Hermes

“Eine reine Geschmacksache”: textual criticism of Latin-Greek code-switching in Roman satire

Pieter-Jan Mannens (KU Leuven)

Anyone wishing to study bilingualism in Roman literature is reliant on written sources that have been handed down to us by medieval scribes. Errors inevitably creep into the text during the copying process, and matters become particularly difficult when a scribe has to copy passages that he or she can barely read or understand. As the critical apparatuses of modern editions often show, Greek passages in Latin works can be so corrupted in transmission that numerous conjectures occur in different editions. In this blog post, I would like to highlight the need for a standardised approach to deal with multilingual texts by sharing some observations on and examples of the problematic textual transmission of Greek passages in Latin works, drawn from my own research into Latin-Greek code-switching (i.e. alternation between two or more languages in the same discourse) in Latin satire of Lucilius, Varro, Martial and Juvenal.

First of all, I would like to illustrate the problems of transmission and conjecture using a famous quotation often discussed in relation to Latin-Greek bilingualism: Catullus, Carm. 12.13, which is in fact a reconstructed form.

verum est mnemosynum mei sodalis.¹

But it’s a memento of my friend.²

Est mnemosynum was reconstructed from the manuscript readings est nemo sinum (X)³ and nemo est sinum (O).⁴ In his Venetian edition of 1481, Italian scholar Giovanni Calfurnio (1443–1503) proposed giving the form a Greek ending, mnemosynon. John M. Trappes-Lomax (2007, 63) follows the conjecture of Calfurnio and believes that, given the corrupt transmission, both the stem and the ending can be corrected because “Catullus would not have spoiled the effect by giving it a Latin ending and pretending that it was naturalized in Latin.” In my view, this assertion is not strongly supported: firstly, because Trappes-Lomax based his argument on his personal aesthetic intuition, secondly because the conjecture mnemosynon lacks direct manuscript support, while mnemosynum appears to offer a more plausible explanation of the transmitted corruptions. Moreover, there are no other examples of Greek endings on –on in Catullus’ work. Whatever the case may be, humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536) and Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) must have regarded the form as purely Greek, as they even went a step further and wrote it using the Greek alphabet. According to the Library of Latin Texts both scholars cite μνημόσυνον nineteen and three times respectively in their works, e.g. Erasmus, Epist. 222.21, his dedicatory letter to Thomas More (ca. 1478–1535) of The Praise of the Folly, presumably from 1509:

Hanc igitur declamatiunculam non solum lubens accipies ceu μνημόσυνον tui sodalis, verum etiam tuendam suscipies, vtpote tibi dicatam iamque tuam non meam.

You will therefore not only be happy to accept this tiny little speech as a memento of your friend, but you will also take it under your protection, since it has been entrusted to you and is now yours, no longer mine.

Such distortions in the preserved texts are best understood in the context of the decline of Greek studies between the 5^th and 6^th centuries (Rollo 2023, 23). Knowledge of Greek remained part of the Western cultural universe until the 11^th or 12^th century, although limited to the mastery of the alphabet and its sounds and reserved solely for monks who had been specially trained for this purpose (Rollo 2023, 28-29, 44). Since all didactic material for Greek available in the Western Middle Ages dated from late antiquity, Greek letters were consequently transmitted throughout the Middle Ages in fixed capital letters, while in Byzantium the switch to minuscule script had already taken place (Rollo 2023, 24-25, 30). In his 2023 monograph I graeca nel De vita caesarum di Svetonio, Antonio Rollo examines the medieval transmission of the Greek passages in Suetonius’ De vita Caesarum. He argues that alternative readings of Greek passages in manuscripts are primarily due to the formal or phonetic similarity between the Greek letters of late antique capital script. According to Rollo (2023, 34), there was considerable confusion in the manuscripts between the triangular letters alpha (Α), lambda (Λ) and delta (Δ), between the round letters such as theta (Θ), omicron (Ο), the epsilon lunatum (ϵ) and the sigma lunatum (C), between the square letters eta (Η), ny (Ν) and pi (Π), between the letters ypsilon (Υ) and psi (Ψ), and between the letters gamma (Γ) and tau (Τ). Furthermore, sequences of letters such as gamma (Γ), pi (Π), iota (Ι) or tau (Τ) can also lead to numerous corruptions in the written tradition. In addition, Rollo (2023, 44) argues that many corruptions can also be attributed to the late antique pronunciation of Greek, leading to considerable confusion between, for example, E, H, EI and I, as well as between AI and E. Moreover, Rollo (2023, 35-36) contends that letters that were incorrectly transcribed or omitted in a manuscript were inevitably passed on to the copies based on it, as the scribes’ knowledge of the Greek language was insufficient for noticing and correcting them. Having applied Rollo’s methodology to my corpus, I found several examples of textual corruption caused by the confusion of letters in the textual tradition. One of them is Varro, Men. 30 (ed. Krenkel 2002), transmitted in Nonius, De compendiosa doctrina, (ed. Lindsay 1903, 50):

