Category: Manuscripts

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.

The 16th and last satire breaks off mid-flow.  The ending is lost, therefore, or perhaps was not written.

Ancient books were written on rolls.  One modern author theorized that the end of a text ought to be safer than the start, because it should be inside the rolled up scroll.  He seems to think that a roll would normally be stored ready to read.

But it seems to me, in my ignorance, that the reverse is the case.  The average ancient reader would get to the end of his reading, and find his roll almost fully rolled-up.   It is possible, of course, that some readers would then unwind the whole roll and roll it back up the correct way.  But human nature being what it is, surely most of the time the reader will just pop the roll back in its cylindrical case.  A reader who takes up a roll to read and finds it is back-to-front has an incentive to rewind it.  A reader who wants his lunch has none.

I suggest, therefore, that as a rule most rolls were stored with the end hanging out.  This would explain quite simply why so many ancient texts are mutilated at the end, without requirement for the hypothesis that they were written in codex form.

I mentioned that one of the manuscripts of Photius’ Lexicon was written on ‘bombycin’, and a commenter has asked what this is.   It’s Arabic paper, used widely in Byzantium from the 9th century onwards until superceded by western methods of paper manufacture.

One of the key references is J. Irigoin, Les premiers manuscrits grecs écrits sur papiers et le problème du bombycin, Scriptorium 4 (1950), 194-202; and this was reprinted in Dieter Harlfinger’s Griechische Kodikologie, p. 132.  And I happen to own a copy of Harlfinger.  Here is a quick translation of the opening portion of his article:

Ever since Bernard de Montfaucon, textbooks on Greek paleography have distinguished two types of paper used in manuscripts; bombycin paper, of oriental origin, and western paper.

Until the end of the 19th century, it was believed that bombycin paper was made with cotton, which neatly distinguished it from western paper which was made from old rags (hence the name, rag paper) made of linen.  Around 1885, the work of Briquet, at Geneva, and of Wiesner and Karabacek at Vienna has shown that “cotton paper” is a myth; oriental paper was made with linen fibres, and bombycin is a linen paper just like western paper.  The only difference between the two papers is the choice of product used to hold it together; starch in the east, and gelatine in the west.

Paleographers have all the same continued to use the adjective bombycinus to designate manuscripts written on paper of oriental origin, in opposition to chartacei, written on paper made in the west.  All the same, the distinction between the two papers is far from simple and recent catalogues of Greek mss. label as chartaceus all manuscripts on paper, without giving any indication of the origin of the material.

As a general rule, paleographers state that bombycin is of a more or less obvious brown colour.  It is thick and opaque, often fluffy at the edges of the leaves; it is this which gives it sometimes the appearance of blotting paper, and it happens sometimes that the bombycin disintegrates at the surface, which is very unfortunate for the text written on it.  Western paper is less obviously coloured, thinner and better glued together, and on holding up to the light the marks left by the manufacturing process, the mesh, and eventually the watermark.  The latter appears sporadically in the last 20 years of the 13th century, and generally from the 14th century on.

This rule appears clear and certain.  In fact it is not so clear, and it often  happens that one hesitates as to whether thick paper does or does not show the marks of the process, and in cases of doubt it tends to be called bombycin.

My work has made it possible for me to study a certain number of Greek mss.  I have examined with care those which are said to be written on bombycin, and this has led me to the following conclusion: many of the manuscripts listed as bombycins in the most recent publications show watermarks and are thus written on western paper.  I shall limit myself to three series of examples.

Irigoin then goes on to detail his work, and to draw up more precise guidelines for identifying bombycin.  After studying more than 200 Greek paper manuscripts written before 1300, he felt able to state with confidence which was which.  The blotting paper effect was unusual rather than characteristic, for instance.  He also looked at Arabic manuscripts, which used paper from the 9th century onwards.  There he found that most used the same kind of paper, suggesting that they were written in the Near East, in the region from where the Byzantine empire imported its paper at that period.

He also points out that paper sizes were different in the orient and in the west.  The oldest manuscript he could find written on western paper was from 1255 A.D.    He also mentions the first known Greek ms. written on paper — Ms. Vatican. gr. 2200, written at Damascus ca. 800 A.D., in an archaising cursive, and suggests that it was a one-off.  The next known ms. is Vatican gr. 504, from 1105, written partly on paper and partly on parchment.  But literary references indicate that paper was being used by the middle of the 11th century.  Western paper, imported from Italy, starts to appear in Byzantium in the middle of the 13th century.  In the 14th century, and especially after 1340, paper replaces parchment almost entirely.  Oriental paper declined in quality during the first years of the 14th century, and disappears.  It is used rarely after 1350, and hardly ever after 1380.  Political and economic factors prevented the Byzantines from trading to the east, and the Turkish threat forced them to look west.  Irigoin adds:

In conclusion, a manuscript written on oriental paper must be placed between the middle of the 11th century and 1380.

and finishes by listing technical details.

