogue of a public library, such as P. Oxy. 27.2456, 27.2462, 33.2659, and 35.2739. 60 We should note, however, that these catalogues were generally written on rolls, and were mostly arranged in alphabetical order.61 Moreover, none of them presents [x] attached to the titles mentioned.

Other interpretations are equally possible. If P. Oxy. 31.2537 were indeed some sort of annotated catalogue, as the same structure of the headings could suggest, there might not be the need to think of the inventory of a library, public or private, but rather of the catalogue of a bookseller, whose business interests highly advised against a clear-cut distinction between [x] and not-so-[x] works of a given author. In this case, the short summary of the speech, with -- when convenient -- an indication of the 'fun facts' about it, would have served as a sort of 'teaser trailer' of the oration, compiled in order to intrigue the potential reader -- and lead him to buy a copy of the work at issue. The very neat handwriting and arrangement of the material, however, which are in sharp contrast with other documents that have been identified as catalogues of booksellers,62 seems to discourage this hypothesis.

Lastly, another possibility has to be taken into account. As it has been tried to pinpoint, the main purpose of these brief summaries seems to have been that of providing the reader with 'condensed versions of texts', and no ancillary relationship with the original speech can be detected. If the most accurate definition of a Readers' Digest is that of 'a digested collection of information consisting of [ ... ] material derived from or based on earlier writings, which is meant to be read for its own sake' (Van Rossum-Steenbeek [1998]161), it might not be desperately unconceivable that these [x], unlike the ones analyzed by Van Rossum-Steenbeek, could, all things considered, fall quite nicely under that definition. The very format of this document -- the codex, much more manoeuvrable and 'user-friendly' than the roll -- seems to characterize the ideal reader for P. Oxy. 31.2537 as someone who does not wish to read this work continuously, but rather to browse quickly through its contents and locate easily the item they are looking for. If this latter hypothesis is true, then the readership P. Oxy. 31.2537 was directed to (or commissioned by) was perhaps represented by that fancy (but perhaps not always erudite) upper class of the Oxyrhynchus region, which sometimes could have been, as often happens today, too busy -- or perhaps too lazy -- to read the entire monstrous bulk of the works of Lysias, but still had the desire to make a good impression and strike their equally rich, and possibly much more learned, friends as profound connoisseurs of the speeches of the famous logographer. Provided, ca va sans dire [GT: it goes without saying], that no-one decided to ask too much.

7 Appendix: Texts

col. 1 recto, II. 6-29

[x]

col. 2 verso II. 18-28

[x]

col. 2 verso II. 42-45

[x]

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Notes

1 A preliminary search on the LDAB and on MP 3 showed that there are around 130 papyri transmitting the work of Isocrates, and around 200 documents containing speeches of the Demosthenic corpus (last checked on 24/04/2020).

2 Cf. Medda (2007) 40. In Roman antiquity, there existed 425 speeches attributed to Lysias, but Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Caecilius of Calacte deemed authentic only 233 of them (cf. X orat. 836a). The exact number can be extrapolated from Photo Bibl. 262, 488b, while Dian. Hal. Lys. 17 mentions generically 'no fewer than two hundred orations' ([x]). To the present day, there are one 172 titles of speeches by Lysias, easily traceable thanks to the painstaking reconstruction put together by Blass (1887) 357-75. which have to be integrated with the ones in P. Oxy.31.2537.

3 Codex unicus for orr. 3-31 (the so- called corpusculum, cf. Dover (1968] 2) is Pal. gr. 88, generally labelled as X, a manuscript dated to the 11th century (cf. Cavallo [1986]127), today in Heidelberg. This codex is entirely made up of speeches representing different genres and authors: along with these 32 Lysianic orations, one of which, the Against Nicides, was completely obliterated due to a physical damage of the manuscript, there are two speeches by Alcidamas, two by Anthistenes, one by Demades, and the Gorgian Encomium of Helen. Nevertheless, orr. 1-2 in Pal. gr. 88 have been represented in other Mediaeval manuscripts as well: it is worth noting, as Indelli (2001) 198 does, how 'la piu ampia tradizione delle prime due orazioni del Corpus Lysiacum rispetto alle altre trovi un riscontro nei pur scarsi ritrovamenti papiracei' [GT: 'the broader tradition of the first two prayers of Corpus Lysiacum compared to the others finds a confirmation in the scarce ones papyrus findings']: notably, P. Londo inv. 2852 + P. Ryl. 3.489 offers fragment of the [x], and so does P. Lauro inv. 3/284 B, while PSI 11.1206 gives some bits of the [x]. This coincidence seems to show that 'forse, non soltanto in eta medievale e umanistica, ma gia nell'Egitto del II-III secolo d.C. esisteva un piu spiccato interesse per questi due discorsi' [GT: 'perhaps, not only in the medieval and humanistic ages, but already in Egypt of the 2nd-3rd century AD there was a more pronounced interest in these two speeches'] (Indelli (2001] 198). Orr. 32-34 of the corpus were preserved thanks to extensive quotations by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, while the [x], reported by Plato's Phaedrus and 'probably a pastiche by Plato himself' (Todd [2007]5), is ordinarily labelled as or. 35 in modern editions of Lysias' work.

4 Cocurullo (2001) lists and analyzes six of them (P. Hibeh 14, P. Oxy. 13.1606, P. Lond. inv. 2852 + P. Ryl. 3.489, P. Rain. 13, PSI 11.1206, and our P. Oxy. 31.2537), to which we must also add the already mentioned P. Lauro inv. 3/284 B, P. Oxy. 69.4715, P. Oxy. 69.4716, and PSI inv. 966.

5 Rea (1966) 23-37.

6 These are Lys. 8-11, grouped under the heading [x] but in the reverse order (cf. below).

7 Van Rossum-Steenbeek (1998) xiii aptly describes subliterary papyri 'as a subcategory of literary papyri because, on the one hand and in contrast to documentary papyri, the texts are usually written in literary hands and their contents have certain links with literary texts. On the other hand, the texts are not considered literary themselves because they do not belong to one of the traditional literary genres in view of their contents and/or style and because they give no evidence of literary pretentions'.

8 Described also as Strenger Stil by Schubart (1925) 124-8. and as unciale bacchilidea by Norsa (1939) 21-22, who defines it as a 'scrittura snella e slanciata, che sa armonizzare elegantemente il contrasto tra lettere larghe e lettere strettissime' [GT: 'slender and slender writing, which knows how to elegantly harmonize the contrast between large letters and very narrow letters']. The most refined example is represented by P. Lond. inv. 733, edited for the first time by Kenyon (1897).

9 The organization based on the legal procedure is not a specific trait of this papyrus only: the same principle can be envisaged also in P. Oxy. 13.1606 and in P. Rain. 13 (cf. Medda [2003] 27- 28), and vestiges of it are still visible in Pal. gr. 88: d. Dover (1968) 7-11.

10 As firstly pointed out by Rea (1966) 23-24. It might also be noted that the fact that short speeches by the same author did often circulate together on the same roll explains why some of these 'conservano un ordinamento stabile in tutta la tradizione' [GT: 'retain a stable order throughout the tradition'] (Cavallo [1986] 121). The order of the speeches [x] (Lys. 8-11) is quite clearly not completely fixed, but it seems safe to assume that they started to circulate as a unitary group at a rather early stage.

11 Cf. II. 12-13 [x] and, most notably, I. 15 [x].

12 No major commentary on the work of Lysias appears to argue otherwise, and Lys. 11 'is verbally so close to Lys. 10 as to enable textual emendation in the latter' (Todd [2007] 702), so that the fact that it was an epitome of the full version of the speech seems unquestionable.

13 Or it could be that the fact that Lys. 11 was simply an epitome of Lys. 10 was so blatantly obvious to him that he did not really deem it worthy of his time. Furthermore, Harpocration appears to be concerned mainly with the antiquated words found in the ample discussion on legal terminology in Lys. 10.16-19, which are notably missing in Lys. 11.

14 Harpocration quotes the speech in six separate occasions, adding the words [x], 'if [the speech] is genuine', four times: Harp. [x] 179, 201, [x] 64, 76 (with the [x]-clause), [x] 106, [x] 5 K. (without any specifications).

15 The fact that Harpocration never mentioned Lys. 11 encouraged scholars to think that it was produced after his time. According to Rea ([1966] 29), 'this papyrus does not disprove that theory, but it is strange if the [x] turned up after Harpocration's work on the orators and was accepted here without comment'. While it is true that the papyrus is not decisive in determining whether Lys. 11 was put together after Harpocration's time or not, the fact that, even if it was, there are no comments on the matter seems actually hardly surprising, given that the papyrus offers barely any comment at all.

16 Harp. [x] 66 K.

17 Although it is clear that the speaker, Polyaenus, did slander the magistrates, it is also clear that he was never brought to court by means of a 5[x] -- he was simply summarily fined.

18 It is interesting to highlight that, although the titles of the speeches in this papyrus and on Pal. gr. 88 generally coincide, 'the overlap [ ... ] is not in this instance complete' (Todd [2007] 546): while the Mediaeval manuscript reads [x], P. Oxy. 31.2537 only gives the bit [x]. Evidently, therefore, Theodorus -- the 'principal scribe' (Sosower [1987] 7) of Pal. gr. 88 -- or his sources justified the outlandish presence of Lys. 8 in the corpus by clearly labelling it in the title as an 'accusation of calumny', but the compiler of P. Oxy. 31.2537 did not find this clarification in his sources, nor he felt the need to explain the presence of this peculiar speech among the ones concerned with slander.

19 As Dover ([1968] 9) puts it, 'the speaker of VIII is obsessed with what his associates have said about him' (author's italics), and the concepts of [x] (§§3, 5-6, 14, 16-17, 19-20), [x] (§§3, 15) and [x] (§§3, 7, 13) function as a Leitmotiv throughout the whole speech. While considering the Mediaeval manuscripts, Blass ([1887] 378) was the first to notice that [x] is, in this section, not much the specific legal charge joining together these four speeches, but rather some sort of fil rouge [GT: red string] binding them in more generic terms, as a thematic connection that can be loosely envisaged, 'provided that [the speeches] are read hastily and superficially' (Dover (1968) 9).

