SOURCES FOR THE TEXT

The basic manuscript tradition of the colloquium Montepessulanum is simple, as the text is found in only one manuscript, but extracts also occur in a glossary that is preserved in a much more complicated fashion. There is also a papyrus containing material related to the colloquium.

THE MONTPELLIER MANUSCRIPT

The colloquium Montepessulanum is named after the only manuscript to preserve it intact, H 306 in the Bibliothèque universitaire de médecine at the Université Montpellier 1 (Mp). This manuscript, produced in France in the second quarter of the ninth century (Bischoff 1998–2004: II.206), contains a large and diverse group of texts, including several glossaries and the Hermeneumata Montepessulana. These Hermeneumata consist of the colloquium, a long capitula section, and a short alphabetical glossary that seems to come from a different source; the colloquium is found at the start of the Hermeneumata section, on folios 139r–146v.

The text is written in a clear, careful hand, laid out with two columns per page and generous spacing. The Greek is in capitals and the Latin in minuscule; the Latin (the right-hand column) was written first and then the Greek (the left-hand column), but the copyist exercised great care to avoid the misalignment that so easily results from such a copying system. He appears to have checked the alignment with almost every Greek word he wrote, for a significant number of lines that had been omitted in copying the Latin (a problem that would normally lead to misalignment when the two columns were copied separately) were added at this stage. After both columns were complete someone – perhaps the original copyist but more likely another from the same time and place – compared the text to its exemplar and made some additional corrections, including indications (using Tironian notes) when the absence of material was due to gaps already present in the original.

In the Greek of the colloquium and the capitula many words have been divided using raised dots, some of which seem to have been written along with the letters themselves and others added subsequently. Goetz believed (1892a: xxvi) that all the dots were later (though still ninth-century) additions by the person who added the Tironian notes, but he failed to observe that there are two distinct types of dots.

Colloquium Montepessulanum

This version of the colloquia is known sometimes as the colloquium Celtis, after the Renaissance scholar who made the only surviving copy of it, Conrad Celtes, and sometimes as the colloquium Vindobonense, because that sole copy is now in Vienna. It is attested only in a late and corrupt form and is full of vocabulary lists that break up the flow of the narrative, but it clearly contains much ancient material, and because the colloquium Celtis is one of the longest versions of the colloquia it provides a significant portion of our evidence for them. This colloquium is better known than the others, because it was first published by Dionisotti (1982) in an article much more accessible than Goetz's work on the other colloquia.

SOURCE FOR THE TEXT

Only one manuscript of this version is known, codex suppl. Gr. 43 in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna (C). It contains the colloquium on folios 12r–17r, preceded by a Renaissance grammar of Greek (folios 1 verso–11 verso) and followed by a very long capitula section (folios 18r–45v). The text is arranged not in the usual narrow columns but in long lines running the full width of the page, with the Greek above the corresponding lines of Latin. Despite the late date of the manuscript it is almost completely without accents, breathings, subscripts, and punctuation. There is no ornamentation except that the Latin is written in black and the Greek in red.

The colloquium section of the manuscript was written in 1495 by the humanist Conrad Celtes, copying a much earlier exemplar that has since disappeared. The exemplar was housed in the German monastery of Sponheim and is probably identifiable with entry 18 in a contemporary catalogue of the Greek works in that monastery, which describes it as codex arcualis formae scriptus, q(ui) co(n)tinet Graecu(m) vocabulariu(m) cu(m) Latino supposito M. Tullii Ciceronis ad filiu(m) suu(m), secu(n)du(m) materias in varios titulos partitu(m), l(iber) 1 ‘a quarto volume that contains a Greek vocabulary, with the Latin placed underneath, of M. Tullius Cicero to his son, divided into various chapters according to the material, one book’.

Title Ἑρμηνεύματα/Interpretamenta: This is the title not of the colloquium but of the Hermeneumata as a whole, which in this version begins with the colloquium. On the use of the terms ἑρμηνεύματα and interpretamenta see vol. I pp. 52–3 with n. 143. The original title for the colloquium itself has been lost from this version; for its probable form see on ME 3a and on the LS title.

Ia–d This preface introduces the Hermeneumata as a whole rather than the colloquium in particular. It is almost identical to part of the preface to the ME version of the Hermeneumata, and less closely related to several other prefaces; comparison of the different versions suggests that the ME preface is the most conservative and that this one has probably innovated where it differs. For a full discussion see on ME 1b–e.

Ic This section is probably a later revision of material that was grammatically awkward in both Latin and Greek (see on ME Id and 1e); it thus indicates that the reviser had a good command of both classical languages.

