The First Edition of Lucian of Samosata

Author(s): E. P. Goldschmidt
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (1951), pp. 7-20
Published by: The Warburg Institute
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 THE FIRST EDITION OF LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA

By E. P. Goldschmidt
of
first edition the original Greek text of
Lucian's Dialogues came out
Theat Florence in 1496. But long before then the amusing and irreverent
compositions of the second-century Syrian author were known to a wide circle
of scholars and littirateursand had produced their effect on various writers.
Such names as Leon Battista Alberti, Jo. Pontanus, Matteo Maria Boiardo
stand out among a multitude of lesser authors whose works betray an admiring
acquaintance with the "scoffer at the gods" (subsannator deorum). Some of
them may have read their Lucian in Greek manuscripts, but many more knew
him only in Latin translations. A number of early Latin versions of single
dialogues existed and exists in manuscripts, and several had appeared in print
before the Greek original became widely accessible, proving that there was a
current demand for such light literature in the second half of the fifteenth
century. There are, as far as I could ascertain, twenty-one distinct editions
of thirteen different dialogues in Latin before the year 1500. The origin of
these translations, the identity of their authors, the tradition of these Latin
texts, offer problems that have not so far been satisfactorilyinvestigated. I will
leave aside all antecedent and subsequent complications that present them-
selves, and I will concentrate on describing the nature, the contents and the
probable origin of one such edition only, the earliest of all, which was printed
at Rome in 1470 and contains six (or rather five) Lucianic Dialogues in Latin.
I will only remarkthat, far from "throwing light" on anything whatsoever, such
research as I have indulged in greatly adds to the complexity of the situation
and, as is so often the case, seems to create more problems than it solves.
The art of printing reached Italy within a dozen years from its invention,
and the two German practitioners who had acquired their skill at Mayence
itself, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, were brought to Rome by
1467, after they had produced the first examples of their craft in the Benedic-
tine monastery of Subiaco. The perfervid humanist popes, Nicholas V and
Pius II, were by then no longer alive, and their successor on St. Peter's throne,
Paul II Barbo, was personally less eagerly in favour, perhaps even a little
suspicious, of such studies. Still, the atmosphere of Rome in these years
remained imbued with their enthusiasm for classical learning; the college of
Cardinals was in its majority created by the Piccolomini pope and, more
important still, the huge body of officials of the Curia, comprising such men
as Hermolaus Barbarus, Domitius Calderinus, Leonardo Dati, and Gasparo
da Verona could fairly be described as a professional corporation of Latin
stylists. These scribes of the Papal Chancery, the bureaucracy of the world
government of the Roman church, formed the dominant social background
of the city from which prelates were chosen and cardinals emerged. Their
gossip made reputations and ruined careers, and their tastes determined the
fashionable lines of interest among the higher clergy, both resident and visiting
from abroad. In a society so strangely constituted, the commission of a blatant
error of syntax in a letter could make a man ridiculous for the rest of his life,
and the acquaintance with a rare or unknown classical text would confer an
aura of distinction on its possessor.
7

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8 E. P. GOLDSCHMIDT
It is sometimes stated that in the period of the early Renaissance "the
prelates of the Church took up humanist studies with zest" or words to that
effect; it would be more correct to say that in the fifteenth century the com-
position of a work on the finer points of Latin style, the editing, or even the
owning of a rare classical text, proved a most efficacious step towards a
bishopric or some other conspicuous preferment. The humanist officials of
the Curia also revived, for their own benefit and amusement, the semblance
of a university, the "Studium Urbis," where scholarslike L. Valla, Jo. Aurispa,
Pomponius Laetus, lectured on Latin and Greek authors, and which seems to
have functioned more like an academy than a teaching institution.1
When the first Roman printing presses started to operate, their products
show the urgent demand for classical texts which, it would seem, the calli-
graphers had hardly been able to satisfy. They also show by their prefaces
and dedications, that the publication of such texts was considered a means
for attracting patronage from the highest authorities in the Church. Sweyn-
heym and Pannartz were set to work in the palace of a Roman patrician
family and, beginning with a Cicero: Epistolaead Familiares,in 1467, they
poured out a succession of classical authors: Aulus Gellius, Julius Caesar,
Apuleius, Livy, Lucan, Pliny, Vergil, Quintilian, Suetonius, Silius Italicus,
Ovid, and several Ciceros, all before midsummer 1471. They also printed the
first Greek author to come out in a Latin translation who, strangely enough,
is the geographer Strabo (1469). All these volumes are dedicated to Pope
Paul II himself by the editor Giovan Andrea dei Bussi, who seems to have
been the literary manager of the enterprise and who was promptly rewarded
with a little bishopric, Aleria in Corsica. The printer Sweynheym was
eventually presented with a canonry at St. Victor's in Mayence in 1474. It is
clear that this first Roman press was an officially sponsored undertaking,
enjoying a Papal subvention, and that its productions were accepted as con-
tributing to the glory of the reigning Pope.
There were soon other printers in the field, mostly Germans, and other
editors of classical texts, rivalling the industrious bishop of Aleria. The
foremost among them was J. A. Campanus, since 1463 bishop of Teramo
(episcopusAprutinus). He brought out a Quintilian and a Suetonius in 1470
and the first edition of Plutarch's Lives,2translated by various scholars. All
these editions by Campanus are dedicated by him to Cardinal Francesco
Piccolomini, nephew of Pius II,. and later himself for a short time Pope
Pius III. To the same Cardinal he addresseshis printed edition of the Letters
of Phalaris, which the translator, Francesco Griffolini, had dedicated to
Malatesta Novello. The Bologna Ovid of 1471 is dedicated by Franciscus
Puteolanus to Francesco Gonzaga, Cardinal of Mantua. Georgius Merula
dedicated his Plautus in 1472 to Giacomo Zeno, bishop of Padua, Ang. Sabinus
his edition of Ammianus Marcellinus to the bishop of Bergamo.3
1 Leo X
in 1513 stated about this Studium: this Plutarch contains a Life of Charlemagne
adeo scolarium copia defecit, ut quandoque "e graeco sermone in latinum translata,"
plures sint qui legant quam qui audiant. See which is in fact by Donato Acciaiuoli.
Denifle: Univ. d.M.A. I, p. 315. 3 On such dedications the earlier biblio-
2 In view of what we are
presently coming graphers are more informative than the
to it may not be inapposite to mention that modern ones. See: A. M. Quirini, De opti-

