Table Of ContentTEXT AND CONTEXT
Frank Coulson, Series Editor
ANTIQUARIAN VOICES
THE ROMAN ACADEMY AND THE COMMENTARY TRADITION ON
OVID’S FASTI
Angela Fritsen
Copyright © 2015 by The Ohio State University.
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fritsen, Angela, author.
Antiquarian voices : the Roman Academy and the commentary tradition on Ovid’s Fasti / Angela Fritsen.
pages cm — (Text and context)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8142-1284-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Ovid, 43 BC–17 AD or 18 AD Fasti. 2. Didactic poetry, Latin—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series: Text and context
(Columbus, Ohio)
PA6519.F9F75 2015
871'.01—dc23
2015008656
Cover design by AuthorSupport.com
Text design by Juliet Williams
Type set in Adobe Garamond Pro
Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Cover image: Calendar of Romulus. P. Ovidii Nasonis Fastorum Libri diligenti emendatione typis impresse aptissimisque
figuris ornate commentatoribus Antonio Constantio Fanensi Paulo Marso Piscinate viris clarissimis additis (Toscolano:
Alexander Paganinus, 1527), fol. A1r. *52L–479, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Preface
ONE • Reading Ovid’s Fasti
The Author and His Work
Aetas Ovidiana
The Fate of Ovid’s Severed Book
TWO • Fifteenth-Century Revival
Time and Place
Teaching Particulars
The Dedication of the Fasti
THREE • Commentary and Professional Identity
An Invitation to Comment
Aggravations of Print
Primacy and Print
Authorship
FOUR • Antiquarianism I: The Roman Academy, the Fasti, and a New Historicism
Ovid as Guide to the City
Context: The Roman Academy
The Earlier Generation of Antiquarians
The Fasti and First-Hand Observation in Rome
Travel and Testing Auctoritas
FIVE • Antiquarianism II: Christian Fasti and Papal Connections
On Superstition and Magic
The Roman Academy and Anniversaries
The Old and New Rome
Propaganda for the Church
AFTERWORD
APPENDIX I • Renaissance Commentaries on Ovid’s Fasti
APPENDIX II • Comparison of Manuscript Glosses in Vat. lat. 1595, Ottob. lat. 1982, and Vat.
lat. 3263
Bibliography
Indices
General Index
Index Locorum
Index Manuscriptorum
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE 1 January in the 1527 composite Fasti commentary
FIGURE 2 Pomponio Leto, Fasti with glosses (ca. 1469/1470)
FIGURE 3 Ovidius de Fastis cum duobus commentariis (fol. a1v.)
FIGURE 4 Ovidius de Fastis cum duobus commentariis (fol. a1r.)
FIGURE 5 Portrait of Pomponio Leto in Elogia virorum literis illustrium
FIGURE 6 Paolo Marsi, editio princeps (1482), Colophon
FIGURE 7 Ciriaco d’Ancona, autograph Fasti (1427)
FIGURE 8 Forum Boarium and Temple of Janus
FIGURE 9 Antonio Costanzi, autograph manuscript (1480)
FIGURE 10 Andrea Mantegna, The Introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome, 1505–6
ABBREVIATIONS
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter,
1972–)
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1893–)
CTC Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 1960–)
DBI Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana,
1960–)
LTUR Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, ed. E. M. Steinby (Rome: Quasar, 1993–2000)
RE Pauly’s Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart: J. B.
Metzler and A. Druckenmüller, 1893–1980)
RIS Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. L. A. Muratori (Milan: Ex typographia Societatis
palatinae in regia curia, 1723–51)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I will always be grateful to the late Jozef IJsewijn, who instilled in me a love for Neo-Latin
literature and the classical tradition. My work on Renaissance commentaries would not have
been possible without Ralph Hexter and Frank Coulson. They were there for me at the
beginning of my project and at its end, and I thank them. I have been the fortunate recipient of a
variety of support from the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, the Newberry Library,
the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti), and the American
Academy in Rome, and I have benefitted from the conversations of my colleagues in these
places. I would like to thank furthermore the staff and librarians at the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Biblioteca Angelica, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Biblioteca
Comunale Ariostea, and Biblioteca Vallicelliana. For their goodwill and support I would like
to mention in particular Robert Babcock, Geoffrey Eatough, Maia Gahtan, Phil Gavitt, Craig
Kallendorf, Marc Laureys, Gianpiero Nasci, Mary Quinlan-McGrath, Maria Paola Saci,
Barbara Shailor, and Fabio Troncarelli. My very special thanks go to Julia Gaisser, who has
been both a sharp reader and my advocate; any shortcomings of my book are my own. I am
grateful to my parents and to my husband Eric, who patiently helped and waited. Thank you to
Tara Cyphers, Martin Boyne, and everyone at The Ohio State University Press for their
invaluable assistance. Images in this book are reproduced, all rights reserved, by kind
permission of the following: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; Houghton Library, Harvard
University; Huntington Library, San Marino, California; National Gallery Picture Library,
London.
PREFACE
If Homer had hoped for ten tongues to tell his story (Iliad 2.489) and Vergil for a hundred
(Georgics 2.43), then Ovid in an exaggerated ploy of inadequacy wished for a thousand (Fasti
2.119). Ovid might have been surprised at the multiplication of mouths not his own.
Multilingual editions and translations, scholarly discussions and articles point to a resurgence
in popularity of his poem on the Roman calendar year, the Fasti.1 My purpose is to present a
different renaissance of the poem, one that took place 500 years ago. This book examines the
humanist Fasti commentaries by Paolo Marsi (1440–84) and Antonio Costanzi (1436–90),
widely disseminated in the first age of print and extensively available in reissues, composite
editions, and collected works of Ovid (see Appendix I). My argument is that Ovid’s poem on
the ancient festival calendar flourished in quattrocento Italy and in a Roman milieu. In
particular, members of the Roman Academy studied Ovid’s Fasti with a passion.
Antiquarianism is the tie that bound the fifteenth-century humanists who were involved in
the Roman Academy. Restoring classical texts, reconstructing history and topography, visiting
monuments and catacombs, reviving celebrations: in these pursuits and more, the
Academicians brought the ancient city of Rome to life. The Academicians were professors and
students; they were curial officials, commissioned secretaries, poets, and diplomats; they were
members of the aristocracy and dilettantes. They met in classrooms, in homes, in printing
houses, and in the field. The City was an open textbook for them. In their antiquarian
endeavors, they sought to return the City to its original splendor. Ovid’s Fasti acted as
interpretive guide.
With this book I hope to contribute to the history of classical scholarship and the history of
ideas, with reception history as my guide. Literary encounters do not occur in isolation;
instead, we are influenced by contemporary and previous societal values and constraints.2 The
positivistic approach, to discover the original meaning of a text, leads to inconclusive results.
This is not to deny authorial intention, but to argue for earlier ways of reading as a
complementary hermeneutical guide. In examining earlier readings we might broaden and
challenge our own interpretations and in the process even arrive at a clearer definition of the
meaning in the text.
Commentaries and glosses are invaluable tools for pulling together lines of thought, and
they are the foundation for my arguments, as well as the very subject under consideration.
Indeed, the commentary has come to be studied as a genre in its own right.3 Notes and
commentaries from previous generations yield a wealth of learning now forgotten, and
