We have the final PDF of the Eusebius book!
How do I express deep joy in mere words?
Month: February 2011
Eusebius update
I have just finished checking over the final PDF of the book (Eusebius of Caesarea, Gospel Problems and Solutions or Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum). It’s pretty nearly perfect. There are two small changes to be done, both because I didn’t understand a note from the translator. But they’re trivial. Bob the typesetter has understood a pretty chaotic set of changes, and done them all perfectly.
I’ve written to him to ask for the last two tweaks. I’ve also asked for .RTF files of the whole thing. One day, remember, this will all go online. The whole idea of this project is to make the work accessible to as many people as possible. The RTF’s will allow me to do so.
First, tho, I have to sell some copies to libraries in order to pay for the costs so far. These are not really huge, in the great scheme of things — perhaps $5,000? — but more than I can just treat as petty cash. But when the sales come to an end, then we’ll get the thing online. The book will still be available for purchase, tho — after all, it’s the sort of book which is probably best consulted in paper form.
To do, then:
-
Decide on a cover, and get one made if need be.
-
Get the cover to Lightning Source.
-
Get a professional website for my company (Chieftain Publishing) up with an eCommerce solution, so people can actually buy it.
-
Get the PDF to Lightning Source for the hardback.
-
Get hold of the test print and check it is OK.
-
Send the translators each a free copy.
-
Send out the handful of other free copies that I have promised or been contractually required to supply.
-
Send out review copies to three journals.
-
Do whatever is necessary to make Amazon.co.uk work.
-
Make sure Amazon.com has the book.
-
Email everyone on the list of “I am interested in this book”
-
Get some kind of e-Flyer made (how?)
-
Tell interested people that the book is available.
Hum. There’s more things there than I had thought! I have some free time coming up in a week, tho, so it should be possible to do a lot of these then.
Book cover design with Lightning Source
One of the tasks that I have shirked for the Eusebius book is designing the cover. That’s mainly because I’ve been too busy with getting the book actually complete, but also because of a misunderstanding.
When you go to Lulu.com, you get an online interactive designer tool. The results when I have used it have been so-so, but at least you don’t worry about that. Lightning Source, who will be printing the book, tell you in their blurb about their cover generator. Naturally I presumed these were the same.
But it is not so. What Lightning Source make you do is enter the dimensions of the book and decide on paper and whether it’s hardback etc. These options are few, but can still confuse. I long ago decided on 6×9 inches as the trim size, and mentally chose a hardback. But I did not realise that this choice committed me to creme paper! Indeed when I started using the form, I naturally chose white paper and couldn’t find any hardback options! But after trudging through some docs, I realised that, if I want white paper, in that size, it can only be a paper back. Still, I am committed to 6×9, and to hardback, so I must lump it. The creme seems to be thicker, and hopefully is better quality.
But the “generator” just emails the info to Lightning Source, who send you back a template file, onto which your design must be placed by you. This is not an operation for the squeamish, it seems.
My next thought was to hire someone to do it. After all, surely anyone dealing with Lightning Source will have the same needs? But a Google search did not bring up much. So far I have two options:
-
Marcellino Design, who would also design a website.
-
Book Creatives – the sample templates in fact look more like the sort of thing I would want.
A few hundred dollars to sidestep this task does not seem unreasonable.
I’m not quite sure what sort of cover the “hardback” is, either. I shall explore as I go a long!
There seems to be a choice of “case laminate (hardcover)” and “cloth – blue or grey” and “jacketed”. The “cloth” option doesn’t list a cover template size. But cloth is what I vaguely had in mind. And then I find this:
Cloth-style casebound titles require text copy for spine production. Up to 42 characters (including spaces) may be used to stamp the title, author, and/or other text the publisher designates onto the spine. Characters available include the 26 upper and lowercase letters, numerals 1-10, space, period, comma, hyphen, quote, apostrophe, colon, semi colon, hash/pound sign, question mark, exclamation mark, dollar sign, ampersand, quotation marks, asterisk, and the two parentheses. Text is positioned on the spine of the book as the publisher designates during the title setup process.
The same digital file or hardcopy book may be submitted for paperback and casebound editions provided the trim size is the same, however, a new copyright page containing the ISBN for that format may be needed. A unique ISBN is required by the book industry for each format.
A google search says “casebound” = “hard cover”! OK: that’s fair enough.