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 THE FIRST EDITION OF LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA 9
Enough examples to show that the appearance of a new classical text under
the patronage of some powerful prince of Church or State was the normal
rule, the dedication of a new edition or translation to a great personage one
of the recognized methods of currying favour and support. Let this be granted
and the fact that the first Lucian came out without any such preliminary
letter or covering flag be taken as a very exceptional feature in a book of this
class. We will try to suggest a reason for this singular omission further on,
but now, having first underlined what the Roman Lucian of 147o does not
contain, we must at last come to a description of the book itself.
It is a rare book; only five copies of it are known to exist: Manchester,
John Rylands Library (Lord Spencer's copy); Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale;.
Modena, Biblioteca Estense; Rome, Biblioteca Corsiniana; Florence, Biblio-
teca Nazionale Centrale.
The small quarto volume contains eighty leaves printed in a rather
clumsily cut Roman type, twenty-four lines to the page. The presswork is
somewhat rough, the line ends uneven; the printer's craftsmanship remains
well below the very excellent standard set by Sweynheym and Pannartz. The
type is that known to students of early printing as the first type of Georg Lauer,
a native of Wuirzburg,who was the fourth or fifth in sequence among the
printers to set up a press at Rome. The book has no title, no subscription and
no date. Nevertheless we incunabulists can positively assert the identity of
the printer and, from the state of the type, the date 1470 as the year of
printing.
How this can be proved would need an explanation in a technical jargon
as illuminating as that of a philatelist discoursing on indentations and wire-
marks, and we had better leave it at that. Lauer's press is neither a distin-
guished one nor a long-lived one; the Lucian is among its earliest products,
by May 1471 this particular type is discarded, by 1481 the activity of the
press comes to an end. In these few years we know of four EditionesPrincipes
of minor classical authors published by Lauer: Quintus Curtius, Pompeius
Festus, Terentius Varro and Nonius Marcellus, all four edited by Pomponius
Laetus.
Lauer's Lucian contains six dialogues: Charon, Timon, Palinurus,
Alexander, Hannibal and Scipio, Tyrannus, Vitarum Auctio,' following in
this order. Each dialogue begins abruptly with the first sentence spoken,
without any heading, but with a space of several inches left blank, not only
to mark the break with the preceding piece, but also to allow for the title
and the names of the interlocutors to be inserted by hand. This is by no means
morumscriptorumeditionibus quae Romae primum Middle Ages, Philadelphia, 1923. But owing
prodierunt, Lindau, I761.--J. B. Audiffredi, to the departmentalized condition of our
Catalogus historico-criticusRomanarum editionum academic studies, this very useful collection
saeculi XV, Rome, I783.--Most valuable: B. of examples is preponderantly devoted to
Botfield, Praefationes et Epistolae Editionibus English and "Romance Philology" texts and,
Principibus auctorum veterumpraepositae, Cam- though it cites a few Latin mediaeval books,
bridge, I86I, who gives the full text of these it practically ignores the humanists.
dedicatory letters. 1 These are Numbers XII, V (-), X, 12,
On the general problem of the function of XVI, XIV of Dindorf's edition, Paris Didot,
patronage the only book known to me is: 1867.
K. J. Holzknecht, Literary Patronage in the