non mirum si caecutis; aurum enim non minus praestringit oculos quam ὁ πολὺς ἄκρατος

No wonder you’re blind; after all, gold dazzles the eyes no less than plenty of undiluted wine.

ὁ πολὺς ἄκρατος, as it appears in modern editions (Cèbe 1972, 112; Astbury 1985, 5; Krenkel 2002, 56), is a conjecture proposed by the French Hellenist Adrianus Turnebus (1512–1565) in 1565. The manuscripts show confusion between the triangular letters Λ and Α of πολύς: manuscript L⁵ (Figure 1) and its copy F⁶ (Figure 2) both have ΠΟΑΥCΑΥΚΡΑΤΟC; in G⁷ (Figure 3) the article is suggested by the omicron in front, OΠΟΑΥCΑΥΚΡΑΤΟC.⁸

Something similar occurs in Lucilius, Saturae 303 K (ed. Krenkel 1970), cited in Nonius (ed. Lindsay 1903, 480):

cum poclo bibi eodem, amplector, labra labellis fictricis conpono, hoc est cum ψωλοκοποῦμαι

When I drink from the same cup, embrace it, and press my lips against the lips of a female statue, that’s what happens when I have erection problems.

If Hadrianus Iunius’ conjecture from 1565 of the form ψωλοκοποῦμαι (a compound of ψωλός [‘with the glans visible, ‘erect’] and κοπόομαι [‘to become exhausted’]) is correct, we once more observe confusion between A and Λ as well as the repercussions of phonetic similarity between AI, E and H. L reads ωAΟΚΟΠΟΥΜΗ (Figure 4), G reads ωΛΟΚΟΠΟΥΜΗ (Figure 5) and Gen⁹ reads ΟΚΟſ ΙΟΥΜΗ (Figure 6).¹⁰ In Gen the first two letters which are present in L and G are missing, and there possibly was a confusion between Π and the combination of S (ſ ) and I.

To summarise, the insufficient Greek knowledge of scribes led to severe textual corruption, resulting in various conjectures proposed by text editors throughout history. That’s the first problem. The second lies in the fact that many Greek passages were handed down to us in the Latin alphabet. In such cases, it is not always clear whether transcription reflects the author’s choice or the manuscript tradition. Cèbe (1972, 63) argues that transcriptions may occur, for example, if a manuscript has been copied under dictation. However, there are examples that rule out such dictations (see Figure 11). In the work of Martial, we find several examples of Greek segments which, in one branch of the manuscript tradition, were copied in Greek script, whilst in the other branch they were transcribed. For example, the γ-branch, including a 10^th-century manuscript X, reads in Epigr. 5.38.8 CΟΛΟΙΚΙCΜΟΝ (figure 7),¹¹ while the β-brach, including the 15^th-century manuscript P,¹² reads the transliterated form solecismum (Figure 8).

