Recovering a Late-Antique Edition of Pliny’s <i>Natural History</i>

Tables

4.1: The 17 Nominatim Quotations of Extant Livy in Seruius, On Aeneid

4.2: The 8 Nominatim Quotations of Lost Livy in Seruius, On Aeneid

4.3: Isidore’s 8 Accurate Nominatim Quotations of Lucretius

4.4: Isidore’s 9 Nominatim Quotations of Ovid, Metamorphoses

4.5: Isidore’s 34 Nominatim Quotations of Lucan

4.6: Isidore’s 9 anonymous quotations of Lucan

4.7: Isidore’s 8 Nominatim quotations of Persius

4.8: Isidore’s 7 Nominatim quotations of Juvenal

4.9: Isidore’s 14 quotations of Martial

4.10: 4 Nominatim Quotations of Lost Livy in Seruius Auctus

4.11: Thomas, book IIII, 9 example quotations of Pliny

4.12: Thomas, book V, 8 example quotations of Pliny

II.27: Source Corpse and Bug Result in Greco-Latin Texts

Acknowledgments

This work began when I investigated the quotation practice of Servius for my dissertation at the University of Colorado, Boulder, under the direction of Christoph F. Konrad (completed 1991, on Sallust). I first published the observation in Keyser (1994) 632–633, n. 45. That observation evolved into a long paper on recovering a Late-Antique edition of Pliny (given at the History of Science Society meeting in Chicago, 2014 November 8th), and became in the end this book, which studies how Pliny’s Natural History was augmented in Late Antiquity.

The resources of six libraries were important for the composition of this work, namely (in chronological order): the University of Colorado, Boulder; the University of Chicago; the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; the University of Durham, England; the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and the Newberry Library, Chicago. The bibliographic closing date of this work was 2019 June 30.

I have benefitted, in matters great and small, from the advice of two anonymous readers for the press, as well as of these dozen colleagues: Clara Bosak-Schroeder; Kathryn Chew; Lisa Cooper; Chris Faraone; Nicholas Horsfall; Bob Kaster, whose comments were especially extensive and helpful; Rick Keyser; Carsten ←xi | xii→Lange; Michèle Lowrie; David Paniagua; John T. Ramsey; and Richard Westall; as well as the two anonymous referees of the press. I presented an “epitome” of this work at the History of Science Society meeting in Chicago, 2014 November 08, and received useful commentary from the five other panelists (James C. Evans, Jacqueline Feke, Zoë Misiewicz, Courtney Ann Roby, and Allen Shotwell), as well as from the audience.

1
Pliny—Augments and Epitomes

We know Pliny, or we think we do. Pliny’s Natural History is one of the largest works to survive from Greco-Roman antiquity, and, because of its grand scale, was also one of the most often epitomized. Some epitomes are by named authors, such as the geographical epitome by Iulius Solinus. Others, mostly excerpting the medical books 20–32, are anonymous, with multiple versions: e.g., the “Medicina Plinii” of the early third century and “Physica Plinii” of the fifth. Despite all these epitomes, or maybe because of them, Pliny’s work as a whole also survived, essentially intact. The existence of the epitomes shows that Pliny’s Natural History, despite its bulk, continued to be copied and used in Late Antiquity.

I. What We Didn’t Know About Pliny

But there is something important that we did not know about Pliny. I argue that there is evidence for an augmented version of Pliny’s work, which added significant material in many places, and that I shall refer to as Plinius Auctus. The evidence is found in citations or quotations by four authors of late antiquity, as well as by three medieval writers. Those are Beda of Wearmouth (“the Venerable Bede”), Thomas of Cantimpré, and Albert von Lauingen (“the Great”). The four ←1 | 2→Late Antique writers are Isidore and three commentaries on Vergil, that by Seruius, that by Filagrius, and that known as Seruius Auctus. These sources attribute material to Pliny, and in many cases explicitly to his Natural History, that is not found in any extant manuscript of Pliny.¹ Although there is evidence in antiquity for “second editions” by various authors, from Aristophanes to Solinus,² it is very unlikely that the “extra” material attributed to Pliny derives from an alternate edition by Pliny himself.³ On the other hand, I will argue in Chapter 4, “Recorders of the Augmented Pliny,” that these sources are generally reliable, when quoting other ancient authors and also when quoting Pliny. So there is little likelihood that any of the sources themselves are responsible for the augments to the Natural History, either by quoting from memory, with augments, or else by quoting from some other work misidentified as Pliny’s Natural History. An alternate hypothesis,⁴ that all extant manuscripts of Pliny descend from an abbreviated archetype, is not impossible, but seems very unlikely—the hypothetical abbreviator not only had to remove material, they also had to disperse some material to separate sites within the abbreviated text. The hypothesis of an independently-existing augmented edition of Pliny, however unexpected, is actually the simplest hypothesis to explain this extra material.⁵

The content in these passages corresponds with the overall program of Pliny’s Natural History. That rules out the possibility that these quotations derive from some other work by Pliny, in particular his grammatical work Dubius Sermo (which only Seruius among our sources also cites). Likewise, there is no reason to believe that there was an otherwise unknown work that covered the same material as Pliny, and that all these sources would have cited such a work falsely as “Pliny.” The only evidence that might point to the use of such a work is a single citation of material from “physiologers” (physiologici), as an anonymous group, by Seruius Auctus.⁶ Finally, it seems highly improbable that the passages quoted or cited just happen to be missing from all extant manuscripts of Pliny’s Natural History. It is not the weight of any one piece of this puzzle that tips the balance: it is the cumulative effect of the pattern of the citations that supports the case that there was an augmented edition of Pliny.

