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Two Giraffes Emended

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. R. Morgan
J. R. Morgan
Affiliation:
University College of Swansea
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Extract

In 1880 Spyridon Lambros discovered in the library of the Dionysiou monastery on Mount Athos a manuscript containing, among other things, the missing second book of a compilation of zoological lore made for the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (912–59), generally referred to as the Sylloge Constantini. The first book, already known from a manuscript in Paris, proclaims in its heading that the compilation was based on the epitome of Aristotle's περ ζῴων by Aristophanes of Byzantium, with supplements from the writings of Aelian, Timotheos and others. These supplements are found exclusively in the second book, which Lambros edited, along with the first, for the Supplementum Aristotelicum. They add greatly to our knowledge of the περ ζῴων by the fifth-century grammarian Timotheos of Gaza, a work hitherto known only from the so-called Epitome Augustana, a selection of 53 unconnected chapters made in the reign of Constantine IX Monomachos (1042–55).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 267 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

1 Dionysiou 180 = Lambros, S. P., Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts on Mount Athos (Cambridge, 1895), no. 3714Google Scholar.

2 Paris supp. gr. 495, edited by Rose, V., Anecdota Graeca et Graecolatina (Berlin 1864, reprinted Amsterdam, 1963), ii. lffGoogle Scholar.

3 Supplementum Aristotelicum Vol. 1, Pars 1 (Berlin, 1885)Google Scholar.

4 Information about Timotheos and his work is usefully collected by Colonna, M. Minniti, ‘Timoteo di Gaza’, Vichiana 6 (1977), 93–102Google Scholar.

5 Preserved in Monacensis Augustanus gr. 564, a manuscript of the 14th century, edited most accessibly by Haupt, M. in Hermes 3 (1869), 1ffGoogle Scholar. (= Opuscula [Leipzig, 1876, reprinted Hildesheim, 1967] iii.274ff.)Google Scholar.

6 Cf. SirGray, James, How Animals Move (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 55ffGoogle Scholar. For a detailed account of giraffid locomotion, see Spinage, C. A., The Book of the Giraffe (London, 1968), pp. 124ffGoogle Scholar.

7 Aithiopika 10.27.3.

8 The giraffe's head is not quite twice the size of that of an ostrich; its hindquarters are like those of a lion; the slenderness rather than the length of its neck is stressed; it has spots (or scales!) that are brightly coloured.

9 Compare the judgements of Bodenheimer, F. S. and Rabinowitz, A., Timotheus of Gaza on Animals (= Collection de travaux de l'Acad. Internationale d'histoire des sciences, No. 3) (Paris and Leiden, 1948)Google Scholar:‘no zoologist but a collector and compiler of interesting notes about animals’ (p. 8); ‘merely the record of a curiosity…a number of exotic, rare animals are mentioned, such as…the giraffe, but obviously the knowledge of Timotheus about them is not more penetrating than that about the common animals of his country’ (p. 13). In fairness, it should be pointed out that these comments are based only on the fragments in the Epitome Augustana; the rather fuller treatment of the giraffe in the Sylloge Constantini seems to have been unknown to Bodenheimer and Rabinowitz.

10 Cf. Suda S.v. Τιμθεος Γαζαῖος, γραμματικς…ἔγραψε δ κα πικς Περ ζῴων τετραπδων θηρων τν παρ' 'Ινδοῖς κα Ἄραψι κα Αἰγυπτοις. Doubt was cast on this report by Diels (reported by Lambros, p. xiii n. 1) and Usener, (Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen 26 [1892], 1018ff.)Google Scholar, who pointed out that no trace of metre or poetic diction survives in the extant fragments. The only way to save the Suda as it stands is to suppose, as do Bodenheimer and Rabinowitz, that we are dealing with a Byzantine prose paraphrase.

11 For earlier reports of the giraffe cf. Diod. 2.51 (from Poseidonios), Strabo 16.4.7 (from Artemidoros), Plin. NH 8.69, Dio Cass. 43.23, Opp. Cyn. 3.462ff.

12 Timotheos has material on tail, horns, ears, not found in Heliodoros; but lacks details on neck, head-size, temperament, which Heliodoros does have.

13 Phot.Bibl. cod. 250, 455b; edited by R. Henry in vol. 7 of the Budé text (Collection Byzantine, Paris, 1974).

14 Müller, C., Geographi Graeci Minores (Paris, 1855), i. 159Google Scholar.