Ovidiana Graeca: Fragments of a Byzantine Version of Ovid's Amatory Works

By P. E. Easterling and E. J. Kenney

This volume presents a Greek translation of Ovid's erotic poetry, perhaps produced by Planudes in the twelfth century and excerpted in the fourteenth. The text is newly edited and printed alongside Ovid's Latin original.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cambridge Philological Society
• Release date: Aug 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913701079

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INTRODUCTION

I

The Greek text here presented was first brought to the attention of the learned world by Heinrich Schenkl in 1909.¹ It has attracted less interest than it perhaps deserves, for it seems to be a document of some importance for students of medieval Greek culture. Elsewhere² I have discussed this matter at some length in an article to which I may be permitted to refer those who may be interested for the arguments on which the following conclusions are based. It seems that there once existed a complete version in Greek prose of Ovid’s Amores, Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris; and that this version was possibly the work of Maximus Planudes and almost certainly originated in his circle. During the fourteenth century this version was excerpted, adapted, and partly bowdlerized by some unknown person (not Planudes himself) for an undefined educational or rhetorical purpose, with the results that are seen here. Thus the text has a double interest, both as a possible accession to the Corpus Planudeum and in its context as part of the collection in which it is found: the latter aspect of the matter is explored below by Mrs Easterling. Editors of Ovid’s amatory works, as I have previously argued,³ will not find in these excerpts a source of great independent value for the text of their author, but it has seemed worthwhile to print the Latin text opposite that of the version.

E. J. K.

II

Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele in, cod. II. C. 32 is a paper manuscript of 372 leaves, measuring 233 × c. 160 mm., written in single columns, usually with 32 lines to the page. It contains a vast medley of excerpts from Greek prose texts, both sacred and profane, and appears to be the work of a single scribe, although the hand varies to a certain extent in different parts of the volume. This may indicate that the copying of the manuscript went on over quite a long period. Each excerpt normally begins with a rubricated initial letter, in some parts of the volume mannered and careful, but elsewhere in the same style as the rest of the text. In a number of places the rubric is omitted altogether.

The watermarks show that the paper is fourteenth-century Italian. They are as follows: two circles, the one superimposed on the other, topped by a line ending in a Latin cross, very common in the fourteenth century, but cf. especially Briquet 3184; Solomon’s knot, Briquet 11979, dated 1311–27, 1339; four-petalled flower, without a parallel in Briquet, but comparable to 6309, dated 1320–34; crescent, not exactly similar to any in Briquet; axe-blade or bell, cf. Briquet, Papier et Filigranes des Archives de Genes (Geneva, 1888) s.v. cloche, where a very similar mark is dated 1315–24; uncertain mark (e.g. in foil. 185–6), perhaps a lion or a griffin. Unless the last-mentioned mark turns out to be late, the evidence of these marks is fairly strong in favour of a date in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, which the style of the hand seems to support.

Certain features of the presentation are worth noting; possibly they suggest that this manuscript was written for its scribe’s own use. For example, in a number of places the excerpts pass from one author to another without a title or even a break in the text, while sometimes an excerpt breaks off in mid-sentence with the word τό, a practice common to different parts of the book.¹ The first of these peculiarities may also imply that the manuscript was carelessly copied from an exemplar similar in form and thus that the scribe was not himself the excerptor. There is other evidence pointing the same way: for example, false punctuation which meaninglessly divides a single excerpt into two. But we must beware of attributing to corrupt tradition errors which arose simply because the manuscript was carelessly executed. Quite often the text has been corrupted because the rubricator (probably the scribe himself) inserted the wrong initial letter (e.g. οὐ τήν for αὐτήν, fol. 242a) or omitted it altogether. But on the whole the manuscript looks like a copy of something substantially similar, rather than like an excerptor’s autograph.

The manuscript has recently been described in detail by the late G. Pierleoni in the first volume of a new catalogue of the Greek manuscripts in the National Library of Naples.² To his list of contents should be added the translations from Ovid with which we are here concerned, following (foll. 24oa–252b) without interval or title on excerpts from Thucydides, and a short selection of excerpts chiefly from Oribasius³ and Dionysius of Halicarnassus⁴ (foll. 252b–253b), which follows the Ovidian text, again without a break or any indication of the change of author.

Naples II. C. 32 is a curious hotch-potch, but quite typical of its period. As A. Diller points out,⁵ it was a common practice among Byzantine scholars of the fourteenth century to take notes on their reading by excerpting passages or copying pieces that interested them. Quite often such compilations preserve fragments of lost works, and in this respect the Neapolitan manuscript has proved to be a valuable witness for the text of Himerius.⁶ So far as we are aware, it is the only extant manuscript which offers even an excerpted version of the translation of the Ars Amatoria, Amores and Remedia Amoris,¹ which as Mr Kenney has argued was probably made if not by Planudes himself at any rate under the influence of Planudean scholarship.

It seems possible that the whole collection was made by someone whose interests and training were in the Planudean tradition. Like Planudes’ own collection of excerpts,² which describes itself as πάνυ ὠφέλιμος, this compilation seems to have had a utilitarian purpose. Its excerpts from Philo are ὅσα κρείττονα καὶ χρησιμώτερα (fol. 150a) and those from Demosthenes are κῶλα πάνυ χρήσιμα (fol. 201a). Rhetorical and ‘philosophical’ ends are probably being served simultaneously, in spite of the apparent meaninglessness of some of the excerpts. As Foerster³ commented on the extracts from Libanius: ‘Auctor in eligendis sententiis… non solum sententiarum sed etiam elocutionis rationem habuit.’ It is perhaps worth noting that these excerpts from Libanius are textually closely related to the ones offered by Heidelberg Palatinus gr. 129, which A. Biedl⁴ has shown to be a compilation made by Nicephorus Gregoras, who spent most of his life in the monastery of Chora in Constantinople, a noted Planudean milieu. All this, however, gives us no more than the general setting; it is perhaps only to be expected that the products of this period should tend to have a Planudean colouring. A more specific suggestion has been made by A. Colonna,⁵ who tentatively identifies the compiler of the Neapolitan collection with Andreas Lopadiotes, the author of the so-called Lexicon Rhetoricum Vindobonense. There is indeed a striking similarity between the two collections