Pseudo-Classical Phantom Words in Latin Literature and Scholarship. The Case of 'dicatura' from Pliny the Elder's Preface (original) (raw)

Benedictus and his Greek-Latin Dictionary: Escorial Σ I.12

Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, 2017

freshly rediscovered ancient manuscript "written in old letters" ("libros litteris vetustis descriptos") 2 appeared to be a most precious treasure. And if one traces the history of one particular apograph, Escorial Σ I.12, and tries to identify the Benedictus who copied it, the story has unexpected turns. The aim of this paper is, by focussing on the manuscript evidence and the scribes' activity, not only to define the place this dictionary may occupy in the manuscript tradition but also to explore the context of its origin. Accordingly, textual-critical analyses will be combined with narrative, biographical sections. The bilingual Pseudo-Cyril became available to Italian humanists during the Council of Basel (1431-1438) via Harleianus 5792, belonging then to Nicholas of Cusa. 3 Before long several copies were made, either directly or indirectly. Goetz, the last editor of the pseudo-Cyril dictionary, lists ten 15 th-or early 16 th-century copies; 4 Dionisotti lists sixteen. 5 In his sketchy overview of Greek-Latin lexica, 6 Thiermann enumerates only those six whose owner or scribe can be identified by name: Laur. Acqu. e doni 92 which was possessed Francesco da Castiglione, Laur.Edil. 219 possessed by Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, 7 ÖNB Suppl.gr. 45 possessed by Janus Pan-___ the thematic bilingual word-lists of Hermeneumata see E. Dickey, The Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana I (Cambridge 2012) 20-24. 2 See P. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne'secoli XIV e XV (Florence 1905) 112. 3 It is mentioned by Francesco Pizolpassi in a letter of 1437, see Sabbadini, Le scoperte 112 and 118. 4 CGL II (Leipzig 1888) XXX-XXXI. Goetz erroneously included in his list Neapolitanus II D 34, presumably by confusion with II D 33. In fact the former MS. contains an unfinished humanist dictionary, see M. R. Formentin,

The Latin of De magistratibus et republica Venetorum

The Republic of Venice, 2019

This translation is based on the Latin text as printed in Contarini's collected works (Opera, Paris 1571), edited and revised by Alvise Contarini and his assistants, and reprinted in Venice with small variations in 1578. This is the edition generally used by modern scholars who quote Contarini from Latin. We have intentionally overlooked earlier editions-the first Latin edition (1543) and its various reprints, the Italian translation by an anonymous hand (1544)-and Lewkenor's English translation (1599), which draws on multiple sources (including the Italian translation of 1544, deriving from the 1543 Latin edition), collated with the Latin text from the 1571/8 edition (as recently discussed by Florio 2010). We have thus avoided the tendency to group versions of the text before the 1571 edition as a single entity. There are significant divergences between the different versions of De magistratibus circulating before 1571, which include substantial interpolations, mistranslations, amplifications, stylistic simplifications, and at times (intentional) meaning alterations. The most common type of alterations have a stylistic nature, and are motivated by a classicizing intent on the part of Alvise Contarini, aiming to make the language adhere more closely to the standards of Ciceronian Latin 18 as regards lexicon and phraseology, syntax and word order, emphasis and ornatus (cf. Florio 2010, 90-101). 17 I am very grateful to Amanda Murphy for valuable comments and suggestions on several drafts of these notes. 18 On humanistic Ciceronianism see below. Cf. also Jensen 1996, investigating the origin of the "Ciceronian ban" advocated by "Ciceronianist" humanists and intended to "banish medieval neologisms and replace them with classical equivalents" (689). This ban is already traceable in the first edition of Contarini's treatise, but becomes l Giuseppe Pezzini

'Il glossario del ms. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 163’ (English version)

Romanobarbarica 10 (1988-1989), pp. 485-516. -Rist. riv. e corr. in Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Glossaries, 1999, pp. 329-355.