The choices in another PDF manual for hardbacks are “blue cloth”, “blue cloth (with jacket)”, “case laminate”. Hum. OK, that’s the same three choices. But I search for “cloth” and find later on a charge for “Stamped cover (hardcover cloth only), 100% cotton fabric cover w/gold foil author/title on spine)”. But then I discover that is the US manual.
The UK manual is different again, and clearer in some ways: “Cloth covered books are available in blue or grey. Foil stamping on the front of the book is not available…. and then the same “Stamped cover” bit. The UK manual insists on using metric, which is annoying.
So it seems if you want cloth, it comes as plain, and with gold stamping on the spine. Hum. Well, that’s clear enough… in the end. In the process of writing this, I’ve found out more than I knew at the start, it seems.
But in that case, I can see why people go for dust-jackets, tho! I had some idea of just having a title and logo stamped on the front of the book, as the old Loeb’s did. But maybe I do need to get a paper cover designed!
A description of Alexandria in Achilles Tatius
A review at Bryn Mawr draws my attention to a new book on the famous library by Monica Berti, La Biblioteca di Alessandria. But the review (in English) mentions descriptions of Alexandria in ancient literature. One of these is at the start of book 5 of the 2nd century novel by Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon.
Like most people I have never paid any attention to this work. So it was a pleasure to have a reason to go and look at it. The 1917 Loeb edition and translation is at Archive.org — aren’t these old online Loebs useful! — here. Here’s the relevant passage, over-paragraphed by me for readability.
1. After a voyage lasting for three days, we arrived at Alexandria. I entered it by the Sun Gate, as it is called, and was instantly struck by the splendid beauty of the city, which filled my eyes with delight.
From the Sun Gate to the Moon Gate — these are the guardian divinities of the entrances — led a straight double row of columns, about the middle of which lies the open part of the town, and in it so many streets that walking in them you would fancy yourself abroad while still at home. Going a few hundred yards further, I came to the quarter called after Alexander, where I saw a second town; the splendour of this was cut into squares, for there was a row of columns intersected by another as long at right angles.
I tried to cast my eyes down every street, but my gaze was still unsatisfied, and I could not grasp all the beauty of the spot at once; some parts I saw, some I was on the point of seeing, some I earnestly desired to see, some I could not pass by; that which I actually saw kept my gaze fixed, while that which I expected to see would drag it on to the next.
I explored therefore every street, and at last, my vision unsatisfied, exclaimed in weariness, “Ah, my eyes, we are beaten.”
Two things struck me as especially strange and extraordinary — it was impossible to decide which was the greatest, the size of the place or its beauty, the city itself or its inhabitants ; for the former was larger than a continent, the latter outnumbered a whole nation. Looking at the city, I doubted whether any race of men could ever fill it; looking at the inhabitants, I wondered whether any city could ever be found large enough to hold them all. The balance seemed exactly even.
2. It so fortuned that it was, at that time, the sacred festival of the great god whom the Greeks call Zeus, the Egyptians Serapis, and there was a procession of torches. It was the greatest spectacle I ever beheld, for it was late evening and the sun had gone down ; but there was no sign of night — it was as though another sun had arisen, but distributed into small parts in every direction; I thought that on that occasion the city vied with the sky for beauty.
I also visited the Gracious Zeus and his temple in his aspect as god of Heaven; and then praying to the great god and humbly imploring him that our troubles might be at last at an end, we came back to the lodgings which Menelaus had hired for us. …
6. … On the morrow came Chaereas at dawn: for very shame we could make no further excuses and got aboard a boat to go to Pharos; Menelaus stayed behind, saying that he was not well.
Chaereas first took us to the light-house and showed us the most remarkable and extraordinary structure upon which it rested; it was like a mountain, almost reaching the clouds, in the middle of the sea. Below the building flowed the waters; it seemed to be, as it were, suspended above their surface, while at the top of this mountain rose a second sun to be a guide for ships.
After this he took us to his house, which was on the shore at the extremity of the island. …
14. … [A rich Ephesian woman living in Alexandria wants to marry the hero] … it was agreed upon between us that the next day we should meet at the temple of Isis in order to discuss our future and take the goddess as witness to our troth. Menelaus and Clinias came there with us, and we took oaths, I to love her honourably, and she to make me her husband and declare me master of all that she possessed.
Note the reference in chapter 2 to street-lighting!
