Ancient History in the Carolingian World

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Ancient History in the Carolingian World ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE CAROLINGIAN WORLD CAROLINGIAN MARGINAL ANNOTATIONS ON THE WORKS OF SALLUST AND JUSTINUS Lenneke van Raaij front cover: Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, VLQ 32, 38v; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 16025, 15v; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 16024, 14r ; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a.l. 1601, 25r. Ancient history in the Carolingian World. Carolingian marginal annotations on the works of Sallust and Justinus Lenneke van Raaij (3749258) Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, track Medieval Studies RMA thesis, August 2016 supervisor: prof. dr. Mariken Teeuwen second supervisor: prof. dr. Marco Mostert TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 8 1.1 Ancient history in a Carolingian world ................................................................. 8 1.2 Modern scholarship on Roman historiography ................................................. 11 1.3 Methodology ........................................................................................................... 13 2 Annotating Sallust ......................................................................................................... 17 2.1 Sallust and his works ............................................................................................. 17 2.2 The transmission of Sallust’s works ..................................................................... 18 2.2.1 Complete witnesses ......................................................................................... 19 2.2.2 Florilegia and miscellanies ............................................................................. 20 2.3 Marginalia ................................................................................................................ 22 2.3.1 General remarks on the marginalia .............................................................. 23 2.4 Annotating Paris, lat. 16024 ................................................................................... 23 2.4.1 Majuscule catchphrases .................................................................................. 24 2.4.2 Speeches and letters ........................................................................................ 26 2.4.3 Nota-signs ......................................................................................................... 28 2.4.4 Vocabulary ....................................................................................................... 29 2.4.5 The annotator ................................................................................................... 30 2.5 Annotating Paris, lat. 16025 ................................................................................... 31 2.5.1 Type α, the teacher .......................................................................................... 33 2.5.2 The γ-type ......................................................................................................... 34 2.5.3 Isidore, Priscian and Servius .......................................................................... 36 2.5.4 Interlinear glosses ............................................................................................ 38 2.5.5 The annotators ................................................................................................. 41 3 Annotating Justinus ...................................................................................................... 42 3.1 Justinus and his work ............................................................................................. 42 3.2 Introduction to the manuscripts and their margins .......................................... 44 3.2.1 florilegia ............................................................................................................ 44 3.2.2 complete witnesses .......................................................................................... 45 [5] 3.3 Paris, n.a.l. 1601 ....................................................................................................... 46 3.4 Gieβen H 79 ............................................................................................................. 47 3.5 VLQ 32 ...................................................................................................................... 49 3.5.1 Keywords .......................................................................................................... 50 3.5.2 Attention signs ................................................................................................. 51 3.5.3 Detailed information ....................................................................................... 53 3.6 The marginal commentary of books I-XI ............................................................ 53 3.6.1 Marginal commentary .................................................................................... 54 3.6.2 Shared interest ................................................................................................. 56 3.7 Conclusion: learning from Justinus? .................................................................... 57 4 Two ends of a spectrum ............................................................................................... 60 4.1 Manuscript evidence: two ends of a spectrum ................................................... 60 4.1.1 Sallust and Justinus in one manuscript ........................................................ 61 4.2 Sallust, Justinus and the liberal arts ..................................................................... 