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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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