It is worth noting that, in the case of Martial, a large number of passages, which modern editions¹³ write in Greek, in fact are preserved in all manuscripts in Latin script. Some examples: μισῶ μνάμονα συμπόταν (Epigr. 1.27.7) appears in the manuscripts as mis omne monasympoten; τὸν δ᾽ ἀπαμειβόμενος (Epigr. 1.45.2) as tondapamibomenon; ἔχεις ἀσώτως (Epigr. 4.9.3) as exisasotos.¹⁴

In Nonius p. 756 Lindsay, where Varro, Men. 41 is cited, we can see the transcription happening before our eyes. The text in Krenkel (2002, 73) reads:

‘Polliceres’ pro pollicereris. Varro Ἀνθρωποπόλει, περὶ γενεθλιακῆς: ‘nam in omnibus <nominibus> legi ‘kath’hyperbaton’, ne dares, ne polliceres quod datum est’.

‘Polliceres’ instead of ‘pollicereris’. Varro wrote in Anthropopolis, about astrology: ‘for I have read everywhere that one ought not to have given “excessively” nor promised what had already been given’.

In the manuscripts, the Greek text has come down to us in a highly distorted form. Figure 11 shows the fragment in the 10^th-century manuscript G:

Figure 11 – fragment from G (fol. 217r).

The first letters of the title of Varro’s satire Ἀνθρωποπόλει are preserved in this manuscript in the Latin alphabet (anoputio); the scribe then switches to capital letters for the Greek characters (ΠΟΑΙΠΕΚΑΕΝΕΛΙΑΚΗC). It is highly unlikely that Nonius wrote down that title in two different scripts in this way. This example also shows that, in this case, the transcription was not made by dictation, as the (presumably) original Greek was imitated by the scribe in lowercase script. Note, incidentally, that there is once again confusion here between the round letters O and Θ (ΚΑΟΥΠΕΡΒΑΤΟΝ) – at least, if Buechler’s conjecture is correct.

Most importantly, the transcription of Greek passages across critical editions lacks uniformity. When Erich Woytek (1970, 50) briefly discusses the contemporary editions in his monograph on Varro’s Menippeae, he rightly states that the choice of alphabet when publishing Greek passages is rather “eine reine Geschmacksache” (“a matter of pure personal taste”) on the part of the publisher. In critical editions, the practice therefore appears highly arbitrary: sometimes a Greek segment transcribed in the manuscripts is rendered in Greek characters, while at other times the transcribed form is retained. In Lucil., Sat. 499 K, for example, Krenkel transcribes the poeticon handed down in the manuscripts as ποιητικόν, while in Varro, Men. 58, where the manuscripts likewise read poeticon, he leaves the form in the Latin alphabet. Sometimes, however, the reverse also occurs. As in the aforementioned Men. 41, where all manuscripts transmit Greek characters, Krenkel chooses to transcribe ‘kath’hyperbaton’, whereas other editors such as Cèbe (1974, 144) and Astbury (1985, 7) do retain the Greek script (καθ’ ὑπέρβατον). In this case, I do not consider Krenkel’s transcription to be ideal. In light of Rollo (2023, 35–36), who argues that misinterpreted or omitted Greek letters are bound to remain incorrect or become even more corrupted in all copies, it is unlikely that the reverse would occur, with originally Latin letters being spontaneously converted by scribes into the (poorly mastered) Greek alphabet. If, therefore, all manuscripts read Greek letters, it seems plausible to me that the original was also intended to be Greek.

With this blog post devoted to the problematic textual transmission of Greek segments in Latin texts, I wish to make it clear to the reader that one should be very cautious when consulting modern editions. Greek passages as they appear in editions today were often reconstructed from corrupted manuscript readings, leading to an explosion of conjectures by scholars over time. As a result, almost every edition of a bilingual text offers a significantly different version. Furthermore, the alphabet in which a passage appears in an edition today offers little or no guidance for the correct identification of code-switches: firstly, because transcriptions do not necessarily originate from the author themselves, and secondly, because there is a considerable lack of uniformity among publishers regarding the use of the alphabet. Uniformity across different editions is also lacking. In my view, there is a need for a common approach that enables publishers to handle bilingual texts consistently (e.g. universal guidelines for deciding whether a foreign word should be transliterated or not, …), so that the editions could be used responsibly for academic research.