64 4.2.1 Sallust and Grammar ...................................................................................... 65 4.2.2 Justinus and oratory ........................................................................................ 67 4.3 Sallust, Justinus and historiography .................................................................... 69 4.3.1 Romans, Trojans and the Jews ....................................................................... 69 4.3.2 Translatio imperii ? ............................................................................................ 71 4.4 Mirrors of Princes ................................................................................................... 73 4.4.1 Kings and rulers in the margin ...................................................................... 74 4.5 Military strategy and the behaviour of soldiers ................................................. 77 4.5.1 Learning about the practice of war ............................................................... 78 4.6 The annotators ......................................................................................................... 80 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 82 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 84 Appendix I - Manuscript Descriptions .............................................................................. 89 Appendix II Nota-signs Paris, lat. 16024 ............................................................................ 93 Appendix III Chrismon signs in Paris, lat. 16025 ........................................................... 100 [6] Appendix IV Marginal Commentary ............................................................................... 102 Appendix V Transcriptions from Paris, lat. 6256 ............................................................ 111 [7] INTRODUCTION Ceterum ex aliis negotiis quae ingenio exercentur, in primis magno usui est memoria rerum gestarum. - Sallust, Bellum Jugurthinum, 4.11 ‘But among sundry intellectual pursuits, the recording of past deeds is especially serviceable.’2 Nine centuries after the composition of these words by the Roman historian Sallust (86 – 36 BC), Carolingian scholars had their own thoughts about what it was that made history ‘serviceable’. Now, another millennium later, I will try to reconstruct what ninth-century scholars found useful and interesting about historical writings such as those of Sallust. 1.1 Ancient history in a Carolingian world Recently, a volume has been published on history writing in the Early Middle Ages: The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe.3 The editors concluded that, in the early medieval period, historians relied on late-antique Christian chronicles and histories to construct their own past, to define their identity and write about the Roman empire. Especially the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339 AD) was a fruitful source for their historiography.4 In the ninth century, when classical texts 1 In this thesis, I will not use the edition Leighton Reynolds made of the works of Sallust for quotations of the texts, but the ninth-century manuscripts themselves. (L.D. Reynolds, C. Sallusti Crispi. Catilina, Iugurtha, Historiarum, Fragmenta Selecta, Appendix Sallustiana (Oxford, 1991)) Readings and punctuation differ considerably from the ninth-century manuscripts studied, as Reynolds based his edition on manuscripts from the eleventh century onwards. Contrary to the ninth-century manuscripts that use classical spelling, the manuscripts from the eleventh century onwards use archaic spelling. As my research is explicitly on the ninth-century manuscripts, I believe it necessary to
Recommended publications
  • 2. Fighting Corruption: Political Thought and Practice in the Late Roman Republic
    2. Fighting Corruption: Political Thought and Practice in the Late Roman Republic Valentina Arena, University College London Introduction According to ancient Roman authors, the Roman Republic fell because of its moral corruption.i Corruption, corruptio in Latin, indicated in its most general connotation the damage and consequent disruption of shared values and practices, which, amongst other facets, could take the form of crimes, such as ambitus (bribery), peculatus (theft of public funds) and res repentundae (maladministration of provinces). To counteract such a state of affairs, the Romans of the late Republic enacted three main categories of anticorruption measures: first, they attempted to reform the censorship instituted in the fifth century as the supervisory body of public morality (cura morum); secondly, they enacted a number of preventive as well as punitive measures;ii and thirdly, they debated and, at times, implemented reforms concerning the senate, the jury courts and the popular assemblies, the proper functioning of which they thought might arrest and reverse the process of corruption and the moral and political decline of their commonwealth. Modern studies concerned with Roman anticorruption measures have traditionally focused either on a specific set of laws, such as the leges de ambitu, or on the moralistic discourse in which they are embedded. Even studies that adopt a holistic approach to this subject are premised on a distinction between the actual measures the Romans put in place to address the problem of corruption and the moral discourse in which they are embedded.iii What these works tend to share is a suspicious attitude towards Roman moralistic discourse on corruption which, they posit, obfuscates the issue at stake and has acted as a hindrance to the eradication of this phenomenon.iv Roman analysis of its moral decline was not only the song of the traditional laudator temporis acti, but rather, I claim, included, alongside traditional literary topoi, also themes of central preoccupation to Classical political thought.
