14. Incontri di filologia classica (2014-2015)

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 . 

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 XII 250 (11878) has special significance: it transmits an autograph anthology of poems still unpublished.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. 

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.