Manuscripts

Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1696.

https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Pal.lat.1696

Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 48.1.

https://www.internetculturale.it/jmms/iccuviewer/iccu.jsp?id=oai%3Ateca.bmlonline.it%3A21%3AXXXX%3APlutei%3AIT%253AFI0100_Plutei_48.01&mode=all&teca=Laurenziana+-+FI

Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, lat. 84.

https://iiif.biblissima.fr/collections/manifest/d4bb438cd1aeb6a5d7cfe6f13d2443b7447e7873

Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. fol. 73.

https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/4118139#page/1/mode/1up

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 8067.

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9078255c.r=latin%208067?rk=21459;2

Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 96 Gud. lat.

https://diglib.hab.de/wdb.php?dir=mss/96-gud-lat&imgtyp=2&size=

References

Astbury, Raymond. M. Terentii Varronis Saturarum Menippearum fragmenta. Leipzig: Teubner, 1985.

Bardon, Henricus. Catulli Veronensis Carmina. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973.

Cèbe, Jean-Pièrre. Varron, Satires Ménippées: édition, traduction et commentaire, vol. 1-13. Rome: École française de Rome, 1972–1999.

Eisenhut, Werner. Catulli Veronensis liber. Leipzig: Teubner, 1983.

Krenkel, Werner Arno. Lucilius: Satiren, vol. 1-2. Leiden: Brill, 1970.

Krenkel, Werner Arno. Marcus Terentius Varro: Saturae Menippeae, vol. 1-4. St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercurae Verlag, 2002.

Shakleton Bailey, David Roy. M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammata. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1990.

Rollo, Antonio. I graeca nel De vita caesarum di Svetonio: la tradizione medievale. Messina: Centro Internazionale di Studi Umanistici, 2023.

Trappes-Lomax, John. Catullus: A Textual Reappraisal. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2007.

Woytek, Erich. Studien zur Satura Menippea Varros. Vienna: Böhlau, 1970.

Footnotes

The Latin text was taken from Werner Eisenhut’s Teubner-edition (1983, 10). ↩︎
All translations in this blog post are mine. ↩︎
X denotes the common ancestor of the 14^th-century manuscripts G (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 14137) and R (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ott. lat. 1829), see Bardon (1973, IX). ↩︎
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici lat. 30 (14^th century). ↩︎
Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. fol. 73 (9^th century). ↩︎
Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 48.1 (9^th century). ↩︎
Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 96 Gud. lat. (10^th century). ↩︎
Sigla are taken from Krenkel (1970, 43-45). ↩︎
Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, lat. 84 (9^th century). ↩︎
Sigla taken again from Krenkel (1970, 43-45). ↩︎
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 8067 (10^th century). ↩︎
Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1696 (15^th century). ↩︎
For my research, I used the 1990 Teubner edition edited by Shakleton Bailey. ↩︎
This list is by no means exhaustive. ↩︎

How to cite

Mannens, Pieter-Jan. 2026. “Eine reine Geschmacksache: textual criticism of Latin-Greek code-switching in Roman satire.” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 28 October 2026.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/0m1w7-ekk57

Hospitality and a Translation into Greek

Tobias Heiss (Universität Innsbruck)

Writing Greek verse takes practice. So much so that the better part of New Ancient Greek poetry was never intended to have a broader readership at all. Scribblings, attempts, and exercises are easily discarded, especially by authors who have outgrown them.^[1] In this context, the translation of Latin poems into Greek was a common exercise. The process required an excellent knowledge of Latin and Greek, an awareness of register and genre, and the ability to work with metrical constraints. In other words, it was a perfect pedagogical instrument. But what if such an exercise in translation grows to be something more serious?

In December 1625, the German University of Altdorf (Nuremberg) hosted a celebratory Christmas oration. Normally, this task would have fallen to one of the enrolled students. For a special visitor, however, an exception was made: the wandering Greek Orthodox scholar Metrophanes Kritopoulos (Μητροφάνης Κριτόπουλος, ca. 1589–1639).^[2] Since his arrival in Altdorf a month prior, the learned society had been keen on meeting the stranger from afar. Questions about his customs, his theological views, and his pronunciation of Greek had already been discussed.^[3] The Greek professor Georg Queck (1561–1628), however, wanted to give him a proper stage and invited him to deliver a festive oration on Christmas day. Both honored and indebted to his host, Kritopoulos did so in the presence of the rector, students, and representatives of society. Notably, the oration was given in Ancient Greek and printed soon afterward together with a Latin translation by Queck.

