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A Student’s Notes of Lectures by Giulio Pomponio Leto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

A.J. Dunston
A.J. Dunston*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Extract

MS. plut. LII 8 in the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana in Firenze contains (ff. 1-80 r.) an anonymous epitome of Boccacio’s de genealogia deorum, ascribed by Bandini to Domizio Calderini, an anonymous work described by Bandini as de rerum inuentoribus etc. (ff. 81 r.-103 r.) and a commentary on the first three books, and part of the fourth, of the Punica of Silius Italicus. The whole MS. is written by one hand in a humanistic cursive script. The watermark of the paper used is a horn (huchet) surmounted by a cross, the nearest example in Briquet (1st ed.), checked by a tracing, being No. 7833 = Venice, 1460. The volume was written by 1473, for an annotation, in a hand different from that of the text, is found on f. 30 r. in the right-hand margin—1473. i. se. mar. furabitur nisi custodietur Turcum. P. VR.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 1 , 1967 , pp. 86 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1967

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References

1 My warm thanks are due to the Librarian of the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana for the kind provision in 1962 of a microfilm of this MS., and for the resolution of subsequent queries.

2 Bandini, A.M.Catalogus codicum latinorum Bibliothecae Mediceae Laurentianae 2 (Firenze, 1775), pp.551–2.Google Scholar The epitome is attributed to Domitius Cauderinus (sic) in the title o Laur. LIII 34. This is presumably Bandini’s only authority for his statement. In the course of a study of the life and work of Calderini I have not as yet found any other reference to this work.See also Branca, V.Tradizione delle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, Vol.1 (Roma,1958), p.110.Google Scholar

3 Hain 14739 B.M.G. V. 323. A copy of the 1493 edition is in the Public Library of New South Wales. See Incunabula in Australia and New Zealand (Sydney, 1966), p. 33, no. 503.

4 Pietro Odi di Montopoli, teacher (with Lorenzo Valla) of Pomponio Leto, died c. 1466. On him see especially Della Torre, A.Paolo Marsi da Pescina (Rocca S. Casciano, 1903),pp.67–71,Google ScholarZabughin, V.Giulio Pomponio Leto (Rome — Grottaferrata,1909–12), Vol.1, pp.11–24,275–9, and now,Google ScholarDelz, J.Ein unbekannter Brief von Pomponius Laetus, in Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 9 (1966), 417–40.Google Scholar

5 For Pomponio Leto see Zabughin, V.op. cit. A brief, but more readily accessible account in Wardrop, J.The Script of Humanism (Oxford, 1963),pp.20–3.Google Scholar See also Ruyschaerrt, J. ‘Les manuels de grammaire latine composés par P.L.,’ Scriptorium 8 (1954),98–107,Google Scholar and‘A propos des trois premiéres grammaires latines de P.L.’, ibid, xv (1961), 68–75.J. Delz, op.cit.

6 For Domizio Calderini, Levi, G.Cenni intorno alia vita e agli scritta di D.C. (Padova, 1900),Google Scholar is still fundamental. See also the bibliography in Weiss, R. ‘In memoriam D.C,’ Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 3 (1960),Google Scholar 309, n. I. I discuss the hand and scholarship of Calderini in a forthcoming number (Vol. x) of this latter journal. The autograph annotations of Pietro Odi and Domizio Calderini are to be found in Vat. Ottob. lat. 1258 of the Punica. I owe the identification of the hand of Odi to Professor A. Campana.

7 On this error, and its ramifications, see Ullman, B.L.The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script (Rome, 1960),p.75,and n. 44.Google Scholar

8 The words excellit nates Pomponius omnes / fons uber … occur in a poem by Dom(en)ico Palladio Sorano quoted by A. Delia Torre, op. cit. pp. 259–60.

9 References to the Punica are from the Teubner edition of Bauer, 2 vols,, 1890–2.

10 The commentary is not accompanied by a text. Lemmata are underlined.

11 I have been unable to trace the source Pomponio used here: the name occurs in Sall. Jug. 108, 112 (Asparem lugurthae legatum).

12 This form is not found (save twice, as a correction) in the MSS. of Silius. Pomponio read, with a number of MSS., In(n)ulce.

13 More so than the nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentators, of whom the only one to make a pertinent comment is Conington: ‘The Astarte of the Phoenicians is identified in the loose way common among the ancients, with Juno.’