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 0o E. P. GOLDSCHMIDT
an unusual feature in books of this early period which in this respect were
following the example set by the writers of manuscripts. The headings were
left out by the scribe to be supplied last of all by a calligrapher who would
carefully add them in special script and usually in red ink; hence his job was
called that of the "rubricator," and the term "rubric" still remains current
as a synonym for a heading. Both in old manuscripts and in early printed
books this finishing touch of adding the headings in red was often left undone.
They had to be copied in from some model, some exemplar, which frequently
seems to have been no longer to hand when the owner might have liked to
complete his book; or else, failing to employ a competent calligrapher, many
owners preferred to leave the spaces empty rather than spoil the page by
clumsily written headings, inserted by themselves.
We have here five dialogues out of the 166 which have come down to us
as Lucian's work and which, as we know from the first Greek edition and
from the extant Greek manuscripts, were all transmitted together in one
volume from the Byzantine East to the Italian West. Nothing has been added
to the corpus of Lucianic writings in the course of time, though much has
been disputed as spurious by later critics. These few dialogues then just
happened to be available to the editor or the printer in Latin versions. As
we know from manuscripts, a good many more had been turned into Latin
by 1470 and no special significance attaches to the priority of publication of
this selection.
But where, when and by whom were these particular dialogues translated?
The title headings might have told us if they had been printed together with
the text or had been filled in by the rubricator. The Spencer copy at Man-
chester and the one at Modena are no help to us at all; they are in their
virginal state, with the spaces blank as they left the press. When I saw the
Paris copy I was delighted to find all the headings carefully filled in by hand
in red ink and I noted them down. But when I came to inspect the Lucian of
the Corsiniana I found something still more interesting: the source from which
the Paris rubricator obtained his headings. For the copy in Rome contains
not eighty leaves but eighty-one, and the extra, isolated leaf bound first in
the volume is precisely the sheet of "rubrics" or chapter-headings which the
printer supplied with each copy to the purchaser, who could then write them
in in their proper places as indicated. (See P1. 4.)1
Such rubricator sheets were, it would seem, quite often supplied by the
early printers-and indeed they were essential to the proper completion of
such a book-but they are not often preserved. For they formed no integral
part of the volume, being loose single leaves, and they were intended to be
thrown away when they had served their purpose. However, sufficient
examples have survived to make us recognize them when they occur, such as
the sheets of chapter headings for the 36-line Bible (about 1460) preserved in
the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale; another example of them is reproduced in
the Catalogueof Early GermanBooks in the Collectionof Charles Fairfax Murray,
London, '913, No. 460, and is now in the Cambridge University Library.
Now that I had the original title-headings, the authentic information sup-
1
The copy at Florence also contains this identified in 1950. (Pressmark L.5.I7.)
leaf. It has only come to light and been

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 Luctantdialogus 9 infmrbit
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Sheet of Rubrics supplied with Lauer's Lucian, Rome, 1470 (p. 10)

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 THE FIRST EDITION OF LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA 11
plied by the editor himself on the authors of these versions, everything should
have been plain sailing. Alas, the more I examined this promising page, the
more I was puzzled. There was not much I knew about the early translators
of Lucian before I met with this sheet; but that little was sufficient to show
that the man responsible for these "model" title-headings had some surprising
things to tell us. On some of the most familiar of these dialogues liis informa-
tion is quite plainly, even fantastically, wrong. On others it seems to be not
only new, but of great weight and importance. However, an editor who can
put down the Palinurus,which is not by Lucian at all, which is not even
Greek at all, but a fifteenth-century Latin composition by Maffeo Vegio, as
"per Rinuccium denuo translatus," forfeits all claims to credence, and his
testimony must be scrutinized item by item with the utmost scepticism.
Lauer's Lucian begins on its first page with a resume of the salient points
of the Charon,the first of the following dialogues. It begins:
Bona fabula hec que loquitur nobis tot utilia. Aurum quid sit et quam
stulte tanti reputatur, etc.
This Prologue continues in similar strain for twenty-two lines altogether. It is
not easy to decide whether this piece is intended as prose or as some kind of
accentuated free verse, something like the ancient Roman Saturnians.
On the next leaf there follows:
I. Charon.
Above the first of the dialogues in the Rome quarto the rubricator is told
to write:
Luciani dialogus qui inscribitur Charon, latinus per Rinutium denuo
factus, ad reverendissimum patrem dominum Johannem cardinalem
Morinensem.
This is the Charonsive Contemplantes(Dindorf XII) translated'into Latin
by Rinuccio of Arezzo (or of Castiglion-fiorentino), on whom see D. P.
Lockwood: "De Rinucio Aretino Graecarum literarum interprete," in Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology, 1913, XXIV, pp. 5I-Iog9. Rinuccio (best known
perhaps as the translator of the frequently printed Latin version of Aesop's
Fables) had been to Constantinople himself (1421-23) and brought back,
among other codices, a MS. of Lucian from which he translated the Charon
and the VitarumAuctio (see below) in the summer of 1441 or 1442. At that
time he was employed in the Roman chancellery and also held a chair of
Rhetoric in the "Studium Urbis" until his death in 1456 or 1457. He dedicates
his version to Jean Le Jeune, Cardinal Bishop of Th6rouanne (Cardinalis
Morinensis) 14I I-51, elevated to the purple in 1439 by Eugene IV, a great
book-collector and hunter of manuscripts, on whom see Sabbadini, Scoperte,
I, p. 194.
The words "latinus denuo factus" are correct; there exists an earlier trans-
lation, never printed, of which we will have to say something below under
Timon. The dedicatory letter to Card. Le Jeune begins with "Seraphius