Figure 1. Portrait of Metrophanes Kritopoulos, © National Portrait Gallery, London

In my post, I will not discuss this long oration, which deserves closer study, but I will focus on a Greek poem that was appended to the published oration. The title reads: “Carmen in natalem Christi salvatoris nostri, e Latina Elegia P. Lotichii Graecè redditum ante XXV. annos à Melchiore Rindero” (trans. “A Song in Honor of the Birth of Christ Our Savior, a Latin Elegy by Petrus Lotichius Translated into Greek 25 Years Ago by Melchior Rinder” ^{^[4]}). The translator Melchior Rinder (1581–1634) was the Minister of Nuremberg’s St Sebaldus Church and a former student of the Academy in Altdorf. More importantly, he had personal connections with Kritopoulos. “Whenever I came from Altdorf to Nuremberg,” Kritopoulos stated in a letter to Wolfgang Jacob Pömer (1590–1655) dated May 15, 1626, “Rinder’s house was open to receive me” (ὁσακις γὰρ Ἀλτορφίηθεν εἰς Νωριμβέργαν ἐγενόμην, ἀνῳγμένη μοι ἦν εἰς ὑποδοχὴν ἡ ἐκείνου [sc. Ῥινδέρου] οἰκία^[5]). In that light, it is not particularly surprising that Rinder made a contribution to a publication of his dear friend. But why did Rinder decide to reach back to an old piece from his student days in Altdorf? And why did he choose to express his friendship through a translation rather than an original composition?

Figure 2. Portrait of Melchior Rinder, © Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

To follow this line of inquiry, let us first turn to the source of the translation. Petrus Lotichius Secundus (1528–1560) was a prominent German Neo-Latin poet and highly regarded by 17th-century readers.^[6] He was known in particular for his elegies, striking both in their poetical immediacy and in their blending of classical sources. The elegy in question was first printed in 1548 and quickly became a valued model, on which German humanists like Johann Bocer, Nikolaus Reusner, and Martin Opitz later built. In 180 lines, it tells the story of Christ’s birth and closely echoes the events of Luke 2:1–20. However, Lotichius puts specific emphasis on the soteriological fate of Christ and the hardships endured by Mary and Joseph.

Melchior did not simply translate Lotichius’ elegy into Greek, but transferred it to a wholly different genre. Written in hexameter and filled with numerous references to the Homeric epics, it makes for a genuine epyllion. Was he ambitious or did he simply adhere to an assigned task? We cannot discard one possibility for the other, as such exercises were commonly used in curricula.^[7] However, his intentional shift of genre is made clear from the beginning. He deliberately omits the first 12 lines from Lotichius’ poem in order to call upon Christ in the epic fashion of an invocation (vv. 1–6):

Σωτῆρος μερόπων τὸ γενέθλιον ἦμαρ ἀείδειν
ἄρχομαι ἐμμαπέως, μάλα δυσμαρὲς ἔργμα τελέσσαι·
Χριστὲ θεοῦ υἱὸς πατρὸς ὑψιμέδοντος, ἀπ᾽ ἄκρου
δεῦρ᾽ οὐλύμποιο στήθεσσιν ἐμοῖσιν ὀπάζων
ἄρρηκτον φωνὴν, ὀπὶ λειριοέσσῃ ἀοιδὴν
μέλπεσθαι γλυκερὴν ἐπὶ σεῖο γενέθλιον ἦμαρ.^[8]

To sing of his birthday, the savior of all mortals,
let me eagerly begin, for it is an awe-inspiring task to complete:
Christ, son of God, the Father ruling on high, from the summit
of Mount Olympus, come hither, bestow upon me and my heart
an unbreakable voice, a sweet song as pure as lilies
to celebrate the day of your birthday.