So, I am arguing that these passages are in fact augments, and provide evidence that the six sources (Seruius et al.) had access to an augmented edition of Pliny. Given that about two-thirds of all the citations of Pliny by Seruius and Seruius Auctus are to the expanded edition, the augments must have been extensive. Indeed, the augmented edition might have been much longer than the current Pliny, perhaps corresponding to as many as fifty or sixty books (there is no ←2 | 3→evidence that the augmentor renumbered the books), which although staggering is paralleled or exceeded by other scholarly works from both the Greco-Roman period and late antiquity, most of which do not survive.⁷

To set this newly identified Plinius Auctus into his context, I will first briefly describe the known Plinian epitomes of late antiquity (below). In the following two chapters, I will survey augmented editions in Late Antiquity, and then I will show how Pliny’s work invites augmenting. Chapter 4 explores the sources who record augments and finds that they are reliable sources. That is, augmented works existed; the Natural History opens itself to becoming a work of this kind; and the sources who quote Pliny provide reliable evidence that the Natural History in fact became a work of this kind. Finally, I will describe and comment upon the surviving augmented material. Almost half of the augmented content is effectively unique, but some of it is paralleled in other sources, typically of the third century ce and later.

II. Epitomes of Pliny

First, the epitomes. Pliny’s huge Natural History became the basis for a handful of extant epitomes in late antiquity. Their focus varied, but included primarily geography (Solinus) and medicine. So far as we can now tell, the earliest of these works originated around 200 ce; they continued to be produced through the end of antiquity.⁸ One of the earliest is the medical poem of the North African writer Q. Serenus Sammonicus (ca 210 ce). Around the same time, an author now unknown produced the Medicina Plinii, which came to be treated simply as “Pliny” (e.g., by Marcellus of Bordeaux in his recipe book, below). Another North African writer, Q. Gargilius Martialis, took a similar direction around the middle of the third century ce, and produced a work on horticulture that included prescriptions based on garden products. A third epitome from the third century is the geographical compendium of Iulius Solinus, intended to make Pliny’s geography more accessible.

Beginning in the late fifth century ce, the Medicina Plinii was further abridged and amended to produce a sheaf of variants all named Physica Plinii. A more complex case is the Herbarius (wrongly attributed to Apuleius of Madauros), which existed in many versions, most of them dependent on Pliny or one of the epitomes already cited, and dating perhaps from the third century ce through ca 600 ce. Meanwhile, in the first half of the fifth century ce, a book on remedies ←3 | 4→from animals appeared, based on Pliny at some remove, whose author is known as Sextus Placitus Papyriensis. Finally, around 410 ce, the aristocrat and amateur pharmacist Marcellus of Bordeaux composed a work of handy remedies, all said to be verified by experience, based mainly on the Medicina Plinii and also directly on Pliny’s Natural History; Marcellus explains that he cites uterque Plinius (“each Pliny”).⁹

These works seem to have been written in response to a perceived need for a convenient digest of the useful portions of Pliny’s grand compendium. Solinus says so explicitly (praef.2, liber est ad conpendium praeparatus), as does Marcellus (libellum hunc … conscripsi … sparsum inconditumque collegi et in unum corpus … conposui),¹⁰ but even if they did not, the structure and content of these works would make this hypothesis tenable. Furthermore, the repeated editions and updates demonstrate the responsiveness of the tradition to the needs of its readership. Most of the epitomes are pharmaceutical, i.e., derive from Pliny’s books on useful things from plants and animals (books 20–32), although Solinus is geographical, deriving chiefly from books 2–6. All the epitomes provide a modicum of new data, e.g., Solinus adds data from Pomponius Mela,¹¹ and adds data to many of his extracts from Pliny. Gargilius cites Galen,¹² and Dioscorides,¹³ and several other Greeks,¹⁴ and mainly exploits Pliny, though he only actually cites Pliny twice.¹⁵ However, the main focus of these late antique epitomes of Pliny is to make Pliny’s material more accessible, or to provide ready remedies decorated with the authority of Pliny.¹⁶ The Herbarius is likewise replete with Plinian material,¹⁷ as is also the later work of “Sextus Placitus Papyriensis”.¹⁸

III. Summary

As mentioned, these epitomes were probably composed to fill a perceived need for a convenient digest of some useful portions of Pliny’s grand compendium. Their existence, and ascription to “Pliny”, show that his text remained a living work that engaged the attention of writers and readers. Some of those engaged readers treated Pliny’s work as raw material for their own efforts at rendering Pliny more relevant. Scribes moreover, some of them at least, treated the outcome of those efforts as being works by “Pliny” (recall Marcellus’ citation of “both Plinies”). In the next chapter, we will consider a common practice in Late Antiquity, in which ancient texts were not epitomized, but instead were reworked and even expanded, and yet considered to be the text of the original author.