Month: November 2012

A letter of Francisco Filelfo to Theodore of Gaza about Plutarch

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Last night I started reading through a PDF of Legrand’s edition and translation of the letters of Francisco Filelfo.[1]  Filelfo was a 15th century Italian involved in the rediscovery of ancient Greek literature, who made trips to Constantinople and translated texts into Latin.

The version of the PDF available from Gallica is much better than the Google Books version, in that it has been OCR’d and the index of names painfully turned into bookmarks by some praiseworthy soul.

A lot of the letters are rather dull.  The following one caught my eye, and I’ve made an English translation from the French, therefore.  It is always interesting to see just how the classics were rediscovered and transmitted in this crucial period.

 Francisco Filelfo, to Theodore of Gaza, greeting.

My son Xenophon, the bearer of this letter, will make known to you various communications from myself.  He will tell you most specially that I desire very much the Lacedaemonian Apopthegmes.  It was, as you know, the wise Plutarch who endowed the Greeks with this book, and your Filelfo has translated it for the benefit of the Latins.  But I found the original was faulty in certain places, because of the ignorance of the scribe, so I am obliged to have recourse to your assistance in order to obtain another copy of the same text, if perhaps you have a copy, and it is correctly written.  Farewell.

This letter was written at Milan on 26 February 1454.  It is followed by a letter to none other than Mehmet II, the Turkish Sultan who had just conquered Constantinople, on behalf of Manfredina, the mother of his wife and widow of his teacher, John Chrysoloras.  The letter opens with compliments and then continues:

The errors of the Greeks have delivered Constantinople to you for the punishment of the guilty.   But as sometimes happens, the divine providence has allowed the righteous to suffer along with the wicked.  Thus Manfredina Chrysoloras, my mother-in-law, a chaste, sainted woman of illustrious birth, who has never given any offence either to God or to your glorious person, has been reduced to slavery with her two excellent daughters.  And by who?  By those eternal slaves, the Jews, those avaricious, pusillanimous, vilest and most wicked of men!

So I come to you, O great emir, to you whom God has sent to be the benefactor of the unfortunate, I come to seek your help.  I seek to reclaim my mother-in-law and her daughters, and I am ready to pay for their ransom, not what is demanded by the avidity of savage Jews, but what is equitable and within the measure of my means.  Your secretary Kyritzis can explain to you verbally the details of this business.

The author also sent a complimentary poem to the Sultan, and achieved his aim; his relatives were released and settled in Candia in Crete.  We need not condemn Filelfo for using flattery to obtain their release.  Let us instead hope that we are never in such a plight.

The letters of the humanists deserve to be better known.  But how wonderful it is that we can access such  material!  Ten years ago I read the letters of Poggio to Niccolo Niccoli, and these were filled with footnotes to works like Legrand.  This was utterly frustrating, because such books were inaccessible.  But today, a few minutes searching produces a neat, handy PDF.

We live in an age of miracles, where scholarship is concerned.  Who can predict what the same scope of years will bring?

Share
  1. [1]E. Legrand, Cent-dix lettres grecques de Francois Filelfe, Paris, 1892.↩

Phaedrus and Tiberius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been reading the Fables of Phaedrus, in five short books, available from Gutenberg here.  These are adaptations of the older Aesop literature, as the prologue to book three makes clear.

Few will know that the fables contain sidelights on the Rome of Tiberius. 

Tiberius Cæsar, when on his way to Naples, came to his country-seat at Misenum, which, placed by the hand of Lucullus on the summit of the heights, beholds the Sicilian sea in the distance, and that of Etruria close at hand.

One of the highly girt Chamberlains,whose tunic of Pelusian linen was nicely smoothed from his shoulders downwards, with hanging fringes, while his master was walking through the pleasant shrubberies, began with bustling officiousness to sprinkle the parched ground with a wooden watering-pot; but only got laughed at.

Thence, by short cuts to him well known, he runs before into another walk, laying the dust. Cæsar takes notice of the fellow, and discerns his object. Just as he is supposing that there is some extraordinary good fortune in store for him: “Come hither,” says his master; on which he skips up to him, quickened by the joyous hope of a sure reward. Then, in a jesting tone, thus spoke the mighty majesty of the prince: “You have not profited much; your labour is all in vain; manumission stands at a much higher price with me.”