This is all that Achilles Tatius gives us about the city. It’s rather vague; but of course the author had no notion that his work would be scanned by readers 18 centuries later for clues about ancient Alexandria, any more than I consider some possible future reader of these words, of two centuries hence, who impatiently scans these paragraphs of tedious-seeming antiquarianism on the off-chance that it may contain a description of modern London! We do not describe what we see every day, until it is vanished.
If only we had a time-machine to take us back to ancient Rome!
Reading in bed can be perilous. I was just reading this in Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights (book 5, ch. 4), and had to get up and write about it:
4. On the word duovicesimus, which is unknown to the general public, but occurs frequently in the writings of the learned.
I chanced to be sitting in a bookshop in the Sigillaria 1 with the poet Julius Paulus, the most learned man within my memory; and there was on sale there the Annals of Fabius 2 in a copy of good and undoubted age, which the dealer maintained was without errors. But one of the better known grammarians, who had been called in by a purchaser to inspect the book, said that he had found in it one error; but the bookseller for his part offered to wager any amount whatever that there was not a mistake even in a single letter. The grammarian pointed out the following passage in the fourth book: “Therefore it was then that for the first time one of the two consuls was chosen from the plebeians, in the twenty-second (duovicesimo) year after the Gauls captured Rome.” “It ought,” to read, not duovicesimo, but duo et vicesimo or twenty-second; for what is the meaning of duovicesimo?” . . . 3 Varro in the sixteenth book of his Antiquities of Man; there he wrote as follows: “He died in the twenty-second year (duovicesimo); he was king for twenty-one years.” . . .
1. Quintus Fabius Pictor, who was sent as an envoy to Delphi after the battle of Cannae (216 B.C.), wrote a history of Rome from the coming of Aeneas to his own time. He wrote in Greek, but a Latin version is mentioned also by Quintilian (I.6.12) and was used by Varro and by Cicero.
2. A street or quarter in Rome where the little images were sold which were given as presents at the festival of the Sigillaria.
3. There is a lacuna in the text which might be filled by “This question might be answered by.”
Ah, which of us would not wish to be there, back in 160 AD, sitting in that bookshop in the Sigillaria, and looking over the shoulder of Aulus Gellius and Julius Paulus, as they examine the aged copy of the archaic Latin Annals of Q. Fabius Pictor! What lover of books cannot sigh at the thought of that book, of “undoubted age”.
I wonder just how long it was, after that event, that the very last copy of Pictor’s work vanished from the world?
(Thanks to Bill Thayer for the text here).
The transmission of Aulus Gellius down to our own days
Texts and Transmissions tells me that the fundamental edition of Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights is the editio maior of M. Hertz, Berlin, 1883-5 (2 vols). This is online in two volumes here(1883) and here (1885), although the title pages in these two PDF’s seem to have been exchanged. The Teubner text of C. Hosius (1903) involved no new work on the manuscripts, and the most recent full critical edition is the Oxford Classical Texts edition Noctes Atticae by P. K. Marshall (1968), 2 vols. Rene Marache has produced a Bude edition, Les Nuits Attiques
Some details of the transmission and publication of the text are accessible to all in Google books preview here of Leofranc Holford-Strevens Aulus Gellius: an Antonine scholar and his achievement, which seems to be an excellent volume indeed.
The Attic Nights are quoted a lot in ancient times, as such a compilation of anecdotes and learning was bound to be. Apuleius (De Mundo 13-14); Lactantius (Epit. inst. div. 24.5), Nonius and Ammianus Marcellinus and Macrobius in many places, and the Historia Augusta 28.1.1, together with Servius (Commentary on the Aenid 5.738, and on the Georgics 1.260 and Aen. 7.740) and Augustine in the City of God 9.4.
We have a fourth century manuscript, even, a palimpsest, written in rustic capitals and containing large parts of books 1-2 and some of 3-4. It also has the chapter headings for books 17-18 presented continuously, indicating that when new the codex originally contained all 20 books, with the headings at the front, immediately after the preface.
Incidentally I have complained before about the manner in which the unmeaning non-English word “lemma” is tossed around in classical studies, attached to a range of objects as a jargon word. In scholia it denotes the couple of words of quotation from the main text, to which the scholion relates. In dictionaries it means the word in its base form, nominative singular etc. But it seems that yet another use is found in Aulus Gellius studies, where “lemmata” means the index of chapter titles! To scholars I say: Enough! Stop using this word. It’s simply a barrier to ordinary people.