Glosses constituted a meeting-point between Latin culture and the Germanic world, a moment when the two civilizations came face to face. The latter attempted to set up a relationship with the former and build a bridge across to it. Consequently, the glossator sought not only to understand and then record the meaning of a more or less obscure word, but also to interpret the text in which this word occurred. His aim was to send forth an echo of the word, selecting it from among many others either for teaching purposes or simply for personal enjoyment. That these and other reasons, such as an interest in compiling or writing encyclopedias, were the basis of medieval glossarial activity is often overlooked: the characteristic approach to glosses is almost exclusively a linguistic one. This has led to the treatment of interlinear glosses in isolation from the contexts in which they occur and, where a text contains glosses in both Latin and the vernacular, or where a glossary, as frequently happens, alternates monolingual and bilingual interpretamenta, only the Old English glosses and their Latin lemmata have normally been printed. Such an approach prevents one not only from studying the glossator's choices and the reasons behind them, but also from making a correct interpretation of the Old English word if it is divorced from its original context. Furthermore, such an approach does not allow the structure of glossaries to be properly understood: it obscures the relationships between the individual items that make up the glossaries and hinders the identification of their sources. The glossary presented in this article, like many others, contains lemmata with interpretamenta in Old English which have been previously published together with other lemmata glossed in Latin, which still await publication. However, only through comprehensive examination of all the items has it been possible to determine its nature and identify its sources. The short glossary copied out on one of the last folios of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 163 has hitherto been described as a selection of items drawn from Aldhelm, but on examination it has turned out to consist rather of a series of glossae collectae from various sources which can be traced back to the family of the Leiden Glossary. These glosses provide unique evidence of the Leiden family in that they are contained in a manuscript written, unlike nearly all the others, in England during the Anglo-Saxon period. The glossary in Bodley 163 is composed in all of ninety-two items and was copied out in the same hand on the recto of the first page of a bifolium (250-1) at the end of the manuscript. It is a composite manuscript, consisting of three parts. The first part (1-227), written in Caroline minuscule dating from the beginning of the eleventh century, contains a copy of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and the poem De abbatibus by Ædiluulf; the second part (228-49), which dates from the beginning of the twelfth century, contains, among other things, a version of the Historia Brittonum; the third part, on fols. 250-1, contains the glossary, datable to about the middle of the eleventh century, together with the beginning of a sermon in Latin for the Feast of St John (250v) and a booklist (251r), both written in a later hand. Both the contents of this list and a note on fol. 250v suggest that the manuscript was written at Peterborough, where, according to T.A.M. Bishop, the scribe who copied out Bede's text was working. His hand has been identified in other manuscripts as well

Lucus a non lucendo: Enantiosemy in Ancient Latin Lexicography

Lexicographer and Lexicography: Critical Studies and New Perspectives from Antiquity to the Present,, 2023

Enantiosemes, words which express opposed meanings (also called auto-antonyms; e.g. altus, which can mean "high" or "low", or the English "cleave", which can mean "cut" or "stick together"), present a practical problem for the lexicographer. My paper surveys enantiosemes as they are explicitly discussed by ancient Roman lexicographers and provides a descriptive typology. Roman scholars distinguish between genuine auto-antonyms, which they sometimes call voces mediae (e.g. valetudo for "health" or "sickness"), and cases of etymology by antiphrasis (e.g. lucus a non lucendo), whereby a name is given through some kind of opposition. This latter group of etymologies-by-antiphrasis can be further subdivided between cases of euphemism and irony. The paper concludes with a short lexicon of Latin enantiosemes explicitly discussed by ancient sources.

dicitur » : vulgarisms in legal Latin

2013

This paper is a contribution to the theory and history of the notion of “vulgarism”. Starting from a critical reflection on the concepts of Volkssprache, Umgangssprache, Vulgärsprache, gesprochene Sprache, and the analysis of the semantic values of the lexical family of vulgus in grammatical, rhetorical and literary sources, it focuses on the function of the expression vulgō dicitur in legal texts, especially Gaius’ Institutes, the Theodosian Code and the Justinian corpus. This expression introduces words or sentences that belong to different social and cultural domains of Latin but all pertain to common and general use. This seems to reflect the influence of the rhetorical principles of clarity ( luciditas ) and propriety ( proprietas ) of expression on both the ideology and practice of legal language. Such principles had profoundly moulded the classical ideals of composition and in the legal context (especially in Justinian’s corpus) became enriched by the crucial requirements of ...