Plautus in der Frühen Neuzeit

Altri interventi

Se le sottolineature sono gli interventi di gran lunga più numerosi, nel codice B si possono tuttavia notare anche altre ‘tracce’ materiali di un lavoro che il riscontro con l’edizione consentirebbe di attribuire al CamerarioCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim:

– l’indicazione in numeri arabi (da 1 a 7) di una corretta sequenza di versi: vv. 311-3191;

B f. 100r ll. 40–43

– la divisione di versi (351-364):2

B f. 104v ll. 25–38

– uno spostamento di parole accompagnato da una linea sinuosa:

763 repente expetit me, | ut ad sese irem

me ut ad sese BCD MerulaMerula, Giorgio : inuersionis lineola in B3 ad sese me ut Camerarius^a

1007 mittite istunc. ME. obsecro te, quisquis es, operam mihi ut des

mihi ut des BCD : inuersionis lineola in B ut des mihi Camerarius^a

B f. 106v l. 39.

Indicazione di atti e scene

In entrambi i codici si riscontrano rare e non sistematiche indicazioni – in una grafia cinquecentesca posata, ma presumibilmente sempre attribuibile al CamerarioCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim1 – di una divisione della commedia in atti e in scene, che si inserisce in una tradizione umanistica non uniforme, e che, per gli atti, ha riscontro nelle prime edizioni dei MenaechmiMenaechmi (nel testo edito vengono indicati i numeri di atti e di scena nelle sole edizioni del ‘36 e del ‘42). Degno di nota è l’atteggiamento di CamerarioCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim nel 1552, che disattende la precedente suddivisione adottata, già presente nell’edizione dell’Angelius, quasi a mostrare di preferire il testo senza alcuna ripartizione, così come lo si trova nei codici2:

– ac. 5 sc. 2 (Vt aetas)

B f. 104r l. 48

– Ac. 3. sc. 1 (Plus triginta – C f. 47r l. 21)

– MenaechmiMenaechmi 5 sc. 5 (Spectamen)

C f. 56r l. 1

Titoli correnti

In tutte le commedie si possono notare, in entrambi i codici, sporadiche indicazioni di titoli correnti inserite là dove mancanti e indubbiamente comode durante lo studio, chiaro ‘strumento’ per una più agile consultazione e riconsultazione dei manoscritti. Per quanto riguarda i MenaechmiMenaechmi ciò si constata due volte nel solo C ai ff. 41r e 52r:

C f. 52r

Annotazioni

Talvolta in una grafia svelta e sottile – riconducibile a quella del CamerarioCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim – nei margini dei codici sono aggiunti termini o, addirittura, versi omessi da uno dei due Palatini:1

arg. 6 Circum omnis oras. post Epidamnum deuenit

B Camerarius^a : versum om. CD Merula Merula, Giorgio Circum et(cetera) add. in marg. dx. manus Camerarii in C2

C f. 40v l. 4

495 qui mi male dicas homini hic ignoto insciens?

homini hic ignoto B³ Camerarius^a3 : homini hic noto B¹ hicnoto CD homini add. in marg. dx. manus Camerarii in C4 ignoto MerulaMerula, Giorgio

605 MA. clanculum te istaec flagitia facere censebas pote?

flagitia CD MerulaMerula, Giorgio Camerarius^a : om. B sed. add. manus Camerarii

B f. 103r l. 1

In conclusione, se le sigle che si trovano nei margini della prima edizione plautina rilevano soprattutto il valore che il giovane filologo attribuisce al codice B; i segni lasciati sui due codici – se attribuibili al CamerarioCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim – sembrerebbero piuttosto funzionali a individuare i ‘difetti’ che lo studioso riscontra nei due manoscritti e che lo hanno portato ad esprimere nel ҆52 quel giudizio alquanto negativo, per entrambi i codici, nei confronti della librariorum inscitia et futilitas.

Bibliografia

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Bandini, Giorgia: Il Camerario e la Rudens: tracce ‘materiali’ del lavoro nei codici plautini B e C, in: Renato Raffaelli / Alba Tontini (cur.): Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates. XVII. Rudens, Urbino 2014, 109–123.

Cappelletto, Rita: La ‘lectura Plauti’ del Pontano. Con edizione delle postille del cod. Vindob. lat. 3168 e osservazioni sull’Itala recensio, Urbino 1988.

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Guastella, Gianni: Menaechmi e Menechini: Plauto ritorna sulla scena, in: Renato Raffaelli / Alba Tontini (cur.): Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates. X. Menaechmi, Urbino 2007, 69–150.

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Plautinae viginti comoediae… recognitae per Eusebium Scutarium, Mediolani, in officina Ulderici Scinzenzeler, 1490.

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M. Accii Plauti Sarsinatis comici festivissimi comoediae viginti diligentiss. a mendis repurgatae, & in mensum suum genuinum, quod Menaechmei Mostellaria & Trinummus docent, restitutae, Basileae, ex officina Ioannis Hervagii, 1535.