Back to the text of Aulus Gellius. It was transmitted in two halves; but instead of books 1-10 and 11-20, as we might expect, it has reached us in books 1-7 and 9-20. Book 8 is lost.
Books 1-7 are known to us from four manuscripts from France, of the 12-13th century. There are also quotations in a couple of anthologies.
Books 9-20 are known to us from three families of manuscripts. The first of these is a single manuscript written at Fulda in 836, as a group effort, on the orders of Rabanus Maurus for Servatus Lupus. But no-one ever seems to have copied it. There is a second family of four manuscripts, 9th, 10th, 12th century, plus one 15th century copy written by the great Florentine collector Niccolo Niccoli himself, probably from a 9th century ms., and which was the parent of all the renaissance copies, presumably because it was the easiest to read and most accessible. There is a third family of three manuscripts of the 12-13th century.
The two halves of the text were first put back together in the early 15th century. But one other important event took place then. Someone, somewhere — we don’t know who or where — found something present in no manuscript now extant. He found the chapter headings for book 8, the lost book; and he found the ending for book 20. These were added to the printed edition, and appear first in the edition in Venice in 1493. Hertz discusses this in vol.1 p.406, note; the italics are Hertz’ words, while the normal text is quotations from somewhat vaguely specified early editions. All they say is that the material came from an “old copy”.
From my diary
Aulus Gellius arrived today. The most interesting thing so far is that, like Pliny the Elder, he has a collection of all the chapter titles at the end of the preface and before book 1. This is useful, because book 8 did not reach us. But we know what it contained, because the “capita” are listed.
I’ve been writing emails about the Armenian version of Michael the Syrian a lot today, and with luck the forthcoming English translation (by Matti Moosa) of the Syriac text of Michael the Syrian will be enriched thereby.
The commission to translate Porphyry Ad Gaurum has fallen through — looks as if there was a misunderstanding. Another time, no doubt.
Armenian versions of Michael the Syrian
The massive world chronicle of Michael the Syrian, composed during the crusader period, survives in a single manuscript in a box in Aleppo. The box has two locks, each held by a senior figure in two different churches. Access is difficult.
Making things worse is that J.-B. Chabot in the early 20th century somehow got access, and somehow surreptiously made a copy. Quite how you can surreptiously make a copy of something the size of two telephone directories I don’t know, but he did. He published it with French translation — we may all be grateful for this, since many Syriac books were destroyed in WW1 — but the owners still remember, and are still angry with him.
The opening portion of the chronicle is lost. But an Armenian version preserves the preface, which Langlois’ edition of 1868 (French only) makes available online.
Few people seem to know much about the Armenian versions of Michael the Syrian. But from Michael E. Stone, The Armenian texts of Epiphanius of Salamis De mensuris et ponderibus, CSCO 583, Subsidia 105 (2000) — an excellent text, fromwhat little I can see in the preview — on p.25, I learn this:
Vardan Arewelc’i translated Michael’s Chronicle into Armenian in the year 1246, with the assistance of the Syrian priest Ishox and at the request of the Armenian Catholicos Constantine. See N. Bogharian, Armenian Writers, 296.
He also refers to an article by F. Haase, Die armenischen Rezensionen des syrischen Chronik Michael des Grossen, Oriens Christianus NS 5 (1915), 60-82, 211-284. That ought to be online somewhere! Apparently this indicates that more than one version exists or existed. He also indicates that material from Moses of Chorene contaminates the translation of Vardan Arewelc’i.
Another link indicates another article: Andrea Schmidt, Die zweifache armenische Rezension der syrischen Chronik Michaels des Grossen, Le Museon 109 (1996), p.299-319. This seems to be inaccessible to proles like you and I, but searching around the web reveals that this has been mentioned to me before here in a useful set of comments. Andrea Schmidt has a home page here, with a long bibliography. I do wish that some of it was online.
I also find D. Weltecke’s article in English on the chronicle here in PDF form. This useful introduction tells me that there are two versions, published in Jerusalem in 1870 and 1871 (but not what the titles etc are). A book in German by Dorothea Weltecke, Die “Beschreibung der Zeiten” von Mōr Michael dem Grossen (1126-1199) is online in preview here, where on p.7 we read more about the history of these versions, and a review of previous research.
