Fulgentius the Mythqgraphe

FULGENTIUS THE MYTHQGRAPHE Translated from the Latin with Introductions by LESLIE GEORGE WHITBREAD $15.00 FULGENTIUS THE MYTHOGRAPHER Translated from the Latin, with Introduc tions, by Leslie G. Whitbread Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance, the writings of Fulgentius the mythographer, who lived in the late fifth or early sixth century, were extremely popu lar, much admired, and widely imitated. His influence on poetry, art, preaching, education, and the modes that were employed to adapt classical myth and literature to the require ments of more-or-less Christian patterns of thought was unquestionably profound. Translations of the five Latin works ascribed to him have long been needed, sim ply to make a significant influence available to modern historians of medieval and Ren aissance art, literature, and intellectual life. But the language of Fulgentius is appallingly difficult. Composed in the decadent Latin of his time, his writing is full of intricate rhe torical excesses of a particular extravagance and complexity that could only discourage the prospective translator, and that have caused some to describe his work as simply untrans latable. The substance, too, of Fulgentius's five trea tises — on the content of Virgil according to moral philosophy, on classical mythology, on the Thebaid, on obsolete words, and on the ages of man and the world — has been found wanting. Charges have been made that both his purposes and his methods are confused and of dubious merit, and that the learning displayed in the convoluted syntax of his pompous and extravagant prose is merely sec ondhand when it is not just highly suspect. It is an indisputable fact, however, that whenever such broad literary themes are under study as the development of allegory, (Continued on back flap) FULGENTIUS THE MYTHOGRAPHER The Mythologies The Exposition of the Content of Virgil according to Moral Philosophy The Explanation of Obsolete Words On the Ages of the World and of Man On the Thebaid FULGENTIUS THE MYTHOGRAPHER Translated from the Latin, with Introductions, by LESLIE GEORGE WHITBREAD Ohio State University Press Copyright © 1971 by the Ohio State University Press Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 70-165263 International Standard Book Number: 0-8142-0162-8 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America CONTENTS Preface ix General Introduction 3 THE MYTHOLOGIES 13 Introduction 15 Translation 39 THE EXPOSITION OF THE CONTENT OF VIRGIL 103 Introduction 105 Translation 119 Supplementary Notes 137 THE EXPLANATION OF OBSOLETE WORDS 155 Introduction 157 Translation 161 ON THE AGES OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN 177 Introduction 179 Translation 187 ON THE THEBADD 233 Introduction 235 Translation 239 Indexes 245 Preface None of the five Latin works ascribed to Fulgentius the mythographer has, to my knowledge, been previously published in English, or any other mod ern language. They are, indeed, frequently described as either untranslat able or not worth translating. At worst, the Latin is appalling—decadent, involved, littered with wasteful connectives and rhetorical extravagances, pompous, inflated, pretentious, prolix, infested with Asianic exaggeration. The colors of rhetoric turn psychedelic; enormous sentences confront lucid ity like barbed-wire entanglements. And as the style is without grace, so are the purposes and methods muddleheaded and dubious, and the displays of learning secondhand and suspect. Yet, for all the drawbacks, which belong as much to his age as to Fulgentius himself, these are works which through the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance were highly pop ular, much admired, and widely imitated. It is one of the curiosities of liter ature how—in the consideration of such broad themes as the development of allegory, the survival of classical mythology, the history of literary crit icism, and the medieval interpretations of Virgil—Fulgentius earned his small niche, and not only for his central theses, which (despite their noto riety for modern students) had considerable influence, but also for the pe ripheral concepts and commonplaces he scatters around them. The present version has necessarily something of a pioneering character. I have followed the only modern edition, by Rudolf Helm in the Biblio theca Teubneriana (Leipzig, 1898), which provides an adequate text and apparatus but little or nothing in the way of critical or explanatory com ment; hence, the fairly copious annotation. I have not aimed at more than a reproduction of Fulgentius's involved style; and I have, therefore, mostly kept to the punctuation adopted by Helm, cumbersome though it may ap pear in places. In places where ambiguity and obscurity lie thickest, my choice has been to paraphrase rather than perpetuate the darkness; but I am very conscious of having groped my way, and I have sometimes noted the original in the hope that others may find more light. My first interest in Fulgentius I owe to