Claudian

Claudius Claudianus (c 370-c 404) belongs, along with Symmachus, Ausonius and Macrobius, to the last generation of "pagan" men of letters who resisted, in vain, the victory of Christianity in the dissolving western Roman Empire. (I've taken to writing "pagan" in quotation marks more and more often since I discovered that it originally was a disparaging adjective meaning something like "rustic" or "bumpkin," which, agree with them or not, was just about the last thing the four above-listed "pagans" were. Nor is it at all accurate in describing non-Christians of the period generally. Insult people if you must, but please, try to do it with at least some relation to reality.) 

 Born in Alexandria, Claudian abandoned his native language Greek in favor of Latin. Arriving in the West in the early 390's, he quickly made a name for himself with panegyrics, speeches praising powerful men. He soon won a high position at the court of the western Emperor Honorius, where he is assumed to lived until his death. 

The works of Claudius which survive to our time are mostly panegyrics favoring Honorius and Stilicho, who was the commander in chief of the armed forces and the effective ruler of the west in the stead of the feckless Emperor, and their allies, and invectives against their enemies. In addition we have some poems of his on mythological themes. One of the latter, the unfinished Raptus Proserpinae in three books, is by far the most well-known of his works, and won him a wide readership all throughout the Middle Ages. 

All agree that Claudian's verse is elegant and polished to a very high degree. Perhaps his most-praised quality as a poet is the intensity and unreserved expression of hatred and contempt in his invective, which has greatly entertained readers from his own time to ours.

John B Hall, in his 1985 Teubner edition of Claudian, lists 23 previous editions, from 1482 to 1933.

He also lists around 300 manuscripts of Claudian in that same 1985 edition, or, I believe, every single manuscript he was able to study. And he seems to have them all, or at the very least very, very many of them, in the apparatus criticus. This puzzles me. Does Hall completely reject stemmatics?

Stemmatics is the determination of which manuscripts were copied from which others. If it can be proven that manuscript B was copied from manuscript A, then, according to stemmatics, B may be disregard when making an edition of the text, unless A has been damaged and therefore lacks portions of the text which survive in B, or for some other extraordinary reason, such as B containing extremely good conjectures. There are some other ancient Latin authors of whose works hundreds of manuscripts survive, but typically, and editions of their works relies on a couple dozen or less, because of stemmatics.

I'll just cut right to the chase here: I don't know why Hall based his edition on all of the manuscripts. Maybe he doesn't believe that stemmatics is valid. Perhaps he doesn't believe that it can proven that one manuscript was copied from another. I don't know why someone would not believe that. If Hall or someone similarly-minded tried to explain it to me, I don't know whether I would understand. 

I do like big long comprehensive lists of manuscripts though, even if I don't not share the compiler's views on what the list is good for.

The Commentary on Vergil of Servius Grammaticus... and Donatus

In the Saturnalia of Macrobius, set in the early 380's AD, published decades later, there appears a shy young man named Servius, who doesn't say much and is praised by his elders for his learning. 

This Servius is generally thought to be a representation, perhaps fictionalized, perhaps not, of the Servius Grammaticus who decades later authored a commentary on Vergil, which, besides grammar, rhetoric and style, also has much to say about subject matter, and besides its interest in strict relation to Vergil, is also of interest for the readings of many other authors cited.

 Or, more likely, he authored parts of the commentary, and for the rest reproduced passages written by Donatus, the grammarian probably best known today as the pagan tutor of the young Jerome. This combination of his own work and contributions from Donatus published by Servius is known as the short version. Some manuscripts contain only the short version, while others, fewer, contain a longer version. It has been conjectured that the passages added to form the longer version were the work of a learned scholar in Ireland in the 7th or 8th century. The more popular opinion today is that they are the parts of Donatus' commentary which Servius had not already used.

By this thesis, the entirety or at least the greater part  of Donatus' commentary on Vergil, long considered lost, could be reconstructed from the various versions of what traditionally had been known as Servius' commentary.