An email reached me this evening, asking what are the earliest manuscripts of the works of Julius Caesar.  I thought my reply might be of general interest. I obtained the following details from L.D.Reynolds, Texts and Transmissions, pp.35-6, written by Michael Winterbottom.

The extant mss fall into two families.  The alpha family contains only the Bellum Gallicum, and is notable for allusions in colophons to late antique ‘correctores’.  The beta family contains the whole collection of works.  Where the two overlap, the readings are often rather different.

Alpha family

There are 6 early witnesses to the alpha family.  Two derive from a common lost ancestor: these are:

• Amsterdam 73, 2nd quarter of the 9th century, written at Fleury (=A)
• Paris lat. 5056, 11-12th century, written at Moissac (=Q)

The remaining four derive from another now lost ms: 

• Paris lat. 5763, 1st quarter of the 9th century, French, later at Fleury (=B)
• Vatican lat. 3864, 3rd quarter of the 9th century, written at Corbie (=M)
• Florence, Laur. Ashb. 33, 10th century, possibly French (=S)
• British Library Additional 10084, 11-12th century, probably from Gembloux (=L)

Some 75 mss later than the 9th century have been listed by Virginia Brown, who has classified them into groupings tentatively.

Beta family

The Klotz edition of 1950 used 8 mss, although at least 3 of these are now considered to be non-primary.  The five are:

• Florence, Laur. 68.8, basically 10-11th century, probably Italian, once the property of Niccolo Niccoli (=W)
• Vatican latinus 3324, 11-12th century, possibly French (=U)
• Paris lat. 5764, 3rd quarter of the 11th century, French (=T)
• Vienna 95, 1st quarter of the 12th century, probably from Trier (=V)

and apparently S above is also a member of this family (not sure how that works).  There is no agreement about how all these are related or to be classified.  Virginia Brown classified and eliminated 162 later mss of this family.  (I would imagine, myself, that the majority of these are 15th century, the sort of books being made in quantity in Italy on the eve of the invention of printing).

How the text travelled from the ‘correctores’ of late antiquity to the earliest manuscripts is not clear.  Brown argues that all our manuscripts derive from a single copy in a minuscule book hand.  One factor that must be considered is that the medieval authors who refer to Caesar (mostly French and German) refer only to the Bellum Gallicum.

It would be interesting to know what the “testimonia” are — the quotations of the text in antique authors.  But for that, I’d have to look further!

UPDATE: A search in Google Books on testimonia caesar brought up an edition here with quotations from Caesar’s lost works in Cicero, etc.  It’s an 1813 edition of Caesar’s works, with English notes, by a certain Thomas Clark.

The 1853 Manual of Greek literature by Charles Anthon may be antiquated, and its opening portions discursive to the point of madness, but it still has use.  Indeed I don’t quite know where else one might go for a survey of Greek literature in the Roman period and after.

I picked it up casually last night, to see if he had anything to say about astrological texts — not much — and found myself reading a section on Greek novels.  On p.488 I found the following:

V. Subsequently Iamblichus, the Syrian, who lived in the time of the Emperor Trajan, wrote his Babylonica (Babulwni/ka). It contained the story of two lovers, Sinonis and Rhodanes, and was in thirty-nine books, according to Suidas; but Photius, who gives an epitome of the work, mentions only seventeen. A perfect copy of the work in MS. existed down to the year 1671, when it was destroyed by fire. A few fragments only are still extant, and a new one of some length has recently been discovered by Mai (Nov. Collect. Script. Vet., vol. ii., p. 349, seqq.) The epitome of Photius and the fragments are given in Passow’s Corpus Eroticorum, vol. i.

I confess that I had never heard of this text before, and it is a shame that it should make it all the way to 1671 only to perish then.

The Corpus scriptorum eroticorum graecorum is a series new to me.  Volume 1, from 1824, is here.  On p.iii we learn that the sole manuscript was in the library of the Escorial in Spain, and destroyed in the fire of 1671.  But the edition is of no great value, I suspect.

Photius’ summary can be found here, in the Bibliotheca codex 94.