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12 E. P. GOLDSCHMIDT

Urbinas, vir utriusque juris . . ." and is here printed in its proper place.
Another dedication to Lorenzo Colonna, belonging to the same dialogue, is
found in this edition also, but misplaced on Fol. 56b in front of the Tirannus.
On these two dedicatory letters see Lockwood, loc. cit., p. 53 and p. 96.1
II. Timon.
Lucian's dialogue on the Misanthrope (Dindorf V) which perhaps had
as momentous an influence on European literature as any of his writings;
M. M. Boiardo's Timone,Shakespeare's Timonof Athens,Moliere's Misanthrope
derive from it.
The sheet of rubrics gives the heading:
Hoc Luciani opus per me Bertoldum ex greco translatum tibi de Czambec-
cariis mitto, oratorum inclite Peregrine, ut ex correctione tua et labore
meo aliqua eternitas oriatur.
The information contained in this rubric is new and important. Of the
translator Bertoldus nothing at all is known so far, but the patron to whom
he addresseshis version, Peregrino de' Zambeccari, was chancellor of Bologna
and died soon after 14oo. The dedication therefore demands a remarkably
early date for this translation, a period much earlier than that in which Greek
manuscripts become ordinarily current in Italy, a date anterior by a quarter
of a century to the return of Aurispa and Rinuccio from Constantinople
(1423) with their codex of Lucian's dialogues.
It is, fortunately, possible to confirm this early date from two independent
sources and so to establish the authenticity of the rubric.
The same version of the Timon,together with a Latin translation of the
Charon(to which I have referredabove) is found in a MS. in the Laurenziana
at Florence, Plu. XXV sin. 9. There it has no heading or dedication, nor
does it give the translator's name. The Codex comes from Santa Croce and
has the full subscription:

1403. 26 mai. scripta sunt haec Florentiae Frater Thedaldus tunc vacans.
On Thedaldo della Casa and his gift of books to Santa Croce in 1406 see
R. Sabbadini: Scoperte. Nuove Ricerche,p. 175.2
Reliable confirmation that a translation, and presumably this translation,
of the Timonwas in existence in 1403 comes from another source. Remigio
Sabbadini in NuovoArchivioVeneto,1915, N.S. XXX, pp. 219 ff., published a
letter from Antonio di Romagno, dated January 16, 1403, addressed to Pietro
Marcello, Bishop of Ceneda (1399-1409, died 1429). In this letter Antonio
gratefully acknowledges the loan of a book to which he refers as "tuum
Timonem." Without disrespect for the great authority of Sabbadini we must
1
See also the rubricator-sheet, lines io- 2, 2The only other MS. known to me con-
where the editor notices that the letter to taining these two early translations of the
Colonna is wrongly placed, but creates fresh Charon and the Timon is Vat. lat. 989, fols.
confusion by suggesting it belongs in front of 81-96, but it neither gives a translator's name
the Palinurus. nor can it be dated.

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 THE FIRST EDITION OF LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA 13
be allowed to disagree if, from the mere occurrence of the pronoun "tuum,"
he jumps to the conclusion that Pietro Marcello must have been not only the
owner of the book but the translator of Lucian's Timonfrom the Greek.
Equally unconvincing is Sabbadini's suggestion made in the same paper
that the translation of the Charonin the above-mentioned MSS. is the work
of Peregrino de' Zambeccari himself. This proposal is advanced solely "merce
una stampa dell'ultimo Quattrocento che assegna la traduzione di questo
dialogo a Peregrino de' Zambeccari."
This is an odd way of citing an authority and it seems clear that, for once,
Sabbadini must have been careless in making or preserving his notes. It
would be impossible to verify his assertion (for it is certain that no printed
edition contains in its text such an ascription of the Latin Timon),if it were
not that L. Frati in editing the Epistolarioof Peregrino de' Zambeccari in the
Fontiper la Storiad'Italia, 1929, had given us a little more information on the
source of Sabbadini's statement. On page xxii of his introduction Frati cites
from a copy of Lucian's Opuscula plurima,Venice, S. Bevilaqua, 1494, preserved
in the Bibl. Nazionale Centrale at Florence (pressmark L.5-I7) the hand-
written heading over the Charon: "Hoc Luciani opus . . . aliqua eternitas
oriatur" in its entirety, which we now know to derive from Lauer's sheet of
rubrics. Frati has nothing to say on the translator's name Bertoldus and for
us, who know its origin, this written copy of 1494 has lost all evidential value;
moreover it is found scribbled out of its proper place, for it is not over the
Timonbut over the Charon,which in that edition is given in Rinuccio's trans-
lation as cited above.'
The only little piece of corroborative evidence which I have found so far,
that translations of Lucian by a man named Bertoldus were in existence, is the
entry in the inventory of the library of Duke Borso d'Este made in 1467:
Lucianus ex graeco translatus per Bertholdum in membranis in forma
mediocri Littera moderna