So … a rather inconclusive result. I’ve gained a little impression of the subject, but not much. I was hoping to locate an Armenian text online, although not with much hope.
Galen’s preface to Hippocrates “On the workshop/laboratory of a doctor” in English
Andrew Eastbourne has come through, and a .doc file of this text (De officina medici) arrived today and can be downloaded from here: Galen_-_Preface. I have also uploaded it to the Fathers site here. I’m placing this in the public domain — do whatever you like with it (except stick your own copyright notice on it!)
It is most interesting as a guide to the transmission of texts in ancient times, so I will do my best to post it here.
He entitled a medical [work], “Pertaining to the Surgery” (κατ’ ἰητρεῖον).[1] But it would have been better for it to be entitled, “On the Things Pertaining to the Surgery” (περὶ τῶν κατ’ ἰητρεῖον), as some give the title for the [works] of Diocles, Philotimus, and Mantius. For while these men wrote on the same subject, in each book, in the greatest number [of copies] the title lacks the preposition (περί) and the article (τῶν)—they are entitled, simply, “Pertaining to the Surgery”—in a few [copies], however, [it is given] with the preposition and the article: “On the Things Pertaining to the Surgery.” But whereas these men’s books give quite copious theoretical instruction, Hippocrates’ [book], after the catalogue of the things that are the components of surgery overall, gives a full explanation of bandaging, since the man considered it proper to practice this first. And indeed, the practice of this can be pursued most especially with pieces of wood sculpted into human form, or if [this is] not [possible], on the bodies of children at least.
This much the book itself required me to say, before my interpretations of individual points; now, however, I will go through what is not required by the book, but by those who, in copying [2] them, readily received the writings of the ancients in whatever [form] they themselves wished.[3] For some eagerly attempted to find 300-year-old copies of even very old books,[4] preserving some in papyrus scrolls, others on sheets of papyrus, others on parchment, like the [texts] that are with us in Pergamum.[5]
Therefore, I decided to examine all these things in the [commentaries of the] earliest interpreters, so that on the basis of the majority and the most trustworthy I might discover the authentic writings. And the result turned out to surpass my expectations. For I discovered that they nearly all agreed with each other—the treatises and the commentaries of the interpreters—such that I was struck with bewilderment at the audacity of those who have recently written commentaries or have made their own edition of all the books of Hippocrates, among whom are Dioscorides and his associates, and Artemidorus, called Capito, and his associates,[6] who made many innovations in the ancient writings.
It seemed to me that the account of the commentaries would be [too] long, if I mentioned all the writings, and so I imagined that it was better to write [about] the older ones only, adding to them some few others—those that show but little alteration—and of these, primarily those which have been acknowledged by the earlier commentators on the book. There are four of them: two, who wrote commentaries on all the books of Hippocrates—Zeuxis and Heraclides; and then Bacchius and Asclepiades, [whose comments], not on all [the books of Hippocrates, are] hard to understand.[7]
And now, enough of these matters. By way of recovering the pleasure of a clearer exordium, I will speak briefly, as though I had not said anything already. Hippocrates’ book, entitled “Pertaining to the Surgery,” contains at the outset a preamble to the whole art [of medicine], as I shall demonstrate a little later, and for this reason some have reasonably considered it proper to read it first of all, promising lessons very similar to what some later gave in the works they entitled “Introductions.” And next in sequence after the common preamble, he teaches (regarding what can be effected in the surgery) the most useful things for those who are beginning to learn the medical art. It will become plain to you that [all] this is the case as you apply your mind carefully to the explanations of the expressions themselves.
From: Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, tom. XVIII pars II, ed. D. Carolus Gottlob Kühn, Lipsiae (1830), p. 629-632. Title: ΤΟ ΙΠΠΟΚΡΑΤΟΥΣ ΚΑΤ̕ΙΗΤΡΕΙΟΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΙ ΓΑΛΗΝΟΥ ΕΙΣ ΑΥΤΟ ΥΠΟΜΝΗΜΑ Α. The title of the Latin translation is: Hippocratis De Medici Officina liber et Galeni in eum Commentarius I; Galeni praefatio. [Note by R.P.]
[1] “Surgery” here appears to refer to the physical set-up for a doctor’s operations, not the practice of surgery to which the English term most frequently refers.
[2] The Greek term, μεταγράφοντες, carries the implication that they changed them in the process of copying.
