BOOK: Angelo Poliziano, "Miscellanies"

Angelo Poliziano: Miscellanies. Vol. 1. Edited and translated by Andrew R. Dyck and Alan Cottrell. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 89. Harvard University Press, 2020. 9780674049376. xxviii + 639 pp.

Angelo Poliziano: Miscellanies. Vol. 2. Edited and translated by Andrew R. Dyck and Alan Cottrell. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 90. Harvard University Press, 2020. 9780674244962. vi + 418 pp.

Poliziano, whom we previously encountered in the ITRL series as a poet (Silvae, Greek and Latin Poetry) and a letter-writer (vol. 1 of his letters appeared in 2006, and so far there has been no hint of any subsequent volume), now appears before us in his main role, that of a philologist. His Miscellanies are a collection of short entries about various subjects having to do with classical languages and literature — not too unlike a good blog nowadays. He hoped to publish several ‘centuries’, or groups of 100 such entries, but managed to publish only the first one. He had written 59 entries of the second century by the time of his death, and they were not published until the 1970s (vol. 2, p. 300). I found many interesting tidbits in this work, and even the not-so-interesting entries, being short, weren't hard or unpleasant to get through. On average, I liked vol. 1 better than vol. 2, because in the latter the entries tend to be a bit longer and often go into more detail than I'd like about some topic that was less interesting than I'd like.

I have long had a great admiration for philologists and the work they do, and felt rather envious that I haven't got the brain for that sort of thing myself. You get many glimpses into their work here in Poliziano's book, and it's extremely impressive to see how he digs up various scraps of information scattered far and wide across the extant works of Greek and Latin literature and connects them together in a way that throws some light on whatever topic he's dealing with at the moment, whether it's explaining some obscure allusion or correcting a widespread but faulty manuscript reading. He has a good awareness that manuscript errors tend to accumulate during copying, so that older manuscripts are likely to be better; and thanks to his good connections with the Medici family he seems to have had access to some quite old manuscripts in their possession.

The humanist philologists seem to have been involved in several difficult tasks at the same time: ascertaining the meaning and finer points of various aspects of the Greek and Latin language; determining the text of ancient writings by comparing many late and faulty manuscripts; and interpreting and clarifying any hard-to-understand passages and allusions in those ancient writings. Learning more about one of these things may help throw some light on the others, and imperfect understanding of one may make it harder to clarify the others, so it's all quite intricately connected and this whole project of ‘recovering’ ancient Greek and Latin literature must have been an enormous task.

Another recurring subject in this book are Poliziano's quarrels and disagreements with other philologists; he often criticizes their errors (and some of them, if we may believe his representations, do seem to have had something of a tendency to pull things out of their asses when they got stumped in interpreting some obscure passage; one Domizio Calderini is a particularly frequent target of Poliziano's, so that I almost began to feel sorry for him) and bickers with them over priority, which clearly must have been quite important to him. He seems to have first made many of his discoveries public in his lectures rather than in print, with the result that they sometimes made their way into print in the works of his rivals sooner than in Poliziano's own. I couldn't help wishing that there was a bit less of this bickering in Poliziano's book, but I suppose it's natural that an author feels jealous about getting the recognition he thinks his work deserves.

Anyway, without further ado, here are some miscellaneous interesting things that I found in this work:

I.3 — an interesting section on the camelopard. Poliziano quotes several ancient descriptions of this animal and adds that it seems to be “what is commonly called a ‘giraffe’”. He saw one in Florence where it had been sent as a diplomatic gift by the Sultan of Egipt. He mentions how surprised he was by its horns, which are not mentioned in the ancient descriptions — a nice illustration of their incompleteness.

I.6 — a short section about Catullus's sparrow (which he mentions in one of his poems, saying that his beloved likes to play with it). This naturally led people to think that the sparrow is just a metonymy with an obscene meaning, and Poliziano exhibits a passage from Martial which supports this interpretation. We have encountered this sparrow before, in ITRL vols. 22 and 38.