The combination of ἄρχομαι (“I begin”) and ἀείδειν (“to sing”) is a recurring incipit of the Homeric Hymns (HH 2.1, 11.1, 13.1, 16.1, 22.1, 26.1, 28.1). Furthermore, attributes of Zeus are used to describe the Christian god: He is ὑψιμέδων(“ruling on high”) and lives on Mount Olympus. Christ is called upon to leave his father’s side, come down from heaven, and help the poet in need. Thus, Christ replaces the ancient Muses. In comparison, the corresponding lines in Lotichius create a different atmosphere (vv. 13–16):

Ipse canam dulces numeros: adhibere sacratis

Piërios aris fasque piumque modos.

Tu modo, Christe, meum pectus vocemque guberna,

vera Dei effigies progeniesque patris.^[9]

I myself will sing sweet verses: to add poetic chants
to sacred altars is both right and dutiful.
You alone, Christ, guide my heart and voice,
true image of God and son of the Father.

Here, the relationship between poet and Christ seems to be more intimate. Ipse (“Myself”) and tu modo (“You alone”) are set in striking opposition, which almost invites us to imagine the scene of a private prayer. Such affective intimacy is well in line with the generic conventions of elegy, especially Roman elegy. The passage, as a result, lacks all the grandeur of Rinder’s translation. More than something to be admired in themselves, the verses are brought forth as humble offerings.

One last question remains: why did Rinder choose this text? One could obviously point to the fact that it was thematically well suited. However, the poem could serve another purpose. The University of Altdorf had only recently acquired the status of a full university, something Kritopoulos himself mentions with great effect in his own speech. Nonetheless, it had been a place of learning since 1575 and had made a name for itself as the Academia Norica. By presenting his friend with a Greek piece from his early 20s, Rinder offered more than a simple congratulatory poem on the occasion. It was a testament to the longstanding engagement with Greek letters on the university’s ground. In terms of content, it recounts the story of a family seeking shelter amidst hostile forces. At the time of the Thirty Years’ War, Kritopoulos had personally experienced Rinder’s hospitality in Nuremberg, but through the printed poem he stepped into local intellectual history and, by means of a shared language, could feel at home.

References

Blair, Ann M., “The Making of Student Notes”, in Student Notes from Latin Europe (1400–1750): A Research Companion ed. Xander Feys, Maxime Maleux, Andy Peetermans and Raf Van Rooy. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2025, 27–48.

Coppel, Bernhard, “Zur Einführung in das Thema: Petrus Lotichius Secundus”, in Lotichius und die römische Elegie ed. Ulrike Auhagen and Eckart Schäfer. NeoLatina 2. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2001, 11–17.

Davey, Colin, Pioneer for Unity, Metrophanes Kritopoulos (1589-1639) and Relations between the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Reformed Churches. London: British Council of Churches, 1987.

Kritopoulos, Metrophanes, Λόγος πανηγυρικὸς, ἅμα καὶ δογματικός, Oratio panegyrica et dogmatica. Altdorf: Balthasar Scherff, 1626.

Legrand, Émile, Bibliographie Hellénique ou description raisonnée des ouvrages publiés par des grecs aux XVe et XVIe siècles. Vol. 2. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1885.

Lotichius, Petrus, Petri Lotichii Secundi Solitariensis Poëmata Omnia, ed. Pieter Burman. Amsterdam: Officina Schouteniana, 1754.

Ordo quatuor facultatum sive brevis descriptio praelectionum, & exercitationum Academiae Altorphinae. Altdorf: Nicolaus Knorr, 1586.

Saracino, Stefano, Griechen im Heiligen Römischen Reich: Migration und ihre wissensgeschichtliche Bedeutung. Cultures and Practices of Knowledge in History 19. Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2024.

Footnotes

^[1] However, attention has been drawn to the value and availability of student notes from the Early Modern period. Cf. Blair (2025).

^[2] Within the Early Modern period, the mobility of Greeks was surprisingly high. Cf. Saracino (2024).

