Original scientific paper
Implicit Sources in Marulić’s In epigrammata priscorvm commentarivs: Niccolò Perotti, Pomponio Leto and others
Bratislav Lučin
orcid.org/0000-0003-2356-0353
; Marulianum, Split
Abstract
This article firstly provides general data about Marulić’s epigraphic- antiquarian work In epigrammata priscorum commentarius – commentary on inscriptions of the ancients and describes the genre context in which it figured. In epigrammata has not been published in its entirety. A critical edition of the text was recently prepared by the present author, but for the moment it is available only in an electronic version accessible at . The backbone of the work, written around 1503-1510, consists of 141 inscriptions, all in Latin, from Rome, Naples, Milan, Aquileia, Trieste, Pula, Zadar and other cities from the Apennine peninsula and the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Every inscription is accompanied with diverse commentaries from Marulić – epigraphic, philological, antiquarian and moralistic – which vary in scope from one or two lines to several pages of the autograph. From an analysis of the contents it became clear that this is a very firmly structured whole: in the original form it consisted of five main parts, the first and the last, or dedication and peroration, framing the central and largest, containing the epigraphs and commentaries. The central section itself is divided into three units, according to the geographical location of the inscriptions: Romę; Externa; Salonis. Just as at the beginning of the work there is a dedication to Marulić’s friend and ancient-epigraph collector Dmine Papalić (Dominicus Papalis), so before the Salona group, a prose paratext has been inserted, in which, first of all, several short notices are given concerning the history of this ancient city, after which Diocletian’s Palace is described (particularlythe Peristyle and Diocletian’s Mausoleum). After inscription no. 130 comes the Peroratio (with the marking FINIS at the end). Subsequently, the writer added 11 more inscriptions, entitling this group Salonis postea repertum. The structure of the work can be seen in Table 1. As collection of inscriptions, Marulić’s work continues from the prolific Humanist tradition of collecting and transcribing greek and Roman epigraphs that developed from the first half of the 15thcentury on the Apennine peninsula (Cyriacus of Ancona, giovanni Marcanova, Felice Feliciano, Fra giovanni giocondo and others) and also had early representatives on the eastern coast of the Adriatic (Petar Cipiko / Petrus Cepio of Trogir, Marin Marinčić / Marinus Marincics of Labin,Marin Rastić / Marinus de Restis of Dubrovnik and perhaps Juraj Benja / Georgius Begna of Zadar). At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries a new epigraphic genre appeared – the collection of ancient inscriptions with commentaries. The first and, as far as we know, the only proponents of this genre in Marulić’s age were Benedetto giovio (1471–1545), Andrea Alciato (1492-1550) and girolamo Bologni (1454-1517). At practically the same time, Marulić’s In epigrammata joined this innovative genre environment, and from this point of view it can be considered one of the pioneering works of Humanist epigraphy. The greatest philological challenge in studying In epigrammata was the search for primary and secondary sources, that is, the endeavour to answer the questions whence Marulić copied the actual inscriptions or where he obtained the information about Antiquity that he evinces in his commentaries. In this work, only secondary sources are considered. Partially, the writer himself stated them expressly in his text, and here we call them explicit secondary sources. As the finder of the autograph, Darko Novaković, has already established (cf. CM VI [1997]), In epigrammata names as many as 35 of them, 31 from pagan antiquity, four Christian. In alphabetical order, they are: Asconius Pedianus, Caesar, Cicero, Diodorus of Sicily, Eusebius, Pompeius Festus, gaius, gellius, Horace (given in the text as Lucretius), Juvenal, Lactantius, Livy, Martial, »Marcianus«, Nonius Marcellus, the New Testament, Ovid, Paulus, Plato, Plautus, Pseudo-Aurelius Victorus (Plinius Primus), Pliny the Elder, Plotinus, Plutarch, Pomponius Mela, Sallust, Scaevola, Servius, the Old Testament, Strabo, Suetonius, Terence, Valerius Maximus, Varro and Virgil. For this reason it seemed at first sight that the identification of the quotations, the establishment of the apparatus of sources and the analysis of the manner in which Marulić makes use of them would be a more or less routine matter. It turned out, however, that a relatively small number of items derived from the works of these named writers; for most of his comments, for example, when they are concerned with the resolution of epigraphic abbreviations, the interpretation of the meanings of some of the words, the etymology, information about myth, about state and religious antiquities, the Split Humanist made use of some other sources. These are not mentioned in the text, and accordingly we call them implicit. An attentive study of the commentaries themselves, as well as the commentating practice of Marulić’s contemporaries, led the author of the paper to compare the commentating part of In epigrammata with Humanist dictionaries and compendia: these proved indeed to