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 ELLIS 
 
 CATULLUS IN THE 
 X I Vth CENTURY
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 flavat 1926 
 
 CATULLUS IN THE 
 XIV^" CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBLNSON ELLIS, M.A, Hon. LL.D. 
 
 CORPUS PROFESSOR OF LATIN 
 
 LONDON 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 OXFORD UxNIVEKSITY PRESS WARKIIOUSE, AMEN CORNER, E.C. 
 OXFORD: ii6 HIGH STREET 
 
 1905 
 Pnrr Our Shilliiii^ vet
 
 CATULLUS IN THE 
 XIV™ CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBINSON ELLIS, M.A, Hon. LL.D. 
 
 CORPUS PROFESSOR OF LATIN 
 
 • • • 
 
 « « • 
 
 » • • < 
 
 a • • 
 
 » * • • • i 
 
 • a • •« 
 
 • • • • • • 
 
 ... . . 
 
 '•• • • 
 
 LONDON 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 OXFORD UNIVEkSrrV I'KKSS WAKIIIOUSK, AMI.N CORNER, K.C. 
 OXFORD: iir, niGII STREET 
 
 ]y05
 
 " C C c • c*
 
 PA 
 
 CATULLUS I?^ THE FOURTEENTH 
 
 CENTURY 
 
 Few things are more remarkable in the history of the 
 tradition of Latin texts than the obscurity which still 
 attaches to the discovery of Catullus' poems in the four- 
 teenth century. Lachmann in his edition of 1829 gave 
 j)rominence to this point by prefixing to the poems an epi- 
 gi-am, which in the earliest IMS. where it is found (dated 
 1375) is inscribed Versus Domini Beneitenuti ^ de Campexa- 
 ■nis de Vlcencia de resurrectione Catidli jMetae Veronensis. 
 Ad patriam uenio longis a finibus exul, 
 
 Causa mei reditus compatriota - fuit, 
 Scilicet a calamis tribuit cui Francia nomen, 
 
 Quique notat turbae praetereuntis iter, 
 Quo licet ingcnio uestrum celebrate Catullum, 
 ^ Cuius sub modio clausa papyrus erat. 
 
 ^ The controversies which have been raised over these six 
 '-' lines are well known. What were the far-off confines 
 where Catullus had been hidden in a prolonged exile? 
 
 'J Who was the comr)atriot that broup-ht him back ? What 
 > . . . .... 
 
 i name is concealed in the description a calaonis tvihuit cm 
 
 Francia nomen ? Are we to understand the words Cuius 
 
 sub modio clausa 2^(tpyrus end as only meaning that the 
 
 MS. in whicli the poems were discovered had been ' a light 
 
 hidden under a bushel,' or may we believe that it was a real 
 
 paj)yrus, perhaps found in some oriental clime % 
 
 * Thus anagiammatized by Forrctoof Viconza in somo versos addressed 
 to Mubsatfj : Cui cognomen aui.s Campvs dedit ot Bene nouu'u Cum 
 Vemo, patriaquo fuit .sat niagnus in ilia Qua retro pauuo iluens I '.it a no 
 delabitur amnis (Zardo, Atbcrfino Mnssato, ]>. 292). Siuiilarly in llu> 
 twelfth of (ho scrie.s of poems by (lie throe friends Mussato, Lovati, and 
 Hiivctini, j)ublished by Padriii in 1887, Campos.iiu^ In! fecit rouorentia 
 Cami'I Quoin tilii co^;nalao Musau coluoro Latiniu' I'erpeluo.-i fructus 
 omtii sidt .solo ferontem. 
 
 ^ Probably ;i Veronosc, just as Colucio Salutati writiiiK (<• (hi' I'.kIimii 
 Francesco Zabarella call.s him Compatriota Muasuti (Zardn, p. 283;. 
 
 A2 
 
 'Mri\*y 
 
 >
 
 As notliiiiijj connot'tiHl witli the liistory of so givat a poet 
 as Catullus can ever bo tlioui^ht supcriluous, I may be 
 allowed t(^ luontion here the chief ne'^v theories as to the 
 name of his Jiscoverer. The earlier views I have men- 
 tioned in the Prolojjjomena to my large edition. Pignorius 
 (cent, xvii) seems rightly to have detected in Francia the 
 name Francesco; whether a calamis represents a surname 
 (as Scaliger, Lessing, and our own scholar, the late Benjamin 
 Jowett, thought), or an official title, perhaps that of a notary, 
 as the fourth verse seems to intimate, Qulque notat turbae 
 praetereuntis iter, is quite uncertain. It can hardly have 
 been Bernardino Plumati as Lessing thought, nor Francesco 
 Notapassanti, as Lachmann (perhaps only half -seriously) 
 suggested in a letter to Moriz Haupt (p. 27 of Karl Lach- 
 mann s Brief e an Moriz Haupt). More recently Costantino 
 Nigra in his excellent work La Chioma cli Berenice (Milan, 
 1 891) has suggested that the name was Frassapaya da 
 Ponti. This seems to occur in the Chronicle of Parisio of 
 Cereta, a small town not far from Verona, as the name of 
 a podest^ of Cereta in 1 256. Frassapaya might represent 
 Francus calamus; da Ponti would explain Quique notat 
 turbae p?'«e^ereu7i^is iter, the bridge taking note of the 
 passengers who crossed by a toll-gate at one or both ends. 
 
 Mr. Falconer Madan thought the name might be 
 Francesco Accorsi; for, as Nake long ago suggested, the 
 occurrence of cursum for turbae in some MSS., notably in 
 Scaliger's, the Cuiacianus (now identified with a MS. 
 in possession of Mr. Samuel Allen of Dublin) is perhaps 
 siirnificant. Niike indeed elicited from the words of the 
 Epigram nothing more recondite than ' Francesco the scribe 
 at the corner of the Corso,' remarking that most Italian 
 towns of any importance have such a Corso, and that it is 
 just in such a locality that an official employed to take 
 note of the passers-by would naturally be stationed^. 
 
 ' Niike takes no small credit to himself for his explanation, which he 
 confesses did not obtain the assent of Nietmhr, but which he V>oldly 
 predicts will stand for ever (stare in aeternum poterit), when Lessing's more 
 elaborate theory will be forgotten.
 
 Francesco Accorsi, son of the great jurist and gloumtor of 
 the same name, was a man of mark in the thirteenth 
 century, as the fact of King Edward I taking him to 
 England and his appointment to a law-lectux'ership in 
 Oxford later prove : he had also seen France and for 
 that time was a well-travelled man. Dante combines him 
 with Brunetto Latini and the grammarian Priscian in 
 the fifteenth Canto of the Inferno. He is said to have 
 died in the last decade of the thirteenth centurjT-, and 
 Mazzuchelli records an inscription from the tomb of 
 Francesco and his more celebrated father in the cemetery 
 of St. Francesco at Bologna. But I do not see how 
 he could be called a compatriot of the Veronese poet 
 Catullus as a citizen of Bologna, nor how the words 
 a calamis and Quigue notat turhae 2:)raetereuntis iter of 
 the Epigram could in any true sense be applied to him. 
 Sir E. M. Thompson has suggested to me that some such 
 name as Strada might be intended. There was a Luca della 
 Penna whom Pope Gregory XI (1370- J37S) employed as 
 his intermediary with Petrarch to borrow copies of some 
 of the works of Cicero which Petrarch was credited with 
 discovering. But this must have been considerably later 
 in the fourteenth century than the time when Catullus 
 re-emerged (De Nolhac, pp. 180, 181). The names, however, 
 would suit the Epigram very well. Or are we to trace 
 in a calamis an occult allusion to Avignon (avena)'^ 
 Francis of Avirnion could of course be none but Petrarch 
 himself; the other verse would designate him as a notaio. 
 
 It will be clear from these widely different guesses that 
 the riddle of Campesani's Epigram is still unexplained ; 
 all that seems fairly made out is that the poems were 
 rediscovered in some region far removed from the im- 
 mediate neighbourhood of Verona, probably indeed not 
 in Italy. We sliouM not forget that this was the time 
 when the Papacy was no longer in Bome, but at Avignon, 
 a circumstance which M. de Nolhac shows in his admirable 
 Pelravfjue d rhuriiavifime to have had a potent iniluenco 
 on the history of classical learning.
 