    [Show full text]
  • TRADITIONAL POETRY and the ANNALES of QUINTUS ENNIUS John Francis Fisher A
    REINVENTING EPIC: TRADITIONAL POETRY AND THE ANNALES OF QUINTUS ENNIUS John Francis Fisher A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS SEPTEMBER 2006 UMI Number: 3223832 UMI Microform 3223832 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 © Copyright by John Francis Fisher, 2006. All rights reserved. ii Reinventing Epic: Traditional Poetry and the Annales of Quintus Ennius John Francis Fisher Abstract The present scholarship views the Annales of Quintus Ennius as a hybrid of the Latin Saturnian and Greek hexameter traditions. This configuration overlooks the influence of a larger and older tradition of Italic verbal art which manifests itself in documents such as the prayers preserved in Cato’s De agricultura in Latin, the Iguvine Tables in Umbrian, and documents in other Italic languages including Oscan and South Picene. These documents are marked by three salient features: alliterative doubling figures, figurae etymologicae, and a pool of traditional phraseology which may be traced back to Proto-Italic, the reconstructed ancestor of the Italic languages. A close examination of the fragments of the Annales reveals that all three of these markers of Italic verbal art are integral parts of the diction the poem. Ennius famously remarked that he possessed three hearts, one Latin, one Greek and one Oscan, which the second century writer Aulus Gellius understands as ability to speak three languages.
    [Show full text]
  • Problems and Audience in Cato's Origines Eleanor Jefferson* 1
    PROBLEMS AND AUDIENCE IN Cato’s ORIGINES Eleanor Jefferson* 1. Introduction The development of Latin literature in the Middle Republic is one of the most enigmatic aspects of a period already remarkable for its fast pace of cultural change. The first steps of Latin literature came in the poetry of Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, and Plautus, but Latin prose soon arrived with the works of Cato the Elder. His first work, the De Agricultura, is interesting in its own right, but in this paper I will address the cultural associations and implications of his later work, the Origines. The Origines is unique not only as the first work of Latin historiography, but also in its inclusion of two books on Italian foundation stories. Furthermore, there is a remarkable lack of personal names in the historical portion of the work.1 Whereas Cato’s use of Latin to write history was widely emu- lated by later historians, the two aspects mentioned above did not find followers. Both of these aspects, as well as the revolutionary use of Latin for a prose, historical work, represent conscious choices on Cato’s part. What these choices actually mean, however, has been debated at length. In this chapter, I will argue for a new understanding of Cato’s potential audience, and I will trace the effects of that understanding on our assessment of Cato’s methods and motives. While in previous studies the audience of the Origines has nearly always been treated as being made up entirely of Romans, I hope to show instead how we may reevaluate the work by supposing an audience made up of Italians and potentially Italic Greeks as well.
    [Show full text]
  • Latin Literature
    Latin Literature By J. W. Mackail Latin Literature I. THE REPUBLIC. I. ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE: EARLY EPIC AND TRAGEDY. To the Romans themselves, as they looked back two hundred years later, the beginnings of a real literature seemed definitely fixed in the generation which passed between the first and second Punic Wars. The peace of B.C. 241 closed an epoch throughout which the Roman Republic had been fighting for an assured place in the group of powers which controlled the Mediterranean world. This was now gained; and the pressure of Carthage once removed, Rome was left free to follow the natural expansion of her colonies and her commerce. Wealth and peace are comparative terms; it was in such wealth and peace as the cessation of the long and exhausting war with Carthage brought, that a leisured class began to form itself at Rome, which not only could take a certain interest in Greek literature, but felt in an indistinct way that it was their duty, as representing one of the great civilised powers, to have a substantial national culture of their own. That this new Latin literature must be based on that of Greece, went without saying; it was almost equally inevitable that its earliest forms should be in the shape of translations from that body of Greek poetry, epic and dramatic, which had for long established itself through all the Greek- speaking world as a common basis of culture. Latin literature, though artificial in a fuller sense than that of some other nations, did not escape the general law of all literatures, that they must begin by verse before they can go on to prose.