This is the only overt example, but there is also a reference to Augustus, and one to Sejanus.  As to why the author should write in fables, this he tells us himself:

Now will I explain in a few words why Fabulous narrative was invented. Slavery, subject to the will of another, because it did not dare to say what it wished, couched its sentiments in Fables, and by pleasing fictions eluded censure.

The historical value of the book is low, all the same.  But it is worth a brief glance, I think.

Share

Aesopica: the horse and the stag

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Fables of Aesop reach us through many derivative collections, such as those of Phaedrus and Babrius.  To edit a collection of them is no doubt a serious business.  But the fables are not lacking in contemporary relevance.

In Britain the Exclusive Brethren church is being attacked by the Charities Commission, which seems to want to set itself up as arbiter of “allowed” and “not allowed” churches.  The Exclusive Brethren are a reclusive lot, not without some suspicion of being cult-like, and ex-members feel quite a bit of antipathy towards them.  Some of the stories that one may read online are hair-raising.  In consequence there are ex-members who are wildly cheering on the Commission, without considering whether this is in their own interests.  

I do wish that these people — who may well have legitimate grievances — would look at the larger picture.  Their grievances will not be addressed by this method.

I do not believe that this is about the Exclusive Brethren, and still less about those who may have been injured by it.  The Charities Commission does not give a damn about either of them.  All of them, to a London-based organisation, are nobodies.  The Commission does not care whether the Exclusive Brethren is a cult. 

I suspect — I am not alone in so suspecting — that the Commssion chose the organisation, in order to create a precedent, to create case-law.   This precedent would give it very considerable powers, to decide which religious groups would, and would not be allowed to operate without crushing financial penalties.  So it chose a small, not very popular, little known group as the object of its attack.  It may well have hoped that the Brethren would just take it, or be unable to afford lawyers.   

The question we all need to ask here is not whether we like the Brethren.  Rather it is this.  Is it a good idea to create a Soviet-style “Commission for Religious Cults”, with whom churches must register, and who can apply financial penalties if it chooses?  Few of us would think so.  That is the issue before us.

This all reminded me of a fable, which, after some hunting around I found.  Interestingly there is a retelling of it by Isaac Asimov, which I will give first.

 A horse having a wolf as a powerful and dangerous enemy lived in constant fear of his life. Being driven to desperation, it occured to him to seek a strong ally. Whereupon he approached a man, and offered an alliance, pointing out that the wolf was likewise an enemy of the man. The man accepted the partnership at once and offered to kill the wolf immediately, if his new partner would only co-operate by placing his greater speed at the man’s disposal. The horse ws willing, and allowed the man to place bridle and saddle upon him. The man mounted, hunted down the wolf, and killed him.

The horse, joyful and relieved, thanked the man, and said: ‘Now that our enemy is dead, remove your bridle and saddle and restore my freedom.’

Whereupon the man laughed loudly and replied, ‘The hell you say. Giddy-ap, Dobbin,’ and applied the spurs with a will.[1]

The ex-members are the horse; the wolf is the Brethren; and the man is the Charities Commission.

Searching for this, I came across a website dedicated to the Aesopica, run by Laura Gibbs who published a translation.  It’s rather wonderful!  It includes the Greek and Latin.  Here is Gibb’s translation of the original:

47. THE STAG, THE HORSE AND THE MAN

Perry 269 (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1393b)

There was a horse who was the sole owner of a meadow. Then a stag came and wreaked havoc in the meadow. The horse wanted to get revenge, so he asked a certain man if he would help him carry out a vendetta against the stag. The man agreed, provided that the horse took the bit in his mouth so that the man could ride him, wielding his javelin. The horse consented, and the man climbed on his back but instead of getting his revenge, the horse simply became a slave to the man.

Note: In some versions of this story, it is a boar, not a stag, who provokes the horse’s reckless anger (e.g., Phaedrus 4.4). There is an interesting version of this story in a fragment of the Greek historian Conon (cited in van Dijk 7T3), and the fable is also found in Horace, Epistles 1.10.34 ff.[2]

 The Greek text of Chambray’s edition is also online here.  Gibbs adds:

Chambry published a multivolume edition of the fables for the Belles Lettres series in 1925/6 (Paris). He later revised this into a single volume, omitting hundreds of the fable variants. In addition, the numeration between these two volumes is not consistent. The texts here are taken from the 1925/6 edition, but the numeration follows the stanard single volume edition.