as given by G. Bertoni: La Biblioteca Estense e la Coltura Ferrarese, 1471-1505,

Turin, 1903, p. 216.
That, I am afraid, is all I have been able to discover about this shadowy
Bertoldus, who, whoever he was and wherever he worked, must be counted
among the earliest of the Renaissance translators from the Greek.
III. Palinurus.
After the Charonand the Timonthere follows in the first Roman edition
1 The recent
rediscovery of the Florence we reproduce. I cannot help adding that
Lucian (see p. Io, n. I) has rendered the above- since 1947 I have gone four times to the Bibl.
described confusion even more involved. Naz. in quest of this Lucian. It remained
Both Frati and Sabbadini must have been "irreperibile" and I have not seen it yet. But
extraordinarily slipshod. There is no 1494 I owe reliable information on its existence and
Lucian with MS. headings in the Biblioteca its contents to my friend Comm. T. de
Nazionale Centrale. The pressmark Frati Marinis, who has succeeded in examining it
cites is that of the 1470 Lucian which has no for me.
notes, but does contain the rubricator-sheet

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14 E. P. GOLDSCHMIDT
the dialogue Palinurus,and Lauer's editor instructs the rubricator that he
should entitle it:
Luciani dialogus per Rinutium denuo translatus cuius interlocutores sunt
Charon et Palinurus. Obsecro ...
We may well wonder how at the time ard place when this was printed,
Rome I470, such a grossly false assertioncould be published. For the Palinurus,
a rather flat-footed discussion between Aeneas' unfortunate helmsman and
Charon, the ferryman, on the miseries of all estates on earth, is not by Lucian
at all. No Greek original of it exists, so that it could not be "translated"
either by Rinuccio or by anyone else. The Palinurusis a composition by Maffeo
Vegio of Lodi (I406-58), who from 1433 onwards was one of the more im-
portant officials of the Roman Curia. He was an industrious and prolific
writer, both in prose and in verse, and he liked to exercise his talent for
imitative composition by producing work which was taken to be a deceptive
"pastiche" of some ancient author. He was bold enough to write a thirteenth,
concluding canto for Virgil's Aeneid,which has found its way with, or even
without, his name into several of the early editions.
Lucian seems to have been one of Vegius' favourite authors. The Palinurus
is quite closely modelled on Lucian's writings, and not only the names of the
interlocutors, but the technique of composition prove his familiarity with the
Greek satirist, though we cannot be certain that he read him in Greek. Beside
the PalinurusVegius wrote at least two other "Lucianic" dialogues, a Disputatio
interSolem, Terramet Aurum,and the Philalethes,sive veritasinvisa. This seems
to have been a very popular piece with the fifteenth-century public and there
are a number of printed editions of it from 1473 onwards, generally with the
true author's name. But I have found at least one Philalethes,printed at
Cracow, by Florian Ungler in 1512, in which the author is given as Lucian
of Samosata.1
The bibliographical history of the Palinurusis amusing and peculiar. Its
occurrence in the Roman Lucian is no doubt its first appearance. But not
long after, in 1473, it is printed again at Cologne from William Caxton's
anonymous press in a volume of Ten Dialogues(Hain 6107). Here it is seen
together with the Philalethes,both of them with Maphaeus Vegius' name as
the author, and it is entitled Dialogus defoelicitate et miseria. On May 13, 1497,
Guillaume Le Signerre at Milan brings out a collection of Maphaeus Vegius'
writings in which he includes the Dialogus de Foelicitateet Miseria (Hain
15933). But in March 1497 another Milan printer, Ulrich Scinzenzeler, had
published a collection of Lucian's works in which the same piece is contained
as Lucian's Palinurus(Hain 10262). All this goes to show that the fifteenth
century was not keenly interested in questions of authorship. But still we
cannot help wondering how a Roman editor could in 1470 attribute the
Palinurusto Lucian, when its author Vegius had died in Rome as recently as
1458, and how he could give Rinuccio as its translator, who was certainly
still alive in I456. To my mind this blunder confirms the impression that
Lauer's Lucian is a surreptitious and almost clandestine publication.
1 See K.
Piekarski, Pierzwa Drukarnia Fl. Unglera, 1926, No. 12.