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M. Accii Plauti comoediae quinque, a mendis purgatae, ac numeris suis, quo ad eius fieri potuit, restitutae, quibus addidimus Trinummum: Capteiuei Aulularia Miles Menaechmei Mostellaria Trinummus, Magdeburgi, excudebat Christianus Rodingerus, 1542.

M. Accii Plauti comoediae quinque [Amphitruo Asinaria Curculio Casina Cistellaria] magna cum cura emendatae a Ioachimo Camerario Pabepergensi, Lipsiae, in officina Valentini Papae, 1545.

M. Accii Plauti comoediae sex [Epidicus Bacchides Mercator Pseudolus Rudens Persa] magna cum cura emendatae a Ioachimo Camerario Pabepergensi, Lipsiae, in officina Valentini Papae, 1549.

M. Accii Plauti comoediae viginti, diligente cura et singulari studio Ioachimi Camerarii Pabepergensis emendatius nunc quam ante unquam ab ullo editae. Adiectis etiam eiusdem ad singulas Comoedias Argumenti et Annotationibus Basileae, per Ioannem Hervagium, [1552].

M. Accii Plauti comoediae viginti diligente cura Ioachimi Camerarii Pabepergensis editae. Accesserunt iam indicationes quoque multorum a Georgio Fabricio Chemnicensi collectae, Basileae, per Ioannem Hervagium et Bernhardum Brand, 1558.

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Camerarius Camelarius

A New Salt Road to the Modern World

Michael Fontaine (Ithaca)

Camerarius d.Ä., JoachimEt mihi Erasmiaco liceat re ludere more;

seria materia est, Musa iocosa levet.

1. The title explained; a proposition; the argumentum

In 2017 I discovered two letters that shed new light on the transmission of Plautus’ comedies from antiquity to the Early Modern period. One concerns (probably) the “Decurtatus” manuscript and the other concerns the 1552 Basel edition that Joachim CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim the Elder based on it.1 To keep the exposition moving, I’ve chosen a fun title inspired by ErasmusErasmus von Rotterdam’Erasmus von Rotterdam Praise of FollyErasmus von RotterdamLaus stultitiae (1509), which he dedicated to Thomas More:

I decided to write a fun essay in praise of folly. “What stroke of genius put that in your head?” you’ll say. Mainly it was your last name, More, which comes as close to the word moria (folly) as you are far from the thing.2

Like ErasmusErasmus von Rotterdam, I hope a little fun will lighten up the serious points I have to make. Consider this proposition:

Quisquis habet Plauti libros cimelia3, peccat:

qui vehit usque sales, iure camelus erit.

It’s natural to think of manuscripts of Plautus’ comedies as cimelia, heirlooms or rare books. But as vectors of sales – salt or jokes – we could also think of them as camels. Analogously, we can think of the scholars who deliver their cargo to us like the traders who have, from time immemorial, traversed the Sahara Desert on camelback to bring slabs of salt from mines to markets. And of all such camelarii, camel drivers, none enjoys greater glory than Joachim CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim (1500–1574). As the following argumentum summarizes, I intend to remap the “salt road” he traveled in bringing Plautus’ comedies from antiquity to his own times:

Carvanâ superat Libyae solitudines

Arabs camelorum, insulsis ut portet salem:

Modo qVo caballIs, asInIs DICVntVr ManV4

Exscripti in Latium allati super Alpes libri,

Leone5 duce: is Palatino tractas Lari

Asportat6 spolia, Plauti membranas duas

Relegatque Romam. Dignius CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim?

“Insulso cuique relegendo illos aperuit

Veteres vectores (nactus quos fuerat prior7)

Salis, salvomque ad nos DetulIt caMeLarIus.”

2. The Standard Account

In 1552 CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim published an epoch-making edition of Plautus’ comedies in Basel (reprinted there in 1558); later scholars heaped praised on him for “healing” the text of Plautus.1 If you read a standard account of the salt road CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim traversed to earn this praise, it goes like this2:

With the decline of Rome in the West, the majority of Plautus’ comedies were not recopied and eventually forgotten. For a thousand years nothing changed until, in 1428 or 1429, the German monk Nicholas of CusaKues, Nicolaus von (1401–1464), known as Cusanus, lit a stick of dynamite, threw it into Italy, and sparked the Renaissance.

Not real dynamite, of course, but a one-humped “camel.” In 1428, Cusanus had found a manuscript in Trier that contained twelve of Plautus’ lost plays (viz. BacchidesBacchides + EpidicusEpidicus to TruculentusTruculentus). He took it to Rome and gave or sold it to Cardinal Giordano OrsiniOrsini, Giordano (Kardinal) (1360/70–1438). Today that camel is called the codex Ursinianus, abbreviated manuscript D (Vaticanus Latinus 3870). Four decades later, the Venetian professor Giorgio MerulaMerula, Giorgio (c. 1430–1494) made it the basis for creating the first complete printed edition of Plautus; he published it in Venice in 1472. Others soon pirated MerulaMerula, Giorgio’s text, and it thus became the first vulgate.