Like most people, I have only a hazy idea of the transmission of the Fables.  But how very, very useful to have a reliable source online!

UPDATE: The Chambry text seems to be entitled Fabulae recensuit Aemilius Chambry.

Share
  1. [1]Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy, part III, chapter 8.↩
  2. [2]Aesop’s Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World’s Classics): Oxford, 2002. http://www.mythfolklore.net/aesopica/oxford/47.htm↩

Plymouth Brethren banned in Britain

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Or they might as well be, if their members have to pay 33% tax on every penny they donate, and the church then has to hand over 20% of all donations to the state.

From the Daily Mail:

MPs are demanding an inquiry into the Charity  Commission after the watchdog banned a Christian group from charitable status on  the grounds that religion is not always for ‘public benefit’.

More than 50 MPs from all the main parties  have signed a Commons motion calling on the charity regulator to think again,  amid fears that hundreds of religious groups could be stripped of their  tax-exempt status, threatening their very existence.

They accuse the Charity Commission of ‘politically correct bias’ against faith groups after it ruled that the Preston  Down Trust of the Plymouth Brethren Church – which has 16,000 members across  Britain – is not entitled to charitable status because it does not do enough  good works in the community.

MPs say the ruling is ‘outrageous’ because it  ignored the way the group, which has enjoyed charitable status for 50 years,  runs soup kitchens for the poor and hospital visits for the sick.

Tory MP Robert Halfon said: ‘There is  something rotten in the Charity Commission. I cannot understand why the  Brethren, good people who do so much in their communities, have been singled  out.

‘I believe an inquiry is needed into the role  of the Charity Commission, to consider how it came to make the decision. What  has happened is unjust and is creating fear in many churches across the  country.’

In a ruling that sent shockwaves through even  the established church, the Charity Commission ruled that its decision ‘makes it  clear that there was no presumption that religion generally, or at any more  specific level, is for the public benefit, even in the case of Christianity or  the Church of England’.

It’s great news!  Yes, the establishment has rediscovered the Test Act and the Act of Uniformity!!!!

I was so missing the days when the state decided which religions were “authorised” and “not authorised”.  We got rid of that around 1850.  Now, at last, once again we can sneer at people as “dissenters” and subject them to discriminatory taxes and legal penalties.

And that should show these dissenters which way their bread is buttered.  After all, if they aren’t a charity, they will have to pay 20% corporation tax on all donations.  David Cameron will take 20% of every church collection.  And …. those donations won’t be eligible for gift aid either.  So church members will have to pay 33% tax on every penny they donate, and then the church will have to pay 20% of whatever pennies they receive.  That’s teach them not to conform, the vile dissenting creeps!  Hang them!  Burn them!

Cracking!

More seriously, this is evil news.  It has been a long, long time since we have had state servants operating a system of “approved” and “unapproved” churches, with legal penalties and discrimination against the latter.  Abolishing all that sort of thing in the mid-19th century allowed half of England back into public life.

This is, of course, a political case.  The Charities Commission — whoever that is — made their decision based on political grounds.  The political left has a deep hatred for Christianity.  The Exclusive Brethren look like a small, powerless group, unlikely to have friends at London dinner parties.  No doubt the inquisitors decided that they looked like suitably helpless victims.

The Charities Commission used to be an innocuous group.  But there is very little practical difference between banning an organisation which relies on donations, and levying on it the brutal taxation to which small businesses in Britain (but not big ones like Vodaphone, Google, Starbucks, and so on) are subjected.  Indeed that is rather the point; to persecute while disclaiming the name, to harass while claiming to be impartial.

I am not a member of the Brethren, about whom I know little.  But I do know that they are a small and harmless group who cause no-one any trouble and who have been quietly doing their own thing for decades.  Only a complete shit would decide to attack them.

Evil days indeed, these.

UPDATE:  The New American also reports on this.

Two members of Parliament have defended the Brethren. The first is Charlie Elphicke, who called the attack on the church “anti-religion,” LifeSiteNews reported. Elphicke, a member of the committee that uncovered the letter from the commission, told members of the Brethren that the charity bureaucrats “are committed to the suppression of religion and you are the little guys being picked on to start off a whole series of other churches who will follow you there.”

