Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity: Problems of Authority from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance

350 Pages·2020·6.434 MB·English

by  Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, Davide Massimo

Defining Authorship, Debating Authenticity
Beiträge zur Altertumskunde
Herausgegeben von
Susanne Daub, Michael Erler, Dorothee Gall,
Ludwig Koenen und Clemens Zintzen
Band 385
Defining Authorship,
Debating Authenticity
Problems of Authority from Classical Antiquity to the
Renaissance
Edited by
Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, and Davide Massimo
ISBN 978-3-11-068455-1
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-068462-9
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-068466-7
ISSN 1616-0452
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020945592
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Acknowledgements
Conceiving, assembling, and editing this volume has constituted a long and chal-
lenging journey, one which started in October 2017, on the occasion of the 2nd In-
ternational Prolepsis Conference Auctor est Aequivocum, and carried on until
Spring 2020. This was a spring that most of us will remember as one of the peaks
of a pandemic that forced most of the world to go into lockdown. Despite the hard
times and the difficulty in accessing resources (especially libraries), we did our
best to commit to the goal of finishing our work on this book, for which we deeply
thank our authors, who have always been receptive to our requests. Furthermore,
we would like to thank our peer–reviewers, Luciano Bossina, Laura Carnevale,
Guglielmo Cavallo, Daniela Colomo, Antonio Felle, Tristano Gargiulo, Valentina
Garulli, Margherita Losacco, Massimo Magnani, Roberta Marchionni, Maria
Chiara Martinelli, Rosa Otranto, Massimo Pinto, Claudio Schiano, for their inva-
luable help. Composing this volume in English has not been an easy choice, but
was done with the aim of making it more accessible to the international scholarly
community, while remaining faithful to the international nature of the original
conference, which benefitted from the attendance and papers of many interna-
tional graduate students and early career researchers. We are deeply grateful to
the proof–readers who helped to significantly improve parts of the manuscript
with great professionalism and availability, namely Marcus Chin, Thomas Cow-
ard, and the others who have been acknowledged in single chapters. We would
also like to thank the staff at De Gruyter for their continuous assistance at such a
difficult time, and, especially in this regard, Martin Hallmannsecker and Simone
Hausmann. We are grateful also to Gregory Hutchinson and Claudia Sode for their
support and encouragement. On a more personal note, we would also like to
thank the loved ones who continuously supported us in our work: Alessio, Heidi,
Jeníček, Lidia, Mesi, as well as all of our respective families. Finally, a special
thanks goes to the other members of the Cultural Association Prolepsis for organ-
izing the conference from which this volume originates, and to all the speakers
who contributed to making it a precious moment for sharing knowledge and re-
search on the themes of authorship and authenticity. In particular, we owe an
immense debt of gratitude to Luisa Fizzarotti, who has provided constant impe-
tus to the intellectual project underpinning this book, and participated keenly in
the early stages of its assemblage.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110684629-202

Contents
Acknowledgements  V
Roberta Berardi, Martina Filosa, Davide Massimo 
Introduction  1
Part 1: Attribution 
Elisa Nuria Merisio 
Semonides or Simonides? A Century–Long Controversy over the Authorship of
a Greek Elegiac Fragment (Simonides, fr. 8 W. = frr. 19–20 W.2)  11
Linda Rocchi 
Greek Readers’ Digests (Again)? Some Lysianic ὑποθέσεις on P. Oxy.
31.2537  25
Davide Massimo 
Defining a ‘Pseudo–Plato’ Epigrammatist  47
Pietro Zaccaria 
Distinguishing Homonymous Writers, Detecting Spurious Works: Demetrius of
Magnesia’s On Poets and Authors with the Same Name  67
Anna Dorotea Teofilo 
‘On Sail–Flying Ships Did I Roam the Great Sea…’: The Epitaph of an
Anonymous Merchant from Brundisium  85
Rosa Lorito 
When the Author Is Not Identifiable: The Case of the Volcei Land–
Register  101
Part 2: Authorship 
Sara De Martin 
Theognis the Author, Traditional Wisdom, and Some Side Effects of
Authority  111
VIII  Contents
Federica Nicolardi 
Beyond the Scribal Error: Clues on the History of Philodemus’ On Rhetoric,
Book 1   139
Elena Bonollo 
The ‘Co–Authorial’ Role of Ancient Pupils, Excerptores, and Copyists in the
Genuinely Menandrean Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι  151
Nicola Reggiani 
ΛΑΒΕ ΤΗΝ ΓΡΑΦΗΝ! Book Format, Authority, and Authorship in Ancient Greek
Medical Papyri  165
Gianmario Cattaneo 
Defensio Bessarionis: Giorgio Benigno Salviati and the Concept of Authorship
in Cardinal Bessarion’s Circle  175
Part 3: Authenticity 
Pietro Bertocchini 
Can Virtue Be Taught?  191
Marco Donato 
Reshaping Socrates’ Authority in the Pseudoplatonica  205
Roberta Berardi 
Letter 1 of Demosthenes and the Prayer to the Gods  223
Anna Mambelli 
The Second Epistle of Peter: A Different Approach to Lexical Analysis  235
Chiara Calvano 
Forged Inscriptions in Early Epigraphic Corpora  257
Bibliography
Abbreviations  273
Online Databases and Resources  274
References  275

List of Contributors  311
Contents  IX
Index
Index of Ancient, Mediaeval, and Early Modern Names  313
Index of Material Sources 317
Index of Ancient Sources 321