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 THE FIRST EDITION OF LUCIAN-OF SAMOSATA 15
IV. Scipio.
The twelfth of Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, the Dispute between
Alexander, Hannibal and Scipio, who in the underworld appeal to the judge
Minos to decide who was the greatest general of the three.
For this piece the sheet of directions for the rubricator prescribes:
Prohemium libelli de prestantia trium principum, videlicet Alexandri,
Annibalis et Scipionis, translati per clarissimum virum Leonardum
Aretinum.-Cum in rebus bellicis.
The attribution of the translation to Leonardo Bruni is a surprising and
quite unwarranted slip on the part of the anonymous editor. There are few
of the early Lucian translations about whose origins we are more reliably
informed than on the Scipio. On the other hand we possess exceptionally
thorough-going studies on Bruni's translations, based on the examination of
hundreds of MSS., viz. L. Bertalot, "Ubersetzungen von Leonardus Aretinus"
in Quellen & Forschungenaus italienischenBibliothekenund Archiven,XXVII,
I937; supplementing: H. Baron, Leonardus BruniAretinus. . . mit einerChrono-
logie seiner Werke und Briefe, Leipzig, 1928. Neither of them has any mention
of Lucian whatsoever, from which we may conclude that nowhere have they
met with this false ascription, which seems to be entirely due to the imagina-
tion of Lauer's editor.
In fact the AltercatioAlexandriAnnibaliset Scipionis,as found here or any-
where else in print or in manuscript before I500, is the Latin version by
Giovanni Aurispa. It was Aurispa who, together with Rinuccio, brought the
Greek manuscript from Constantinople in 1423, and it was Aurispa who in
1425 at Bologna made this translation and dedicated it to Battista Capodiferro,
Governor of Bologna. In numerous MSS,1 though strangely enough in none
of the printed editions, this dialogue is preceded by the letter: "Ad Baptistam
caput de ferrum Romanum civem, disciplinae militaris virum et praetorem
Bononiae, Aurispa . . ." The letter itself begins with the words: "Cum in
rebus bellicis . . ." and these are the words before which Lauer's sheet directs
you to place the heading. In fact the printed text of the Roman edition gives
the whole of Aurispa's letter, though without its address, before it gets to:
"Alexander: Me, o Lybice, praeponi decet .. ." the opening words of Lucian's
dialogue. Before this beginning the rubricator is to insert:
Incipit libellus altercationis Alexandri et Annibalis de prestantia.
A curious peculiarity of Aurispa's version seems worth noting, even in this
condensed account. In Lucian's Greek original Scipio only comes in at the
very end with one sentence to protest against Hannibal's claims, and the
judgment of Minos is given: Alexander to be first, Scipio second, then third
perhaps Hannibal, who is not to be despised either.
In the Latin "translation" Scipio by no means confines his claim to a
single sentence, but gives a substantial account of his African victories; he
1 On the
many MSS. and on the curious F6rster, "Zur Schriftstellerei des Libanios,"
deviation from the Greek original, see: R. in Jahrbuchfir Philologie, 1876, pp. 219 if.
2

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16 E. P. GOLDSCHMIDT
concludes with the statement that, not for insisting on his own personal prefer-
ment, but "pro patria haec dicta sunt." Thereupon Minos gives hisjudgment:
"Per Jovem. o Scipio, et recte et uti Romanum decet locutus es"; you are to
be put first, Alexander to be second, and third, perhaps, Hannibal, for he is
not to be despised either.
Fdrster, loc. cit., is right, no doubt, in seeing in this arbitrary alteration a
compliment to the Roman military Governor to whom Aurispa dedicates his
version. I would add that so high handed a "patriotic" distortion of the text
before the translator appears to me an ominous symptom of the spirit of
nationalism, which the humanists, Petrarch' himself at their head, were to
inject into European literature.
V. Tyrannus,seu Trajectus(graece KccraXou;,Dindorf XVI).
Lucian's Tyrant follows his favourite device of presenting his characters
in the ferry across the Styx on their way to the underworld. The murderous
tyrant arrives, full of conceit and arrogance, and holds up the other passengers
by his blustering demands to be immediately returned to earth. He is dragged
before the judges, convicted by the testimony not only of human witnesses
but also of his bed and of his night lamp, and ultimately condemned never
to drink of Lethe and so never to lose the haunting memory of his crimes.
The heading for this Dialogue reads:

Luciani viri clarissimi fabula de venatione (corrected by hand into:

navigatione) vel tiranno, cuius interlocutores sunt Charon, Clotho,
Mercurius, Radamantus, Megapentes, Ciniscus et Micillus mortuus,
lucerna et lectus; denuo translata per venerabilem patrem Cristoforum
Personam, Romanum, Priorem in S. Balbina.
There is no reason to doubt the truth of this attribution; Christophorus
Persona (1416-86), Prior of the Guilelmite monastery of Santa Balbina at
Rome, was an industrious translator from the Greek who, towards the end of
his life was appointed Prefect of the Vatican Library by Innocent VIII. Two
other of his translations at least appeared in print in his lifetime, one of them,
Twenty-fiveSermonsof St. John Chrysostom (Hain 5039), printed by the same
Georg Lauer in the same type and in the same year as this Lucian. The
other is an Origen Against Celsusprinted also at Rome by Georg Herolt in
1481 (Hain 12078). His translations of the Historiesof the Gothsby Procopius
and by Agathias were published in I506 and in 1516. A notice on him by
Fabricius: Bibliothecamediaeet infimaeLatinitatis,1858, I, pp. 348-9, enumerates
these and a few other works from his pen, but not this Lucianic dialogue.
Note the words "denuo translata" in the rubric, which in the case of the
Charonwe have found to be true. I have found no trace of any such earlier
translation of the Tyrannus,but the possibility of its existence is by no means
to be excluded. However I have no note of any MS. containing the Latin
Tyrannus.
1 Petrarch: see Africa, VIII, lines 42-232, without some trace of pro-Italian fervour and
where Scipio also is awarded first place, not anti-Greek animosity.