20 Harp. [x] 209 K.

21 And which, lamentably, cannot be reconstructed in any of its forms anywhere in II. 24-28 verso. Being able to supplement this verb in the text of P. Oxy. 31.2537 would have constituted almost incontestable evidence of the fact that the speech mentioned by Photius and the one summarized in these lines are one and the same.

22 As was first suggested by Dover (1968) 21-22.

23 E.g. in I. 6 recto: [x].

24 Dion. Hal. Lys. 20-21. The word [x] is also used to refer to a rapid outline of the speech's occasion placed before the text in §29, and in Isoc. 9 to define a long paraphrase of the contents of the speech.

25 Cf. Dion. Hal. Lys. 22.

26 On the rhetorical (and grammatical) interests of this text, see most recently Otranto (2012), especially 162-5.

27 Cf. Worp/Rijksbaron (1997) 28.

28 As Canfora's ([1968] 96) inventory of Demosthenes' Greek manuscripts plainly shows, several Demosthenic manuscripts contained 'altro materia le biografico-esegetico' [GT: 'other material biographical-esegetic'], among which there were 'hypotheseis anonime dei grandi discorsi giudiziari di argomento politico (che, quando non sono premesse alle relative orazioni, precedono i relativi "Commentari di Ulpiano")' [GT: 'anonymous hypotheseis of the great judicial speeches of political argument (which, when there are no premises to the related orations, precede the relative "Commentaries of Ulpian")'] (p. 19). These manuscripts clearly represent editions put together for the use of highly educated people.

29 Cf. Meccariello (2014) 22- 23.

30 Although generally longer than the ones in P. Oxy. 31.2537, with the exception of P. Kell. 3 gr. 95.

31 Rea ([1966) 30) quotes Lys. 8.5 ([x]). If Carey's ([2007] 481) conjecture [x] is correct, the compiler seemingly conflated two verbs into one that implies them both.

32 This idea has been expressed as an essential precondition of her work on Euripidean [x] by Meccariello (2014) xiii.

33 E.g. [x] (I. 18) [x] (§4), [x] (I. 18) [x] (§6), [x] (I. 19) [x] (§6) and the reference to the [x] (I. 20), a term which, such as [x], appears to be used in the generic meaning of 'clerks' instead of the more appropriate [x] (cf. MacDowell [1994] 161).

34 For example, in this papyrus the plural [x] (I. 19) is employed, while in the Mediaeval text these public figures are designated with the rather cryptic [x] (§6). On the basis of Lys. 14.21 and 16.16, where the plural indicates 'not the Nine Arkhons but more broadly "officials", (Todd [2007] 583), it is now preferred to regard Ctesicles not as the Chief Archon but as one of the generals, reading the term [x], more broadly, as 'person who holds and [x] (cf. MacDowell [1994] 157). Whether the compiler of P. Oxy. 31.2537 read [x] in the narrow or in the broad sense is completely irrelevant, but it is interesting to notice that he simplified a potentially tricky sentence by suppressing the personal name and combining into one single definition Ctesicles and his 'fellow-generals' or 'attendants'.

35 According to Rea ([1966] 30), 'it looks as if the epitomizer had a different text or drew the wrong conclusion'. Both solutions are in theory possible, but the sentence in itself is so convoluted that it is perhaps enough to explain the compiler's mistake, without postulating the existence of a concurrent text.

36 It could even be argued that this pythoness-like sentence was the reason why, although the name of the speaker can, after some reasoning, be rather confidently worked out, the speech was known with such a generic title as [x], since normally, in the Lysianic corpus, when names do not appear in the heading it is because they are nowhere to be found in the text: perhaps no-one felt sure enough about the name of the defendant as to immortalize it in the speech title.

37 It should be noted that the compiler, at least in two occasions, drew a sign on the left-hand margin of the page to indicate the presence of textual discrepancies: first between II. 13-14 recto ([x]), and second between II. 30-31 recto ([x] ?), where there are good reasons to suspect that the name [x] was, in other versions of the text, substituted by the name [x]. The fact that, in this instance, no such device is employed could suggest either that the vulgate of this speech, at that time, was indeed different and that the compiler did not double-check it against the secondary version which, for some reason, was passed on to the Mediaeval tradition -- or originated at a later point in the tradition -- or, more likely, that there was ultimately no concurring text: he simply misinterpreted a rough-hewn sentence which is admittedly easy to misinterpret, and surely not likely to be read twice by someone whose main concern seems to be not much accuracy in details but rather clarity in the general picture.

38 With nine lines of text (not counting the speeches' title), it is even longer than the [x] in II. 18-23 verso (consisting of six lines of text), [x],' which equally examines two speeches at a time.

39 The fact that Theomnestus has accused Lysias' client of having killed his own father is the cause and sole object of the trial: nothing else happens. The compiler could have described the previous sequence of trials, but this information was not strictly relevant to the present litigation, and he probably found more appropriate to make his reader aware of the two potential chronological frames within which it was possible to set the events.

40 Cf. Lys. 10.4 and 27.

41 Cf. Lys. 11.1-2 and9.

42 For date and author of this commentary, see Wolska-Conus (1976).

43 Cf. above.

44 There are reasons to suspect that at least part of the ancient sources believed Isocrates to have also delivered the speech in his own persona. For instance, in I. 22 verso of P. Oxy. 31.2537 Lysias' client seems to be said to have uttered abuse towards Isocrates (cf. below), not towards Isocrates' client. The compiler of this papyrus proves elsewhere that he (or his source) is aware of the fact that speechwriter and litigant -- at least in our extant court speeches -- do not often coincide: this is patent from the observation, added to the title of the speech[x] (II. 12-14 verso), that Lysias delivered the speech himself (I. 12 [x]). The fact that the compiler considered this note significant appears to stem directly from his consciousness that this was a deviation from the norm, so his remark on Isocrates being reviled in court is in itself very interesting -- there could have been something, in Lysias' speech, that led the compiler to believe that Isocrates was speaking on behalf of Nicias. Moreover, both Stephanus' summary of Isocr. 21 and the wording of the Aristotelian passage seem to imply that Isocrates himself delivered the speech. On this, see Rocchi (forthcoming).

45 He is said to be a better orator than Nicias in Isocr. 21.5.

46 As Trevett ([1990] 25 n. 15) clarifies, 'although it is possible that the epitomist was saying that Isocrates abused Euthynos (or Lysias)' it is far more probable 'that in such a brief summary he would have confined himself to the contents of the speech, and that he is describing abuse of Isocrates contained in the speech'.

47 Martinelli Tempesta (CPF 1/2** 974) points out that the traces on the papyrus are not entirely compatible with [x], so there is a palaeographic reason to be suspicious of the most logical supplement, [x], suggested by Cocurullo ([2001] 160) and Carey ([2007] 480). The trace as it is now -- though of course one can never turn aside the possibility that part of the ink was scraped away over time -- appears to be more compatible with [x], in which case the copyist might have got confused and written [x] instead of [x] (cf. Gignac [1976] 275-6).

48 This can be found in Rocchi (forthcoming).

49 That is, 'a rhetorical device used in ancient Athenian litigations as a means of persuading the jury' (Fairchild [1978] 49).

50 This text can be read in CAG XXI/2, 299: [x].

51 [x].

52 Either an unprecedented stroke of luck presented philologists with the only two pages in the codex which were abnormally rich in new titles or the presence of the summaries of a considerable number of new speeches was consistent throughout the whole codex -- or the whole section of the codex dedicated to Lysias' work.

53 Valerius Pollio wrote a [x], while Valerius Diodorus was author of an [x]: cf. Turner ([1952] 92), who refers to Suda [x] 1150 (s.v. [x]) and [x] 2166 (s.v. [x]), and to Phot. Bibl. 149 and 150 (nn. 1-2). A relationship between Harpocration and Valerius Pollio seems to be confirmed also by P. Oxy. 18.2192, a private letter with a book request in which both a Harpocration and a Pollio are mentioned. On this papyrus, see Otranto ([2000] xxiv-xxv and especially 55-61) and, most recently, Coles et al. ([2007] 282-6).

54 Cf. Worp/Rijksbaran (1997, especially 28-30).

55 Of course, it is not possible entirely to rule out the possibility that P. Oxy. 31.2537 was indeed produced in a scholastic environment. However, along with the reasons mentioned above, it should perhaps be noted that Lysias does not seem to have been as popular as Isocrates and Demosthenes as a school reading.

56 That the text the summary was primed on was close to the one preserved by the Mediaeval tradition of Lysias is guaranteed by the fact that the discrepancy between the ages of the father and the son in Lys. 10-11 is mentioned in this [x] as well (II. 11-15 recto).

57 Cf. Otranto ([2000] 87) and Puglia ([2013] 89-90).

58 As was mentioned above, Lysias was said to have composed 425 speeches. Assuming an average of 22 speeches per leaf (the number we have in P. Oxy. 31.2537), this codex should then have been made up of c. 18-20 leaves (i.e. 9-10 sheets, cf. Turner [1977]. esp. 43-54) in order to contain them all. This slim number of leaves could suggest that the codex, when it was still complete, might have contained not only summaries of speeches of Lysias, but of other authors (orators?) as well. However, as Cavallo ([1986] 123) has shown, 'non s'incontrano fino allo scorcio del III secolo codici che si mostrino materialmente adeguati ad un contenuto ampio' [GT: 'Not up to the end of the third century one meets codes that are shown materially suitable for a broad content'] (author's italics).

S9 Cf. above.

60 Analyzed by Otranto ([2000] 51-54; 44-49; 29-38; 41-43). Two of them (P. Oxy. 33.2659 and 35.2739) are dated to the 2nd century, one (27.2462) to mid 2nd century, and one (27.2456) to the late 2nd century.

61 Cf. Otranto ([2000] xii). It is worth noting, however, that P. Oxy. 35.2739 is not in alphabetical order. Moreover, these catalogues contained lists of plays (comedies and, in the case of P. Oxy. 27.2456, tragedies). Alphabetical order would not make much sense for speeches whose titles were usually more unstable than those of theatrical plays, and which were very often arranged according to legal procedure or thematic affinity (cf. above).