Another member of parliament, conservative Bernard Jenkin, explained a larger purpose in the government’s attack on the Brethren, said LifeSite:

“The Commission seems to be using the group as a test case to establish the meaning of the public benefit requirement in charity law,” he said.

“Picking a relatively vulnerable organisation and putting you through huge time and expense is a rotten way to decide what charity law means,” Jenkin said.

Indeed.

There is a useful article at the Third Sector site here.

Share

Soliciting donations

Posted on by Roger Pearse

For some years now I have commissioned translations of previously untranslated texts.  These I make freely available on the web.

A correspondent has suggested that I should make it possible for generous-minded people to contribute.  As an experiment, I’ve added a “Donate” button on the right hand side.

Not quite sure how I feel about this, but if you would like to contribute, feel free to click the button.

At the moment we have a number of translations going forward.  Ephraem Syrus, Hymns against heresies 23 and 24 are in the works.  I have today commissioned a translation of “February” from John the Lydian’s, De mensibus book 4.  Just so that you know where funds go!

Share

A new review of the Eusebius “Gospel problems and solutions” book

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A fresh — and kind — review has appeared of the text and translation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel problems and solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum) which I published last year.  It is by Michael F. Bird and can be found here at the Review of Biblical Literature site.  (h/t here).

Share

Sabbadini on the discovery of Greek and Latin codices in the 14-15th century

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Anyone at all interested in manuscripts knows that the definitive account of the rediscovery of classical texts is that of R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne’secoli 14 e 15 (1905).[1]  But these volumes have always been hard to obtain; and worse, were in Italian, a language few of us speak with fluency.  Those two problems always stopped me accessing the text.

This evening I was reading an article on Paul the Deacon when it referred to Sabbadini, and I suddenly noted the date of the latter’s publication: 1905.  That means that it is out of copyright in the USA.  That in turn meant that it ought to be in Google Books or Archive.org.  A quick search later revealed copies of both volumes, as well as other works by Sabbadini.

Better was to follow.  By opening the “Full Text” link in Google Chrome, I got a page with a button at the top inviting me to translate the page.  I did so; and suddenly I have an English version of Sabbadini!

Alright, it’s definitely very mangled; but I can definitely get some good out of it, if not everything.  The table of contents emerges, more or less:

  1. The discoverers of Verona (first half of the 14th century)
  2. The Florentine triad (second half of the 14th c.)
  3. The discoveries of Greek codices (15th c.)
  4. Discoveries during the Council of Constance (1415-1417)
  5. Exploration in Italy (1420-30): the Florentine humanists; the humanists of the north.
  6. Exploration outside of Italy (1425-1430)
  7. Discoveries during the Council of Basle (1432-1440)
  8. Anonymous discoveries
  9. Later explorations (second half of the 15th century).  The manuscripts discovered at Bobbio (1498)
  10. Counterfeit discoveries
  11. 15th century collections and libraries.

That by itself gives you an idea of the process of the rediscovery of the classical heritage.

Try it.  Open up Chrome, and start reading bits of Sabbadini.  It works!

Share
  1. [1]Volume 1 and volume 2 are online at Archive.org.↩

A bit more from Festus’ lexicon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few more extracts might be of interest.

MERCURIUS, so-called from merces.[1]  In fact they consider him as the god of all commerce.

MEDIALIS they call a black sacrificial victim which they immolate at mid-day.

MACELLUM.  This place is so-called from a certain Macellus, who carried out robberies in the City.  After he was condemned, the censors Aemilius and Fulvius ordered that his house be turned into a food market.

M. MANILIUS.  It is not allowed for anyone from a patrician family to bear this name, because of a Manilius who expelled the Gauls from the capitolium, but attempted to become king and was put to death.

MARCULUS, a diminutive from Marcus.

MATRONAE they call those women who have the legal right to wear the stola.

MAXIMUS PONTIFEX is so-called because he is the judge of matters relating to sacred things and religions, and prosecutor of violations by private citizens or magistrates.

MAXIMI ANNALES are so-called, not because of their length, but because the pontifex maximus writes them.

MULTA they say is a kind of penalty in Oscan.  M. Varro says that it is a penalty, but a financial one, which he discusses carefully in book 1 of his Epistolary Questions.