    [Show full text]
  • New Latin Grammar
    NEW LATIN GRAMMAR BY CHARLES E. BENNETT Goldwin Smith Professor of Latin in Cornell University Quicquid praecipies, esto brevis, ut cito dicta Percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles: Omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat. —HORACE, Ars Poetica. COPYRIGHT, 1895; 1908; 1918 BY CHARLES E. BENNETT PREFACE. The present work is a revision of that published in 1908. No radical alterations have been introduced, although a number of minor changes will be noted. I have added an Introduction on the origin and development of the Latin language, which it is hoped will prove interesting and instructive to the more ambitious pupil. At the end of the book will be found an Index to the Sources of the Illustrative Examples cited in the Syntax. C.E.B. ITHACA, NEW YORK, May 4, 1918 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The present book is a revision of my Latin Grammar originally published in 1895. Wherever greater accuracy or precision of statement seemed possible, I have endeavored to secure this. The rules for syllable division have been changed and made to conform to the prevailing practice of the Romans themselves. In the Perfect Subjunctive Active, the endings -īs, -īmus, -ītis are now marked long. The theory of vowel length before the suffixes -gnus, -gna, -gnum, and also before j, has been discarded. In the Syntax I have recognized a special category of Ablative of Association, and have abandoned the original doctrine as to the force of tenses in the Prohibitive. Apart from the foregoing, only minor and unessential modifications have been introduced. In its main lines the work remains unchanged.
    [Show full text]
  • Cato the Censor and the Beginnings of Latin Prose
    Cato the Censor and the Beginnings of Latin Prose Cato the Censor and the Beginnings of Latin Prose FROM POETIC TRANSLATION TO ELITE TRANSCRIPTION Enrica Sciarrino THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS · COLUMBUS Copyright © 2011 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sciarrino, Enrica, 1968– Cato the Censor and the beginnings of Latin prose : from poetic translation to elite tran- scription / Enrica Sciarrino. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1165-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1165-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-9266-2 (cd-rom) 1. Latin prose literature—History and criticism. 2. Cato, Marcus Porcius, 234–149 B.C.—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PA6081.S35 2011 878'.01—dc22 2011006020 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978-0-8142-1165-6) CD-ROM (ISBN 978-0-8142-9266-2) Cover design by Mia Risberg. Text design by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe. Typeset in Times New Roman. Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI 39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface and Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations xi Chapter 1 Situating the Beginnings of Latin Prose 1 Chapter 2 Under the Roman Sun: Poets, Rulers, Translations, and Power 38 Chapter 3 Conflicting Scenarios: Traffic in Others and Others’ Things 78 Chapter 4 Inventing Latin Prose: Cato the Censor and the Formation of a New Aristocracy 117 Chapter 5 Power Differentials in Writing: Texts and Authority 161 Conclusion 203 Bibliography 209 Index Locorum 229 General Index 231 Preface and Acknowledgments his book treats a moment in Roman cultural history that in the last decade or so has become one of the most contentious areas of dis- T cussion in classical scholarship.
    [Show full text]
  • Sallust's Histories and Triumviral Historiography
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2012 Sallust's Histories and Triumviral Historiography Jennifer Gerrish University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Classics Commons Recommended Citation Gerrish, Jennifer, "Sallust's Histories and Triumviral Historiography" (2012). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 511. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/511 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/511 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sallust's Histories and Triumviral Historiography Abstract This dissertation explores echoes of the triumviral period in Sallust's Histories and demonstrates how, through analogical historiography, Sallust presents himself as a new type of historian whose "exempla" are flawed and morally ambiguous, and who rejects the notion of a triumphant, ascendant Rome perpetuated by the triumvirs. Just as Sallust's unusual prose style is calculated to shake his reader out of complacency and force critical engagement with the reading process, his analogical historiography requires the reader to work through multiple layers of interpretation to reach the core arguments. In the De Legibus, Cicero lamented the lack of great Roman historians, and frequently implied that he might take up the task himself. He had a clear sense of what history ought to be : encomiastic and exemplary, reflecting a conception of Roman history as a triumphant story populated by glorious protagonists. In Sallust's view, however, the novel political circumstances of the triumviral period called for a new type of historiography. To create a portrait of moral clarity is, Sallust suggests, ineffective, because Romans have been too corrupted by ambitio and avaritia to follow the good examples of the past.