I.8 — the Roman names of the days were all based on the planets (and the Sun), and Pontano cites two more or less wacky theories by Dio as to why that particular sequence was chosen. But what I found really interesting was Pontano's remark that “since the Sabbath and the Lord's Day have now commonly lost their ancient names, while the rest [of the days] still retain [theirs], it is fitting for scholars to know that the former was named for Saturn and the latter for the Sun” (I.9.2). He was, of course, writing from the perspective of the Romance languages, where we find names such as sabato and domenica; but in English, Saturday and Sunday still have those old planetary names (as does Monday, while the other days are named after Germanic gods).

I.11 — this chapter includes an interesting myth about the rose: it used to be white, but at one point Venus, while running, “fell into some roses and became caught in their thorns” (I.11.1); her blood dyed them red, and they have retained that colour ever since.

I.12 — a silly legend about the discovery of purple dye. Heracles's dog ate some of the snails that produce that dye, and the nymph Tyra (after whom the Phoenician city of Tyre was named) noticed the colour on the dog's lips and asked Heracles for a dress of the same color :)))

I.14 — on various more or less harp-like instruments and their names. Notable among these is the naula or nabla, whose triangular shape apparently inspired the mathematical symbol ∇ of the same name. We have already encountered it in ITRL vol. 6. Not to be confused with the NAMBLA :)) Also very interesting is the translator's remark that the change in pronounciation of β from b to v already took place by the Hellenistic period (n. 215 on p. 536) — thus the Greeks have been pronouncing β as v for much longer than as b!

I.15 — some interesting ancient mentions of Sybaris, the ancient Greek town in southern Italy that became a byword for dissipation and luxury. A few authors mention something called “the Sybaritic books” by an otherwise unknown “catamite Sybarite Hemitheon” (I.15.2). However, according to this blog post Hemitheon seems to have lived in the times of Ovid, long after the town of Sybaris was destroyed, so he can only have been a Sybarite in the figurative sense.

I.19 — on the use of aspiration, i.e. the sound h, in Latin. Apparently in very early times they did not aspirate consonants at all, so they said Gracci instead of Gracchi and triumpi instead of triumphi. (This last one is very interesting — does that mean that the letters <ph> in triumph used to represent an aspirated stop /p^h/ rather than the fricative /f/ like nowadays?) Cicero says that he tried to follow that ancient practice for some time, but eventually yielded to the prevailing use of his own day (I.19.2). Later apparently there was a period where they exaggerated in the opposite direction, saying chenturiones instead of centuriones and the like (I.19.1).

I.26.2 — in an offhand remark, Poliziano says that the Latin language has a richer vocabulary than the Greek, but that the latter is more playful and hence better suited to poetry. Earlier he lists some examples, from Cicero, of Latin words that apparently have no Greek equivalent (I.1.6). But I suspect that with some effort you could also find Greek word with no Latin equivalent, and so on for any pair of languages.

I.28 — on the connection between the word ‘panic’ and the ancient god Pan. I knew that there was a connection, but was still surprised at it, since I thought of Pan as a relatively harmless forest deity. Apparently, however, Pan was also associated with war (he “waged war against the Titans”, I.28.3; and was the “ruler of groves and war”, I.28.4). Possibly panic terrors were also associated with the women who were “wont to celebrate Pan's orgies with shouts which [. . .] cause the listeners to be gripped by fear” (I.28.2).

I.31.4 — a nice passage from Tertullian, comparing the soul's fate after death to that of a manumitted slave who is now “honored with the splendor of white clothing [. . .] and the name and tribe of his patron and access to his table”.

I.32 — apparently the ancients had a curious custom of “acknowledging lightning by smacking one's lips” :))

I.35 — an collection of ancient references to the stereotype of Cretans being liars. I knew, of course, about that famous paradox where Epimenides the Cretan said that all Cretans were liars (did he lie or not in saying that?), but I didn't know (or more likely had forgotten) that this statement even made it into the Bible (Titus 1:17). Another nice one: “the Cretans are always liars, since they built Jupiter's sepulcher, although he never died” (I.35.3).