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 THE FIRST EDITION OF LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA 17
VI. VitarumAuctio(Dindorf XIV).
The Auctioning of the Philosophers' Lives must have been a puzzling piece
for a fifteenth-century reader. Without some slight knowledge of the doctrines
of the Pythagoreans, the Cynics, the Epicureans, the Peripatetics, etc.,
Lucian's satirical idea of having them put up for auction one by one and
cross-examined by the intending purchasers, must have been barely intel-
ligible. That this was the case becomes evident when we observe the grotesque
mistakes and mistranslationsin the early printed versions. Whether Rinuccio's
authentic Latin rendering was much better, I for one cannot tell. I have not
examined the MSS., and I would suspect that they might be nearly as un-
faithful to the original text as the printer's productions seem to be. The
choice of this Dialogue for translation suggests the humanists' superior, "high-
brow," attitude which put a blight of sterility on so great a proportion of their
labours. They were so often pretending to understand texts which, quite
plainly for us to judge, remained utterly obscure to them.
The version here printed is that by Rinuccio of Arezzo, on whom see
above under Charon(p. I ), but the printed text retains no trace of the
dedicatory epistle to Seraphius of Urbino, which should precede it. This
translation is found in MSS. generally following that of the Charon(see Lock-
wood, loc. cit.) and this explains how Lauer's editor has come to prescribe the
rubric:
Eiusdem Luciani per eundem translatus tractatulus de Venditione
Vitarum, cuius interlocutores sunt Venditor, Mercurius, Emptor, Philo-
sophus.
Since in Lauer's quarto Rinuccio's VitarumAuctiodoes not follow upon
the Charon,but immediately after Persona's Tyrannus,the words "per eundem
translatus" are utterly misleading. *Butwe have by now ceased to wonder at
the erratic fantasies of Lauer's editor.
All this lengthy analysis of a slender volume of eighty leaves may appear
somewhat involved and complicated, and if the reader should happen to be
a believer in "progress," he may well ask: What does it prove except that the
first edition is a very bad one? Nevertheless I would plead that if we admit-
tedly learn little about Lucian from such research, we are brought to see more
vividly than we may have done, how the "Revival of Learning" worked in
practice. We were led to find out something about the persons of the first
translators from the Greek and about their patrons. We had to recognize
that, contrary to widely current opinion, it was long before the Fall of Con-
stantinople that the Western World became curious about the Greek classics.
We met with a crass example of the indifference to authenticity and to
problems of authorship prevailing among the fifteenth-century scholars, who
would enjoy their Palinuruswhether by Lucian or by Vegio. We have en-
countered an early instance of patriotic falsification of an ancient text in
Aurispa's Scipio. And we have left aside many pertinent reflections on the
subsequent fate and influence of these early translations, a subject which I
hope to pursue more fully in some future publication.
The editor of Lauer's Lucian, the man responsible for the prescribed title-

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18 E. P. GOLDSCHMIDT
headings and for the muddled displacements in the text, who gave the printer
his script and, presumably, hired or encouraged him to publish it, does not
make himself known. It would not be for fear of pedantic strictures like ours
on the incompetence of his editorship that he hides his identity; he must have
had other reasons. He does not seize the opportunity to offer his production
to some patron of learning and so to win favour and a little reputation, to
"immortalize" his name and that of his protector, as the composers of prefatory
letters were so fond of proclaiming.
It is permissible to make a guess at the motives for such unusual self-
effacement. This Lucian is published in Rome in the year 1470. Very shortly
before that date, in 1468, an event of nearly tragic consequences had caused
some commotion in the literary circles of the city. All the members of
the AcademiaRomanawere arrested on a charge of conspiracy against the
government of Pope Paul II. They were all closely examined under torture
in the Castello Sant' Angelo, soon found to be guiltless of any political machi-
nations, and all of them were released within a year. Jo. Baptista Platina,
the historian of the Popes, was one of the members who suffered this indignity
and he has left us an account of his experience in his, comprehensibly, some-
what spiteful life of Paul II, first published in his Vitae Pontificum,Venice,
1479-
The AcademiaRomanawas a circle of literary and scholarly people, mainly
composed of the pupils and admirers of Pomponius Laetus, who was the
presiding figure of the society; it mostly met in his house on the Quirinal
and hence is sometimes referred to as SodalitasQuirinalisor AcademiaPom-
poniana. From 1465 until his death in I498 Pomponius held a salaried
lecturership in the Roman University, the Studium Urbis, and his courses on
Roman antiquities were assiduously followed by numerous disciples. His
"Academy" included some very serious scholars, like Jo. Baptista Platina and
Marcus Antonius Sabellicus, the historian of Venice. But it also comprised a
crowd of young poets and enthusiasts for the antique. One of the distinctive
features which seems to have originated among them was that all its members
gave themselves classical names, a custom that persisted in learned societies
in and outside Italy for generations. In their trial this discarding of their given
Christian saints' names and their use of pagan names like Pomponius, Calli-
machus or Pantagathus was one of the points given prominence in their
questioning, even by the Pope himself. But their fervour for antiquity did not
stop there; they publicly performed some comedies of Plautus in the Piazza
Navona, they even went so far as to celebrate the ancient festival of the Palilia
on the anniversary of the foundation of Rome. There undeniably was a
tendency to flirt with paganism among the less restrained members of this
Academy, and there was, it would seem, ample ground for the accusation.that
their morals were suspect.
In fact we may well doubt whether the outcome of their trial would have
been as mild as it fortunately proved to be if the interrogators had known of
the astonishing, if rather puerile, inscriptions which Comm. G. B. de Rossi
encountered in the Roman Catacombs in 1852, and which he published in
his RomaSotteraneaCristiana,I864, I, pp. 2-9. It is evident how profoundly
he was shocked and upset by these traces of the Roman Academy as his earliest