Ic The Montpellier manuscript has interpretatorus (corrected by a second hand to interpretaturus, but the correction must be simply a desperate attempt to make some sense of the passage), as is clear from inspection of the original and acknowledged by Goetz (1892a: 283.16); Boucherie, however, thought the manuscript had interpretatoriis. The second abscida lucida glossary in Vat. Pal. Lat. 1773 has interpretatorius here (cf. Goetz 1892a: 515.49). None of the manuscript readings is possible as it stands, but Boucherie’s interpretatoriis, even if it has been superseded as a reading of the manuscript, has some merits as an emendation: it makes sense and it matches the Greek. Goetz therefore retained it in his restored version of the colloquium (1892a: 654).

But there are also problems with interpretatoriis. The adjective interpretatorius is very rare: the TLL cites as examples only this passage, the abscida lucida glossary entry derived from it, and one passage in Tertullian (Ad nationes 2.4.6 = Corpus Christianorum series Latina I: 46).

Id ἄρχομαι γράφ〈ε〉ιν/incipio scribere: In Latin this is again (cf. on Ic) a later rationalization, by someone with a good understanding of both languages, of material that was originally more peculiar; see on ME In.

Mp Montpellier Faculté de Médecine H 306 (9th century)

Boucherie Boucherie 1872a

Goetz Goetz 1892a

Haupt Haupt 1871

Reeve Personal communication from M.D.

Reeve

ac before correction

del. bracketed for deletion by

om. omitted by

pc after correction

ut vid. reading uncertain

( ) parenthetical material in the text

〈 〉 editorial supplements to the text

[ ] editorial additions to the translation

In the text, line divisions reproduce those in Mp unless otherwise noted; capitalization, punctuation, accents, breathings, iotas subscript, and word divisions are editorial. Spelling is normalized (with original spellings in the apparatus), but morphology and syntax are not normalized. The section numbers are those provided by Goetz in his restored version (1892a: 652–9), but for convenience I have divided them into smaller units marked with letters.

In the apparatus, the reading of Mp is always given when it differs from the text printed (except that abbreviations have been silently expanded when there is no doubt about the correct expansion, and differences concerning only diacritic marks, punctuation, capitalization, or word division are not noted), so the text may be assumed to have the authority of that manuscript when there is no indication to the contrary. Readings of the abscida lucida glossaries are given only when they are of particular interest. Corrections and supplements come from Haupt (1871) unless otherwise noted.

A leaf from a parchment codex of the fifth or sixth century contains noun paradigms and is important for illustrating how Greek speakers learned Latin grammatical paradigms. Both the paradigms themselves and the framework in which they are presented are in Latin, so only the fact that each word is glossed in Greek before being translated reveals that the text was intended for Greek speakers. This transcription, based on personal examination of the parchment, is effectively identical to that presented in Dickey, Ferri, and Scappaticcio (2013), where more comprehensive notes and further discussion can be found; all supplements are due to the authors of that edition unless otherwise indicated. I have supplied Greek accents, breathings, and some of the word divisions, but the overlines, punctuation, and other symbols are original, as are the line divisions.

Title Περὶ ὁμιλίας καθημερινῆς/ de sermone cottidiano: This title has affinities with the titles of three other colloquia: ME (second colloquium), LS, and C. See on ME 3a.

Ia–2d The exhortation and response with which this text begins are unusual; most of the other colloquia begin with an explanatory preface in the author’s own voice (C, Mp, and both the ME colloquia) or with a description of the start of a boy’s day (LS and most of the other colloquia after their prefaces). It may be a later addition to the original schoolbook format, but not necessarily, for the colloquium Stephani begins with a very short speech that could be related to this passage: someone who could be (but need not be) the main character’s father says ‘Read well! What did you do today?’ (S 1–2). There the question provides a framework for the rest of the text, which is narrated by the boy in an apparent response to the initial question: ‘I got up . . .’ Here the introductory speeches are less well connected to the rest of the text, both because the father does not ask the boy to describe his day and because the rest of the text is in dialogue format rather than first-person narrative and therefore does not seem to be part of the boy’s response to his father. Nevertheless it is possible that there is some distant connection between the two introductions.

It is notable that the exhortation in 1a–2d contains elements that are part of the usual morning routine described in other versions of the schoolbook, such as getting up early, getting dressed, and going to school. It is likely that those elements have migrated from the main part of the text into the introductory exhortation: the exhortation was created or expanded by taking material from the morning scenes of the original schoolbook.

Ia προσφίλτατε/amantissime: The Latin term is classical and well attested as a vocative from the second century AD onwards (Marcus Aurelius in Fronto, Epistulae 29.7 van den Hout). The Greek, however, is very rare: apart from this passage and 12a below it appears only once, in a seventh-century text (where it is also in the vocative: Miracula Sancti Artemi, in Papadopoulos-Kerameus 1909: 78.23).