62 Cf. for instance P. Vars. 5 v, analyzed by Otranto (2000) 97-105.

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Dionysius of Halicarnassus
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 10/25/22


An image of Dionysius of Halicarnassus from the Codices Ambrosiani.
Born: c. 60 BC, Halicarnassus, Asia, Roman Republic (now Bodrum, Muğla, Turkey)
Died: c. 7 BC (aged around 53), Rome, Roman Empire (now Rome, Italy)
Citizenship: Roman
Occupation: Historian; Rhetoric; Writer

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ancient Greek: Διονύσιος Ἀλεξάνδρου Ἁλικαρνασσεύς, Dionúsios Alexándrou Halikarnasseús, ''Dionysios (son of Alexandros) of Halikarnassos''; c.  60 BC – after 7 BC) was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus.[1] His literary style was atticistic – imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.

Dionysius' opinion of the necessity of a promotion of paideia within education, from true knowledge of classical sources, endured for centuries in a form integral to the identity of the Greek elite.[2]

Life

He was a Halicarnassian.[2] At some time after the end of the civil wars he moved to Rome, and spent twenty-two years studying Latin and literature and preparing materials for his history.[3] During this period, he gave lessons in rhetoric, and enjoyed the society of many distinguished men. The date of his death is unknown.[4] In the 19th century, it was commonly supposed that he was the ancestor of Aelius Dionysius of Halicarnassus.[5]

Works

His major work, entitled Rhōmaïkḕ Arkhaiología (Ῥωμαϊκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία, ''Roman Antiquities''), narrates the history of Rome from the mythical period to the beginning of the First Punic War in twenty books, of which the first nine remain extant while the remaining books only exist as fragments,[3] in the excerpts of the Roman emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus [6 June 913 – 9 November 959; (1,000 YEARS LATER!)] and an epitome [An abridgment; a brief summary or abstract of a subject, or of a more extended exposition of it; a compendium containing the substance or principal matters of a book or other writing.] discovered by Angelo Mai in a Milan manuscript.

'Ambr': A collection of miscellaneous excerpts, in chronological order, in a 15th century Milan MS; also in a second MS which is a copy of it. The collection was carelessly edited by Cardinal Angelo Mai in 1816. MSS:-

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date - Century

Q / Milan, Ambrosian Library / Ambrosianus Q 13 sup. / 15th

A / Milan, Ambrosian Library / Ambrosianus A 80 sup. (Copy of Q) / ???

The order and location of the fragments can usually be determined, since Stephanus of Byzantium gives the books in which he found various people and places mentioned. However his references in books 17 and 18 are confused, so these are more uncertain.

-- Dionysius of Halicarnassus: the Manuscripts of "The Roman Antiquities", by Roger Pearse, tertullian.org, June 14, 2002

Angelo Mai (Latin Angelus Maius; 7 March 1782 – 8 September 1854) was an Italian Cardinal and philologist. He won a European reputation for publishing for the first time a series of previously unknown ancient texts. These he was able to discover and publish, first while in charge of the Ambrosian Library in Milan and then in the same role at the Vatican Library. The texts were often in parchment manuscripts that had been washed off and reused; he was able to read the lower text using chemicals. [NO CITATIONS!]

In particular he was able to locate a substantial portion of the much sought-after De republica of Cicero and the complete works of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus.

-- by Angelo Mai, by Wikipedia

Dionysius is the first major historian of early Roman history whose work is now extant. Several other ancient historians who wrote of this period, almost certainly used Dionysius as a source for their material. The works of Appian, Plutarch and Livy all describe similar people and events of Early Rome as Dionysius.[citation needed]

Summary outline of “Roman Antiquities”

In the preamble to Book I, Dionysius states that the Greek people lack basic information on Roman history, a deficiency he hopes to fix with the present work.

Book I (1300?)–753 BC

Mythic early history of Italy and its people. Book I also narrates the history of Aeneas and his progeny as well as Dionysius' telling of the Romulus and Remus myth, ending with the death of Remus.

Book II 753–673 BC

The Roman monarchy's first two Kings, Romulus and Numa Pompilius. Romulus formulates customs and laws for Rome. Sabine war -- as in subsequent parts of the history, this early conflict is described as involving numerous categories of officer, thousands of infantry, and cavalry combatants. This is highly unlikely, but is a common anachronism [An error in respect to dates; any error which implies the misplacing of persons or events in time; hence, anything foreign to or out of keeping with a specified time.] found in ancient historians.

Book III 673–575 BC

Kings Tullus Hostilius through Lucius Tarquinius Priscus.

Book IV 575–509 BC

Last of the Roman kings and end of the monarchy with overthrow of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus.

Book V 509-497 BC

Start of Roman Republic and Consular years.

Book VI 496–493 BC

Includes the first instance of Plebeian secession.

Book VII 492–490 BC

This book describes at length the background leading to the Roman Coriolanus’ trial, ending in his exile. Much of the book is a debate between supporters of the oligarchy and the plebeians.

Book VIII 489–482 BC

Coriolanus, now exiled, allies with Rome’s current primary enemy, the Volscians. Coriolanus leads the Volscian army on a successful campaign against Roman allies and finally is near to capturing Rome itself. Coriolanus’ mother intercedes for the Roman state and manages to end the military campaign. Coriolanus then is treacherously murdered by the Volscians. The remaining part of the book covers the military campaigns to recover land from the Volscians.

Book IX 481–462 BC

Various military campaigns of mixed fortune in foreign matters. Domestically the plebeians and patricians argue and the conflict of the orders continues. The number of Tribunes is raised from 5 to 10. Book IX ends with the first two years of the decemvirate and the creation of the first Roman Law Tables.

Note

Manuscripts - books 1-10.

These were used by Jacoby for books 1-10:

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date-Century

A / ??? / Chisanus 58 / 10th century

B / Rome, Vatican / Urbinas 105 / 10th-11th century

C / ??? / Coislinianus 150 (also contains book 11 - see below) / 16th

D / Paris, BNF / Regius Parisinus 1654 & 1655 / 16th

E / Rome, Vatican / Vaticanus 133 (also contains book 11 = 'V' below) / 15th

F / Rome, Vatican / Urbinas 106 (contains books 1-5 only) / 15th

A and B are the best MSS - the others are all late and some, particularly C and D, contain numerous interpolations [the insertion of new words or expressions in a book or manuscript; especially, the falsification of a text by spurious or unauthorized insertions]. The editio princeps [The first printed edition of a book] was based on D. Jacoby felt a sound text should be based on A and B, and he used the late MSS hardly at all.

Manuscripts - books 1-10.

Those used for Kiessling and Jacoby for book 11:

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date - Century

L / Florence, Laurentian / Laurentianus Plut. LXX 5 / 15th

V / Rome, Vatican / Vaticanus 133 (= 'E' above) / 15th

M / Milan, Ambrosian / Ambrosianus A 159 sup. / 15th

C / ??? / Coislinianus 150 (= 'C' above) / 16th

The best of these four MSS is L, which appears to be a faithful copy of a badly damaged original; the scribe usually left gaps of appropriate length where he found the text illegible. Second best is 'V', which only occasionally shows interpolations; but this is the same MS labelled 'E' for the first ten books and treated as a negligible witness for them. Much inferior, however, even to 'V' are M and C, which show many unskilful attempts to correct the text, especially by filling lacunae [gaps], especially in chapters 42 and 48-49.

All these MSS derive from a poor archetype [manuscript] which, in addition to numerous shorter lacunae [gaps], had lost entire leaves at the end of book 11, as well as earlier, and had some of the remainder out of order.

-- Dionysius of Halicarnassus: the Manuscripts of "The Roman Antiquities", by Roger Pearse

The last ten books are fragmentary, based on excerpts from medieval Byzantine history compilations. Book XI is mostly extant at around 50 pages (Aeterna Press, 2015 edition), while the remaining books, have only 12–14 pages per book.

Book X 461–449 BC

The decemvirate continued.

Book XI 449–443 BC

fragments

Book XII 442–396 BC

fragments

Book XIII 394–390 BC

fragments

Book XIV 390 BC

Gauls sack of Rome.

Book XV

First and Second Samnite War.

Book XVI–XVII

Third Samnite War.

Book XIX

The beginnings of conflicts between Rome and the warlord Pyrrhus. The southern Italian city of Tarentum has problems with Rome, who have recently expanded into southern Italy. Tarentum invites Pyrrhus as muscle to protect them.

Book XX

Roman-Pyrrhic war, with Pyrrhus’s second invasion of Italy.

Because his prime objective was to reconcile the Greeks to Roman rule, Dionysius focused on the good qualities of their conquerors, and also argued that -– based on sources ancient in his own time -– the Romans were genuine descendants of the older Greeks.[6][7] According to him, history is philosophy teaching by examples, and this idea he has carried out from the point of view of a Greek rhetorician. But he carefully consulted the best authorities, and his work and that of Livy are the only connected and detailed extant accounts of early Roman history.[8]: 240–241 

Dionysius was also the author of several rhetorical treatises, in which he shows that he had thoroughly studied the best Attic models:

Τέχνη ῥητορική, (Tékhnē rhētorikḗ)
The Art of Rhetoric

which is rather a collection of essays on the theory of rhetoric, incomplete, and certainly not all his work;

Περὶ συνθέσεως ὀνομάτων, (Perì sunthéseōs onomátōn) Latin: De compositione verborum
The Arrangement of Words

treating of the combination of words according to the different styles of oratory;

Περὶ μιμήσεως, (Perì mimḗseōs)
On Imitation

on the best models in the different kinds of literature and the way in which they are to be imitated—a fragmentary work;

Περὶ τῶν Ἀττικῶν ῥητόρων, (Perì tôn Attikôn rhētórōn)
Commentaries on the Attic Orators

which, however, only covers Lysias, Isaeus, Isocrates, and by way of supplement, Dinarchus;

Περὶ λεκτικῆς Δημοσθένους δεινότητος, (Perì lektikês Dēmosthénous deinótētos)
On the Admirable Style of Demosthenes

Περὶ Θουκιδίδου χαρακτῆρος, (Perì Thoukidídou kharaktêros)
On the Character of Thucydides

The last two treatises are supplemented by letters to Gn. Pompeius and Ammaeus (two, one of which is about Thucydides).[4]

Dionysian imitatio

Main article: Dionysian imitatio

Dionysian imitatio is the literary method of imitation as formulated by Dionysius, who conceived it as the rhetorical practice of emulating, adapting, reworking, and enriching a source text by an earlier author.[9][10] It shows marked similarities with Quintilian’s view of imitation, and both may derive from a common source.[11]