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 THE FIRST EDITION OF LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA 19
predecessors in penetrating into the underground chapels and venerable
sepulchres of the early martyrs, in the Cemetery of Calixtus. On the walls of
these hallowed passages we can see-not scribbled, but traced in lapidary
capitals-the record of the presence of: Pantagathus, Mammeius, Papirius,
Minicinus, Aemilius, Unanimes Perscrutatores Antiquitatis, regnante Pom.
Pont. Max. (signed:) Minutius Rom. Pup. Deliciae. And again: Pomponius
Pont. Max., Pantagathus Sacerdos Achademiae Rom. How far such mural
writings should be taken seriously may be a matter of opinion, but that the
"reigning pontiff" Pomponius and the "Priest of the Roman Academy"
Pantagathus were not regarding themselves as Christians, but, playfully
perhaps, as servants of some pagan cult, can hardly be doubted.'
A society like the Academy of Pomponius, a group of preponderantly
young enthusiasts for pagan antiquity, a kind of advanced, "highbrow" clique
in a Rome mainly dominated by canon lawyers and purposeful careerists,
was a circle in which Lucian's ironical and disrespectful satires would find
their readers and admirers, where every newly translated piece from his pen
would circulate and be enjoyed. It seems to me most likely that the haphazard
bundle of six dialogues came to Lauer's printing office from some up-to-date
young member of Pomponius' classes on Roman Archaology. The happy-go-
lucky attitude of the "editor" towards his duty to provide reliable information
on the authors of his versions stamps his publication almost as an under-
graduate's joke.
The person of the printer, Georg Lauer, affords another clue that points
in the same direction. For among the comparatively few productions of his
press we met with four classics, the Curtius Rufus, the Varro, the Festus and
the Nonius Marcellus edited by Pomponius Laetus in 1471-72.
There must have been personal contact between Lauer and Pomponius as
between printer and proof-reader at the least. Witness also the explicit
reference to Lauer in the preface to the Nonius Marcellus as reprinted by
B. Botfield, loc. cit., p. 138. Not that I would suggest Pomponius himself for
the r6le of the first editor of Lucian; he was too solemn a pedant to care for
such levities and too anti-Greek to exert himself on behalf of an author so
conspicuously lacking in Roman gravity. But the link between the printer
and the Academy through the person of its president is demonstrable.
Granted that some minor member of the AcademiaRomanamay have
conceived the project of publishing some Lucianic dialogues, he would surely
have good reason for keeping his name out of the printed book. It would
barely be twelve months since he had come out of prison, absolved of a silly
charge of conspiracy, but after a most unpleasant examination, in which the
prosecution made ample use of accusations of paganizing impiety, of moral
1 On Pomponius Laetus and his Roman useful footnotes is to be found in G. Zippel's
Academy we find some information in Tira- edition of Mich. Canensius, "De Vita et
boschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, .1795, Pontificatu Pauli II," in the Rerum Italicarum
VI, I, pp. 99-104, and L. Pastor, History of Scriptores, 1904, III, pt. 16, pp. 153-6. A
the Popes, 1894, IV, pp. 41-66. Also in J. E. fuller study of Pomp. Laetus and especially
Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, II, of the trial of the Academicians, based on
pp. 92-3; M. Maylender, Storia delle Accademie manuscript material in the Vatican, is V.
d'Italia, 1929, IV, pp. 320-7. A cluster of Zabughin, Pomponio Leto, I909- I.
I

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20 E. P. GOLDSCHMIDT
laxity, and of notorious irreverence to authority, implicating the entire
Academy and each one of its members singly. Paul'II was still alive-he died
the next year-and it can hardly have been advisable for a young scholar to
flaunt his admiration for Lucian while his regime lasted.
Nor, under such circumstances, would a dedication of a volume of Lucian
to some influential prelate have been helpful or even acceptable. To the
half-learned and to the severer scholars little would be known about Lucian,
then as now, except that he was a naughty author.
The supposition that the first printed Lucian came to see the light through
some impulse generated in the Roman Academy is admittedly pure guesswork;
but it may appear as plausible to others as it does to me. May I give further
rein to my imagination and record what may well have passed between the
printer and the young scholar who brought the manuscript?
"What about a dedication to some cardinal?" asked Lauer. "Never
mind," replied the editor, "this book will sell itself."

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