 It i>^ only in these days of palacogi-aphical research that 
 the qncstion as to the meaning of 2^<tpyrus in the Epigjram 
 conld occur. In a paper reatl to tlio Oxford Philological 
 Society in 190;:?, I suggested that the figure of a long- 
 Ic'-'Tod liird Nvliich recurs so often in the Canonici MS. of 
 Catullus may ilate from a jMpyrus archetype. At least 
 there is a close agreement between this figure and that 
 of a long-legged hird found in column V of the recently 
 discovered papyrus of Timotheos the Milesian, edited by 
 ^Vilamo^vitz. This bird-figure he suggests may have served 
 the purpose of a coronis, and some such use it may have 
 had in the lost archetype of the MSS. of Catullus, surviving 
 in Canon. Lat. 30, and in this, it would appear, alone. This 
 is of course a pure conjecture, and must wait for confirma- 
 tion from similar instances not yet known or recorded. 
 
 I shall now proceed to inquire what are the earliest 
 traces of the poems of Catullus, after their rediscovery 
 by a compatriot, as recorded in the Epigram, either in 
 actual quotations containing the poet's name, or in citations 
 obviously drawn from his works. 
 
 I. There are two collections of fiores scrlptoruTn 
 belonging to the early fourteenth century, both of which 
 contain quotations from Catullus. 
 
 The smaller of these two MSS. is here mentioned first 
 because it is dated, 1329. It was written at Verona, and 
 contains this excerpt (lib. II. 3) — de errore. Catullus ad 
 Varum. Quern non in aliqua re {uidere om.) Suffenuiii 
 Possis, suus cuique attrihutus est error. Sed non uidemus 
 mantice quod in tergo est (xxii. 18-20). This points to 
 a complete copy of the poems ; for only such a copy would 
 be likely to contain ad Varum. The MS. of the redis- 
 covered poems had been brought back to Verona before 
 Campesani's death in 1323 ; a Veronese scribe in the interval 
 between its discovery (perhaps as early as 1 3 14 or j 315) and 
 1329 (when the collection of excerpts was made) had seen 
 in the MS., or drawn from some one who had seen it, the 
 above extract. 
 
 A much larger collection of Fiores, purporting to belong
 
 to nearljT^ the same period, is known as the Compendium 
 morallum notabilium ^jer Hlenmiam iudicem de Monta- 
 gnone ciuem Paduanuin. This work exists in a printed 
 form, Yen. 1505, a copy of which is in the possession of 
 Professor Bywater, another in the Bodleian. I have seen 
 four MSS. of it, all, I should suppose, of the fifteenth century. 
 One of these is in the British Museum, Add. 22,801 ; of the 
 other three two are in the Bodleian, one at New College 
 (100). The extracts, which are mainly of an ethical 
 character, or at least bearing on the conduct of life, are 
 taken from a very wide range of authors, including, besides 
 those easily forthcoming, such as Horace, Juvenal, Vergil, 
 Terence, Statins, Lucan, Martial, Persius, Ovid, Avianus' 
 Fables, Boetius, others less widely read, such as Sallust, 
 Frontinus, Vegetius, Cassiodorus, and the curious Cronica 
 de nugis philonophorum. 
 
 The Compendium contains seven citations from Catullus, 
 quoted not by the order of the poems as they follow 
 each other in our MSS. of Catullus, but by sections, or as 
 they are sometimes called books (llbri). As the 76th poem 
 is cited from the xith or xiith section, the total number 
 was perhaps not over thirteen or fourteen. I will mention 
 them in order. 
 
 xxii. 18 omnes fallimur — attributus est error: in sect. v. 
 
 xxxix. 16 risu incpto res incptior nulla est: in sect. v. 
 
 li. 15 otium et reges prius et beatas Perdidit urbes: 
 in sect. v. 
 
 Ixiv. 143-148 Nulla uiro iuranti femina credat — periuria 
 curant : in sect. viii. 
 
 Ixvi. 15, 16 Estne nouis nuptis — lacrimulis : in sect. ix. 
 
 Ixviii. 137 Ne nimium sinms stultorum more molesti : in 
 sect. ix. 
 
 Ixxvi. 13 Difficile est longum subito dcponere amorcm : in 
 .sect, xi (one MS. xii). 
 
 These sections H(;om to l»e rightly preserved in tlie last 
 four extracts, l)ut the .f^th section containing xxii. 18, xxxix. 
 16, li. 15 is too comprehensive, containing as it does a total 
 of 428 verses. Probably the first of these pa.ssages may
 
 8 
 
 have liolon^^ed to sect, iv, aiul only the other two to sect, v, 
 if iiulcrd, which is not certain, these sections were all of 
 equal len^^th. The Preface to Cornelius Nepos, and the 
 two poems on Lcsbia's sparrow, Diay have constituted 
 sect, i, for there is reason to believe that the sparrow- 
 poems were sometimes a libeUus by themselves. This is 
 of course a matter of uncertainty. For us the important 
 point to bo noticed is the af^recment in the order of the 
 sections with the order of the poems of Catullus as they 
 occur in our MSS., the early poems being quoted from 
 the earlier sections, the later from the later. Bearing 
 this in mind, we shall not be too hasty in accepting the 
 wholly unproven hypothesis that these extracts in Monta- 
 guone's Compendium were drawn, not from the rediscovered 
 codex of Catullus but from some Anthologia in which 
 excerpts from Catullus were included. Such a theory is at 
 once gratuitous and at variance with fact. No anthology 
 of the middle age prior to 1300 has yet been found con- 
 taining complete lines from Catullus, still less with the 
 addition of his name. 
 
 If then Montagnone drew his excerpts from Catullus 
 direct, we may perhaps infer that the archetypal codex 
 rediscovered by the poet's compatriot was divided into 
 short books or sections, which fell out from the later 
 transcripts, giving way to the division into separate 
 poems, with their titles, which also formed part of the 
 same codex. This might naturally happen, as the refer- 
 ence by books or chapters was comparatively vague, and 
 the other division would be for practical purposes more 
 available. 
 
 The precise date at which the Compendium was written 
 is unknown. Scardeone (1478-1564) in his work DeAnti- 
 quitate Urbis Patauii, p. 235, ed, Basil, 1560, says he died 
 about 13CO. But the last mention of his name in the 
 Matricida Collegli ludicuno ciuitatis Paduae, preserved 
 in the Archives of the University of Padua, belongs to 
 the year 1321. Accordingly the date assigned by Rajna to 
 the con)pilation of the Comjjcndium, the last decade of the
 
 thirteenth centuiy, must be considered precarious. It would 
 much assist our inquiry if any MS. of the work were 
 fortlicoming which belonged to the early fourteenth century. 
 All those hitherto examined, I believe, date from the 
 fifteenth, except the MS. in St. Mark's, Venice, 295 in 
 Valentinelli's Catalogue (iv. p. icS6), which he assigns to 
 the fourteenth century, and which he considers to have 
 been used by the Venetian editor from its general agree- 
 ment. The New Collecje MS. is dated at the end of the 
 second treatise (fol. 130-158) consisting of Homilies, Sept. 
 17, 14C0. But it is more than possible that MSS. of an 
 earlier date still await examination. Meanwhile, as I have 
 stated in my large Catullus, there are very clear indications 
 of the source whence Montagnone drew being identical 
 with the fons of our existing MSS. of Catullus. Thus in 
 Ixiv. 145 the archetype seems to have had not cqjisci but 
 adipisci, which appears in the printed edition of Montagnone, 
 and is found or traceable in each of the two earliest of our 
 MSS. of Catullus : again the corrupt atqiie parentum of 
 Ixvi. 16 was also in the codex whence Montagnone drew 
 the passage as quoted in his Com23endium. 
 
 I proceed to the second part of my inquiry. What 
 traces of acquaintance with Catullus' poems can be found 
 in the writers of the earlier part of the fourteenth century ? 
 