Dionysius' concept marked a significant departure from the concept of mimesis formulated by Aristotle in the 4th century BC, which was only concerned with "imitation of nature" and not "imitation of other authors."[9] Latin orators and rhetoricians adopted Dionysius' method of imitatio and discarded Aristotle's mimesis.[9]

History in the Roman Antiquities, and the Foundation Myth

Dionysius carried out extensive research for his Roman history, selecting among authorities, and preserving (for example) details of the Servian Census.[8]: 239 

His first two books present a unified account of the supposed Greek origin for Rome, merging a variety of sources into a firm narrative: his success, however, was at the expense of concealing the primitive Roman actuality (as revealed by archaeology).[8]: 241  Along with Livy,[12] Dionysius is thus one of the primary sources for the accounts of the Roman foundation myth, and that of Romulus and Remus, and was relied on in the later publications of Plutarch, for example. He writes extensively on the myth, sometimes attributing direct quotations to its figures. The myth spans the first 2 volumes of his Roman Antiquities, beginning with Book I chapter 73 and concluding in Book II chapter 56.[citation needed]

Romulus and Remus

Origins and survival in the wild

Dionysius claims that the twins, Romulus and Remus, were born to a vestal [In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins or Vestals were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. The college of the Vestals was regarded as fundamental to the continuance and security of Rome. These individuals cultivated the sacred fire that was not allowed to go out. Vestals were freed of the usual social obligations to marry and bear children and took a 30-year vow of chastity in order to devote themselves to the study and correct observance of state rituals that were forbidden to the colleges of male priests.] named Ilia Silvia (sometimes called Rea), descended from Aeneas of Troy

In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises [Anchises was a member of the royal family of Troy in Greek and Roman legend. He was a mortal lover of the goddess Aphrodite.] and the Greek goddess Aphrodite [Aphrodite is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess Venus. Aphrodite's major symbols include myrtles, roses, doves, sparrows, and swans. The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte, a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar, whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna.] (equivalent to the Roman Venus). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy (both being grandsons of Ilus, founder of Troy), making Aeneas a second cousin to Priam's children (such as Hector and Paris). He is a character in Greek mythology and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad. Aeneas receives full treatment in Roman mythology, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid, where he is cast as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He became the first true hero of Rome. Snorri Sturluson identifies him with the Norse god Vidarr of the Æsir.[2]

-- Aeneas, by Wikipedia

and the daughter of King Latinus [Latinus was a figure in both Greek and Roman mythology. He is often associated with the heroes of the Trojan War, namely Odysseus and Aeneas.] of the Original Latin tribes, thus linking Rome to Trojans and Latins both. Dionysius lays out the different accounts of her pregnancy and the twins' conception, but declines to choose one over the others.

Citing Fabius [In Roman mythology, Fabius was the son of Hercules and an unnamed mother.], Cincius [Lucius Cincius Alimentus (fl. about 200 BC) was a celebrated Roman annalist, jurist, and provincial official. He is principally remembered as one of the founders of Roman historiography, although his Annals has been lost and is only known from fragments in other works.], Porcius Cato [Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 BC), also known as Cato the Censor, the Elder and the Wise, was a Roman soldier, senator, and historian known for his conservatism and opposition to Hellenization. He was the first to write history in Latin with his Origines, a now fragmentary work on the history of Rome. His work De agri cultura, a rambling work on agriculture, farming, rituals, and recipes, is the oldest extant prose written in the Latin language.], and Piso [???], Dionysius recounts the most common tale, whereby the twins are to be tossed into the Tiber; are left at the site of the ficus Ruminalis [The Ficus Ruminalis was a wild fig tree that had religious and mythological significance in ancient Rome. It stood near the small cave known as the Lupercal at the foot of the Palatine Hill and was the spot where according to tradition the floating makeshift cradle of Romulus and Remus landed on the banks of the Tiber. There they were nurtured by the she-wolf and discovered by Faustulus.]; and rescued by a she-wolf who nurses them in front of her lair (the Lupercal) before being adopted by Faustulus [In Roman mythology, Faustulus was the shepherd who found the infant Romulus (the future founder of the city of Rome) and his twin brother Remus along the banks of the Tiber River as they were being suckled by the she-wolf, Lupa. According to legend, Faustulus carried the babies back to his sheepfold for his wife Acca Larentia to nurse them. Faustulus and Acca Larentia then raised the boys as their own.].[13] Dionysius relates an alternate, "non-fantastical" version of Romulus and Remus' birth, survival and youth. In this version, Numitor [In Roman mythology, King Numitor of Alba Longa, was the maternal grandfather of Rome's founder and first king, Romulus, and his twin brother Remus. He was the son of Procas, descendant of Aeneas the Trojan, and father of the twins' mother, Rhea Silvia, and Lausus.] managed to switch the twins at birth with two other infants.[14] The twins were delivered by their grandfather to Faustulus to be fostered by him and his wife, Laurentia, a former prostitute. According to Plutarch, lupa (Latin for "wolf") was a common term for members of her profession and this gave rise to the she-wolf legend.

Falling out and Foundation of Rome

The twins receive a proper education in the city of Gabii, before eventually winning control of the area around where Rome would be founded. Dispute over the particular hill upon which Rome should be built, the Palatine Hill or the Aventine Hill for its strategic advantages saw the brothers fall out and Remus killed.

When the time came to actually construct the city of Rome, the two brothers disputed over the particular hill upon which Rome should be built, Romulus favoring the Palatine Hill and Remus favoring what later came to be known as Remoria (possibly the Aventine Hill). Eventually, the two deferred their decision to the gods at the advice of their grandfather. Using the birds as omens, the two brothers decided "he to whom the more favourable birds first appeared should rule the colony and be its leader."[15] Since Remus saw nine vultures first, he claimed that the gods chose him and Romulus claimed that since he saw a greater (the "more favorable") number of vultures, the gods chose him. Unable to reach a conclusion, the two brothers and their followers fought, ultimately resulting in the death of Remus. After his brother's death, a saddened Romulus buried Remus at the site of Remoria, giving the location its namesake.[16]

Before the actual construction of the city began, Romulus made sacrifices and received good omens, and he then ordered the populace to ritually atone for their guilt. The city's fortifications were first and then housing for the populace. He assembled the people and gave them the choice as to what type of government they wanted - monarchy, democracy, or oligarchy - for its constitution.[17] After his address, which extolled bravery in war abroad and moderation at home, and in which Romulus denied any need to remain in power, the people decided to remain a kingdom and asked him to remain its king. Before accepting he looked for a sign of the approval of the gods. He prayed and witnessed an auspicious lightning bolt, after which he declared that no king shall take the throne without receiving approval from the gods.

Institutions

Dionysus then provided a detailed account of the ‘Romulus’ constitution, most probably based on the work of Terentius Varro [???].[18] Romulus supposedly divides Rome into 3 tribes, each with a Tribune in charge. Each tribe was divided into 10 Curia, and each of those into smaller units. He divided the kingdom's land holdings between them, and Dionysus alone among our authorities insists that this was done in equal lots.[19] The Patrician class was separated from the Plebeian class; while each curiae was responsible for providing soldiers in the event of war.


Bernard van Orley, Romulus Gives Laws to the Roman People – WGA16696

A system of patronage (clientela), a senate (attributed by Dionysius to Greek influence) and a personal bodyguard of 300 of the strongest and fittest among the nobles were also established: the latter, the celeres, were so-named either for their quickness, or, according to Valerius Antias, for their commander.[20]

A Separation of power and measures to increase manpower were also instituted, as were Rome's religious customs and practices, and a variety of legal measures praised by Dionysus.

Again, Dionysius thoroughly describes the laws of other nations before contrasting the approach of Romulus and lauding his work. The Roman law governing marriage is, according to his Antiquities, an elegant yet simple improvement over that of other nations, most of which he harshly derides. By declaring that wives would share equally in the possessions and conduct of their husband, Romulus promoted virtue in the former and deterred mistreatment by the latter. Wives could inherit upon their husband's death. A wife's adultery was a serious crime, however, drunkenness could be a mitigating factor in determining the appropriate punishment. Because of Romulus' laws, Dionysius claims that not a single Roman couple divorced over the following five centuries.

Romulus' laws governing parental rights, in particular, those that allow fathers to maintain power over their adult children were also considered an improvement over those of others; while Dionysius further approved of how, under the laws of Romulus, native-born free Romans were limited to two forms of employment: farming and the army. All other occupations were filled by slaves or non-Roman labor.

Romulus used the trappings of his office to encourage compliance with the law. His court was imposing and filled with loyal soldiers and he was always accompanied by the 12 lictors appointed to be his attendants.

The Rape of the Sabine Women and death of Romulus


The Intervention of the Sabine Women, by Jacques-Louis David, 1799

Following his institutional account, Dionysus described the famous abducting of the Sabine women and suggesting thereby that the abduction was a pretext for alliance with the Sabines.[21] Romulus wished to cement relations with neighboring cities through intermarriage, but none of them found the fledgling city of Rome worthy of their daughters. To overcome this, Romulus arranged a festival in honor of Neptune (the Consualia) and invited the surrounding cities to attend. At the end of the festival, Romulus and the young men seized all the virgins at the festival and planned to marry them according to their customs.[22][23] In his narrative, however, the cities of Caecina, Crustumerium, and Antemnae petition for Tatius, king of the Sabines to lead them to war; and it is only after the famous intervention of the Sabine women that the nations agreed to become a single kingdom under the joint rule of Romulus and Tatius, both declared Quirites.[24]

The Rape of the Sabine Women... was an incident in Roman mythology in which the men of Rome committed a mass abduction of young women from the other cities in the region. It has been a frequent subject of painters and sculptors, particularly during the Renaissance and post-Renaissance eras.

The word "rape" (cognate with "rapto" in Portuguese and other Romance languages, meaning "kidnap") is the conventional translation of the Latin word raptio used in the ancient accounts of the incident. Modern scholars tend to interpret the word as "abduction" or "kidnapping" as opposed to a sexual assault....