[3] Here Birt, Das antike Buchwesen, p. 503, suggests emending the odd ἢ (“or” [?]) to οἳ, yielding the following meaning for the sentence: “…but by the copyists, who readily took…”
[4] In the Greek, it is the copying rather than the composition that is explicitly described as “300-years old,” since the participle γεγραμμένα—lit., “having been written”—is in the accusative case, whereas the books are in the genitive.
[5] Kuhn’s text (τὰδὲἐνδιαφόροιςφιλύραις, ὥσπερτὰπαρ’ ἡμῖνἐνΠεργάμῳ: “others on various / excellent [sheets of paper made from] the under-bark of the lime tree, like the texts that are with us in Pergamum”) is problematic. Although this under-bark is attested as being used for writing (Herodian 1.17.1; Cassius Dio 72.8.4), it has no connection with Pergamum. Birt, Das antike Buchwesen, p. 503, cites Cobet’s emendation (ἐνδιφθέραις) with approval—I have adopted it here; Birt also mentions Marquardt’s suggestion (ἐνδιφθερίναιςφιλύραις: “on [sheets of] parchment ‘bark'”).
[6] The phrasing here—”Dioscorides and his associates” (Gk. οἱπερὶΔιοσκορίδην)—is frequently used in Greek as a circumlocution for the simple “Dioscorides.”
[7] Gk. δυσλόγιστα; this can mean, literally, “hard to calculate” or “bad at calculating” and hence, either obscurity or shoddy commentating is the point.
UPDATE: Andrew Eastbourne writes to remind me that “duties” of a doctor would be “officiis”, and to say that “officina” is workshop/laboratory.
Notes on the Laus Pisonis
My copy of Texts and Transmissions is still lying beside my computer with a bookmark at the page on the manuscripts of Juvenal. But over the page is a short entry on a Latin text previously unknown to me. This is an anonymous Latin panegyric known as the Laus Pisonis (Praise of Piso). Fortunately I find the text and a translation already present at Bill Thayer’s site, Lacus Curtius, here.
The work survived to the renaissance in a single manuscript, which in 1527 was found at the South German abbey of Lorsch. The text was published by Johannes Sichard in that year at Basle (by Froben?), which is fortunate for the Lorsch codex has since disappeared. Lorsch was founded in the middle of the Dark Ages, and was sacked, like the other abbeys of Southern Germany, during the Thirty Years War. The manuscripts of Lorsch, such as survived, were taken to Heidelberg. The collection of manuscripts at Heidelberg ended up in the Vatican collection, as the “Palatine” manuscripts. But like the two volume Tertullian, listed in a medieval catalogue, the collection of minor Latin poets which contained the Laus Pisonis did not make it.
Anyone wishing to edit the text is therefore dependent upon the fidelity of Schard’s edition. This is not an enviable fate. Even so good an editor as Beatus Rhenanus, who printed the editio princeps of Tertullian at Basle in 1521, was quite willing to simply mark up the manuscript for the printer and send it to the monkeys of the press to be typeset in the new moveable type. Quite a number of errors could creep in, from such a hands-off policy. Rhenanus did just this, in 1520, with the only manuscript of Velleius Paterculus (since lost). But in that case, once sample sheets had been printed, errors were noticed — and one of Rhenanus’ associates recalled the manuscript from the printer, and collated it against the print. The collation was then itself added to the edition.
The process also led to the loss of manuscripts. A careless editor might well feel that the parchment manuscript, by now considerably defaced, was of no further interest, now that he had a nice new clean copy. It is a lamentable fact that quite a few unique manuscripts survived the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, only to be chopped up for parchment once printed. However we happen to know that the manuscript of Velleius survived this treatment and existed as late as the 18th century. Similarly the manuscripts of Tertullian used by Rhenanus did not perish at that point; one, indeed, survives today among Rhenanus’ papers in the little town of Selestat in Alsace. But we can only speculate whether the only manuscript of the Laus Pisonis perished in 1527, cut up to line baking dishes, or suffered some other fate somewhat later.
Fortunately a second source is available, in the form of a 12th century anthology of texts, the Florilegium Gallicum. This contains 75% of the Laus Pisonis, and so can be used to correct the text.
The poem itself praises a young Calpurnius Piso, one of a number of that name. The references to Maecenas suggest a date in the mid- to late-first century.