 This inquiry seems to centre chiefly in Padua and 
 its neighbour Venice. Three names emerge as interesting : 
 they are the poet and historiographer, Albertino Mussato, 
 born in 1261, died in 1329; Lovato di Lovati, born 
 about 1240, died in 1309; Bovatino di Bovatini, died 
 in 1 30 1. They were close friends, and a collection of 
 Latin poems which they exchanged with each other has 
 been preserved in a MS. of St. Mark's at Venice (class, xiv. 
 no. 223) and published at Padua l)y Luigi Pndrin in 
 iHHy^. All three were men of mark among their con- 
 
 ^ Tliia volume, of whicli only 40 copioa wore printed, is raro and 
 .ilmost inaccessible. I have been able, however, to examine it in tlie 
 nritinh Museum. Padrin'.s elaborate edition of Mussato's tragedy Ecninis, 
 with Carducci'ii valuable estimate of it aa a |)< em, was jpubli-ihed at
 
 10 
 
 temporaries. Bovatini was for forty years the chief 
 authority on ecclesiastical law at Padna. Lovati knew 
 Petrarch, who eulofi^izes his poems and declares he would 
 liave been the first poet of his time, if he had not taken up 
 law as a profession and combined the Twelve Tables with 
 the nine Muses. We must regret that so little of Lovati's 
 poetical workmanship has survived (Wicksteed, Dante and 
 Giovanni del VirgiUo, Append. II). But by far the most 
 distinguished member of the triad was Albertino Mussato, 
 a man memorable as patriot, poet, historian. In his famous 
 tragedy Ecerinis, 629 verses describing the cruelties and 
 disastrous end of Ezzelino III, tyrant of Padua, beyond Nero 
 in cruelty ^, as he is described by the Latin commentator 
 on Ecerinis, Guizzardo of Bologna (Padrin, p. 83), Mussato 
 imitated, as well as the learning of that time allowed, the 
 iambics and lyrical metres of Seneca. In his study of this 
 model Mussato had a compeer in his friend Lovati, who 
 has left notes on the metres of Seneca's tragedies in a MS. 
 preserved in the Vatican Library^ (1796}. Mussato's mastery 
 of the iambic in the Ecerinis is very imperfect ; impossible 
 caesuras, such as Saeuae tyrannidis ita ut ancipites uices, 
 Nam quisque liber arbiter in actus suos, are very frequent 
 and greatly impair the poetical effect. In the Achilles, 
 a later tragedy which must also belong to the fourteenth 
 century 2 and which till 1832 was generally, if not 
 universally, believed to be by Mussato, the imitation of 
 Seneca is equally palpable, especially of his diction and 
 love of affected conceits ; but the management of the iambic 
 
 Bologna in 1900. Not the least part of the importance of this work 
 is the publicity given by Padrin to the Holkham MS. of Mussato's Latin 
 poems. 
 
 ' Dante includes him among other monsters of cruelty in Canto XH 
 of tlie Inferno. 
 
 * Carducci ap. Padrin, p. 272. 
 
 ' In the Holkham MS., \vhich contains both Ecerinis and Achilles, the 
 coloplion at the end of the former is Alhertini Muxati Paduani Eccerini 
 Tragedia Explicit 1390. This is immediately followed by Tragedia Achillis, 
 but without mention of the author's name. As Mr. Alexander Napier, 
 librarian of Holkham, suggests, it would be a natural inference that 
 AchilUs was also by Mussato.
 
 11 
 
 is considerably improved, though sometimes, especially 
 in the beginning, the same faults are traceable as in 
 the Eceriniti. Mussato, who from the age of thirty had 
 been the representative man of Padua, whose counsels 
 were indispensable in every undertaking of the republic, 
 then at the height of its prosperity (A. Gloria, Docu- 
 menti inediti intorno a Francesco Fetrarca e Albertino 
 Mussato, p. lo), was thought to have achieved a high 
 success b}'- his Ecerinis, and, after a recitation of it in 
 presence of the assembled Paduans was crowned in the 
 palazzo del Commune with a wreath of myrtle and ivy and 
 conducted home in triumph. The date of this, according 
 to Carducci (Padrin, Ecerinide, p. 254) w^as Dec. 2, 131 5; 
 others assign it to 1314. A Latin Commentary^ on the 
 poem was shortly afterwards drawn up by Guizzardo of 
 Bologna and Castellani of Bassano which is still extant, 
 dated Dec. 21, 1317. 
 
 I have not detected either in the Ecerinis or this Latin 
 commentary upon it, anything which even remotely points to 
 a knowledge of Catullus. Of Seneca's tragedies both show 
 considerable knowledge, and any Uude on these would be 
 imperfect which did not take Mussato's poem into account. 
 
 In the other tragedy, Achilles, closely resembling Mussato's 
 Ecerinis in form and long ascribed to him, certainly too 
 written not after the fourteenth century, though perhaps 
 belonging to a later part of it, I seem to discern at least 
 some recognizable traces of a knowledge of Catullus. One 
 of these I noticed in my first edition of Catullus (1867). 
 Some .Sapphics in a chorus of this play contain the words 
 Nemo tarn fortis uulet esse quo non Fortior assit (p. 30, 
 ed. Yen. 163,^). This looks like an imitation of Cat. Ixvi. 
 27, 8 Anne honum oblita es facinus, quo rcfjiinn adepta 
 es Coniugium, quod non fortior ausit alisl Here MSS. 
 give aut sit, and assit appears to be a conjectural emenda- 
 tion of this. Tiie .same tragedy Achilles contains the rare 
 combination celchrare tacdas (p. 28) to which it would be 
 difficult to find any parallel except Cat. Ixiv. 302 Nee 
 
 ' I'rintt'd entire \>y P.aflrin, Ecerinide, pp. 69-247.
 
 Thetidis tacdas uoluit cdehrare iugalis : iiixUX like Cat. 
 Ixvi. 66 Callisto iuxta Lycaonia[m) : and Catullus'(lxiv. i8 1) 
 Jiciipersum iuuenem fraferna caede secuta perhaps finds 
 an echo in nirgo iioUutas manus Fratrum cruore 
 liordido tactaferet {Achilles, p. 2i), though the source may 
 possibly be Seneca. 
 
 It is, however, in the other, preeminently the elegiac, 
 poems of Mussato, not in the Ecerinis nor the debatable 
 Achilles, that we find more tangible indications of the 
 rediscov^ered Roman lyrist. In one of these, the Epistola 
 ad Collegium Artistai^m (p. 39, ed. Ven.), Mussato men- 
 tions Catullus in a way which, though not proving that 
 lie had read the two poems on Lesbia's sparrow, is most 
 naturally explained on that hypothesis. 
 
 Non ego fagineis cecini te Tityre siluis 
 Scripta Dionaei nee mihi gesta ducis. 
 Carmine sub nostro cupidi lusciua Catulli 
 Lesbia, dulce tibi nulla susurrat auis. 
 In particular the verb susurrcit, not in itself a very 
 happy word for a sparrow's chirp, looks like a reference to 
 pipilahat (iii. 10). Similarly in Epist. xviii the lines Quod 
 pater Oceanus fuerit, quod mater aquaruon Thetis (sic) et 
 in liquidis exertas Naiadas undis, are not obscurely 
 modelled partly on Catull. Ixxxviii. 5, 6 Suscipit, Gelli, 
 quantum non ultima thetis (sic) Nee genitor nymi^harum 
 abluit Oceanus, partly on Ixiv. 13, 14, where the Nereids 
 are described rising breast-high from the sea to gaze on 
 the Argo. In another poem of Mussato's (Ep. 3), headed 
 Eiusdem ad Rolandum iudicem de 2^l<^ciola ', I trace 
 a knowdedge of Catullus' Elegy to Hortalus (Ixv) in three 
 consecutive verses : 
 
 Tota superciliis nigrescent tempora toruis 
 Inuidaque ^ infundens obruet ora rubor 
 Defier (1) enim tectam ueluti sub ueste salutem. 
 Catull. Ixv. 21-24: 
 
 Quod miserae oblitae molli sub ueste locatum, 
 Dum aduentu matris prosilit, excutitur, 
 > Ilolkham MS. 425, fol. 34. ^ Liuidaque, Ilolkham MS.
 
 13 
 
 Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu, 
 Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor. 
 
 These resemblances, it may be said, are fugitive and not 
 wholly convincing. I allow that there is nothing like 
 the transference by Orientius of one whole verse of the 
 O vidian Ibis\ nothing as directly taken from Catullus, as 
 many of Mussato's own Ovidian imitations are taken from 
 Ovid. Possibly the poet had only succeeded in obtaining 
 an imperfect copy of Catullus' poems ; or as his confession 
 seems to imply, he may have made a merit of abstaining 
 from indecencies - such as abound in Catullus, turning by 
 preference to the stately Muse of Tragedy and finding in 
 his denunciations of tyranny a more assured solace as well as 
 a more enviable crown. Or again, he may have had only an 
 imperfect acquaintance with Catullus' principal metre, the 
 phalaecian hendecasyllable ; certainly it is nowhere found 
 in the Ecerinis. Still, slight as they are, the resemblances 
 which I have above cited are sufficient in my judgement 
 to make it more than probable that Mussato had read at least 
 some of the lyrics, perhaps only the two on the sparrow in 
 the first or lyrical portion of the poems, probabl}^ all the 
 elegiacs (Ixv-cxvi) as well as the hexameter epyllion (Ixiv). 
 
 The volume of Latin poems interchanged between the 
 three friends Mussato, Lovati, and Bovatini, contains little 
 which can be certainly traced to Catullus ; there is, how- 
 ever, an exception, c. xvi, in which, besides combinations 
 like Tie bene quod noui — bene uelle 2^otest (Cat. xci. 3, 
 Ixxii. 8), the peculiar and rather rare ^ diction tacita mente 
 is introduced into a hexameter in the very place of the 
 verse in which it occurs in Catullus : tacita quern mente 
 gerehani as compared with tacita queni mente requirunt, 
 Cat. Ixii. 37. This seems to occur in a poem of Mussato's. 
 