MAGNUS ANNUS (=Great Year).  The astronomers call the great year in which the seven wandering stars[2], each having finished its individual course, are gathered together again.

MAIORES FLAMINES are called those of patrician origin, minores those of plebian.

MARTIUS MENSIS.  The month of March was the beginning of the year both in Latium and after the foundation of Rome because its people were very warlike.  This is shown by the fact that the later months which end the year are named after numerals, the last being December.[3]

MALEDICTORES[4] is what the ancients called those whom we call maledicos.  Cato, when he was about to depart for Spain, said: “The maledictors must be got rid of.”

MAXIMA DIGNATIO.  The Flamen Dialis[5] held the highest rank among the fifteen flamines, and while the rest had their degrees of importance, the lowest grade was the Pomonalis, because Pomona presided over the least important things from the fields, tree-fruits.

There is much more of interest in this section, relating to the customs of the Roman Republic, and quoting many lost authors.

Share
  1. [1]Merces = merchandise.↩
  2. [2]The planets.↩
  3. [3]December from decem, ten; this being the tenth month.↩
  4. [4]Evil-speakers, calumniators.↩
  5. [5]Priest of Jupiter.↩

Some excerpts from Festus, De significatione verborum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been idly looking through the section of Festus for the letter ‘M’ — the first book preserved in the damaged manuscript.  Here are a few extracts.  Perhaps others will find these interesting also.

MINOR DELOS.  This name is given to Puzzuoli, because at one time Delos was the greatest commercial centre in the whole world.  It was then replaced by Puzzuoli, previously known in Greek as Δικαιαρχία.  From this Lucilius has said: Inde Dicaearcheum populos, Delumque minorem (Whence the peoples of Dicaearchia and the little Delos).

 MIRACULA.  This word, which we apply today to things deserving of admiration, was only given by the ancients to hideous things. [1]

MISCELLIONES.  Those who have no certain opinions, but are of varied and mixed judgements.

MIRACIDION. First adolescence.

MEDDIX is the title of a magistrate among the Oscans.  Ennius says, Summus ibi capitur meddix, occiditur alter.[2]

MEDITRINALIA.  This is the origin of this word.  It was the custom among the Latin peoples that, on the day when one sampled the new wine for the first time, to say: Vetus novum vinum bibo, veteri novo morbo medeor.[3]  From the same words is formed the name of the goddess Meditrina, whose celebrations were called Meditrinalia.

MEDITERREA.  Sisenna considers this form as preferable to mediterranea. 

MELO, alternative name for the Nile.

MEGALESIA.  Games in honour of the Great Goddess. 

I will look some more at this later on.

Share
  1. [1]i.e. monstrosities, prodigies, rather than marvels.↩
  2. [2]The senior magistrate (Meddix) was captured there, the other was killed.↩
  3. [3]Old, I drink the new wine; from the old wine I would acquire a new illness.↩

More on the manuscript of Festus’ Lexicon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An early editor, Antonio Agustin, in his preface to his edition of 1559, describes the transmission as follows:

In these twenty books, which he entitled de verborum significatione, or priscorum verborum cum exemplis, Sextus Pompeius Festus abridged the books of Verrius Flaccus on the same subject. For he omitted the words which were, in Verrius’ own words, ‘too old, and dead and buried and were of no use and authority’. He dealt with the same words [that Verrius had discussed] more clearly and more briefly, setting out the original words in a smaller space. He also provided a critical treatment of examples found in other sources. He often corrected Verrius’ errors, and he always explained most learnedly why he did so.

Now this book had the misfortune to suffer harm of several kinds very long ago. For we could not find out either who this Festus was, or when he wrote this work. Only one or two references to it are to be found here and there in Charisius and Macrobius.

While the whole book was still extant in the time of Charlemagne, one Paulus thought it would be useful if he made a sort of epitome of the parts he liked best. Ignorant men liked his book so much that it took Festus’ place in every library.

One codex survived the slaughter. But that was like a soldier whose comrades have been defeated and massacred, and who creeps along at random with his legs broken, his nose mutilated, one eye gouged out, and one arm broken. This book supposedly came from Illyria. According to Pio and Poliziano, Pomponio Leto had some pages of it; Manilius Rallus had the greater part. Angelo Poliziano received the book from them, went over it, and copied it, and he tried to use it in his Miscellanea to emend a verse of Catullus. Using this same copy by Poliziano, Pier Vettori has begun, with his customary learning, to emend the vulgate text of Festus at various points in his Variae lectiones.