    [Show full text]
  • Livy, Folklore, and Magic: a Reappraisal of Rome's Foundational Mythology
    LIVY, FOLKLORE, AND MAGIC: A REAPPRAISAL OF ROME'S FOUNDATIONAL MYTHOLOGY Jeremy Leonard Albrecht A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2020 Committee: Casey Stark, Advisor Amilcar Challu James Pfundstein © 2020 Jeremy Albrecht All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Casey Stark, Advisor This paper argues for an additional manner in which the social and cultural history of Rome can be both examined and understand through the implementation of folkloric practices. While folklore and history are two distinct academic traditions, there exists a certain amount of overlap between the fields and this overlap is worth exploring in more detail. In the course of this paper, it is argued that many aspects of Roman social and cultural history can be understood and examined through folkloric means. In chapter one, a working definition of folklore is established and shown to apply to the foundational mythology of Rome as portrayed by Livy in his Ab Urbe Condita. Chapter two continues to examine Livy and provides an argument that, in the process of his writing, Livy himself was more concerned with a folkloric interpretation of Rome’s history than he was in staying firmly within the bounds of historical accuracy. Finally, chapter three branches off from Livy and focuses on the arcane and magical traditions which were prevalent in Rome to show that not only were folkloric traditions present in Rome’s traditional mythology, but can also be seen throughout the Republic and even into the early Empire.
    [Show full text]
  • "The Roman Republic in the Long Fourth Century" Princeton University: May 16-18, 2019
    "The Roman Republic in the Long Fourth Century" Princeton University: May 16-18, 2019 Abstracts and Participant Bios Cornell, Timothy. “Timaeus and the Romans” In the course of his long life (96 years according to one source) the Sicilian historian Timaeus of Tauromenium witnessed the most dramatic changes in the geopolitical structure of the Mediterranean world since the end of the Bronze Age: the decline of the Greek city-states, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the struggles of the Successors and the formation of the Hellenistic monarchies, the rise of Rome, and the outbreak of the first war between Rome and Carthage. His Histories in 38 books were centred on Sicily, but also covered Italy, Spain, the western Mediterranean islands, Gaul, and North Africa, and broke new ground in making the history of the ‘barbarian’ West known to the Greek world. Although his works are no longer extant, and survive only in fragments (quotations in later texts), his influence was pervasive. Timaeus was the first to carry out research on the Romans and their history, and to attempt to grasp their impact on the changing world of his time. Dionysius of Halicarnassus tells us that Timaeus wrote about the Romans twice, first in his general History, which covered the western Mediterranean from the earliest times to the death of Agathocles (289 BC) in thirty-eight books, and then again in a separate account of the wars between Pyrrhus and the Romans. It can be argued that in the former work Rome appeared in passing as one of the non-Greek communities of Italy, but that in the later monograph the city occupied centre stage.
    [Show full text]
  • Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the 'Founders' of Rome
    Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the ‘Founders’ of Rome: Depicting Characters in the Roman Antiquities by Beatrice Poletti A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classical Languages Department of History and Classics University of Alberta © Beatrice Poletti, 2018 ABSTRACT In my thesis, I analyze Dionysius’s presentation of some of the most celebrated characters of Rome’s early past: Aeneas, Romulus, Numa Pompilius, L. Junius Brutus, and M. Furius Camillus. The thesis is composed of Five Chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. In Chapter 1, I describe the background to Dionysius’s arrival in Rome, focusing on the literary milieu of the capital. In Chapter 2, I discuss Dionysius’s work and the ideas underlying the conception of the Roman Antiquities. In Chapter 3, I examine Dionysius’s account of the Aeneas legend. I deal with the legends of Romulus and Numa, respectively, at Chapters 4.1.1 and 4.2, and 4.1.2 and 4.3. My analysis of the stories of L. Junius Brutus and M. Furius Camillus occupies Chapters 5.1 and 5.2. I have chosen these characters for my study because of their significance in the Romans’ conception of their early past and their association with key events and institutions of Roman history, as well as the political meaning which their figures eventually acquired. By Dionysius’s time, all these characters (with the exception of L. Brutus) had come to embody the qualities and political virtues of the princeps. Aeneas was the progenitor of the Roman race as well as Augustus’s personal ancestor through his adoption into the gens Julia.