 Next to Mussato in order of time as vouchers for the 
 
 ' Orient. Conim. ii. 315 'Illo miser \iero iicc orit inisoral)ilis ulli'; Ov. II). 
 117 'Sisque miser suiiipcr noc sis miscrabilis ulli.' Soo Bullaugcr's now 
 Etude sur le Commonitorium d' Orienlius, P.iris, 1903. 
 
 ' Tlie only indocent poems are the Priapus and Uror Priapi, botli in the 
 Holkham MS., but noithor containing anything taken from Catullus. 
 
 ' It is found, however, in Manil. ii. 60.
 
 14 
 
 early roiliscovory of Catullus arc two friends, both ainon<ij 
 the earliest of (he fourteenth century humanists, Guglielmo 
 di Pastren^ro and Francesco Petrarca. 
 
 Pastrenjjfo is a township near Verona, whence Guglielmo 
 is sometimes styled orator Veroncnais (Tirab. v, p. 409). 
 His life covers nearly the same ground as Petrarch's (1304- 
 1374), though it is probable that Petrarch outlived him. 
 Pastrengo was certainly alive in T361, in which year he 
 addressed a letter to Petrarch on the death by plague of 
 his natural son Giovanni at the age of twenty-five ^ 
 
 Tiraboschi (v. 294) quotes from Pastrengo's now almost 
 inaccessible work de originibus rerwn, a statement that 
 he had attended the law lectures of Oldrado da Ponte, and 
 supposes this to have been at Padua where Oldrado held 
 a school in 13 10. Supposing him to have been sixteen or 
 seventeen at that time he would probably have been some- 
 what older than Petrarch. It was perhaps at Avignon 
 that he made the acquaintance of the poet. To Avignon, 
 as the truer representative of Rome, most of the aspiring 
 young men of that age naturally turned. Oldrado is 
 himself said to have held the post of consistorial advocate 
 in the court of Pope John XXII ; but wdiether this was 
 or was not so, there seems to be reason for supposing 
 that it was there that Pastrengo made the acquaintance 
 of Petrarch, long before his public mission thither during 
 the pontificate of Innocent VI (i 353-1 363). To Pastrengo 
 Petrarch has addressed six Latin poems and five prose 
 epistles ; three letters of Pastrengo's to Petrarch survive 
 according to Tiraboschi (v. 409). It is clear from the 
 second of the poems that the two friends had toiled to- 
 gether to make the ground near the spring of the Sorgue 
 liabitable. They had torn away rocks and opened out the 
 soil, not in vain, for when this letter was written ' nature 
 had yielded to their toil, and a garden had sprung into view 
 verdant with many-hued flowers ^ ' ; though in the end the 
 
 ' De Nolhac, pp. 405, 406. 
 
 ' •Hie ubi to lufcuni conuulsa reuoluerc saxa Non puduit campumque 
 satis laxare malignum, Vornantom uariis uideas nunc floribus hortum ' 
 (torn. III. p. 104, ed, Basil. 1581).
 
 15 
 
 river was too strong to be resisted, and the nj^mphs 
 triumphed. Again, ' As I gaze on the waters, the meadows, 
 the arbutes, the bays brought from another clime, the face 
 of my Gugliehno meets me everywhere ; on this mound we 
 have sat, on this grass we have lain together, here we 
 delighted to recall the Muses dispersed by a long exile, to 
 compare together the poets of Greece and Latium ^' Another 
 letter Petrarch begins with the words Nomen tuum quo nihil 
 didcius audio (Var. 37, p. 1023) ; in another he says he is 
 waiting for the Eclogues of Calpurnius and Pastrengo's own 
 MS. of Varro de R. R. as impatiently as is usual when any- 
 thing has been promised him ; elsewhere he begs from him 
 a loan of books from his private library (De Nolhac, p. 54), 
 or leaves his own books in his friend's charge (De Nolhac, 
 p. 47). It is not surprising therefore to find that Pastrengo 
 was himself an author. Sarti {de claris Archigymn. 
 Bonon. Professor ihus, i. p. 331, ed. 1896), says he wrote 
 his de originihus reruvi, an encyclopaedic work printed by 
 Blondus, Ven. 1547, and now extremely rare, about the 
 middle of the fourteenth century 2. In this work there 
 are two quotations which imply a knowledge of the poems 
 of Catullus ; p. 1 6*, Pastrengo describing a voluminous 
 liistoriography by the Lombard Bencius, chancellor to 
 Can Grande I, writes, ut de eo did 2^ossit quod scrihit 
 Veronensis_, pacta, dicens Ausus quideiii unus Italorum 
 omne aeuuin tribus explicare chartis .i. uoluminibus 
 Jupiter doctis et lahoriosis. This is from the first poem of 
 Catullus, and must have been drawn from the MS. brought 
 to light early in the foui-teenth century by the poet's 
 compatriot, since the three verses are not extant in 
 any ancient writer, and the description of Catullus as 
 Veronensis poeta points to the titulus of the poems given 
 by the ]\ISS. as Catullus Veronensis or Gatidll Veronensis 
 liber. In the second passage, p. 18'', Pastrengo writes 
 
 ' *Hic longo exilio sp.irsas rouocaro Camoenas, Hie Grnios Latiosque 
 simul conf<Tr(! pottas Dulco fiiit.' I iimloratand exilio in tho same sonao 
 as exul in tho Ej)igiam of IJcnvenuto do CampoHaiiis, of writiugn, uiaiuly 
 of course poems, whicJi liad been long lost. 
 
 ' Ilaupt (Quacit. CatulL, p. 5) says not boforo 1350.
 
 16 
 
 C^lt^^llus Veronensis poeta Ciceronis coetaneus lihrum 
 ■unrio mdrorum genere exaratum, multa iocosa et placita 
 continentevi, srolasiicis lec/endivni tnidklit Protholoniaei 
 Alcxandri (? Ptolomaei et Alexandri) terti2Jorihus. Here 
 ajj^ain wo have an indubitable witness to the poems having 
 been read by Pastrengo ; they were, he says, in various 
 metres, and contained much that was jocose and amusing ; 
 words which describe the amatory or Hght tone of the 
 greater part of the I'lher CatullL 
 
 There are two other passages where Pastrengo refers to 
 Catulhis, p. iSj* and p. 88'', but the former, on Mamurra, 
 is taken from Pliny's Natural Hidory, xxxvi. 48, the 
 second comes so directly from Isidorus' Origines, as to make 
 it doubtful whether Pastrengo collated the two verses of 
 Catullus (i. 1 , 2) there cited with any actual MS. of Catullus, 
 as Haupt believed. 
 
 In passing from Pastrengo to his friend Petrarch, the 
 question meets us more palpably. Did the great humanist 
 possess a MS. of Catullus ? To this question we are now 
 able to make a definitive answer, since the publication of 
 M. de Nolhac's admirable work Petrarque et VJmmanis'nie. 
 The quotations in Petrarch's Latin writings, no less than the 
 actual imitations of lines or passages of Catullus in the 
 Sonetti and Canzoni, would indeed be sufficient alone to 
 prove the point ; but tlie researches of M. de Nolhac have 
 added another source of evidence little suspected before, 
 a manuscript Vergil in which he entered illustrations or 
 explanations of Vergil's text taken from a large list of 
 Roman writers, including Catullus. The following details 
 I take from M. de Nolhac. 
 
 There is in the Ambrosian Library of Milan a MS. con- 
 taining the Bucolics, Georgics, Aeneid with Servius' Com- 
 mentary, scholia on the Achilleis of Statins, then the Achilleis 
 itself, followed by some Odes of Horace. This MS. was 
 Petrarch's and one of the earliest he possessed ; it was stolen 
 from him in 1326 and restored in 1338 when he was at 
 Avignon, for so a note informs us in his own handwriting. 
 The MS. shared his travels, spite of its size and heaviness,
 
 17 
 
 and bears the traces of his prolonged and continuous study- 
 in a thick mass of notes with which he has filled its text 
 and margins. It exhibits the ingenuity and elaborate 
 learning of the humanist from many different sides, not 
 only such as directly touch the Vergilian poems, e.g. history, 
 geograph5^ or metre, but less directly, as in moral or 
 religious reflexions bearing on his own time, and occa- 
 sionally as suggesting a symbolic or allegorical meaning 
 which must have been quite alien from Vergil's thoughts. 
 Of the extent of Petrarch's reading we can have no ampler 
 voucher ; a list of the authors quoted is given by De Nolhac, 
 pp. 131, 132. They amount to forty-three, and there are 
 probably others. Besides the works of which MSS. were 
 common, we find some that were rare : A. Gellius, Floras, 
 Justin, Lucretius, Plautus, Propertius, Quintilian, Spartianus, 
 Trebellius Pollio, Varro, Vibius Sequester, Vitruvius. 
 