^[3] Personal connections to the university society are recorded by autographs in Kritopoulos’ album amicorum. As far as the nature of the inquiries is concerned, Kritopoulos’ name featured in different scientific writings published in Altdorf. Cf. Davey (1987), 199.

^[4] All translations from Latin and Greek are my own.

^[5] Cited by Legrand (1885), 221–22.

^[6] Coppel (2001) offers some basic information about the work, life, and reception of Lotichius.

^[7] The curriculum of the Altdorf Academy is noteworthy in its extensive use of classical Greek and Latin sources across all four faculties (theology, law, medicine, and art). It subsumes Latin-to-Greek or Greek-to-Latin-translations under “exercitationes Classicae partim in loquendo et scribendo, Latine, & Graece, tam versu, quam prosa”. Cf. Ordo quatuor facultatum (1586).

^[8] Kritopoulos (1626), Gv.

^[9] Lotichius (1754), 309.

How to cite

Heiss, Tobias. 2026. “Hospitality and a Translation into Greek” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 4 November 2026.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/0y0m7-thj75

Greek and Latin Paratexts in the “Novum Testamentum”

Laura Truzzu (KU Leuven)

Erasmus of Rotterdam’s edition of the New Testament is a monument to early modern bilingual scholarship. Published in 1516 as the Novum Instrumentum, it presented a Greek text of the New Testament, the first ever to appear in print, alongside a revised Latin translation, supplemented by an extensive collection of annotations. The Greek text was based on a collation of medieval Byzantine manuscripts and followed the majority reading of the New Testament, supported by most of the surviving Greek manuscripts.^[1] The Latin translation was based on the Vulgate, which it revised in accordance with the Greek text and rendered in a classical style. The annotations provided a rationale for the new translation and served as a running commentary on the language, history and content of the New Testament books. ^{^[2]}

Surrounding these core components – Greek text, Latin translation and annotations, which would recur in all subsequent editions (1519, 1522, 1527 and 1535) – were several Greek and Latin paratexts. The most famous were the Paraclesis, Methodus and Apologia, prefatory essays outlining Erasmus’ program for religious reform (fig. 1). They encouraged readers, particularly theologians, to engage with Scripture personally and critically. Personally, by reading the sacred texts themselves rather than through medieval anthologies. Critically, by studying the ancient languages in which these texts were originally composed as well as by consulting the Church Fathers, whom Erasmus considered the most reliable guides to biblical exegesis.^[3] Underlying these essays was the idea of Scripture as literature, as a collection of multilingual texts written by different authors, across different time periods and cultures, and therefore in need, as was any other ancient corpus, of careful (re-)contextualization.^[4] The theologian’s task then lay in restoring the original meaning of the biblical text and rendering it intelligible and appealing to a contemporary audience. For the former, he must employ the philological-historical methods of classical humanism. For the latter he must follow the example of the Church Fathers who, by means of rhetoric rather than dialectic, conveyed the true and timeless message of Scripture, referred to by Erasmus as the Philosophia Christi.^[5]

Figure 1 – The opening paragraphs of the *Paraclesis*, *Methodus* and *Apologia*. Basel, Johann Froben, 1516. Basel, UB, BibG B3.

The Paraclesis and Methodus eventually developed into autonomous essays, reprinted and sold separately from the Novum Instrumentum while the Apologia continued to preface the work in all subsequent editions.^[6] From 1519 onward, these essays were supplemented by a series of polemical paratexts that defended the now renamed Novum Testamentum against growing criticism. Amid the rising tensions of the Reformation, the work became increasingly controversial because it treated the Vulgate as a translation that could be revised and improved rather than a sacrosanct text impervious to change. By implication it seemed to challenge the authority of the Catholic Church that sanctioned the primacy of the Vulgate as the sole and divinely inspired Latin version of Scripture.^[7] To counter these objections, Erasmus prefaced the 1519 edition with Pope Leo X’s letter granting permission for its publication (fig. 2). This was followed by the Capita argumentorum contra morosos quosdam ac indoctos (Chief Points in the Arguments Answering Some Crabby and Ignorant Critics), a passionate apology refuting his – conspicuously anonymous – opponents (fig. 3); and by the Elenchi or Indices, a catalogue of erroneous, obscure and corrupt passages in the Vulgate (fig. 4). In doing so, Erasmus reaffirmed that the Vulgate was a translation in need of revision, while simultaneously reassuring his readers that such revisions enjoyed papal approval and were not intended to challenge the privileged status of the Vulgate nor to replace it as the official text of the Catholic Church. They were only meant to help theologians understand Scripture more accurately and accommodate its message to a contemporary audience, catering to their refined (humanistic) tastes.^[8]

