14. Incontri di filologia classica (2014-2015)

Some very small, but incontestable verbal elements, inextricably link together three passages from De rerum natura first book: the well known eulogy of Epicurus (at lines 62- 77), the cautious tribute to Ennius (at 112-126), the self representation of the poet (at 921-934). The common role of protoi heuretai shows that Lucretius feels that he himself is walking in the footsteps of these two great precursors. 

Gli Incontri di filologia classica (INCF) sono una rivista scientifica internazionale a cadenza annuale. Nata per accogliere le relazioni discusse da studiosi appositamente invitati all’interno dei seminari che si tenevano presso l’Università di Trieste (da qui il titolo Incontri triestini di filologia classica, conservato fino al volume IX), la rivista pubblica, previa valutazione, contributi inviati alla redazione e/o discussi nell’ambito di incontri scientifici in Italia e all’estero.

The contribution examines some manuscripts and printed editions that transmit carmina of the neo-Latin poet Jerome Amalteo (s. XVI): these witnesses are independent of each other. Between them, the manuscript Marc. Lat. XII 250 (11878) has special significance: it transmits an autograph anthology of poems still unpublished. Jerome’s carmina are characterized by considerable variants that are the result of a revision of the text made by the author himself. 

Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii opens with a double prologue, written in verse and in prose. In the prose section, the author is questioned by his son about the meaning of the hymn he has just recited and which the young man considers to be the creation of an idler. The verb with which this kind of activity is defined is, in the manuscript tradition, the Greek neologism γυμνολογίζεις, which could be interpreted on the basis of another neologism, γυμνολογία, a term which appears in the theological disputes on the human and/or divine nature of Jesus. 

Behind the playfulness and the self-irony, Ennod. carm. II 67 = 188 V. is a complex metaliterary epigram, in which the future bishop of Pavia represents himself as writing poems in the backyard of his villa during grape harvesting. A detailed commentary and an analysis of the ideological elements scattered in the five elegiac couplets show that the text is a self-portrait of Ennodius in the attitude of a heathen poet, and that it was perhaps intended as a closure poem for his own collection of secular poetry . 

Building on F. Cairns, The Genre ‘Oaristys’, «WS» CXXXIII (2010), 101-129, the purpose of this article is to read the scene of Lycainion’s seduction of Daphnis in Long.Soph. 3.15-19 within the narrative pattern of the oaristys, the ‘wooing’. I argue that considering the passage as adhering to such a pattern shall contribute to the full appreciation of the author’s refined and complex literary strategy underlining the ideal continuum between the novel’s episode and other famous seduction scenes in the Greek literary (especially poetic) tradition.

The geometry section (chapters 5-8) of the so-called Fragmentum Censorini (date of composition unknown) is a faithful translation of the definitions (ὅροι), of the postulates (αἰτήματα) and of the common notions (κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι) of Book I of the Elements written by the Greek mathematician Euclid (IV-III B.C.). Within the Latin tradition, numerous translations, spanning several centuries (from the 1st to the 6th ) and directly or indirectly connected to Euclid, do survive. This contribution is a critical edition of the Fragmentum; it also includes an essay where the connections which can be established with the tradition of Euclides Latinus are scrutinized and assessed. 

The paper presents some textual observations on the following passages of the Book XI of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria: IX 3,9; IX 3,23; IX 3,36-38; IX 3,43.

In the first section of the paper is analysed Mart. VIII 73, where the poet, answering to his patron’s request for elevated poetry, asks in turn “something to love” (v. 4 da quod amem). The catalogue of love-poets inspired by the object of their passion (Propertius, Gallus, Tibullus, Catullus) is functional to the thesis that the beloved person makes great poets and prepares the ground for the conclusion, in which Martial declares that his poetry will be at the same height of Ovid’s and Virgil’s, if only he have a Corinna or an Alexis. The acceptance of the biographic-allegorical tradition which treated the Alexis of Virgil’second eclogue as a real puer, gift of a patron, reveals the goal of the playful literary history’s lesson proposed by the poet: Martial covertly suggests to his patron that the gift of a beautiful boy will make him an epic poet, as shows the analogy with VIII 55(56), where Maecenas’ gift of Alexis immediately inspires the Aeneid to Virgil. It is likely that the request is pointed to Cestus, minister of his patron, already mentioned in VIII 46 and 50(51). Discussed are then some critical loci of the epigram and given elements which support second family’s variants, generally discarded by editors (vv. 1 Instani; 3 animumque; 5 lasciva). 

In this paper we try to outline the presence of the Ausonian model and the modalities of his inclusion within the narrative and poetry plot of Sidonian texts; the attention is focused especially on Sidonius’ letters. In the first part is proposed an overview about Ausonian echoes starting from Sidon. epist. I,2; I,9. Conversely in the second part we propose a detailed study on the complexity of inclusion and a further use of the model focusing especially on Sidon. epist. II,2; VIII,12 and IX,13.

This essay analyzes the connections between the Martianus Capella manuscript tradition and the exegesis of De inventione, focussing in particular on the first medieval commentary of Cicero’s text, in other words Menegaldus’ commentary (XI c.), only recently published and therefore still open to comparison with the De nuptiis. The three cases which are here examined are: the term culleus, an interpolation in the Menegaldus manuscript tradition derived from the exegesis of the commentary to Martianus and the identification by commentators of Ciceron’s quidam (inv. I 2,2) as the first person who was capable of civilizing man thanks to rhetoric.