AEVUM - 2012 - 1

SUMMARY: The present article announces the discovery of hitherto unknown Euripides passages in the famous Jerusalem palimpsest Codex Hierosolymitanus Sancti Sepulcri 36. The codex is written on more than 550 pages of palimpsested parchment. It consists of seven original manuscripts that have never been fully studied. This is the first detailed codicological analysis of the whole codex based on historical photographs which are in possession of the Septuginta-Unternehmen (Go¨ttingen, Germany). Inter alia, the manuscript offers passages of Euripides which were overlooked by Stephen G. Daitz. Several passages are identified as Phoenissae 730-777; 952-992, but many substantial passages reveal material of Euripides that is so far totally unkown. In addition, the codex contains pages from Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on Luke, written in uncial script, probably from the 8th century. Most of the Greek original of this text was previously thought to be lost. I am currently preparing an edition of all these texts in cooperation with Agamemnon Tselikas and Bernhard Neuscha¨fer.

SUMMARY: In Birds 1553-64 Aristophanes ridicules the philosopher Socrates and the demagogue Pisander of Acarne, a democratic politician, later one of the leaders of the oligarchic coup of 411 BC. As generally believed, Aristophanes hits Pisander for his cowardice, since he was traditionally portrayed as a coward. On account of the manifold meanings of the word psyche´ a different interpretation is possible. When Aristophanes mentions that Pisander paid a visit to Socrates, he probably hints at Pisander’s shifting political alliances, since the writer of comedies accused Socrates and his followers to sympathize with the oligarchic party. If the analysis of the passage is correct, we may infer that Pisander’s political ambiguity was already evident in 414 BC.

SUMMARY: This paper considers the state of the democratic party in the years between the battle of Chaeroneia (338 BC) and Alexander’s invasion of Asia (334 BC), focusing on the relations among its most important representatives, Demosthenes, Hypereides, and Lycurgus. The discussion centers around Eucrates’ law (336 BC), and Hypereides’ speech Against Diondas (recently discovered in the so-called Archimedes’ Palimpsest) is compared with Demosthenes’ On the Crown, which proves to be analogous in language and topics. So the hypothesis of internal struggles in the Athenian democratic party (between the moderate side lead by Demosthenes and the radical side lead by Hypereides) is rejected and the year 334 BC is proposed as terminus post quem for the origin of these struggles.

SUMMARY: Few fragments survive from the works of two minor Hellenistic poets, Nicaenetus and the poetess Moiro` (or Myro` ), and modern scholars left both of them in obscurity. This paper, based on a deep investigation, now sheds light on their lives and provides a commentary on their poems. Nicaenetus and Moiro` (or Myro` ), who lived in the 3rd century B.C., composed epic poems and epigrams, of which 20 hexameters and 7 epigrams are extant. All the testimonia antiquorum are discussed. Quotations from Nicaenetus are found in later authors (Meleager, Parthenius of Nicaea, the historian Menodotus) and he was known until the late Imperial age, to the mythographer Conon, the metrist Hephaestion, Nonnus of Panopolis and Stephanus of Byzantium. Moiro` (or Myro` ) could have been the initiator of a literary genre, the curse poetry, a genre practiced by Callimachus (Ibis), Euphorion (Chiliades, Imprecations or the cup-stealer, Thrax) and in Latin by Ovid (Ibis).

SUMMARY: MS Vatican Gr. 1312 (late 12th or early 13th century) and MS Milano, Bibl. Ambrosiana, C 222 inf. (last quarter of the 12th century) contain Pindar, Second Olympian, in a colometrical arrangement to be compared with that exhibited by P. Oxy. 2092 and P. Oxy. 5036 (both datable to the end of the 2nd century) and P. Oxy. 1614 (from the 5-6th century). The colometry of both MSS is presented here synoptically and possible patterns governing it are discussed. The arrangement of the Second Olympian could have been settled according to the theory of the metra prototypa explained by Hephaestion. In this perspective colometry can be described as a definite alternation of cola characterized by opposed metrical rhythms, which correspond to two different metrical modulations, framed into a coherent structure: modulations depending on rhythmical homogeneity and on rhythmical contrast.