The remains of the codex passed to Aldo Manuzio, who tried to combine them with the epitome of Paulus, thus making one body from two sets of parts. But so much was omitted [or] changed in publication that it was still necessary for other critics to intervene. Achille Maffei, the brother of Cardinal Bernardino, has another copy, similarly confIated from both texts; it is fuller than the Aldine. Thus there have been three recensions of the same text, all imperfect. There is the old MS of half of Festus; of this, nothing remains before the letter M, and from that letter to the end barely half of what there used to be. The second text is Paulus’s epitome. As we show in this edition, even the most ignorant can see from a comparison of the texts how carelessly that was put together. The third text is that conflated from the other two, like those of Aldo and Maffei, and our own.

Stirring stuff!  Anthony Grafton, who translated the Latin [1] rightly remarks, “by no one has [the story] ever been told in livelier terms”.

Grafton corrects the picture slightly.  Various editions of the epitome by Paul the Deacon started to appear in print from 1471 onwards.  The solitary codex to survive the Middle Ages is Naples, Bibliotheca Nazionale IV.A.3, written in the second half of the eleventh century, probably at Rome.  It originally contained sixteen gatherings, the first seven of which had already been lost by the time that it reappeared in the fifteenth century.  He continues:

The nine that remained had also been damaged by fire, so that some leaves were missing, and on many leaves most or all of the outer column of the text was also lost. Manilius Rallus, a Greek from Sparta who became a successful Roman Catholic churchman and Neo-Latin poet, brought it to Italy at some time before 1477. He is said to have found it in Dalmatia.

Rallus lent this codex to Pomponio Leto, who found it most helpful for his pioneering research into Roman antiquities. He drew on the new codex for his university lectures on Varro and other authors. Unfortunately, he treated the codex with his usual lack of scruple – he kept the eighth, tenth, and sixteenth gatherings, which have subsequently disappeared, and must be reconstructed from a number of surviving transcripts. 

These statements about the ms. Grafton references to the edition of W. M. Lindsay (1913), p.iii-xi (the statements about Leto are from elsewhere).

However Fay Glinister disagrees on one important point:

When the manuscript surfaced, some time before the death of the humanist and philosopher Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457), it was already incomplete.[6]

[6] For the date, see Lorenzo Valla, Le postille al”Institutio oratoria’ di Quintiliano, eds. L. Cesarini Martinelli and A. Perosa (Padua 1996). There had previously been a claim that the MS was found in Dalmatia in the 1470s, by the Greek Manilius Rhallus; it is now evident that this was a mistake.

I presume from this hasty reference that there is evidence that Valla referred to Festus (and not to the epitome of Paul the Deacon), but without access to the Valla text, it is not clear what the argument is. 

Lindsay on the other hand tells us:

In Illyrico codicem repertum fama erat, sed non satis certa.

It is supposed that the codex was found in Illyria, but this is not quite certain.

No reference is given for this statement.  Rhallus’ claim to discovery is based on his edition of the epitome by Paul the Deacon in 1471, in which he refers in the preface:

Nuper cum legissem Pompei Festi mutilatos libros qui priscorum verborum inscribuntur, vehementer dolui quod tantum opus integrum non remansit.

Recently when I read the mutilated books of Pompeius Festus which are inscribed priscorum verborum, I greatly regretted that such a work should not be preserved complete.

But whether this refers to the manuscript, or to the epitome is not clear.

The Illyria story seems to derive from the preface of the editio princeps, 1500, at Milan, from Io. Angelus Seinzenzeler, which contained Nonius, Festus with Paul the Deacon, and Varro.  The editor was Io. Baptista Pius.  In his preface he writes:

His quae nobis venerunt ex codice pervetusto et ob hoc fidelissimo, qui ex Illyrico Pomponio Laeto fuerat oblatus, …

These things, which came to us from a very old and therefore very reliable codex, which was brought from Illyria by Pomponio Leto, …

There are no other references to a find in Illyria in Lindsay.  It would be good to clarify precisely what is, and is not, known about the circumstances of the rediscovery.

Share
  1. [1]Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A study in the history of classical scholarship, Clarendon, 1983, p.134.↩