I am not going to conjecture which parts were authored by whom. What is now called [S], the version published by Servius, and [DS], the version with passages now generally agreed to have been written by Donatus and added by a later 3rd party, are each represented by manuscripts as early as the 9th century.

The makers of what many consider to be the best complete edition, published in 4-volumes by Teubner from 1881-1902, George Thilo and Hermann Hagen, present the thesis of the 7th or 8th century Irish contributor, and put what they take to be his contributions, and what is now generally believed to be the parts of Donatus not included by Servius himself, in italics. 

An edition which was hoped will be a great improvement over Thilo and Hagen is in progress from Harvard. Very slow progress. Or perhaps it is not progressing at all anymore. In 1946 (!) vol II of 5 planned volumes appeared, covering Aeneid, book I-II, and in 1948 (!) E Fraenkel is considered to have established a highly negative opinion of this volume in a very widely-respected review. Vol III, on Aeneid, books III-V, appeared in 1965. Vol V, on Aeneid books IX-XII, appeared in 2018. I have not been able to find any trace of a vol I or a vol IV, and presumably there are now planned more than the original 5 volumes.

I am not aware of any other plans for new editions of Servius. As always, if some of my readers know more than I. I'm very glad to hear from them.

Macrobius and the Saturnalia

Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius is known for writing 2 works in the 5th century: Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio; and the Saturnalia, the work which will primarily concern us here. A third work, De verborum Graeci et Latini differentiis vel societatibus, Differences and Similariites Between Greek and Latin Verbs, has been lost except for fragments.

Macrobius tells his readers that Latin is not his first language. Therefore it is safe to assume that he was not a native of the city of Rome. Where exactly he did come from, which positions he held in the Empire, and his exact dates are matters of considerable controversy. It is safe to assume that he was among the upper class of consuls, prefects and proconsuls. He may have been praetorian prefect of Italy in the year 430, or he may been proconsul of Africa in 410, or he may have been neither. It is fairly safe to assume that his first language was Greek.

The Saturnalia was a week-long Roman holiday celebrated around the winter solstice. In Macrobius' Saturnalia, learned gentlemen gather during the Saturnalia in the year 383 or earlier, and discuss matters of history, literature and philosophy, placing the work in the genre extending back to Plato's Symposium. Just as in the Symposium and other works, the tone of the discussion in the Saturnalia varies greatly, depending to a certain extent on factors such as the time of day, how much the characters have had to drink, whether they're being interrupted by other party guests, and so forth. Those involved in the learned discussion include Praetextatus; Symmachus, famed editor of Livy, who pleaded that pagan altars not be removed by Christian Emperors; Nicomachus Flavianus, who edited Livy alongside Symmachus; someone who is either Avienus the translator of Aratea or Avianus the writer of fables, although called Avienus in either case; and Servius, here a very young man, later famous as the commentator of Vergil.

Vergil is discussed far more than any other topic. Roman history and Roman festivals are discussed with great dignity. An example of some less dignified discussion has to do with the effect of the consumption of food and drink on people's appearance.

Estimates as to when the Saturnalia was written range from ca400 to ca435 or later. The earlier the date, the more likely it is that Macrobius was writing about people he knew personally, and perhaps even describing an actual event in his life. The later the date, the more likely it is that Macrobius is delivering a nostalgic vision of a life before the Christianization of the Empire, a time he knows only by hearsay. It is remarkable that Christianty is mentioned nowhere in the Saturnalia.

For scholars, the Saturnalia is, like Aulus Gellius' Noctes Attica, Quintilian's Rhetores Latini Minores, Severus' commentary on Vergil and Isidore's Etymologiae, an immensely valuable source of passages of ancient literature which are otherwise lost or controversially attested. It also holds a natural interest for those studying the last days of "pagan" Rome.

6 9th-century manuscripts of the Saturnalia survive, and hundreds of manuscripts altogether.