Back in Germany, Joachim CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim was born in 1500 in Bamberg. In 1513, he began studying Plautus at Leipzig University with a charismatic professor and Plautophile named Veit (i.e. Vito) WerlerWerler, Veit (1480s – after 1536).3 In 1530, CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim published two comedies in Nuremberg, MenaechmiMenaechmi and MostellariaMostellaria, that he had reedited on the basis of new manuscript sources. A decade later, he published two more partial editions in Leipzig, one in 1545 and the other in 1549. In 1552, CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim finally published in Basel his epoch-making, complete edition of all of Plautus’ 20 comedies. In 1558, he published a corrected reprint that became the second vulgate; it remained the basis of every subsequent edition for the next 250 years.

In Milan in 1815, Cardinal Angelo Mai (1782–1854) stumbled on a new manuscript of Plautus, the Ambrosian Palimpsest, that warranted a radical new edition of Plautus.4 That manuscript is tremendously important, but I won’t mention it again in this paper.

What made that second vulgate so special and enduring? The answer is that CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim based it on two valuable but previously unknown camels, known today as the Codex Vetus (B) and the Codex Decurtatus (C). To prevent information overload, I commissioned an allegory to help tell them apart.

The Allegory of the CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim Camelarius, by Lucy Plowe (2017). Note the weariness on his face.

3. The Camels Described and Distinguished; Their Fate

In the painting, the Vetus (B) is a Bactrian camel. It has two humps to symbolize the full 20 comedies of Plautus that it carries. Those comedies are depicted as slabs of salt that, by a nice coincidence, look like early modern folio editions. The other camel, C, the Decurtatus, is a dromedary. It has only one hump, to remind readers that it contains only the later 12 comedies (BacchidesBacchides + EpidicusEpidicus–TruculentusTruculentus).

We know CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim had these two camels because upon his death in 1574, they were found among his belongings. His sons JoachimCamerarius d.J., Joachim Jr. and PhilipCamerarius, Philip received them as a bequest, and for a time they let other scholars use them.1 In 1598, the boys sold them both to the elector Frederick IVFriedrich IV. von der Pfalz for his Palatine Library in Heidelberg, Germany (it is not to be confused with the Palatine hill in Rome). Frederick (1574–1610) paid them 26.10 coronati, and it is probably not a coincidence that a few months later, he appointed Joachim Jr.’s son, LudwigCamerarius, Ludwig, as his advisor (consiliarius).2

The man who prompted Frederick to buy the manuscripts was Janus GruterGruter, Jan (1560–1627), head of the Palatine Library. GruterGruter, Jan saw their extraordinary value for Plautine scholarship, and in time he used them to produce his own important edition (Wittenberg, 1621). Meanwhile, other editors came to Heidelberg to consult the camels, among them Friedrich TaubmannTaubmann, Friedrich (1565–1613), J. P. PareusPareus, Johann Philipp (1576–1648), and possibly Claude Salmasius (1588–1653).

PareusPareus, Johann Philipp is to blame for giving the camels their misleading nicknames Vetus (old) and Decurtatus (shortened or mutilated).3 I say “misleading” because the Decurtatus is no more “shortened” or “mutilated” than a one-humped camel is; it was never complete to begin with:

Tubera habet duo Bactrius, at dromedarius unum;

dic tamen, umquamne hiC semicamelus erit?

Even worse, the Decurtatus is older than the Vetus. According to Karl Zangemeister (1837–1902), GruterGruter, Jan’s eventual successor as head of the Palatine Library, the Vetus dates to the 11^th century but the Decurtatus dates a bit earlier, to 10^th/11^th century. A 17^th-century cataloguer in the Vatican Library described the Vetus as antiquus but the Decurtatus as antiquissimus.4

As noted in the argumentum above, in 1622 the Vatican librarian Leo Allatius Allatius, Leo(1586–1669) transported both manuscripts and many others from the Palatine Library over the Alps, tearing off their bindings to reduce weight and allegedly on horse- or muleback for part of the way, and deposited them in the Vatican Library, where they were rebound.5 The Vetus is there still. In 1797 the Decurtatus was taken to Paris, and in 1816 the Pope donated it to Heidelberg University Library, where it now resides.6

Both camels are good witnesses to the true text.7 Given their value, it is an abiding mystery why – as I shall discuss in a moment – CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim used the Vetus extensively in preparing his 1552 edition, but barely used the Decurtatus at all. Equally mysterious is how he obtained it. Since these mysteries stand in stark contrast to what we know of the Vetus, it is worth reviewing CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim’ claims about both manuscripts here.