 The MS. has the following entries from Catullus (De 
 Nolhac, p. 1 40) Ixiv. '^2'] Currite ducenti sub tegmine currite 
 fusi (cited on Eel. iv. 46) ; xxxv. 4 Comi menia Lariumque 
 litiis (on G. ii. 158); xxxix. 11 aut parens Umber aut 
 obeaus Etruscus (on G. ii. 192) ; Ixiv. 171, 2 hipjnter omni- 
 potens utinam ne temjyore 2^^11110 Cnossia Gecropiae tetigis- 
 sent litora 2'>upp€s (fol. 114 of the MS.). 
 
 Of these four citations, the first and fourth are found in 
 Macrobius and may come from a MS. of the Saturnalia, not 
 a MS. of Catullus. The second and third must have come 
 from a codex of Catullus' poems, either the original brought 
 back by the poet's Veronese compatriot or a copy. 
 
 There are two other annotations in the Ambrosian Vergil 
 which are of rather more importance for a history of the 
 text of Catullus. Commenting on the words of Scrviu.s' 
 Introd. to the Aeneid^ 'nescicntes hanc esse artem poeticam 
 ut a mediis incipientes per narrationem prima reildamus,' 
 Petrarch writes Iujc signanter seruat Catullus in Pcplon, 
 obviously referring to the bridal quilt on wliidi was 
 wrought the story of Ariadne and Theseus as described in 
 The Nuptials of Feleus and Thdln (Ixiv. 47-264). H^^r^ 
 • Vol. II. p. .», of Thilo's edition of Scrvius.
 
 18 
 
 wo detect the poet criticizing and approving the rules of 
 art on -wliich liis Roman predecessor had worked ; it is 
 obvious that Petrarch had not only read, but carefully- 
 studied, the whole episode, can we doubt?, the whole 
 poem. 
 
 The other is apropos of Sallust's over-estimate of Cato as 
 Rotnani generis disertissimus''- (Serv. on Aen. i. 96) on which 
 Petrarch remarks quod M. Tidlio iiotest conuenire; cui enim 
 dignius? tedes sunt innumeri, sed secretior Catullus Vero- 
 nensis poeta quadavi ad ipsum Tullium epistola his uerhis : 
 Disertissime Roniidl nepotum, Quot sunt, quotque fuere, 
 MarceTulliyQuotque j)Ost allis erunt in unnis (Cat.xlix. 1-3). 
 In this passage what is the meaning of secretior "i In what 
 sense could Catullus be a more secret witness? Perhaps 
 there may be an intimation in so pari/cttZar a word that 
 the poems were not yet allowed full publicity, and were 
 copied only sparely and with reservation. 
 
 The references to Catullus in the Latin writings of 
 Petrarch are not yet ascertained with anything like com- 
 pleteness, and are often of uncertain date. He speaks of 
 the poet as Catullus, sometimes as Catullus Veronensis. 
 This is when he cites him by name : in other passages he 
 cites words which must come from a MS. of the poems 
 without any mention of his name. 
 To the former class belong : 
 
 I. From a letter to (Ni)cola di Ricnzi written at 
 
 Avignon in 1347, Eloquio Ciceronem (te dicunt) 
 
 ad quem Catullus Veronensis ait: Disertissime 
 
 Romuli nepotum. 
 a. From Petrarch's treatise^ de remediis utriusque 
 
 fortunae, i. 59 (p. S5> ^d. Bas.) Si per teipsum 
 
 illos paueris, quid nisi occupatissimus pastor eris. 
 
 OfRcium uile laudatum licet a multis ante alios a 
 
 Catullo Veronensi. 
 
 * Fr. i. 4 in Maurcnbrecher's Sallusti Ilisioriarum Reliquiae. 
 
 ' KOrting states {Petrarch's Lchen und Werke, p. 542), on the authority 
 of a MS. at Venice (Z. L. 475) written 1398 but copied from Petrarch's 
 autograph codex, that the de rem. u. /. was finished October 4, 1366.
 
 19 
 
 A slip of memory ; he confused Catullus with Tibullus 
 (i. 1,1 5, ii. 3). 
 
 3. lb. i. 69 (p. 6^, ed. Bas.). 
 
 Quid ex uestris Ouidio'? Catullo? Propertio? Tibullol 
 quorum nullum ferme nisi amatorium est poema. 
 It is 2^rohable that Petrarch had read all the poets he 
 mentions here, though there seem to be no Tibullian 
 excerpts in the Ambrosian Vergil. 
 
 4. Praef. to B. II of de rem. u.f. (p. 104, ed. Bas.). 
 Stultorum risus quo inepto res ineptior nulla est, 
 
 ut Catullus ait. 
 
 5. In Ejnst. rer. Senil. xi. 3 (p. 884, ed. Bas.), from a 
 
 letter written at Padua after the election of Pope 
 
 Urban V in 1362, 'Solet enim ut Catul(l)i Veronen- 
 
 sis uerbo utar meas aliquid putare nugas.' 
 
 If Petrarch took this from the preface of Pliny's Natural 
 
 Hidory he has altered the order of the words, which the MSS, 
 
 of Pliny give thus : ' Namque tu solebas putare esse aliquid 
 
 (or aliquid esse) meas nugas' or esse aliquid meas putare nugas. 
 
 The following are taken from a MS. of the poems, but 
 
 with no mention of Catullus' name : 
 
 6. De rem. u.f. i. ^'^ (p. 32, ed. Bas.). 
 Nulla fugae, nulla spes est igitur salutis. 
 
 Palpably from Cat. Ixiv. 186. Did Petrarch read nullast 
 spes ? Our MSS. give nulla spes. 
 
 7. Epld. Famil. iii. 3 (p. 608, ed. Bas.). 
 
 Omnibus bellorum ducibus qui sunt c^uiipie erunt 
 omnibus seculis. 
 
 8. Epist. sine tltulo xiv (p. 725). 
 
 Omniltus (jui sunt et qui fucrunt eruntuc mortalibus. 
 This combination of past, present, and future which 
 Catullus has introduced three times in his hcndecasyllabic 
 poems seems to have struck Petrarch. It recurs, unless 
 my memory deceives me, in the Italian poems. 
 
 9. Epist. Rer. Famll. v. 5 (p. 644, ed. Bas.). 
 
 Magis magisque crebresceret : from Cat. Ixiv. 274. 
 In the short biograjjliy of liimself which IV'trnrch 
 addrcs.sed to Posterity, and with whicii the Basel edition
 
 20 
 
 commoncca, he gives a chronology of liis early life which 
 for literary purposes, such as the present inquiry, must be 
 consiilered very valuable. He was born at Arezzo on 
 ,luly 20. 1304, a Monday. His infancy and chiklhood were 
 passed at Florence or on his father's country estate fourteen 
 miles otf; in his eighth year he was at Pisa; he was nine 
 when the family moved to Avignon on the left bank of the 
 llhone,to which city, Babylon ^ of the exile as it is called again 
 and again in the letters, the Popes had now transferred 
 their seat, and from which they did not finally move till 
 the pontificate of Gregory XI in 1377. At Carpentras he 
 learnt the rudiments of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, 
 remaining there four whole years ; thence he was sent to 
 Montpellier to study Law. Here also he remained four 
 years ; the next three he was at Bologna still working at 
 law ; he returned to Avignon when he was in his twenty- 
 second year, i.e. in 1326. It was in April of 1327 that he 
 first saw Laura de Noves, as he has recorded with his own 
 hand in the Ambrosian Vergil, and the same note informs 
 us that she died in April 1348 2. This entirely agrees with 
 the statement of the biography : aniore acerrwio, sed unico 
 et honesto in adolescentia laboraui, et diutius lahorasseni, 
 nisi iam tepescentera ignem mors acerba sed utilis ex- 
 tinxisset. 
 
 Korting in his Petrarch's Lehen und Werke assures us 
 that it is an impossible task to fix the chronology of the 
 Italian poems, and that all the attempts to do so have 
 failed. Furthermore it was the poet's habit, as Ugo Foscolo 
 has shown (Essays, p. 56), to alter the diction and setting of 
 his Rirtie, sometimes to the extent of rewriting them ^. 
 None the less it remains true that these poems represent the 
 period of Petrarch's life when both his passion and his fancy 
 
 * Epist. sine titulo, p. 716, ed. Basil, written from the Western Babylon 
 as he calls Avignon. In another written about the same time (p. 719, 
 ed. Basil.) he calls himself 'an exile from Jerusalem amid the rivers of 
 Babylon.' 
 
