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Pliny, Naturalis Historia Xxx, 11) THE ENIGMA OF THE MAGICIAN LOTAPES (PLINY, NATURALIS HISTORIA XXX, 11) BY STEPHEN GERO Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen In a famous passage Pliny the Elder refers to a school of magic which, long after the time of Zoroaster, originated from Moses, Jannes, Lotapes and the Jews: "est et alia magices factio a Mose et Janne et Lotape ac Judaeis pendens, sed multis milibus annorum post Zoro- astren."' Moses' reputation as a powerful magician needs no comment here;' Jannes is also well known as an Egyptian wizard who resisted Moses.' The name of Lotapes by contrast has been a crux interpretum ever since the publication of Pliny's text in the fifteenth century.' The purpose of the present contribution is to survey the emendations and explanations which have been hitherto proposed and to proffer, with all due caution, still another, hopefully more satisfactory, solution. 1. The Printed Text and Its Interpretation The initial efforts at understanding the precise import of the pas- sage have been hindered by the unfortunate fact that at the point of 1 Ed. C. Mayhoff, C. Plini SecundiNaturalis Historiae libri XXXVII, vol. 4 (Leipzig, 1907; reprint Stuttgart, 1967), p. 423, lines 16-18. 2 See e.g. J.G. Gager, Mosesin Greco-RomanPaganism (Nashville/New York, 1972),pp. 134ff. 3 See the dossier now assembled in A. Pietersma, TheApocryphon of Jannesand Jambres the Magicians(Leiden, 1994), especially pp. 24ff. and the present writer's "Parerga to 'The Book of Jannes and Jambres,'" Journal for the Studyof the Pseudepigrapha9 (1991), pp. 67ff. 4 Though Pliny's work was of course much used also earlier, the passage of interest here was not cited or commented upon by any author in late antiquity or in the Middle Ages, to my knowledge. 305 interest the text of Pliny as first published and repeatedly reprinted was not at all in order. The anonymous Venetian editio princeps of 1469, which was brought out by the expatriate German printer Johannes de Spira5 (ob. 1470), has the almost entirely corrupt wording "Est & alia magices facio amiso (sic!) & iane & iotapata Iudeus pendens."6 The eminent humanist Giovanni Andrea Bussi's slightly later, but indepen- dent Roman edition of 1470 (reprinted in Venice in 1472 and in Rome in 1473) gives the much better, though still incorrect "alia Magices factio a Mose etiam num et Lotapea Iudeis pendens."' In Filippo 5 I.e. Johannes hailed from Speyer, a historic town in the Rhenish Palatinate. This fact, of which Johannes was clearly proud, is noted in the colophons of both the Pliny edition itself and the slightly earlier one of Cicero's Epistulaead familiares;however the family name of Johannes and his brother Wendelin, pioneer practitioners of the art of printing in Venice, is, strangely enough, not known. See further F. Geldner, Die deutschen Inkunabeldrucker,vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 62ff. For technical information about the edition of 1469 see Catalogueof BooksPrinted in the XVth Centurynow in the BritishMuseum, part V, Venice(London, 1924),p. 153 and M. Schiavone, "Dall'editioprinceps della Naturalis Historiaad opera di Giovanni da Spira all'edizione Lione 1561," in A. Spallino (ed.), Plinioe la natura (Como, 1982), 95-100. 6 pp. I am most grateful to Dr. Martin Davies, Curator of Incunabula in the British Library, for communicating to me both this reading and that of the first Roman edi- tion (letter dated June 6, 1995) as well as for providing photocopies of the pertinent pages from the two unpaginated incunabula in question.-The editio princeps was based on the present Paris. lat. 6805 (saec. XV), a work of several hands (see H. Walter, "Bericht zum Forschungsprojekt: Studien zur Handschriftengeschichte der Naturalis Historia des Älteren Plinius. Ein Erfahrungsbericht,"Zweiter Forschungsbericht der Universitat Mannheim1978-1982 (1983), p. 231; this important, although somewhat out-of-the-way article is registered in A. Borst's brief, but well-documented account of the early pub- lication history of the Pliny's work (Das Buchder Naturgeschichte.Plinius und seineLeser im Zeitalterdes Pergaments(Heidelberg, 1994), pp. 314ff., esp. p. 315, note 56). The edition of 1469 plays a very minor role in the later establishment of the correct text; though typographicallyimpressive, it made no claim to scholarly excellence and was intended only to make Pliny's work readily available in print (see R. Sabbadini, "Le edizioni quattrocentistiche della S.N. di Plinio," Studiitaliani classica8 7 di filologia (1900), p. 442). For technical descriptions of the editions of 1470 and 1473 see Catalogueof Books Printedin theXVth Century now in theBritish Museum, part IV, Italy:Subiaco and Rome(London, 1916),pp. 9, 17. As Gelenius already recognized (see below, note 19) the printed "etiam num" (later run together as "etiamnum") is a misreading of "et iamne." The incorrect feminine desinence of "Lotapea" is presumably a result of the Roman editor's having combined into one word "Lotape" with an immediately followingabbreviation for "ac" in the MS Vorlage.-The edition of Bussi (who was assisted by no less a Hellenist than Theodore Gaza!) is based on Vatic. lat. 5591, which in turn is but a corrected copy of Angelicanuslat. 1097 (anni 1460); see A. Marucchi, "Note sul manoscritto [Vat. lat. 5991] di cui si è servito Giovanni Andrea Bussi per l'edizione di Plinio del 1470," Institutde Rechercheet d'Histoiredes Textes,Bulletin No. 15 (1967-68),pp. 175ff.and on the Angelicanus S. Samek Ludovici, "Sweynheym, Pannartz e Giovanni Andrea Bussi," Beiträgezur Inkunabelkunde,3. Folge, 4 (1969), pp. 165-66. Geldner, curiously, does not register the edition of 1470 at all, and thus gives the impression that the reprint of .
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