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PSEUDO-APULEIUS’ DE FATO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2021

Leonardo Costantini
Leonardo Costantini*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
*
eu20184@bristol.ac.uk
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Abstract

The note presents the discovery of a spurious Apuleian work entitled De fato from MS n° 1040 at the Bibliothèque patrimoniale Villon in Rouen. This work is, in fact, a series of excerpts from Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis Book 1.

Keywords

pseudepigraphaApuleiusFirmicus Maternusmanuscript

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , May 2021 , pp. 461 - 462
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

A twelfth-century manuscript conserved at the Bibliothèque patrimoniale Villon in Rouen (shelfmark n° 1040) preserves, alongside some writings of Cicero and Claudianus and the letters of Symmachus, a work entitled De fato from fol. 49v to fol. 54v. Both the incipit and the explicit ascribe it to the second-century rhetorician and Platonist Apuleius of Madauros.Footnote 1 However, after inspecting the eleven leaves transmitting this otherwise unknown work that is allegedly by Apuleius, it becomes apparent that this is a series of excerpts from Firmicus Maternus’ Mathesis Book 1.Footnote 2 More precisely, fol. 49v = Math. 1.6.2–1.7.1; fol. 50r = Math. 1.7.2–9; fol. 50v = Math. 1.7.9–17; fol. 51r = Math. 1.7.17–26; fol. 51v = Math. 1.7.26–35; fol. 52r = Math. 1.7.35–1.8.2; fol. 52v = Math. 1.8.2–1.9.1; fol. 53r = Math. 1.9.1–1.10.8; fol. 53v = Math. 1.10.8–14; fol. 54r = Math. 1.10.14, followed by 1.5.6–11 and then by 1.2.2–3; fol. 54v = Math. 1.2.3–8, followed by 1.1.1.Footnote 3

The reference to Socrates at the outset of the text (uir diuinae sapientiae Socrates docuit nos ut confirmata animi nostri diuinitate ex aliqua parte stellarum uiolenti decreto et earum potestatibus res<is>tamus. nam cum quidam […], a free reworking of Math. 1.6.2–3) likely accounts for its spurious attribution, given the presence of comparable expressions in De deo Socratis 17.1 and 19.2 (Socrates, uir apprime perfectus) and the fortunes of Apuleius’ philosophical works in Northern Europe, probably stimulated by the abundant references to the philosophica in Augustine.Footnote 4 Therefore, the De fato may now be added to the list of Apuleius’ pseudepigrapha.Footnote 5

References

1 Apuleius’ name is misspelt in both cases: cf. fol. 49v, col. 2, line 13: incipit Apuleus de fato; fol. 54v, col. 2, lines 6–7: explicit Apuleus de fato. Reynolds, L.D. (ed.), Texts and Transmission. A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), 67Google Scholar mentions the Rouen MS in the context of Cicero's speeches and gives a reference in passing to the De fato therein preserved, without discussing or disputing the Apuleian authorship.

2 The manuscript is written in an early Northern Textualis and was likely produced in a French scriptorium; on this script, see Derolez, A., The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books (Cambridge, 2003), 72–101Google Scholar. The parchment leaves are ruled with a sharp point and divided into two columns, each of 40 lines. The folios I inspected (via high-resolution digitizations) show the intervention of a second hand—contemporaneous to the scribe—correcting small lacunae interlinearly or wider sauts du même au même in the margins. Later, a humanistic hand added a few variants in the margins.

3 These different sections of the Mathesis in fols. 54r and 54v are introduced by enlarged capitals in red or blue ink.

4 Text and paragraph subdivision of De deo Socratis after Magnaldi, G., Apulei opera philosophica (Oxford, 2020)Google Scholar. On the medieval circulation of Apuleius’ philosophica, see Reynolds (n. 1), 16–18; Klibansky, R. and Regen, F., Die Handschriften der philosophischen Werke des Apuleius. Ein Beitrag zur Überlieferungsgeschichte (Göttingen, 1993), 46–52Google Scholar; Carver, R.H.F., The Protean Ass. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford, 2007), 59–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Apuleius’ presence in Augustine's works, see Hagendahl, H., Augustine and the Latin Classics, 2 vols. (Göteborg, 1967), 1.17–28, 2.680–7Google Scholar.

5 For a handy overview, see Harrison, S.J., Apuleius. A Latin Sophist (Oxford, 2000, repr. with rev. 2008), 13–14 and n. 57Google Scholar. To this list we may add a spurious prognostic text transmitted under the title Sphaera Apulei Platonici de uita et morte, or Ratio sphaerae Pythagorae philosophi quam Apuleius descripsit, on which see Liuzza, R.M., ‘The sphere of life and death: time, medicine, and the visual imagination’, in O'Keeffe, K. O'Brien and Orchard, A. (edd.), Latin Learning and English Lore, 2 vols. (Toronto, 2005), 2.28–52Google Scholar; Chardonnens, L.S., Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900–1100 (Leiden, 2007), 181–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.