 * De Nolhac, p. 407. 
 
 ' Mostica, Rime di Fr. Pelrarca, p. x ' Nossuno do' nostri poeti a tanto 
 lavorato in correzioni, per quello oho so no sa, quanto il Pctrarca,' and
 
 21 
 
 were at their height, in other words his youth and early 
 
 manhood. As Catullus says of himself 
 
 lueundum cum aetas fiorida uer ageret, 
 
 Multa satis lusi : non est dea nescia nostri, 
 
 Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem. 
 
 With both poets the same reason would interfere to 
 
 prevent excessive re-casting ; Petrarch, if Beccadelli may be 
 
 trusted, thought all his works might be improved except the 
 
 Rime^. The form which love had originally impressed would 
 
 survive, or if changed, would only be changed slightly. We 
 
 may fairl}'- assume that the Sonetti and Canzoni remain to 
 
 a large extent much as they were when first conceived, i.e. 
 
 in the years whilst Laura was still alive from 1327 to 1348. 
 
 This point is of some importance for the question I am 
 
 here discussing. The Italian poems contain some passages 
 
 immediately and unmistakably moulded on Catullus, others 
 
 where the resemblance is slighter, yet such as to point in the 
 
 same direction. 
 
 Son. 28S (Mestica, p. 472): 
 
 'S' onesto amor p6 meritar mercede, 
 
 E se pieta ancor p6 quant' ella suole, 
 
 Mercede avro.' 
 
 Cat. Ixxvi. I : 
 
 Siqua recordanti benefacta priora uoluptas 
 
 Est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium, 
 
 Nee sanctam uiolasse fidem nee foedere in uUo 
 
 Diuuin ad fallcndos numine abusum homines, 
 
 Multa parata manent in longa aetate, Catulle, 
 
 Ex hoc ingrato gaudia aniore tibi. 
 
 Son. fjO (Mestica, p. 95) : 
 
 again 'tornava e ritornava con la lima per lungho scguenzo di anni e 
 anche dopo una vontina.' Cod. Vat. 3196 contains a number of sucli 
 Hketcln-H in the jio.fs own hand: tluyhavo been publisliod by Appel, and 
 in photographic facsimilo by Monaci. 
 
 > Vita di Pelrarca in Tomasini's Pelrarcha Eedivivus, p. 238 : 'Ila lasciato 
 Bcritto I'ietro Paolo V< r;,M;rio hauor intcso da Cchilio Salutato Fioreiitino, 
 che fu .secrotario di I'apa Vrbano ot amico dil r<trarcji, ch' a hii aiiuua 
 detto, come le sue composizioni tutte potoua niigliorarc assai, dalio rinio 
 in pf.i, nrlhj quali s'ura tanto nlzuto, cho piii non li daua I'aniuio 
 d'arriuarli.'
 
 oo 
 
 ' Non prego g\h, nd puote aver pii'i loco, 
 Che mesuratamente il mio cor arda; 
 ]\Ia clio sua parte abbi costei del foco.' 
 Cat. Ixxvi. 23 : 
 
 Non iam illud quaero contra ut me diligat ilia 
 Aut quod non potis est, esse pudica uelit. 
 Both these passages are modelled directly on the same 
 poem of Catullus ; but the sonnets where they occur are 
 distinct and perhaps removed by a long interval. Is it not 
 the most probable hypothesis that Petrarch was in neither 
 case indebted to a friend for a copy either of this single 
 poem or of the whole series of the liber Catulli, but was in 
 possession of a complete codex of his own, and that it was 
 from this that he has drawn his inspiration in the two 
 sonnets just quoted, as well as the direct quotations either 
 contained in his prose works or entered in the margin of 
 his Vergil ? And if it was his habit to employ a number 
 of copyists (de Nolhac, p. 69), is it conceivable that he 
 would consent to be without a copy of a poet as great as 
 Catullus ? 
 
 I am not unaware that Colucio Salutati, who speaks of 
 Petrarch as possessing or likely to possess in his library a 
 MS. of Propertius, does not say he possessed a Catullus. 
 But this was only a short time after Petrarch's death in 
 1374, and Salutati, it is probable, speaks with nothing like 
 complete knowledge of the contents of his library. 
 Son. 62 (p. 129 M.): 
 
 ' Se bianche non sono prima ambe le tempie.' 
 Cat. Ixi. 154 : 
 
 tremulum mouens 
 Cana tempus anilitas. 
 Son. 285 (p. 463 M.) : 
 
 ' Ma inanzi agli occhi m' era post' un velo 
 Che mi fea non veder quel ch' i' vedea.' 
 Cat. Ixiv. 55 : 
 
 Necdum etiam sese quae uisit uiscre credit. 
 Indeed the whole of this exquisite sonnet is steeped in 
 Catullus, particularly reflecting c, xxx, to Alfonus :
 
 23 
 
 Or conosco i miei danni, or mi risento; 
 Ch' i credeva (ahi credenze vane e 'nfirme !) 
 Perder parte, non tutto, al dipartirme : 
 
 Quante speranze se ne porta il vento ! 
 Cat. XXX. 9, lo : 
 
 Idem nunc retrahis te ae tua dicta omnia factaque 
 Yentos irrita ferre ac nebulas aereas sinis. 
 Sestina I (p. 25 M.) : 
 
 E non ci vedess' altri que le stcllc 
 Sol una notte. 
 Cat. vii. 7, 8 : 
 
 Aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox, 
 Furtiuos hominum uident amores. 
 Trionf. di Amore, ii. 185 (p. 551 M.) : 
 
 ' vita degli amanti 
 Com' poco dolcc molto amaro appaga.' 
 Cat. Ixviii. 17, 18: 
 
 non est dca nescia nostri, 
 Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem. 
 The same idea 2^ervades the Rime from first to last. 
 Son. 177 (p. 304 M.) : 
 
 Solco onde, e 'n rena fondo, e scrivo in vento. 
 Cat. Ixx. 4 : 
 
 In ucnto et rapida scribere oportet aqua. 
 A passage, wliich as de Nolliac observes (p. 138), is also 
 alluded to in Petrarch's Latin treatise against physicians 
 (ed. Bas., p. 1093) ' Vos si gloriac cupiditas tangit, in uento 
 et aqua scribite ut ad posteros fama citius uestra perueuiat.'
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 MUSSATO AND THE TRAGEDY ACHILLES 
 
 Todoschini in a pamphlet entitled Bel vera auiore delta tragedia L'Achille, 
 published in 1832 at Vicenza, was the first to make a serious defence of 
 the attribution of the Achilles not to Mussato, but to Antonio Loschi, aa 
 affirmed by Ignazio Savi, Librarian of the Municipal Library of Vicenza, 
 in a note published in the twelfth volume of Castellini's Storia di Vicenza, 
 1821. His arguments are : 
 
 1. Only one tragedy, the Ecerinis, is ever mentioned as Mussato's by 
 himself, his contemporaries, or in the epitaph in St. Justina. Sicho 
 Polentono in his work Be scriptoribus illustribus laiinae linguae, writes 
 nomini eius inscripta Ecerinis tragedia, Jion ignobile opus, extat, but has no word 
 of Actnlles. 
 
 2. The Achilles was not ascribed to Mussato till it was printed amongst 
 his other works by Felice Osio, Professor of Humanity at Padua, at the 
 Venice PincUi Press, 1635. Of the four MSS. of Mussato's poems used by 
 Osio, one, the Mussatianus, a codex belonging to Antonio Mussato of Padua, 
 and dated 1390, contained after Ecerinis another tragedy, the Achilles, 
 which he therefore printed also, ' etsi styli diuersitas scriptoris alterius 
 calamum referre uideatur.' 
 
 3. The difference of style, noticed by Osio, between the Ecerinis and the 
 Achilles was equally perceptible to Villani of Pistoia, who, in the few 
 notes he has left on the play, pronounced the Achilles to be better in 
 plot than Ecerinis, equally good in style, and far inferior in its moral 
 teaching. 
 
 As compared with the Ecerinis the Achilles shows more study of ancient 
 poets, an advance in Latin idiom and diction, a more exact observance of 
 the laws of metre. It has nothing plebeian or vulgar. In Mussato's 
 acknowledged tragedy there is no unity of time or action or protagonist, 
 it is always a question where the scene is laid : the work belongs to the 
 infancy of the art, or rather is wholly without art. Quite different is the 
 texture of Achilles: it has unity of action, for everything leads up to the 
 death of Achilles ; of place, all being done in Troy ; of time, a single 
 day. Had Mussato treated this subject, he would have made more of the 
 disdain of Achilles for Agamemnon, and perhaps extended the action to 
 the destruction of Troy. 
 