According to Roman historian Livy, the abduction of Sabine women occurred in the early history of Rome shortly after its founding in the mid-8th century BC and was perpetrated by Romulus and his predominantly male followers; it is said that after the foundation of the city, the population consisted solely of Latins and other Italic people, in particular male bandits. With Rome growing at such a steady rate in comparison to its neighbors, Romulus became concerned with maintaining the city's strength. His main concern was that with few women inhabitants there would be no chance of sustaining the city's population, without which Rome might not last longer than a generation. On the advice of the Senate, the Romans then set out into the surrounding regions in search of wives to establish families with. The Romans negotiated unsuccessfully with all the peoples that they appealed to, including the Sabines, who populated the neighboring areas. The Sabines feared the emergence of a rival society and refused to allow their women to marry the Romans. Consequently, the Romans devised a plan to abduct the Sabine women during the festival of Neptune Equester....At the festival, Romulus gave a signal by "rising and folding his cloak and then throwing it round him again," at which the Romans grabbed the Sabine women and fought off the Sabine men. In total, thirty Sabine women were abducted by the Romans at the festival. All of the women abducted at the festival were said to have been virgins except for one married woman, Hersilia, who became Romulus' wife and would later be the one to intervene and stop the ensuing war between the Romans and the Sabines. The indignant abductees were soon implored by Romulus to accept the Roman men as their new husbands....

The Sabines themselves finally declared war, led into battle by their king, Titus Tatius. Tatius almost succeeded in capturing Rome, thanks to the treason of Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius, Roman governor of the citadel on the Capitoline Hill. She opened the city gates for the Sabines in return for "what they bore on their arms", thinking she would receive their golden bracelets. Instead, the Sabines crushed her to death with their shields, and her body was buried on or thrown from a rock known ever since by her name, the Tarpeian Rock.

The Romans attacked the Sabines who now held the citadel, in what would become known as the Battle of the Lacus Curtius....

At this point in the story, the Sabine women intervened:

[They], from the outrage on whom the war originated, with hair dishevelled and garments rent, the timidity of their sex being overcome by such dreadful scenes, had the courage to throw themselves amid the flying weapons, and making a rush across, to part the incensed armies, and assuage their fury; imploring their fathers on the one side, their husbands on the other, "that as fathers-in-law and sons-in-law they would not contaminate each other with impious blood, nor stain their offspring with parricide, the one their grandchildren, the other their children. If you are dissatisfied with the affinity between you, if with our marriages, turn your resentment against us; we are the cause of war, we of wounds and of bloodshed to our husbands and parents. It were better that we perish than live widowed or fatherless without one or other of you."

The battle came to an end, and the Sabines agreed to unite in one nation with the Romans. Titus Tatius jointly ruled with Romulus until Tatius's death five years later.

The new Sabine residents of Rome settled on the Capitoline Hill, which they had captured in the battle.

-- The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Wikipedia

After the death of Tatius, however, Romulus became more dictatorial, until he met his end, either through actions divine or earthly. One tale tells of a "darkness" that took Romulus from his war camp to his father in heaven.[25] Another source claims that Romulus was killed by his Roman countrymen after releasing hostages, showing favoritism, and excessive cruelty in his punishments.[25]

Editions

• Collected Works edited by Friedrich Sylburg (1536–1596) (parallel Greek and Latin) (Frankfurt 1586) (available at Google Books)
• Complete edition by Johann Jakob Reiske (1774–1777)[26]
• Archaeologia by A. Kiessling (1860-1870) (vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4) and V. Prou (1886) and C. Jacoby (1885–1925) (vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4, supplementum) [26]
• Opuscula by Hermann Usener and Ludwig Radermacher (1899-1929)[26] in the Teubner series (vol. 1 contains Commentaries on the Attic Orators, Letter to Ammaeus, On the Admirable Style of Demosthenes, On the Character of Thucydides, Letter to Ammaeus about Thucydides, vol. 2 contains The Arrangement of Words, On Imitation, Letter to Gn. Pompeius, The Art of Rhetoric, Fragments)
• Roman Antiquities by V. Fromentin and J. H. Sautel (1998–), and Opuscula rhetorica by Aujac (1978–), in the Collection Budé
• English translation by Edward Spelman (1758) (available at Google Books)
• Trans. Earnest Cary, Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library:
o Roman Antiquities, I, 1937.
o Roman Antiquities, II, 1939.
o Roman Antiquities, III, 1940.
o Roman Antiquities, IV, 1943.
o Roman Antiquities, V, 1945.
o Roman Antiquities, VI, 1947.
o Roman Antiquities, VII, 1950.
• Trans. Stephen Usher, Critical Essays, I, Harvard University Press, 1974, ISBN 978-0-674-99512-3
• Trans. Stephen Usher, Critical Essays, II, Harvard University Press, 1985, ISBN 978-0-674-99513-0

See also

• Diodorus Siculus

References

1. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book I, Chapter 6
2. Hidber, T. (31 Oct 2013). Wilson, N. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece. Routledge. p. 229. ISBN 978-1136787997. Retrieved 2015-09-07.
3. Sandys, J.E. (1894). A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. London, GB. p. 190.
4. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Dionysius Halicarnassensis". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 285–286.
5. Schmitz, Leonhard (1867). "Dionysius, Aelius". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. Boston. p. 1037.
6. The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Loeb Classical Library. Vol. I. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. March 29, 2018 [1937] – via Penelope, U. Chicago.
7. Gabba, E. (1991). Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome. Berkeley, CA.
8. Usher, S. (1969). The Historians of Greece and Rome. London, GB. pp. 239–241.
9. Ruthven (1979) pp. 103–104
10. Jansen (2008)
11. S F Bonner, The Literary Treatises of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2013) p. 39
12. J Burrow, A History of Histories (Penguin 2009) p. 101 and 116
13. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book I, Chapter 79
14. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book I, Chapter 84
15. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book I, Chapter 85
16. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book I, Chapter 87
17. T P Wiseman, Remembering the Roman Republic (2011) p. xviii-ix
18. T P Wiseman, Remembering the Roman Republic (2011) p. xviii
19. T P Wiseman, Remembering the Roman Republic (2011) p. xviii
20. T P Wiseman, Remembering the Roman Republic (2011) p. ii
21. R Hexter ed., Innovations of Antiquity (2013) p. 164
22. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book II, Chapter 12
23. G Miles, Livy (2018) p. 197
24. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book II, Chapter 46
25. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book II, Chapter 56
26. Chisholm 1911.

Further reading

• Bonner, S. F. 1939. The literary treatises of Dionysius of Halicarnassus: A study in the development of critical method. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
• Damon, C. 1991. Aesthetic response and technical analysis in the rhetorical writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Museum Helveticum 48: 33–58.
• Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 1975. On Thucydides. Translated, with commentary, by W. Kendrick Pritchett. Berkeley and London: Univ. of California Press.
• Gabba, Emilio. 1991. Dionysius and the history of archaic Rome. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
• Gallia, Andrew B. 2007. Reassessing the 'Cumaean Chronicle': Greek chronology and Roman history in Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Journal of Roman Studies 97: 50–67.
• Jonge, Casper Constantijn de. 2008. Between Grammar and Rhetoric: Dionysius of Halicarnassus On Language, Linguistics and Literature. Leiden: Brill.
• Jonge, Casper C. de, and Richard L. Hunter (ed.). 2018. Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Augustan Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sacks, Kenneth. 1986. Rhetoric and speeches in Hellenistic historiography. Athenaeum 74: 383–95.
• Usher, S. 1974–1985. Dionysius of Halicarnassus: The critical essays. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard Univ. Press.
• Wiater, N. 2011. The ideology of classicism: Language, history and identity in Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.
• Wooten, C. W. 1994. The Peripatetic tradition in the literary essays of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. In: Peripatetic rhetoric after Aristotle. Edited by W. W. Fortenbaugh and D. C. Mirhady, 121–30. Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 6. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

External links

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By Dionysius of Halicarnassus
• Online books
• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries

• English translation of the Antiquities (at LacusCurtius)
• 1586 Edition with the original Greek from the Internet Archive
• Greek text and French translation

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Dionysius of Halicarnassus: the Manuscripts of "The Roman Antiquities"
by Roger Pearse
tertullian.org
June 14, 2002 Updated with book 11-20 details, 29th June 2002.

This work was written in 20 books, of which books 1-10 are preserved, with the greater part of book 11, and fragments of the remainder amounting altogether to about 1 book in size. Most of the fragments come from the great collection of historical extracts made at the direction of the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the tenth century. Photius (cod. 83) refers to it, and also (cod. 84) to a summary of it in 5 books; Stephanus of Byzantium cites numerous Italian place-names from it, the last book named being book 19. The author was born between 69-53BC and died probably sometime after 7BC. The preface gives the date of publication as 7 BC (consulate of Nero and Piso), and he tells us in ch. 7 he spent 22 years researching and writing his work. The work treats in Greek of the History of Rome from earliest times down to the start of the First Punic War, the point at which the history of Polybius begins. The author also wrote other, shorter works, the scripta rhetorica of which only fragments remain.

Manuscripts - books 1-10.

These were used by Jacoby for books 1-10:

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date-Century

A / ??? / Chisanus 58 / 10th century

B / Rome, Vatican / Urbinas 105 / 10th-11th century

C / ??? / Coislinianus 150 (also contains book 11 - see below) / 16th

D / Paris, BNF / Regius Parisinus 1654 & 1655 / 16th

E / Rome, Vatican / Vaticanus 133 (also contains book 11 = 'V' below) / 15th

F / Rome, Vatican / Urbinas 106 (contains books 1-5 only) / 15th

A and B are the best MSS - the others are all late and some, particularly C and D, contain numerous interpolations [the insertion of new words or expressions in a book or manuscript; especially, the falsification of a text by spurious or unauthorized insertions]. The editio princeps [The first printed edition of a book] was based on D. Jacoby felt a sound text should be based on A and B, and he used the late MSS hardly at all.

Manuscripts - books 1-10.

Those used for Kiessling and Jacoby for book 11:

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date - Century

L / Florence, Laurentian / Laurentianus Plut. LXX 5 / 15th

V / Rome, Vatican / Vaticanus 133 (= 'E' above) / 15th

M / Milan, Ambrosian / Ambrosianus A 159 sup. / 15th

C / ??? / Coislinianus 150 (= 'C' above) / 16th

The best of these four MSS is L, which appears to be a faithful copy of a badly damaged original; the scribe usually left gaps of appropriate length where he found the text illegible. Second best is 'V', which only occasionally shows interpolations; but this is the same MS labelled 'E' for the first ten books and treated as a negligible witness for them. Much inferior, however, even to 'V' are M and C, which show many unskilful attempts to correct the text, especially by filling lacunae [gaps], especially in chapters 42 and 48-49.

