Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica

This article provides a morphological analysis of all Greek personal names containing the suffix ᾱ(ϝ)ον and highlights the fact that, in archaic epic poetry, it designates either Greek heroes from mainland Greece, especially from Thessaly, or Trojans and their allies. This distribution was likely influenced by the fact that the old Greek suffix ᾱ(ϝ)ον was employed to approximate the Luwian ethnic suffix -wanni- or its later development *-unni-.

The sequences [τ]ᾶς ΠΟ and τᾶς ΞΑ in a will from Terina (IGDS II 98) have been traditionally interpreted as partitive genitives referring to two pieces of land and governed by τὸ ἥμισον. Purportedly, ΠΟ and ΞΑ are sigla for the names of the districts in which those pieces of land were located. This idea has been recently questioned by Manganaro, who corrects τᾶς ΞΑ into <γ>ᾶς ΞΑ. Neither of these solutions is acceptable. In fact, ΠΟ and ΞΑ are abbreviated phylonyms preceded by the feminine article in the genitive singular. The peculiar word order probably originated in the syntax of catalogues.

POxy LXXI 4808 transmits either a private text written by a learned reader or, more likely, a fragment from a handbook composed for schools and for the pursuit of more advanced learning. Through schematic accounts of three historians of Alexander the Great (Onesicritus, Cares, and Cleitarchus) and of Hieronymus of Cardia and Polybius, the document clearly favors historiography that is devoted to the representation of reality and the reconstruction of events that is as accurate as possible, as opposed to an encomiastic historiography focused on great personalities and more oriented towards myth and the fabulous or pure entertaintment.

This article considers the role played by papyri in the reconstruction of ancient historiography. The number of Greek and Latin literary papyri, including historiographical texts, keeps increasing, but scholars only rarely take advantage of them. The Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker by F. Jacoby includes many papyrus fragments, but they are not sufficiently exploited from a papyrological point of view. The article also describes the Corpus dei Papiri Storici Greci e Latini and explains why the Editorial Committee has sponsored this project, focusing in particular upon POxy LXXI 4808.

This paper starts with a fresh survey of the textual problems of POxy LXXI 4808, accompanied by a recent photograph, and then turns to problems relating to the content. Careful analysis is devoted to the way in which the anonymous author of the text presents a series of historians: three historians of Alexander (Onesicritus, Chares and Cleitarchus), Hieronymus of Cardia and Polybius of Megalopolis. Particular emphasis is laid on the fact that the text is composed as a select compendium of the sources for the history of the eastern Mediterranean from Alexander the Great to the Roman conquest.

Taking the paper by Prandi and Landucci as a starting point, this contribution discusses some problems regarding Poxy LXXI 4808. 1) In col. I 14-15, the name of the biographer Hermippus (Ἔ[ρ|μιπ]πος) is supplied as that of the authority referred to for, among other things, the statement that Cleitarchus was the teacher of Ptolemy IV, which favors a late date for this historian of Alexander. 2) According to our reconstruction of the discussion of Hieronymus of Cardia, the historian was regarded by the author as unbiased, but too heavily reliant on speeches. 3) Cleitarchus is accused of exaggeration, which means that the author doubted the reliability of his account. 4) The text might have been part of a collection of material (hypomnema) for a historiographical work. 5) In terms of historiographical theory in antiquity, the text provides significant evidence for the importance of truth and the active participation of the historian in the events described.

It is noteworthy that the text of Veg. mil. 4, 39, 4-5, in which the author deals with the dangers of navigation in autumn, has not yet been published correctly. Lang, Önnerfors and Reeve have all discarded the reading taurura found in the most faithful witnesses, only to accept what is found in the less reliable manuscripts: Taurus or Taurus a. Instead, Taurura is quite obviously the correct reading, because it is nothing more than a transliteration of the Greek Ταυρουρά resulting from haplography of Ταύρου οὐρά. In the Greek astronomical texts ἡ οὐρά τοῦ Ταύρου(Cauda Tauri in Latin) refers to ‘The Bull’s Tail’, namely the star cluster of the Pleiades. An appendix to the article deals with Greg. Naz. 2, 1, 11, 126, where the tradition is divided between Ταύρου τιν’ οὐράν and Ταύρου τὴν οὐράν.

After his return from exile, Cicero refers on several occasions to ‘his monument’ (meum monumentum), ‘his’ in that he had previously carried out the locatio operis of the structure as decided by the senate; but he complains that Clodius had placed his name on this monument and that the senate had done nothing to prevent him. The identification of the building which Cicero considered his monumentum has always been problematic, but, some years ago, the reconstruction of an important epigraphic text from Ostia, in which the names both of Cicero and Clodius appear, has suggested that it may be identified with the late republican walls of Ostia. This hypothesis is now proposed again with new arguments, demonstrating at the same time that the different solution lately proposed by Ph. Moreau, based on an interpretation of a passage of fam. 1, 9, 15, is not acceptable either from an historical-archaeological or a philological- linguistic point of view.

Of the numerous erudite interpretations of Catullus’s poem 67 suggested by Humanist and Renaissance scholars, many were often based on textual conjectures that were interesting but paleographically unlikely: among such suggestions, a conjecture on l. 32, erroneously attributed to Angelo Colocci and Bernardo Pisano during the nineteenth century, can be traced to unpublished marginalia by the Florentine Humanist Francesco Pucci (1463-1512). His interpretation of poem 67 seems to take into account a historical and antiquarian reading of ll. 32-34, a passage discussed at length by Humanists in Brescia and Verona.

Les Histoires perses de Dinon et d’Héraclide. Fragments édités, traduits et commentés par Domi n i q u e Le n f a nt - Lellida Todini

La Musa dimenticata. Aspetti dell’esperienza musicale greca in età ellenistica. A cura di M. C. Ma r t i n e l l i , con la collaborazione di F. Pe l o s i e C. Pe r n i g o t t i - Gianfranco Mosconi

La r a Ni c o l i n i , Ad (l)usum lectoris: etimologia e giochi di parole in Apuleio - Francesca Piccioni

Readers and writers in the ancient novel. Ed. by M. Pa s c h a l i s , S . Pa n ayo t a k i s , G. S c h - me l i n g - Valeria Novembri

Far from being a sign of forgery, the treatment of Lusitania in the Artemidorus papyrus - where it is described as a region under full Roman control - is exactly what one would expect to find in a text composed around 100 BC. Already in 138 and shortly afterwards, D. Iunius Brutus Lusitaniam … usque ad Oceanum perdomuit (Liv. Perioch. 55); the Romans who subsequently intervened in Lusitania, from C. Marius to L. Cornelius Dolabella, did so in their capacity as governors of the province of Hispania ulterior, in which Lusitania was included (Lusitanis devictis Hispania ulterior pacata, Obseq. 44a).