 4. This difference of style is in fact not the difference of one mind at 
 different periods of life, but of two epochs, one of which has progressed 
 far beyond the other. 
 
 5. It is not likely that Mussato would have had the inclination or the 
 knowledge necessary for a mythological subject. His life of active public
 
 25 
 
 occupation predisposed him for subjects taken from actual history, like 
 the rise and fall of the tyrants Ezzelini. 
 
 Part II (Todeschini, p. lo). 
 
 If it is a priori improbable that Mussato wrote Achilles, we have actual 
 reasons for ascribing it to a much later poet, Antonio Loschi. 
 
 Santa Maria ^Biblioteca e storia degli scriitori di Ftce>ica, 1772, I. p. eclvii) 
 states that in certain unedited memoirs of Giambattista della Valle a 
 tragedy called Achilles was attributed to Antonio Loschi, and that della 
 Valle professed to have it in his own possession. The heading was 
 Achiles 
 Antonii de Luschis de Vincentia Tragedia incipit, 
 at the end 
 
 Antonii de Luschis de Vincentia tragedia explicit Achiles. Laus sit 
 Deo. Amen. 
 
 Some fifteen or twenty years before Todeschini's pami)lilot appeared 
 (1817 or 1812) a Vicentine, Franc. Testa, gave to the public library there 
 a MS. which seems to be identical with that of della Valle. It had once 
 been in possession of a Venetian noble, Teodoro Corraro. It agrees with 
 the description of della Valle's MS. in being ' d' ottimo carattere, con- 
 servatissima,' as also in the words of the titulus at the beginning, and tho 
 words of the Explicit. This tragedy is identical with the Achilles printed as 
 Mussato's in 1635. Tho MS. containing it is of cent, xiv-xv >. It may 
 well have been a copy of Loschi's original, corrected either by himself 
 or some one in his confidence. In about 150 passages it emends tho 
 reading of ed. Ven., in many cases supporting the conjectures of Oslo or 
 Villani. 
 
 Loschi was not only a man of importance in affairs — holding various 
 offices under Duke John Galeazzo Visconti of Milan — sent on missions 
 to the Holy See — in favour with five successive Popes, one of whom, 
 Martin V, appointed him ambassador to the Emperor Sigismund — but 
 famous as a man of letters. His commentary on eleven orations of 
 Cicero was largely read in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and 
 as a writer of Latin verse he held a distinguished, if not tho first, place, 
 so much so, that Lorenzo Valla was censured for prei'orring tho com- 
 positions of Bartolommeo di Tulciani to his. Tho only difliculty is in 
 tho dates. Oslo's Codex Mussatianus containing the Achilles had the 
 year 1390 appended to tho /male of Ecerinis, i.e. about sixty years 
 after tlie death of Mussato and at least fifty before the death ofLosclii •. 
 If botli the tragedies were copied at the same time, Loschi must have been 
 a more boy at tho time when he is supposed to have written Achilles. 
 Tofleschini answers tliis olijection by fjuoting a brief nf rojio Boniface IX 
 of Feb. II, 1390, in which Antonio Loschi, tlien a stud, iit in tho University 
 of Pavia, is called 'arciprete della chicsa padovana' and is appointed t« 
 ' Mn/zatinti, in his Catalogu.- of tlie MSS. at Vic<nzu fvol. ii), d<s.-ril>«s 
 it as belonging to llie fifteenth century. Mr. E. O. Winstedt thinks it late 
 fifteenth. 
 
 ^ Thodeath-yiar of Losflii is uncerl.iin : Tirn]>f)H('hi, Storia dilhi IctUrnltirn 
 
 Jtnliunu, vi. 915, fixoa it between 1447 an<l 1450. Others place it aa early 
 
 aa 1441.
 
 26 
 
 a ' pr('l>i-ii<l;i oniioiiicali',' in tlic Cntliodrnl of Padua, formerly hold l)y 
 Pi>trari'h ; and by citiiim'xpressovidi'nccsof Losclii's jtrecocity asa writer. 
 If it is arniii'd that tho Achilles is nowhere ascribed to Loschi by any 
 writor wlio nu'utions liim, it may be replied that Marzani in his liistory 
 of Viconza says he conij)Osed dottis&iinc iragcdic ; tliat tragedies are attributed 
 to him l>y Barbaraiio and Castellini ; and that Ualasso di Cavazzoli 
 (Vicentino poet and notary) writes of him Qui fontem Parnase iuum 
 decorafijue colhuritis Maiores, Luscus non reticcndtts erit^. 
 
 Todeschini's pamphlet is generally supposed to have settled the question 
 of tho authorship of ^c/iiHes. Its strong point is its negative side ; tho 
 arguments against its being a work of Mussato's form a strong case, 
 though they do not amount to proof. Its weaker side is tho attempt to 
 prove that Achilles was the work of Antonio Loschi. 
 
 I shall say a few vpords on both points. 
 
 I. The discovery of the Holkham MS, (no. 425) of Mussato's poems, 
 which was unknown to Todeschini, materially strengthens the case 
 for Mussato. Padrin, Ecerinide, pp. xvii, xviii, describes this MS. at 
 length. I have myself examined it in tho Bodleian, It is of the fourteenth 
 century, and consists of three parts. The first contains, in liexamcters 
 books ix, X, xi of Mussato's Be gestis Italic, post Ilenricum VII, ending with 
 the words Be confliciu domini Canis grandis Explicit 1390. The second part 
 contains the other Latin poems of Mussato, including the two on Priapus 
 and Priapus' wife omitted by Osio, and ending with the tragedy Ecerinis 
 followed by the words Alhertini Miixati Paduani Eccerini irayedia explicit 
 1390. Then Achilles (without mention of author) and the Bucolicum 
 carmen printed by Osio. 
 
 Part III contains the Bias Latina (Biihrens, PLM, iii. 3-64), or, as it 
 was called in the Middle Age, and in the Holkham MS., Liher Pindari 
 tebani tie desintcione Troye. In general the Holkham codex shows a sur- 
 prising agreement with the Codex Mussatianus from which Osio printed 
 the Achilles ; it would seem, however, from tho examination of its 
 readings in the Ecerinis made by Padrin, to differ in some details, and 
 to be either a second copy of the same original, or perhaps a direct 
 transcript of the Mussatianus. Both MSS. conspire (i) in the date 1390, 
 (2) in including Achilles, which both place immediately after Ecerinis, 
 •without assigning any author, (3) in the Carmen Priapi and De coniuge 
 Priapi, as well as tho Carmen bucolicum. 
 
 The existence of two MSS. dated 1390 in which the Achilles is appended 
 to the other acknowledged poems of Mussato is, in my* judgement, an 
 
 * Santa Maria, Scrittori di Vicenza, i. p. ccl, quotes from an hexameter 
 poem of Loschi's addressed to Antonio de Romagno, the following verses 
 which might apply to a tragedy either written or planned on the Return 
 of Ulysses from Troy : 
 
 ad sua forsan 
 Tecta meus pelago et ventis iactatus Ulysses 
 Naufragus accensa victor properasset ab urbe 
 ludicium et cari limen sul^iturus amici. 
 
 * Such is also tho opinion of Mr. Alexander Napier, the Librarian of 
 Holkham.
 
 indication that at that time it was at least in some quarters ascribed to him. 
 It is true this might be a consequence of the external similarity of the two 
 plaj's, both being based on Seneca's tragedies, and both imperfect in their 
 comprehension of his metrical rules. The difference lies chiefly in two 
 points, the greater absence of teehnic in the Ecerinis, which betrays itself 
 principally in the illegitimate caesuras of the iambic, and in the much 
 greater liveliness of its situations, or perhaps one should say, descriptions, 
 as compared with the unexcited and monotonous character of the Achilles. 
 The criticism of that time was not likcjly to think of Aristotelian unities ; 
 a general resemblance of form would bo quite sufficient to determine 
 opinion. 
 