I.39 — apparently the Romans used to refer to the Nile as “Melo” in very early times. Well, it isn't uncommon for names to get corrupted during transmission, and I guess they switched to the correct name later as their contacts with the eastern Mediterranean increased.

I.42 — Poliziano cites a few ancient sources indicating that thumbs were “clenched” to show support and turned down to deny support. This last one surprised me a bit; it is, of course, the obvious and traditional view on the subject, but nowadays it seems that everyone and their dog is very keen to debunk it and claim that it was exactly the opposite, with thumbs down indicating support and thumbs up denying it. Now I don't know whom to believe :) And I'm not quite sure what he means by “clenching” a thumb — is that the same thing as clenching the fist? Anyway, there's a wikipedia page about the whole thing, which could be summarized as ‘it's complicated (and unclear)’.

I.45 — Poliziano cites passages from Homer and Plato demonstrating that Patrocles was older than Achilles, contrary to popular belief! That surprised me as well, I always thought of Patrocles as younger.

I.47 — ancient artists had a habit of signing their works with ‘So-and-so was making (faciebat) this’ and not ‘made’ (fecit), either out of modesty (to suggest that the work was never quite perfect) or as an excuse (should anyone find mistakes, they can be excused because the work is not yet finished).

I.52.2–3 — apparently some ancient temples had altars built out of animal horns, and in fact either only right horns or only left horns. Wow :))

I.55 — about the “crocodile puzzle”, in which a crocodile snatches a woman's child and promises to return it if she gives a true answer to the question whether the crocodile would have to return the child or not. As I understand it, if she says that the crocodile will have to return the child, the crocodile can either return it or not and still remain within the rules of the puzzle; but if she says that the crocodile will not return the child, then the crocodile can't comply with the rules of the puzzle regardless of whether it returns the child or not, so its only option is to disappear in a puff of logic :) See also the translator's note 598 on p. 563 for a list of several other types of sophistical arguments.

I.56 — about a mention of two-horned rhinoceroses in a poem by Martial. Poliziano thinks that all rhinoceroses are single-horned, so the reference might actually be to a kind of bull (I.56.4). As the translator points out (n 612 on p. 565; citing the Wikipedia! :)), some rhinoceroses are in fact two-horned and twice as horny as the single-horned ones.

I.61.1 — wine was apparently an antidote to hemlock poison. How convenient :) ‘I swear I only got drunk because I had reason to believe I had been poisoned by hemlock!’

I.62.2 — a very interesting discussion on the names of fingers in Latin, (ancient) Greek and even “Romaic”, i.e. modern Greek (modern as of Poliziano's time, at any rate). The middle finger was apparently called “notorious” (famosus) in Latin, and the ring finger was called “the doctor” (medicus); but in modern Greek, the middle finger was called “the doctor” (iatros). Later he lists an even more odd list of Greek names for fingers: “the opposing [i.e. thumb], the licking finger, the bundle, the passenger, and the gadfly”.

I.65.2 — apparently ancient Roman statues were often in a pose called “ ‘the peacemaker’, which, with the head tilted toward the right shoulder and the arm stretched out at ear level, extends the arm with the thumb raised” (the quote is from Quintilian).

I.72.1 — apparently the ancients used to make garlands for their hair out of the bark of the lime-tree (linden). Poliziano uses what seems to be the Greek word for that tree, philyra. I'm still not quite sure how you make a garland out of tree bark, however...

I.74 — the painter Zeuxis charged people a fee to view his painting of Helen of Troy; “[h]ence even then Helen was commonly called a prostitute, since she was for hire” :))

I.77 — an interesting discussion on whether Vergil or Virgil is the better spelling of that poet's name. Poliziano supports the e-spelling, saying it appears in the earliest sources and monuments, even though in later times, and even in his own day, the i-spelling seemed to predominate. I guess you could say that the same debate is possible in English, where my impression is that the i-spelling is the traditional one (and hence I prefer it), but lately I think the e-spelling has not been uncommon e.g. here in the ITRL series. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen the i-spelling used in Slovenian, always the e-spelling. The wikipedia says that the i-spelling is a corruption that emerged in the late antiquity (perhaps due to some sound change?).