14 Pomponio raises an important point here: the connection of Juno with Carthage may well have had its origin in poetry (i.e. the bringing together of the stories of Aeneas and of Dido) rather than history. There does appear to have been some tradition of the connection in antiquity: see Servius ad Aen. xii 841 and the euocatio quoted by Fraenkel, Horace, p. 237. In this latter, there is no direct reference to Juno. The ille of teque maximeille qui urbis huius populique tutelam recepisti is not ‘a provisional blank in the form, later on to be replaced by the name, as we should use “X” ’, for there is little point in this when the city has been specified. It refers, more naturally, to Hercules Tyrius, cuius numiniurbem dicauerant (Q,. Curtius, iv 3.23).

15 This excursus is of particular interest and I hope to discuss it more fully elsewhere. Pomponio had a deep interest in the topography, coins and inscriptions of ancient Rome. His de Romanae urbis uetustate was printed, posthumously, at Rome in 1510: the Excerpta, notes on a tour of Rome on which he took a foreign visitor, are printed in Valentini, R.Zucchetti, G.Codice topografico delta citta di Roma (Rome,1946),Vol.4,pp.421–3.Google Scholar

16 The text, as one would expect, follows that of the recentiores of the Tusc. disp.

17 A. Delia Torre, op. cit. pp. 119 ff.

18 For the hand of Pomponio Leto see Muzzioli, G. ‘Due nuovi codici autograft di P.L’ Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 2 (1959), 337–51.Google Scholar

19 Hain 14734.

20 Hain 14733. Vat lat- 165l bears on f. 1 r. the stemma of Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84). This has, however, been superimposed on another, which, from a comparison of traces which have discoloured the verso, with the stemma to be found in Ottob. lat. 1188, a Martial annotated by Pomponio and C. Antonio Settimuleio Campano, a well-known ‘Pomponian’, can be identified as that of the Massimi family. See Spreti, Enciclopedia storica nobiliare italiana IV (Milan, 1931), p. 478. It is interesting to note that it was in the Massimi palazzo that the printers of the princeps set up their portable press. Cf. the verses includedin those which follow the colophon in Hain 14733:

Petrus cumfratre Francisco Maximus ambo

Huic operi aptatam contribuere domum.

21 On these MSS. see Zabughin, op. cit. vol. ii, p. 18: Muzzioli, op. cit. p. 348, and see tav. xxx.

22 I have not checked the readings in two more: Yale, Marston MS. 220, and Budapest, Bibl. Univ. MS. 8.

23 Not unnaturally, in the light of the textual tradition, these references are often false. E.g. ad i 52a (aereus clipeus) teste Plini libro XXIII° should be libro XXXV°. Here either Pomponio, or the scribe, or the student may be the cause of the error. In the note ad i 523 (plumbi) where Plinius epistola secunda should be naturalis historiae libro XXXIV° (HN xxxiv 50.166) it looks very much as if Pomponio has nodded.

24 Other references to Ennius can be traced to Varro, de lingua latina, Aulus Gellius or Nonius Marcellus.

25 Punica, ed. G. A. Ruperti (Göttingen, 1795).

26 I have not yet succeeded in tracing the source of the words ad i 351 (phalarica), after a long quotation from Livy, = phalarica a Phalari tyranno teste Marcellino. Contrast Non. 555 M. and Festus 78.20.

27 Op. cit.

28 Cf. Caper, GLK vii 99.11, and contrast Charisius (ed. Barwick) 111.5 and 358.24.

29 Ciceronis poetica fragmenta,ed. Traglia, A. (Rome,1950),fasc.1,p.43.Google Scholar

30 Ottob. lat. 1956 is a text of the Ephemeris Belli Troiani copied by Pomponio. See Muzzioli, op. cit. p. 341.

31 Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship ii, p. 92.

32 Muzzioli, op. cit. p. 350.

33 Muzzioli, op. cit. p. 340.

34 Written 1435–44; the ed. princeps seems to be that of Jenson, Venice, 1471 (Hain 15802). Pomponio was a pupil of Lorenzo Valla. It is of particular interest that Pomponio Leto does not mention or quote from either Plautus or Terence. In one section of ‘Studies in Domizio Calderini’, to appear shortly in Italia Medioevale e Umanistica x, I demonstrate that Calderini exhibits, surprisingly, a very sketchy and perhaps completely derivative acquaintance with the plays of Plautus.

35 The reading malatam is found in Vat. lat. 3302, 2778 (see p. 91), Oxford, Bodley, Canon. lat. 116 and in the edition of Pomponio Leto. In Borg. lat. 417, Books i, ii and part of iii are missing. In Vat. lat. 1651 the words mala tam, are linked by a stroke of the pen of a later corrector—perhaps Pomponio.