 Neither of the two plays, judged from an exacting standpoint, can be 
 pronounced more than mediocre ; but the less correct is by far the more 
 interesting, as a narrative of a real Italian tragedy, by an Italian who, 
 if not coeval with the events ho described, brought to his task the far 
 greater qualifications of an active life spent in every kind of patriotic 
 service, and an observant eye for the dramatic situations which naturally 
 rise in the course of a long, odious, and successful tyranny, like that of the 
 Ezzclini. This, and the glory attending Mussato's coronation, as the 
 author of Ecerinis, would give an unique importance to the play, and 
 •would have acted alike to keep it standing on a pedestal of its own, and 
 to prevent any other drama, not expressly known to bo by Mussato, from 
 coming into competition with it. Hence, even supposing Mussato to 
 have emploj'ed some part of his spare time as an exile at Chioggia, where 
 he died in 1329, in writing a tragedy on stricter rules and a more 
 commonplace subject drawn from Greek mythology, it would not follow 
 that it was recognized as his, unless ho had expressly set his name to it, 
 or perhaps unless he had published it in his lifetime. Wo might 
 imagine the Achilles left imperfect, and for some years after his death 
 copied but rarely, and without his name ; gradually its general resem- 
 blance to Ecerinis would be remarked, and would cause its inclusion in 
 a volume containing that or other poems by Mussato : the poet's namo 
 would not bo added because it was not certainly known. We must not 
 forget that there is no hint of Achilles belonging to any other author than 
 Mussato in Muratori, Scipio Maffei, or Tiraboschi ; and that tho increased 
 study of MSS. in our own ago places us in a jtosition of advance much 
 beyond tho epoch of Todcschini's dissertation. 
 
 Coming to tho second of Todcschini's positions, 1 am cxfct dingly 
 conscious of its insecurity. 
 
 I. Tho birth-year of Loschi is not ascertained, and the same doubt 
 hangs over his d(;ath. But as the brief of IJoiiifacct IX dated 1390 confers 
 a prebendal stall ui)on him and calls liim Arciprdf, it is djflicult to l)eln'vo 
 ho can have been under tho ago of inci]iiont nianhooil, say oightoon to 
 twenty. It follows that when lu! wrote Achilles (if he wroli- it) ho must have 
 been a mere boy. I do not think this is at all the imimssion which llio 
 play gives. It is difhcult to believe it could have been written und<r 
 tho age at tlio very least of sevouteon or eighteen, especially if we couHiib-r 
 tho rarity at that lime of metrical manuals, and all tho resources which
 
 28 
 
 from tlio fiftooiith century to tlic prosoiit tiino Imvo fncilifatod tlio com- 
 position of Latin verse. 
 
 Still, conceding that Achilles might have been written by a young 
 boy of unusual precocity, some time would elapse before it was 
 transcriboil, and when transcribed it would naturally carry with 
 it its author's name. But in the two earliest copies no such name 
 is appended, it is only in the third and considerably later copy that 
 the play is attributed at the beginning and end to Loschi. And this is 
 exactly what happens in other cases of false attribution. A work of 
 doubtful authorship is at first transcribed without any name ; as time 
 goes on, a false or at least uncertain name is attached. The very MS. 
 at Holkham which contains Achilles is followed by the Latin hexamotrical 
 epitome of the Iliad (of unknown authorship) with the ridiculous title 
 Pindari tehani de destrucione Troye. The minor poems ascribed to Vergil in 
 MSS. as early as the ninth century are most of them by unknown writers, 
 and cannot possibly be Vergil's. Tiljullus was long supposed on the ascrip- 
 tion of MSS. to be the author of the third and fourth books of Elegiacs 
 which Lachmann and most critics since Lachmann give to Lygdamus. 
 Few critics nowadays believe the Nux to be a genuine work of Ovid's : yet 
 in the MSS. it is assigned to him. These are only a few out of many 
 similar cases. The natural conclusion to be drawn from the fact that in 
 the two MSS. dated 1390 the Achilles is given without a name, in the 
 third is attributed to Loschi, is that at the time when those two MSS. wore 
 written the author was unknown, in the interval between them and 
 the third, a claimant had sprung up to whom the authorship might 
 reasonably be assigned. Whether Loschi had anything to do with 
 this himself we cannot say ; it would be enough for our purpose if ho 
 was known to have composed Latin tragedies of sulficient merit to make 
 a name. 
 
 To repeat once more less particularly -what I have said above, I think 
 it very improbable, in the light of the Mussatian and Holkham MSS., 
 which add the date of transcription (the latter twice) 1390, that the 
 Achilles, ranked as it is with Mussato's famous drama Ecerinis, should 
 have been written by a boy however precocious ; or should have approached 
 in the time of its composition so very near to that year. Everything 
 points in the opposite direction ; it must have been composed considerably 
 he/ore that year, perhaps, if not a work of Mussato's, at a time not so vei-y 
 long after his death in 1329. The Ecerinis had probably popularized the 
 study of Seneca's tragedies, and the Achilles was one of the attempts to 
 reproduce their diction and metre in an age which with Petrarch as its 
 protagonist was growing daily more and more humanistic. 
 
 The question is of some interest as regards the transmission of Catullus, 
 If, as I think is likely, the words of the Achilles, Nemo tarn fortis xialel esse 
 quo non Fortior assit, are based on CatuU. Ixvi. 28 quod (al. quo) nonforiior aut 
 sit alis, we have a very early correction, perhaps the earliest, of the 
 corrupt tradition of the Catullian MSS., all of which give aut sit. It is true 
 that assit is not the most probable correction of aut sit, but it is a possible, 
 and even an ingenious, correction. Professor Bywater has discovered
 
 29 
 
 the rigJitful cJaimnnt of ausit^, which palaeo.2T.iphy pronounces to be the 
 true emendation of aut sit; he traces it to Pietro Nicetti of Lucca, a con- 
 temporary of Poliziano at the close of the fifteenth century. Let us not 
 forget in this age of palaeographical illumination, when a large propor- 
 tion of even Bentley's corrections are seen to be impossible, the slow 
 degrees bj- which classical philology has arrived at its present position of 
 comparative assurance. The fourteenth-century emendator (surely no bo}') 
 may have guessed wrong : but his guess is to say the least clever, and 
 easily intelligible ; and what is moi-e to the point, it is. if an emendation, 
 perhaps the earliest discoverable of the text of Catullus. 
 
 * Compare autdef for atidet, ant derent tor auderent in Schuchart, Vokalisnius 
 des Vidgcirlateins, i. p. 121. 
 
 PETRARCH AND PRORERTIUS. 
 
 Prof. J. S. Phillimore has sent me the following imitations of Propertius 
 which he has noted in Petrarch's Latin poems. 
 
 Petr. Africa, Bk. I. p. 1275 b (ed. Basil. 1554) milia curarum. 
 
 Prop. I. v. 10 At tibi curarum inilia quanta dabit. 
 
 Potr. Africa, III. 1284 a at pastorali baeulum fort more rccuruuni. 
 
 Prop. IV. ii. 39 Pastorom ad baeulum possum curuaro. 
 
 Petr. Africa, III. 1287 a pacati conscius orbis 
 
 Erexit columnas. 
 
 Prop. III. xi. 19 qui pacato statuisset in orbe columnas. 
 
 Petr. Africa, IV. 1292 a qualis inest . . . color. 
 
 Prop. I. ii. 22 qualis . . . est color in tabulis. 
 
 Petr. Africa, V. 1294 a candid;', purpureis imitantur lloribns almac 
 
 Lilia mixta genae rosois. 
 Prop. I. XX. 38 Candida purpureis . . . 
 Prop. II. ill. 10-12 lilia non . . . magis alba ; 
 
 utquo rosae . . . 
 Petr. Africa, V. 1294 a huic leuos longaoque manus. 
 Prop. II ii. 5 longaeque man us. 
 Prop. III. vii. 60 . . . longas . . . maiius. 
 W'Xt. Africa, VII. 1310 a quid sim, quid fucrim. 
 Prop. II. ix. I iste quod est, ego saepe fui. 
 Petr. Africa, VIII. 1318 b i non minor ipso animis. 
 Projt. II. xxxiv. 83 nee minor his ('? ipse) aninii.s. 
 Potr. Africa, VIII. 1318 b 26 ibat honorato . . . currii. 
 Prop. IV. xi. 102 honoratis . . . equi.s. 
 
 Petr./l/nca, VIII.i323b 23 Piscibus autpLlagi mediaa offusiis in undas 
 
 K-ica forot. 
 Epist. II. '355 b 20 piHcibu.s <-s(!am. 
 Proji. III. vii. 8 pi.Hcibua u.ica iiatat. 
 
 .'{4r>H>^
 
 30 
 
 IVtr. Africa, IX. 1336a 34 iiiaiorquo scjnilcliri 
 
 jiost cinoivs to (';niia maint. 
 Prop. III. 1. 36 ilium post cinoroa augiiror ipso diom. 
 Prop. III. i. 23 lainai' ])ost nliitum fingit maiora Volustas. 
 Potr. Echig. i. Quo iiiilii Parllionias bibcrct dcfontc notaui. 
 Prop. III. i. 6 . . . qxiamue bibistis aquain ? 
 Petr. Epist. III. 1371 b fortunao scandcre culmcn. 
 Prop. II. X. 23 laudis consccndcrc culmcn {al. carmen).
 
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