All these MSS derive from a poor archetype [manuscript] which, in addition to numerous shorter lacunae [gaps], had lost entire leaves at the end of book 11, as well as earlier, and had some of the remainder out of order.

Manuscripts - fragments from books 12-20

About half of these come from the collection made by order of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century from then extant classical and later historians. The excerpts were classified under various heads, and a few of these sections have been preserved, some in only a single MS. These are the sections:

'Ursinus': De legationibus. There are several MSS. First published by Fulvio Orsini in 1582; critical edition by C. de Boor, Berlin 1903. MSS:-

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date - Century

E / Madrid, Escurial / Scorialenses R III 14, and R III 21 / ???

V / Rome, Vatican / Vaticanus Graecus 1418 / ???

R / Paris, BNF / Parisinus Graecus 2463 / ???

B / Brussels Bruxellensis 11301-16 / ???

M / ??? / Monacensis 267 / ???

P / Rome / Palatinus Vaticanus Graecus 113 / ???

'Vales': De virtutibus et vitiis. Preserved in the Codex Peirescianus (now Turonensis 980). Published by Valesius, 1634; critical edition by A.G. Roos, Berlin 1910. MSS:-

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date - Century

P / ??? / Peirescianus (now Turonensis 980) / ???

'Esc': De insidiis. Preserved in a single MS in the Escurial. Edited by Feder, 1848 and 1849, and by C. Müller in his Frag. Hist. Graec., vol. ii, 1848. critical edition by C. de Boor, Berlin 1903. MSS:-

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date - Century

S / ??? / Scorialensis W I 11 / ???

'Ath': A few chapters from book 20, contained in an early MS found on Mt. Athos but now in Paris. Edited by C. Müller at the end of vol 2 of his Josephus in 1847 and later by C. Wescher in his Poliorcétique des Grecs, Paris 1868. MSS:-

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date - Century

A / ??? / Athos MS, now in Paris / ???

'Ambr': A collection of miscellaneous excerpts, in chronological order, in a 15th century Milan MS; also in a second MS which is a copy of it. The collection was carelessly edited by Cardinal Angelo Mai in 1816. MSS:-

Siglum / Location / Shelfmark & Notes / Date - Century

Q / Milan, Ambrosian Library / Ambrosianus Q 13 sup. / 15th

A / Milan, Ambrosian Library / Ambrosianus A 80 sup. (Copy of Q) / ???

The order and location of the fragments can usually be determined, since Stephanus of Byzantium gives the books in which he found various people and places mentioned. However his references in books 17 and 18 are confused, so these are more uncertain.

Editions with new MS witnesses

The editio princeps of the Greek text was Robert Estienne (Stephanus), Paris, 1546. This contained books 1-11, and was based on D. Sylburg's edition of 1586 (Frankfurt) was books 1-11 plus the excerpta de Legationibus, with a revised version of Gelenius' Latin translation and notes. Sylburg made use of two MSS, a 'Romanus' (which has not been identified) and Venetus 272. John Hudson, Oxford 1704 had books 1-11, excerpta de Legationibus, and excerpta de Virtutibus et Vitiis. He was the first to use the Urbinas, which he called Vaticanus, but only in his notes.

Cardinal Angelo Mai published at Milan in 1816 some fragments from an epitome contained in a Milan MS, Cod. Ambrosianus Q 13 sup., and its copy, Cod. Ambrosianus A 80 sup. These are now included as the excerpta Ambrosiana among the fragments of books 12-20.

Translations with MS value

The first translation was into Latin of books 1-11 by Lapus (or Lappus) Biragus, Treviso 1480, three-quarters of a century before the first edition of the Greek text. It has great interest, since it was based on two MSS which cannot now be identified with any extant, supplied to the translator by Pope Paul II. Ritschl argued that one of these must have belonged to the better class of MSS, now known through A and B, as the translation contains most of the additions to the text of the editio princeps that are found in one or both of the older MSS. (Opuscula i, pp.489, 493). In addition he avoids most of B's errors, and includes down to III, 24 a good number of readings that appear in no other MS. Some of the interpolations in C and D are included, but he avoids most of C's interpolations. In a few cases he supplies words missing from both B and C, so his good MS must have been better than any now extant MS at these points. Since he refers to the confused order of the text at the end of book 11, his older MS cannot have been B; and the interpolated one can hardly have been C, if C is correctly assigned to the 16th century.

Gelenius did a fresh translation in 1549 of books 1-10; for 11 he merely reprinted Lapus's translation.

The only English translation before the Loeb was Edward Spelman, published London 1758 with notes and a dissertation. It is a good version of Hudson's text, and covers books 1-11, and served as the basis for the Loeb version.

Bibliography

Earnest CARY, The Roman antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Loeb edition in 7 vols. Harvard University Press (1937). Vol 1 has details of the MSS of books 1-X; Vol 7 (1950) about the MSS for book 11 and fragments of 12-20.

Carl JACOBY, Leipzig (Tuebner), 1885-1905, index 1925. (Details from the Loeb).

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Biblioteca Ambrosiana
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 10/25/22


Entrance to the Ambrosian Library
Established: 1609
Location: Piazza Pio XI 2, 20123, Milan, Italy
Coordinates 45.4631°N 9.1854°ECoordinates: 45.4631°N 9.1854°E
Director: Alberto Rocca
Website: http://www.ambrosiana.it

The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan, Italy, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded in 1609 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, whose agents scoured Western Europe and even Greece and Syria for books and manuscripts. Some major acquisitions of complete libraries were the manuscripts of the Benedictine monastery of Bobbio (1606)

Bobbio Abbey (Italian: Abbazia di San Colombano) is a monastery founded by Irish Saint Columbanus in 614, around which later grew up the town of Bobbio, in the province of Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. It is dedicated to Saint Columbanus. It was famous as a centre of resistance to Arianism and as one of the greatest libraries in the Middle Ages. The abbey was dissolved under the French administration in 1803, although many of the buildings remain in other uses.

-- Bobbio Abbey, by Wikipedia

and the library of the Paduan Vincenzo Pinelli, whose more than 800 manuscripts filled 70 cases when they were sent to Milan and included the famous Iliad, the Ilias Picta.

Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535 – 31 August 1601) was an Italian humanist, born in Naples and known as a savant and a mentor of Galileo. His literary correspondence put him at the center of a European network of virtuosi. He was also a noted botanist, bibliophile and collector of scientific instruments....

His enormous library was probably the greatest in 16th-century Italy, consisting of around 8,500 printed works at the moment of his death, plus hundreds of manuscripts. When he died, in 1601, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc was in his house and spent some of the following months studying his library and taking notes from its catalogues. Pinelli's secretary, Paolo Gualdo, wrote and published (1607) a biography of Pinelli which is also the portrait of the perfect scholar and book-collector.

His collection of manuscripts, when it was purchased from his estate in 1608 for the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, filled 70 cases. Pinelli stood out among the early bibliophile collectors who established scientific bases for the methodically assembled private library, aided by the comparatively new figure—in the European world— of the bookseller.

His love of books and manuscripts, and his interest in optics, labored under a disability: a childhood mishap had destroyed the vision of one eye, forcing him to protect his weak vision with green-tinted lenses. Cautious and withdrawn by nature, detesting travel whether by road or canal boat, wracked by the gallstones that eventually killed him, he found solace in the library he amassed over a period of fifty years (Nuovo 2003).

Leonardo's treatise on painting, Trattato della Pittura, was transcribed in the Codex Pinellianus ca. 1585, perhaps expressly for Pinelli who made annotations in it. Pinelli's codex was the source for the Barberini codex from which it was eventually printed, ostensibly edited by Raphael du Fresne, in 1651. Pinelli's interest in the new science of optics was formative for Galileo Galilei, for whom Pinelli opened his library in the 1590s, where Galileo read the unpublished manuscripts, consisting of lecture notes and drafts of essays on optics, of Ettore Ausonio, a Venetian mathematician and physician, and of Giuseppe Moleto, professor of mathematics at Padua (Dupre).

Beside his Greek and Latin libraries of manuscripts his collection included the original Arabic manuscript from which was translated and printed the Descrizione dell'Africa of Leo Africanus.

-- Gian Vincenzo Pinellim by Wikipedia

History


[Leonardo da Vinci Crossbow sketch, Codex Atlanticus

During Cardinal Borromeo's sojourns in Rome, 1585–95 and 1597–1601, he envisioned developing this library in Milan as one open to scholars and that would serve as a bulwark of Catholic scholarship in the service of the Counter-Reformation against the treatises issuing from Protestant presses. To house the cardinal's 15,000 manuscripts and twice that many printed books, construction began in 1603 under designs and direction of Lelio Buzzi and Francesco Maria Richini. When its first reading room, the Sala Fredericiana, opened to the public on 8 December 1609 it was one of the earliest public libraries. One innovation was that its books were housed in cases ranged along the walls, rather than chained to reading tables, the latter a medieval practice seen still today in the Laurentian Library of Florence. A printing press was attached to the library, and a school for instruction in the classical languages.

Constant acquisitions, soon augmented by bequests, required enlargement of the space. Borromeo intended an academy (which opened in 1625) and a collection of pictures, for which a new building was initiated in 1611–18 to house the Cardinal's paintings and drawings, the nucleus of the Pinacoteca.

Cardinal Borromeo gave his collection of paintings and drawings to the library, too. Shortly after the cardinal's death, his library acquired twelve manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci, including the Codex Atlanticus. The library now contains some 12,000 drawings by European artists, from the 14th through the 19th centuries, which have come from the collections of a wide range of patrons and artists, academicians, collectors, art dealers, and architects. Prized manuscripts, including the Leonardo codices, were requisitioned by the French during the Napoleonic occupation, and only partly returned after 1815.