be favourite Marulić’s favourite aids, on which he drew unsparingly. Thus it has been established that Marulić used not only explicit but also implicit (always unacknowledged in the text) sources. Particular importance among them belongs to Cornu copiae of Niccolò Perotti, designed as a commentary on Martial’s epigrams, but in fact an encyclopaedic dictionary of Latin (it was identified as Marulić’s source 52 times); then comes the little treatise of Pomponio Leto De magistratibus. De sacerdotiis. De legibus (28), the dictionaries of Giovanni Tortelli Commentariorum grammaticorum de orthographia dictionum e Graecis tractarum libri (17) and Giuniano Maio De priscorum proprietate verborum (12)and a few other, similar, fifteenth century reference works: Pseudo-Fenestella, De magistratibus Romanorum, Maffeo Vegio, Vocabula ex iure civili excerpta (De verborum significatione), a letter of Bartolomeo della Fonte to Francesco Sassetti known under the title of De ponderibus et mensuris. All, or almost all, of these works are to be found in the list of Marulić’s library in his will (cf. CM XIV [2005]); a useful spinoff for Marulić philology is that some of the units from the list have been identified for the first time in this way. The implicit sources that Marulić possessed in his own library are shown in Table 2 (grammatical and lexicographic reference works), Table 3 (humanistic compendia of ancient history, facts about Roman life and natural history) and in Table 4 (miscellaneous works). The facts given induce us in the context of the study of In epigrammata to ask three questions: why did Marulić systematically fail to acknowledge the works of his contemporaries; is there a relationship between type of source and kind of material that is excerpted from it; and how did Marulić proceed with his sources (i.e. what processes of transformation of the original appear when he imports it into his own text)? An indirect answer to the first question is given by the list of explicit sources: the Split Humanist refers by name to thirty one authors from classical Antiquity and four Christian classics. Contemporary writers, it would follow, are no authorities as far as he is concerned, and he does not consider it necessary to name them. This kind of procedure, it should be said, is no exception in fifteenth century philology: most of the sources that Marulić used were themselves created as compilations of primary and secondary (i.e. already compiled and paraphrased) sources, and their compilers unsparingly (and mainly tacite) took them from their predecessors. As for the relationship between type of source and kind of material excerpted (with the note that there are no strict divisions, only dominant tendencies), we have established that Marulić mainly made use of explicit sources when he was giving information about historical persons and events. He drew on the implicit type when he was explaining political and religious antiquities – the Roman magistrates and priests (Pomponius Laetus was a particularly common source) and legal antiquities (Maffeo Vegio, who is there hidden behind the explicitly named gaius, Paulus and others). Perotti and Maio are sources for the majority of lexical explanations, and considerable assistance in philology, particularly for greek words and names, is afforded by Tortelli, in whose work useful mythological and geographical information can also be found. Marulić borrows his information from all types of source in a more or less modified shape. He paraphrases and adapts the source as his purpose requires, not aiming at consistence, but proceeding – entirely in accordance with the habits of the Humanists – pragmatically: it is important to convey to the reader the essence of the information contained in the source. In modifications of sources, i.e. in adapting the original to his own purpose and the context of his own work, Marulić most often makes use of procedures such as abbreviation, changes to the syntactical structure, synonymy and so on. These are procedures similar to those to be found in his contemporaries; in addition, we can find similar types of adaptation elsewhere in Marulić’s works, particularly in Repertorium (cf. D. Novaković, CM VII [1998]) and in the comments to Catullus’ poems (cf. B. Lučin, CM XVI [2007]). Marulić’s utilisation of implicit sources is shown (using selected examples) in Table 5. Parts of the text that he took literally from the source are given in underlined italics; those that are adapted are given in underlined regular font; those parts that are not taken at all are not marked in any way. Any recasting of the original is marked by letters in square brackets [a], [b], [c] and so on), which enable us to perceive the process in which the original was divided into smaller semantic units, that are then assembled in a somewhat different order. Minor changes in the order of words, phrases or sentences and similar adaptations are not especially marked, but can easily be seen in a consideration of the parallel texts. In the Annex to Table 5 there are examples of information for which Marulić’s sources have not been identified so far.
Keywords
Marko Marulić; In epigrammata priscorum commentarius; Humanist epigraphy; Humanist lexicography; commentary; paraphrase
Hrčak ID:
80205
URI
Publication date:
5.4.2012.
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