Professor Robert G. Cook of New x Preface comb College, Tulane University. The stimulus which led directly to the present version owes most to Dr. O. B. Hardison, Jr., formerly professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and now di rector of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., who gener ously placed at my disposal both his wide learning and his own unpub lished translation of Fulgentius's Content of Virgil. Of what follows, the best is his. My more intimate debts the dedication expresses. L.G.W. February, 1971 FULGENTM THE W General Introduction Of the five works translated here, the first three share strong internal sim ilarities and may be considered to belong securely to one author, named, in most early manuscripts, Fabius Planciades Fulgentius. The remaining two texts are On the Ages of the World and of Man, assigned in early cop ies to a Fabius Claudius Gordianus Fulgentius, and On the Thebaid, al most certainly a later work, which in the one copy known is assigned to a sanctus Fulgentius episcopus, presumably the sixth-century saint Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe in modern Tunisia, whose family names included Clau dius and Gordianus. The identity of this Bishop Fulgentius with our author has been much debated,1 but appears to rest on somewhat flimsy evidence. Our author was clearly a Christian, familiar with the Bible and with apologist attitudes, in troducing Adam and Antichrist into his account of classical mythology, directing his explanation of Virgil to a lev'tta or deacon, and mentioning Tertullian among the authorities for obscure Latin words. But in attempt ing to decide his period, his cultural and geographical background, and details of his career, we are entirely dependent on the incidental references provided in his own works; these gi\e some light, though its focus is far from full or precisely defined. The general flamboyance and decadence of his Latin, the reasonably accurate knowledge he shows of Greek, and his view of classical authors and cults as already receding into antiquity, would suit what is known in general of the state of education, learning, and reli gion in colonial North Africa of the fifth and sixth centuries;2 and these are his most likely bounds of place and time. African interests are apparent in Fulgentius's mention in the prologue to the Ages of Libyan as "our own language," that is, the language of himself and the unnamed patron he is addressing. In chapter 10 of the Ages, Fulgentius repeats a legend, at tached to the birth of Alexander the Great, elsewhere found in Egyptian sources. In the opening prologue to the Mythologies, he makes a point of describing the medical school and the "narrow streets" of the city of Alex andria; he goes on, 1.1, to an Egyptian story of the first idol; later, 1.20, 4 Fulgentius the Mythographer he stresses that "as you certainly know for a fact, the Egyptians worship the barge of Isis"; and further on, 2.12, he alludes to the strong wine of Mer oe in upper Egypt, a detail repeated in the Ages, chapter 10, along with the cataracts of the Nile. Several copies of the Mythologies and the Content of Virgil are addressed to a priest of Carthage. The circumstantial, if graphic, account of his country estate just recovered from the assaults of barbarian "Galagetici," as set out in the opening of the Mythologies, most obviously fits the encroachments of the Vandals into North Africa during the cen tury beginning in 439, though neither the Galagetici nor the king whose re turn he welcomes are known.3 One may, of course, add that Fulgentius clearly belongs to an age prior to the overrunning of North Africa by the Mohammedans in the century following the death of the Prophet in 632. Fulgentius's literary affinities are most obviously with the Greek and Latin writers of the later Alexandrian age: in the Mythologies and the Content he is reminiscent of African authors like Apuleius of Madaura (Mdaurusch in Algeria) and of Christian apologists such as Tertullian of Carthage and Lactantius; and for the Ages he leans heavily on the Histories of Orosius, the Iberian disciple of St. Augustine of Hippo. Many of these circumstances also fit St. Fulgentius the bishop, the year of whose death is established as 532 or 533.4 The main drawback to iden tification is that the bishop emerges from his surviving Latin theological tracts and letters as an orthodox opponent of Arianism and Pelagianism who has little in common, except some resemblance of style and a knowl edge of Greek, with the interests of our author; and these are features of the age rather than the individual. That the two shared the same age and culture, even family relationship, seems very possible. If they are one per son, it would seem logical to take the mythographical works as more youth ful productions, though in that event one would have to dismiss as a con ventional pose the apparent reference to great age with which the Content of Virgil begins.

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