Portrait of a Musician by Leonardo da Vinci

On 15 October 1816 the Romantic poet Lord Byron visited the library. He was delighted by the letters between Lucrezia Borgia and Pietro Bembo ("The prettiest love letters in the world"[1][2]) and claimed to have managed to steal a lock of her hair ("the prettiest and fairest imaginable."[2]) held on display.[3][4][5]

The novelist Mary Shelley visited the library on 14 September 1840 but was disappointed by the tight security occasioned by the recent attempted theft of "some of the relics of Petrarch" housed there.[6]

Among the 30,000 manuscripts, which range from Greek and Latin to Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic,[7] Ethiopian, Turkish and Persian, is the Muratorian fragment, of ca 170 A.D., the earliest example of a Biblical canon and an original copy of De divina proportione by Luca Pacioli. Among Christian and Islamic Arabic manuscripts are treatises on medicine, a unique 11th-century diwan of poets, and the oldest copy of the Kitab Sibawahaihi.

When looking at the secrets held within Vatican City, perhaps the most logical place to start is the Vatican Secret Archives. The name itself is evocative of mystery, and many theories have naturally arisen about what might be held among the 53 miles of shelves and 12 centuries' worth of documents only available to a select few....

[T]he Archives are not fully public: they're only open to scholars who have passed a rigorous vetting process, and journalists were not allowed to see the contents of the Archives until 2010.

-- Dark Secrets of the Vatican Revealed, by Benito Cereno, July 6, 2022

The library has a college of Doctors, similar to the scriptors of the Vatican Library. Among prominent figures have been Giuseppe Ripamonti, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Giuseppe Antonio Sassi, Cardinal Angelo Mai and, at the beginning of the 20th century, Antonio Maria Ceriani, Achille Ratti (on 8 November 1888,[8][9] the future Pope Pius XI, and Giovanni Mercati. Ratti wrote a new edition of the Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis ("Acts of the Church of Milan"), Latin work firstly published by the cardinal Federico Borromeo in 1582.[9][8]

The building was damaged in World War II, with the loss of the archives of opera libretti of La Scala, but was restored in 1952 and underwent major restorations in 1990–97. The stained glass windows were made by the painter Carlo Bazzi and were partly saved from the Second World War.

Artwork at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana includes Leonardo da Vinci's "Portrait of a Musician", Caravaggio's "Basket of Fruit", Bramantino's Adoration of the Christ Child and Raphael's cartoon of "The School of Athens".

Some manuscripts

• Uncial 0135 — fragments of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke
• Codex Ambrosianus 435, Ambrosianus 837 — treatise On the Soul of Aristotle
• Minuscule manuscripts of New Testament: 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 614, 615
• Lectionaries ℓ 102, ℓ 103, ℓ 104, ℓ 105, ℓ 106, ℓ 284, ℓ 285, ℓ 286, ℓ 287, ℓ 288, ℓ 289, ℓ 290.
• Codices Ambrosiani, containing the Gothic language

References

1. Ian Thompson, review, The Spectator, 25 June 2005, of Viragos on the march by Gaia Servadio. I. B. Tauris, ISBN 1-85043-421-2.
2. Pietro Bembo: A Renaissance Courtier Who Had His Cake and Ate It Too, Ed Quattrocchi, Caxtonian: Journal of the Caxton Club of Chicago, Volume XIII, Nº. 10, October 2005.
3. The Byron Chronology: 1816–1819 – Separation and Exile on the Continent.
4. Byron by John Nichol.
5. Letter to Augusta Leigh, Milan, 15 October 1816. Lord Byron's Letters and Journals, Chapter 5: Separation and Exile Archived 9 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
6. Shelley, Mary (1996). Travel Writing. London: Pickering. p. 132. ISBN 1-85196-084-8.
7. Oscar Löfgren and Renato Traini, Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, vol. I (1975), ii (1981) onwards.
8. don Vincenzo Maraschi (Ambrosiane Doctor) (1938). Le Particolarità Del Rito Ambrosiano (in Italian). Milan. p. 1, 7, 174. Retrieved 10 April 2022., with imprimatur of Milan Curia (in person of friar Castiglioni) on 9 August 1938, and of cardinal Schuster
9. Carlo Marcora (1996). Achille Ratti and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. persee.fr (in Italian and French). p. 56. Archived from the original on 12 December 2018. Retrieved 27 December 2018.

Further reading

• Catalogus codicum graecorum Bibliothecae Ambrosianae (Mediolani 1906) Tomus I
• Catalogus codicum graecorum Bibliothecae Ambrosianae (Mediolani 1906) Tomus II
• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "The Ambrosian Library" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Biblioteca Ambrosiana website, select English
• Ambrosiana Foundation, U.S. support organization
• Inventory Catalog of Drawings at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana
• http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Edward-C ... tings.html
• "Ambrosian Library" . New International Encyclopedia. 1905.

External links

• Virtual tour of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana provided by Google Arts & Culture
• Media related to Biblioteca Ambrosiana at Wikimedia Commons

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Seeing the Invisible — Multispectral Imaging of Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts
by Dr. Melissa Moreton
Assistant Director for Strategic Initiatives at HMML [2018 to 2020]
July 1, 2019

This year marks twenty years since the first significant efforts were made to use multispectral imaging (MSI) to reveal hidden writing within a parchment manuscript (the book in question contained the lost works of ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes). This noninvasive technology is especially suited for work with parchment, a unique sheet material made from animal skin whose surface can be written upon and then miraculously ‘erased’ by scraping for reuse by a later scribe. In the ancient and medieval Mediterranean world this recycling was common. Texts came and went, but parchment was expensive and always valuable to scribes. Books no longer deemed necessary or desirable were sometimes unbound, and the parchment scraped down and reused to create what is called a palimpsest. Even when the earlier writing was not visible to the naked eye, traces of the ink remained embedded in the parchment sheet, bonded to the collagen and proteins in the skin. Multispectral imaging can reveal traces of this hidden writing.


HMML Palimpsest

The MSI process involves photographing the palimpsested manuscript folios with a variety of wavelengths of light ranging from ultraviolet to infrared. Each wavelength interacts differently with the manuscript surface, revealing details that can enhance the visibility of parchment, inks, pigments, surface treatments, or stains. Once the images are captured, they are digitally processed, selected, and united to form a single image that reveals details not visible to the naked eye. This technology has been developed over the last two decades by Mike Toth, in partnership with scientists and camera manufacturers. Toth was a member of the team that imaged the manuscript with the lost works of Archimedes in 1999 for the Archimedes Palimpsest Project at the Walters Art Gallery.

Since then, Toth has been using MSI to image manuscripts, maps, paintings, pottery, and even mummy masks made of recycled papyri containing ancient texts. The technology was devised for medical use, and then adapted to the imaging of manuscripts. Toth describes the work as highly collaborative, involving photographers, manuscript scholars, conservators, data specialists, computer engineers, and scientists.

Toth recently imaged a manuscript fragment from HMML’s collections (SJU Ms Frag 32), working with imaging scientist Bill Christens-Barry and R.B. Toth Associates-sponsored PhD student Cery Jones. The parchment bifolium (folded sheet) had been in HMML’s rare book vault for several decades, but was not brought to light until preparation for an exhibit on manuscript fragments was underway in 2016-17. It comes from a Georgian liturgical manuscript and has a faint trace of older underwriting visible to the naked eye. HMML’s Curator of Western Collections, Matthew Heintzelman, noticed the underwriting and brought it to the attention of Executive Director, Father Columba Stewart, who identified it as early Syriac and sent the fragment off to Toth and team for imaging. The resulting images revealed that Syriac text (seen here in two and a half red columns of writing) underneath the Georgian writing (wider columns in blue). As is common with palimpsested parchments, the original Syriac manuscript was larger than the later Georgian manuscript, and was scraped, cut down and reused (the center fold of the original Syriac manuscript is visible down the middle of the wide column of Georgian text on the left).

According to HMML’s Curator of Eastern Christian and Islamic Manuscripts, David Calabro, based on the peculiarities of the Syriac Estrangela script, the Syriac underwriting dates from the sixth to the eighth century. By any standard this makes it an early and rare fragment. Calabro’s preliminary work on the text with Adrian Pirtea, a HMML Swenson Family Fellow in Eastern Christian Manuscript Studies, revealed several words and strings of words in Syriac (such as ṭúbānā / “the blessed one”), which may place the book in the genre of hagiographical writing on the lives of saints. More will be revealed as Toth and Calabro collaborate to post-process different parts of the sheet to enhance visualization of particular areas of the Syriac text. Equally remarkable is the 1,000-year-old Georgian overwriting, from a 10th-century collection of chants including texts from the Prophets Habakkuk, Isaiah and Amos. This dating makes the Georgian text early as well. It is clear that this manuscript had a complicated life, likely produced in Mesopotamia (an area that today includes parts of Syria, Iraq, and southeastern Turkey) before being scraped down and reused by a Georgian scribe. This may have been done in northern Syria, where there were Georgian monastic communities in the medieval period such as at the Black Mountain near Antioch, or possibly at Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. This fragment demonstrates how palimpsest witnesses both preserve valuable early texts and attest to the wide dissemination of Syriac literature throughout the eastern Mediterranean, offering a rich comparative perspective on the contacts between Syriac and other eastern Christian traditions.

Each imaging project presents its own set of challenges, but solving those data and processing hurdles adds knowledge useful for the future study of similar texts. For example, twenty years ago Toth and his collaborators knew little about the material characteristics of parchment and its fluorescence—its ability to absorb short wavelength and reflect long wavelength light. The understanding of parchment as a material has allowed Toth and researchers to refine the imaging process to enhance the visualization of embedded texts. Also, every project adds to the knowledge base and understanding of particular manuscript traditions, whether they are Syriac, Latin, Arabic, or Ethiopian. For example, parchment in Syriac manuscripts (such as SJU Ms Frag 32) is often high in calcium, which can interfere with a clear imaging of the underwriting (this may be due to the chalk required to degrease certain types of parchment skins for writing). Toth and his team now account for this codicological feature when imaging Syriac fragments such as HMML’s fragment or the famed Syriac Galen Palimpsest, a ninth-century Graeco-Syriac manuscript containing part of a pharmacological treatise by that ancient Greek physician. As the technology and knowledge base evolve, the growing data library of palimpsests from different traditions will allow technicians and researchers to get even more out of these texts. It will also lead to advancements in artificial intelligence and, in particular, machine learning, that will allow computers to teach themselves how to recognize and correct for differences in parchment, inks, and surface preparations from a variety of traditions.