I.80 — a lovely poem by Callimachus; Poliziano gives both its Greek text and his translation of it into Latin. In English, of course, both versions are nearly the same. The goddess Athena is bathing in a river in the company of one of her favourite nymphs; unfortunately, the nymph's son is out hunting and happens to see them naked. [At this point you might be tempted to say: I've seen enough pr0n to know where this is going. But then, if you've seen enough Greek mythology you know that it's going to be going in a very different direction.] Apparently there is some sort of general rule, laid down by no less than Kronos himself, what whoever uninvited sees a deity naked must go blind as punishment. In response to the nymph's complaints, Athena says she is unable to prevent it, but tries to compensate the young man with the gift of prophecy and a long span of life. His name will be familiar to you from the Theban plays of Sophocles, at which point he is an old man — it's Teiresias.

I.86 — on the adjective decumanus and the various things to which it was applied. I knew that the decumanus was one of the principal streets in a traditional Roman city layout (the east-west one, as it turns out; the principal north-south one being the cardo). But here from Poliziano we learn that the adjective decumanus simply meant “tenth” and was often used with the implied idea that the tenth thing is the biggest, so they would talk about the decuman wave or about decuman eggs.

I.96 — on mice being salacious. Yes, you read that right; “mice are also said to be salacious”; “a female mouse is exceedingly randy” (the first quote is by Poliziano himself, the second from Aelian's On the Characteristics of Animals). I can only conclude that some people had nothing better to do than to watch mice getting it on. Well, everyone needs a hobby, I guess :]

II.6.2 — Aelian reports on a curious custom practised at Lavinium: on designated days, virgins presented food to snakes in a certain sacred grove; “[i]f in truth they are virgins, the serpent accepts the pure food from them [. . .] [b]ut if not, their food is left there untouched, for the serpent senses and divines that it is corrupt” — an in this latter case, unsurprisingly, the girl got punished. What an insane idea. I can only imagine how many virgins were unfairly convicted because of the random behaviour of some stupid reptile :(

II.8.4 — the ancients had special terms for former slaves who got their freedom in their master's testament, upon his death (which, if I understand correctly, made them slightly less respectable than if the master had liberated them while he was still alive). They were called orcini in Latin (from Orcus, the Roman god of the underworld) and charonianoi in Greek (from Charon, the ferryman to the underworld).

II.15.3 — the Romans had two kinds of dice: a tessera was a cube with six inscribed sides, while a talus had four flat inscribed sides, while the remaining two sides (on opposite ends of the dice) were rounded (see translator's n. 173 in vol. 2, p. 332).

II.20, 27 — when keeping boys “at home as sexual pets” (II.20.4), Romans apparently had a disturbing custom which aimed at delaying their puberty and preventing them from growing a beard for as long as possible (so as to keep them attractive to the pedophiles): “silver clasps [fibulas] were commonly made for those boys so that they might reach puberty more slowly, which is called being pinned up [infibulari] so that they would, of course, be better protected, lest while their male parts are being handled and stimulated that occur which Martial describes [i.e. they grow hair on their beard and elsewhere]” (II.20.5). Martial mentions “one who had already passed through puberty to manhood so that he had now been unpinned [refibulatus]” (II.20.6).

Another reference to the same practice: “ancient musicians used to abstain from sex in order to spare their voices, and for that purpose they were usually enclasped [infibulari], just as, we explained above, boys regularly were during puberty. For those who were enclasped were unable to have sexual relations unless they had unclasped [refibulassent] themselves.” (II.27.2) And a certain Menophilus, “because he lacked a foreskin, the clasp fell off him more easily, since those who put the clasp in place used to pierce [the foreskin], as Celsus indicates”. Eeeek.