    [Show full text]
  • “Quaeque Memoria Digna Videbantur: Digressions in Sallust's Historical
    “Quaeque memoria digna videbantur: digressions in Sallust’s historical monographs” Edwin H. Shaw A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ancient History Department of History, UCL 1 I, Edwin Shaw, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. ________________________________ 2 Abstract This thesis examines the digressions in the historical monographs of Sallust, as important and under-utilised documents of the construction of his text and of his place within a Late Republican milieu. It aims to demonstrate the central place of digressions in Sallust’s historiography, and to argue that Sallust is a more sophisticated thinker than is usually recognised, engaging with a variety of contemporary ideas in his construction of a new form of Roman historiography. The first part of the thesis explores the role of digression, a basically rhetorical technique, within historiography more widely, contributing to the current debate about the relationship between the two genres; I establish that digression is an important aspect of the historian’s activity of dispositio, through which the historical account is constructed. Drawing on classical rhetorical textbooks, works on historiography and the practice of other historians, I demonstrate that digressions have a key role within historiographical narrative, as impositions reflecting the historian’s own analysis of events, and that as such we need to pay careful attention to the relevance of ostensibly digressive material. The second part of the thesis examines three sets of digressions in detail, arguing that in each case such passages serve to advance Sallust’s wider historiographical aims, and that the disparate material they contain demonstrates his close engagement with the intellectual developments of his period in philosophy, historiography, ethnography and geography.
    [Show full text]
  • Origo Gentis Romanae
    ORIGO GENTIS ROMANAE The Origin of the Roman Race Translated by Kyle Haniszewski, Lindsay Karas, Kevin Koch, Emily Parobek, Colin Pratt, and Brian Serwicki Thomas M. Banchich, Supervisor Canisius College Translated Texts, Number 3 Canisius College, Buffalo, New York 2004 Contents Introduction ……………………………………… pp. ii-v. Abbreviations and Sigla …………………………. p. vi. Translation ………………………………………. pp. 1-19. Authors and Texts Mentioned in the Origo ……... pp. 20-22. Bibliography of Works Cited ……………………. pp. 23-24. i Introduction T. M. Banchich The so-called Origo Gentis Romanae—a sometimes-etiological and -euhemeristic explication of Rome's distant past to Romulus' foundation of the city—survives only in two 15th-century manuscripts, Codex Bruxellensis (Bibliotheca Regia 9755-9763, fol. 52r-56v) and Codex Oxoniensis (Bodleianus Canon. Class. Lat. 131, fol. 85r-95v). Both contain not only the Origo but also the collection of sketches of famous figures of Roman history from Romulus and Remus through Antony and Cleopatra known today as De Viris Illustribus and Sextus Aurelius Victor's De Caesaribus.1 The identities of the authors of the Origo and De Viris Illustribus are a mystery, their connection with Victor's name—as the shared incipit of Codd. Bruxellensis and Oxoniensis (p. 2, ed. Pichlmayr, translated below, p. 1) illustrate—being the result of their inclusion with the De Caesaribus in the tripartite corpus which preserves them. Furthermore, if Arnaldo Momigliano is correct, the application of the manuscript title Origo Gentis Romanae (p. 3, ed. Pichlmayr, translated below, p. 1) to the initial component of the corpus may be the result of an inverse error, in this case, the application to its first part alone of a title meant to designate the whole.2 In this view, the introductory material on Pichlmayr's p.
    [Show full text]