The basic principles of MSI technology have stayed the same over the last two decades, and processing images has remained the terrain of a few technicians with the software and skills to create readable images from raw data. The next level of functionality for MSI will involve creating a suite of computer analysis tools that would allow anyone to enhance, refine, and interpret hidden texts more effectively on their own (women have the advantage, Toth says, as one in ten men is color blind). Toth and business partner, Bill Christens-Barry of Equipoise Imaging, are developing a “Paleo Toolbox” that will do just that. This would allow multispectral imaging technology to reach wider audiences who could analyze a larger number of palimpsest texts, some of which may have been hidden in plain sight for decades. Work with these palimpsests is certain to include the discovery of important lost works and the reinterpretation of little known texts that will reshape scholarship in many fields.

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How Art Forgery Actually Works
How Crime Works
Insider News
by Max Brandrett
Producer: Nazar Risafi
Oct 23, 2021



Former art forger Max Brandrett speaks to Insider about his experience and how art forgery works.

Max began his journey as a child in a poor Brighton neighborhood and eventually ran away to end up homeless in London. Max says that after he failed to find work, he decided to forge paintings and sell them with the help of an older accomplice he met in Portobello Road. Max tells us he forged over 500 paintings of artists such as Samuel Palmer and Louis Wain which sold in bespoke auctions and galleries making him over $600,000. After being arrested and jailed a few times Max decided to become a Copy Artist rather than a Forger. He has now made a legitimate business out of copying paintings.

Transcript

I am Max Brandrett, master forger, and I made over 500,000 pounds forging art. This is how crime works.

In those days, you didn't have the technology to send them up to the lab to be tested. Today, you would never get away with it. They can tell you the day you painted it; the color; how old it is; he canvas has got to be right -- you know, you can't forge.

In my day, you didn't have all this technology. From '60s, '68 to the '70s is when you could still hit it. But not today. No way.

Chapter 1: Making a Forged Painting

We used to buy what we called potboilers. Potboilers are old rubbish pictures that were painted by somebody who'd be an amateur -- but as long as the canvas at the back was right. You couldn't do an old picture from the 1700 or 1800s on a canvas that's mitered. You had to do it sort of when it's looking the part. If you did it on a mitered canvas, the auctioneer would suss it out.

If they've got a bowl of flowers on it, or a landscape, you rub it down -- you sand it down to a flat level -- prime it, gesso -- gesso primer -- undercoat on top of that -- white undercoat -- do the sides, and then do your painting.

As for starting, do the sky. Get the drawing system done, with your Brolac undercoat. Hair-dryer. Then you'd just sketch it out.

So that was the preparation. I think that's where the experts couldn't work out, "Hey, well, if this is a fake, he's got" -- I can match the color. It's just there. It's just, I see it. And I think I would know the color straightaway, what to use, you know?

If you use oil paints, normally with oil paints, it takes probably about three months to dry, right? But my little way of doing it was I found a quick drying process. Brolac, or any house undercoat, you know, white undercoat, and then you put that with your paint, you put your hair-dryer over it, and it'll dry probably in about two hours. That's why we could do so many. And that was it.

So the aging is a whole new world. What do you think happens when you've got a picture in a frame for years and years and years? So, when it's inside the slip frame, it will be clean, won't it? And all the dirt will show. So we used to age it, fake it up with a walnut scramble, like dirty sort of tea stain color, and then get your turps and run your finger down with a cloth all the way around, so you've got a neat line. So then they said, "Oh, it's been in the frame for years and years."

Put it back in the frame. That was it.

I wanted to crack the pictures; hence, a very magic thing which somebody showed me years ago from an old guy that used to restore. He said, "Bee glue is perfect." Bee glue is a Scotch glue, it's called. It's used for woodwork. Well, you're too young to remember. But it was always a smelly sort of gooey look. So I bought 2 pounds of this. I put it in a sauce bin, he told me, overnight. Next morning it's a jelly. Then you think, right, put it on the stove, bring it up to a varnish. If you overdo it, it goes too thick, so you just got to get it right. Get your picture, right. You get your picture. You give it a coat of this varnish -- this bee glue varnish -- you take it to a heater. It has to be an electric heater. It can't be dry heat. And you circulate the painting, like that. And you think, "God, it's cracking. It's working." And you do a bit on the top of the sky, and you look at it. You can actually hear it cracking. Wash off the bee glue with warm water on your tap, and then, all right, you've got water cracks.

Empty a Hoover on it. Rub all the Hoover in. All the dirt, all the cracks fill with dirt.

And then after that, all the nails that you've had in the garden for six months in a tin, because you put water in there and they rusted, make sure that the nails go back in the place where it was, 'cause they'll suss you out. Tap it all back, under glass, white polish, back in the frame, talcum powder -- because it smells after a while. It takes off the bee glue stink, and it rots, to be honest. And then hence, you've got it.

So, there again. On there, looking good. Auction room, Saturday, three or four of those, boom.

In the next chapters Max refers to an accomplice who assisted in selling fake paintings. The person's name is censored as Insider could not verify their involvement in the crimes.

Chapter 2: Becoming a Forger

[Censored] had the finance in the beginning. He would buy the canvases. He would buy the frames. He gave me light money in the beginning till we got started. I was in Portobello Road. [Censored] would come along, and he said, "I'll have your paintings, sir." He said, "I'll give you 200 quid for the lot. Come to have a drink with me afterwards." So we went to the pub -- just on Portobello Road -- and he started talking about, "We want to do this big time."

Yeah -- I could have done it on my own, but not as well.

Chapter 3: Selling a Fake

We would go in as father and son. Like, you know, he was 45, and I was 19 years old. So the first auction we hit was Lots Road. We got into the auction room, and, you know, you sort of make them look like they're very important. We would say, "Morning, governor." They'd go, "Yeah. Morning." "So, got some smudges in the car. So would you have a look for me?" And he goes, "Yeah, bring them in." He said, "Just there, fine." Said, "Dad, bring them in, will you?" So we bring them in a bloody bin liner. And he goes, "What's that down there? That looks interesting."

This is the very posh guy in the desk. This is how silly it was. The auctioneer would go, "Hm, Albert Darby." But what he didn't know was that Albert Darby used to sweep floors in Brighton in a pub. And I thought, when I was painting these fakes, [censored] said, "Nice, what are we going to do?" I said, "I know. A friend, a old fellow I met was in his '80s, called Albert Darby." He went, "Yeah. Do that." So I put "Albert Darby" on this fake picture, went into the auction, and he told me he's a listed painter. I went, "Yeah, right. That's how much they know." I thought that was it.

And then he said to me, "What's the other thing there?" "Oh, it's some cat picture, sir." Said, "Did you not know what this was? It's a Louis Wain." "Who's Louis Wain, sir? I thought it was Batman." Sorry, sorry. And my, [censored] would go, "You see, son? This guy knows all about it. When you've got respect like that, and the knowledge he has is incredible. So you look and learn."

But, again, to make that auctioneer feel like he's got the knowledge, and you know nothing.

Then, the big thing was the auction rooms. When you go into the auction room, you've got to be careful. The guy on the desk doesn't go into the auction on the night, because he spots two of you bidding for the bugger, then he'd think, "Hold on, why are they bidding against their own picture?" Sometimes we nearly bought the buggers back. And what we used to do, you'd have a preview. So on the day, you would have people coming in to look at the pictures, to see what they wanted to buy. We used to stand next to my pictures, or two of them, and we'd pretend not to listen. We'd go, "Oh." And the other guy'd go, "Hm, Albert Darby. It's interesting." Said, "It looks pretty good to me. You gonna have a pop at this?" And you'd mark it down, thinking, "Right, I've got him."

[Censored], he was in one side, I was in the other, and we used to ring it. So my sign was for when we were bidding up. We used to get to 2-1/2 grand, and I'd either do that, that I'm out, and he would carry on. And I used to do that twice. If you're going to overdo it, you buy the bloody thing back yourself. Yeah. So we hit the [censored] and said, "Oh, don't say it, don't say it." But we hit Bond Street Gallery for 45 grand. And we got 25 in readies, then the rest in a check, which we cashed immediately.

There you go. That's the other way.

Chapter 4: The Market

Mostly dealers would buy. They would buy for reselling. Oh, you get privates, you know. We fooled a lot of people with ours. But we had never had any comebacks. Never once did they suspect that they were -- Well, how do you feel about this? You got a picture, you listen to all these people talk about it, it's four weeks old, and it's dated 1797. So, you know, who knows? It just goes on.

Chapter 5: Getting Caught

Somebody legged it. Somebody crossed us up. And they raided us one night when I was in Fulham. They found all this bee glue, old paintings, stretchers -- everything. Then they charged me with forgery and deception. [Censored] got off. I didn't. I got nicked.

And I had a single cell, 'cause I asked the governor. I asked the governor for oil paints, he agreed. And then pencils and paper and things like that. And so [censored] came to me, and we'd be visiting in those days. So, what he used to do is he used to bring the paper in, and he'd have it up his sleeve. And he used to slide out some paper that he used to nick from the library, and flip clean pages. The pages were really old -- 1830s. So I could do Samuel Palmer drawings in my cell, put it in a Bible, next time he came up I was to roll them up, and roll them up his sleeve. He used to take them back home, frame them up, shove them in the auction. So when I came out, I had about 4 grand.

So I was forging in prison.

Chapter 6: The Aftermath

If I walked into Christie's or Sotheby's, a bloody bell would ring. 'Cause I'm on camera, aren't I? Well, I'm banned from auctions. I'm banned from every auction. In the old days, if there's a bang on the door, I was halfway out the bloody window. But I don't have to do that now. I just feel content with my lot.

Chapter 7: The Backstory

I was born in Buckingham Road, in Brighton, in a basement flat. Five of us. And it was poverty. It got so bad that they decided to take us away. So that was the first place, was Barkingside, we went to, the children's home. I did all that; came back to my mother; I ran away to London; and then I thought, "the only job you could get was in the circus." So I went up to the circus in Chipping Norton. When I left the circus, I hit Portobello Road. I saw lots of paintings, I thought, "I can do those myself." And so I did about five or six pictures. Then off you go. Portobello Road, here I come.

Do I feel remorse? To be honest, I just felt it was survival, you know? I didn't sink. Perhaps if I was that age -- I was only 19 or 20.

My book is called, "Max Brandrett, Britain's Number One Forger." And it's not about how to fake a picture. It's my real, my life story.