SUMMARY: Catullus’ carm. 105 could be considered not only a pungent observation on Mamurra’s (mentula) fanciful poetic ambitions and a statement of neoteric poetry. A close analysis of the words used by Catullus shows that the text hints at the topos of the poet’s initiation: the comparison is with Hesiod and Ennius; others words refer to epic poetry and military deeds (Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus). Through antiphrasis Mamurra’s behaviour should so be interpreted as sacrilegious and his act as parodic of those described by great poets and writers.

SUMMARY: According to Eustathius, the 12th century Homeric commentator who could read the complete book VII of Strabo’s Geography, at VII 7, 11 the ancient reading proposed for Hom. Od. XVI 403 is not tomouroi, as in MSS and modern editions of Strabo, but tomourai. The first indicates the prophets of the sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona, the second their prophecies; both rare terms are quoted in the passage, and the second was easily confused with the first one. The textual discussion comes from Apollodorus’ commentary on the Homeric Catalogue of Ships; a reconstruction of Eustathius’ sources about Dodona is given too. Appendix: A better reconstruction of Strabo VII fr. 1 Radt is made possible by comparison of two Apollodorean testimonia (Eustathius on Hom. Od. XIV 327-28 and Sch. in Soph. Trach. 172). The fragment should include a quotation from Herodotus (II 57). Apollodorus appears to discuss about the Dodona doves, in order to explain the disturbing fact that the birds, according to an established tradition, could speak.

SUMMARY: Alciphron’s choice of topics, settings, language and style implies an imitation of the great authors of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. However, the writer succeds not infrequently in drawing realistic compressed scenes, pictures and portraits, instead of using mannerism and frigidities. Alciphron’s philosophers particularly seem more than types. In his characterizations the author shows a remarkable convergence of different materials and influences adapted in different ways: his most distinctive sources are Lucian (of great interest is comparison between the Symposium of Lucian and Alciphron III 19) and Comedy and, secondarily, the historical and biographical tradition.

SUMMARY: An unknown treatise of Galen on freedom from pain has been recently discovered in a 15th century MS, Thessalonicensis Vlatadon 14. This paper suggests more than a hundred emendations to the Greek text edited by Ve´ronique Boudon-Millot and Jacques Jouanna, with the assistance of Antoine Pietrobelli, Galien. Ne pas se chagriner, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2010 (Collection des Universités de France, Galien, IV).

SUMMARY: This paper deals with a passage from the long and well-constructed poem of Nemesianus, Cynegetica, vv. 67-68, about which several scholars have raised doubts, because the same verb, bibunt, is repeated in two successive lines. However, all the proposed emendations are in many respects unsatisfactory. In accordance with Horace, carm. 4, 14, 45-46, and Lucan 10, 189-191, we suggest emending bibunt v. 68 with ignotum and reading the whole of the passage in this way: gentes / quae Rhenum Tigrimque bibunt Ararisque remotum / principium Nilique in origine fontem.

SUMMARY: Prudentius ({ ca. 410) mentions the Saturnini, a group of martyrs at Saragozza in the early 4th century, stating that the ancients (prisca vetustas) gave them this epithet (Peristephanon, 4, 161-64). How a poet, writing around A.D. 400 could speak about prisca vetustas for martyrs, who died less than a hundred years before, is explained by this paper. Prudentius’ lines are an erudite allusion, reminiscent of the metrists and grammarians Terentianus Maurus and Aphtonius, who refer prisca and vetustas not to the martyrs Saturnini, but to the old Latin verse saturnius.

SUMMARY: Pietro Mazzucchelli (1762-1829), scriptor and in the end prefect of the Ambrosiana Library (1823-1829), was an outstanding librarian, and a scholar of classical, patristic, biblical and liturgical texts as well. He acted also as librarian for the Marquis Trivulzio. In this old family library he made an important discovery: in 1814, studying MS Triv. 686, a 14th century paper MS, he identified the text (the poem Iohannis) as work of the 6th century poet Flavius Cresconius Corippus. The poem, in latin hexameters, was apparently lost since the 16th century. Mazzucchelli, showing a keen paleographical and philological skill, unusual in Italy at that time, published a still remarkable editio princeps in 1820. Mazzucchelli’s corrections to the text are here listed and compared with the readings of the following 19th and 20th century editions.