II.30.3 — a nice list of national stereotypes by Julius Firmicus: “The Scythians alone behave with cruelty of immense savagery; the Italians always show themselves resplendent with a regal nobility; the Gauls are slow-witted; the Greeks shallow; the Africans deceitful; the Syrians greedy; the Asians always extravagant and focused on pleasure; and the Spaniards preposterous with all their extravagant boasting.” It's very remarkable how, except for the one about the Gauls, so many of these stereotypes still seem quite applicable to the present-day inhabitants of those areas. I wonder what that is. Is there some real basis to these stereotypes? If not in the actual behaviour of those people, is it maybe that the geographical character of a country consistently gives rise to certain kinds of stereotypes about its inhabitants? Or are we just extremely lazy in our stereotype-building and didn't bother to invent new ones for nearly two thousand years?

II.35.3 — a funny confusion between the words poeta (poet) and pycta (boxer) occurred in certain manuscripts of Pliny: “Nicaeus, the famous poet” was apparently actually a famous boxer... An important difference should you, for example, want to go about mocking him :)

II.37 — If you think the cosmetic industry of today is bad, just listen to this: “women once used to use makeup made from crocodile dung” (II.37.1). Apparently, however, these were not the usual crocodiles that live in water, but a smaller terrestrial species, and the Pliny “says that the crocodilian cosmetic is made from the intestines of this second one, and that it has a fine aroma”. I wonder what exactly this second species of crocodile is supposed to be, but unfortunately the translator's notes don't offer any comment on it. (I also wonder what the hell the first person was thinking who went rummaging through crocodile dung on the off chance that something there might turn out to have a fine aroma...)

II.46 — some ancient authors apparently claimed that elephants had no joints in their legs and hence couldn't bend their knees; as a result, they can't lie down, but lean on a tree to sleep, with predictably hilarious effects: “Sometimes the tree, overwhelmed and unbending, is broken by the massive body, and the beast that had supported itself on it falls down and cannot raise or lift itself.” (II.47.5; from the Hexaemeron of St. Ambrose.) And Julius Caesar apparently wrote the same sort of nonsense about elk (II.47.7)! But Poliziano also quotes other authors who described elephants as being able to kneel, lie down, etc. He doesn't wish to quite commit himself to either side of the dispute, as he had never seen a living elephant. That's fair enough, but I thought that in the ancient Roman world elephants would have been seen often enough that such wild nonsense as their inability to kneel or lie down couldn't have spread like this...

II.50.5 — the ancient Greek word gyne “can mean both ‘wife’, just as it did in Hesiod, and any woman”. This seems to be fairly common. Its Slovenian cognate, žena, still had both senses as late as the mid-20th century, but has pretty much completely restricted itself to the ‘wife’ sense by now. Its English cognate had a still more curious fate, splitting itself into two words, one of which restricted its sense to ‘a king's wife’ (queen) and the other to ‘a hussy’ and ‘a young woman’ (quean). The OED tells us that in Middle English their pronunciation still differed, quean having an open e.

II.55 — on the enthymeme, an interesting concept that I didn't know about until now. It is apparently like a syllogism but one of the two premisses is left unstated, as if the writer expects that the reader already considers that unstated premiss to be true and will supply it automatically in his mind (II.55.2). [Example from the wikipedia: “Socrates is mortal because he is human.” The unstated second premiss is that all humans are mortal.] But Poliziano argues that Aristotle defined enthymeme differently: it is not about whether a premiss is left unstated, but about having a syllogism “that is inferred only from signs and conjectures” (II.55.7). [Example from the wikipedia: “He is ill, since he has a cough.” Obviously this does not logically follow unless we have somehow demonstrated that illness is the only thing that causes coughing. But we might say that a coughing person is more likely to be ill than one who is not coughing.]

II.57.3 — the myth of Crocus and Milax (or Smilax), two lovers turned into plants who now bear their names (crocus and smilax), though I'm not quite sure what this latter plant is. It is translated as bindweed here, but in the wikipedia smilax seems to be a genus of plants that is not particularly closely related to the bindweeds. In any case, I was mostly impressed by how Poliziano managed to reconstruct this myth from tiny bits of information scattered across the work of several ancient authors.