Figure 2 – The privilege granted by Pope Leo X. Basel, Johann Froben, 1519. Basel, UB, FG V40-41.

Figure 3 – Excerpt from the *Capita contra morosos*, which shows how Erasmus refutes his critics point by (numbered) point. Basel, Johann Froben, 1519. Basel, UB, FG V40-41.

Figure 4 – The first of the *Elenchi* or *Indices*, offering a list of solecisms in the Vulgate. Basel, Johann Froben, 1519. Basel, UB, FG V40-41.

Alongside these lengthy essays and polemical pieces, Erasmus also included a series of shorter paratexts surrounding the individual books of the Gospels, Acts and the Epistles. They were mostly biobibliographical in nature, outlining the lives of the biblical authors and the content and characteristics of their writings. Most of these paratexts were adopted from the Church Fathers or from the editorial apparatus of the Greek and Latin manuscripts Erasmus used for his revised editions, although some were compositions of his own. The Gospels, for example, were prefaced by Latin biographies of the evangelists, adopted from Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus (fig. 5); by their Greek translations, falsely attributed to his friend Sophronius; and by Greek summaries or hypotheseis derived from Theophylactus’ commentary on the Gospels (fig. 6).^[9] Acts was introduced by two Greek treatises on the missionary travels and martyrdom of the apostle Paul, anonymously transmitted through the Byzantine tradition. In 1527 they were supplemented by Erasmus’ own chronological survey of the travels of Peter and Paul, written in Latin (fig. 7).^[10] The Epistles, meanwhile, were prefaced from 1516 onward by Greek hypotheseis and Latin argumenta, brief summaries passed down anonymously through the Byzantine and Vulgate traditions respectively (fig. 8). At the end of each Pauline Epistle also appeared bilingual subscriptions recounting the letter’s place of composition, secretary and courier. These subscriptions were originally attested only in Greek, but in 1516 Erasmus provided his own Latin translation (fig. 9).^[11] While the hypotheseis and subscriptions recurred in all subsequent editions, the argumenta were replaced by Erasmus’ own summaries in 1519 (fig. 10). These summaries elaborated on the content and style of the letters, as well as their moral relevance to everyday life, topics he had already introduced in the Paraclesis, Methodus and Apologia and would develop further in his annotations.^[12]

Figure 5 – Prefacing the Gospels are Jerome’s Lives of the Evangelists, followed by Greek-Latin chapter headings of the individual Gospels. Seen here are the Life of Matthew and the bilingual chapter headings of his Gospel. Basel, Johann Froben, 1519. Basel, UB, FG V40-41.

These biobibliographical paratexts embedded the Novum Testamentum within an ancient, and authoritative, tradition of biblical scholarship, emphasizing the continuity of the work rather than its innovation, as did the prefatory essays discussed above. They privileged the Church Fathers (e.g. Jerome) and their Byzantine commentators (e.g. Theophylactus) over the scholastic theologians, whom they did not mention at all. They also seemed to reveal a hierarchy between the Greek and Latin manuscript traditions in which these patristic and scholastic bodies of scholarship were respectively rooted. Whereas the editorial features of the Greek tradition were adopted without alteration (e.g. hypotheseis, subscriptions), those of the Latin tradition, most notably the argumenta, were replaced by Erasmus’ own compositions, further distancing the Novum Testamentum from the Vulgate and reaffirming the primacy of the Greek tradition.^[13] Alternatively, or perhaps additionally, this asymmetry may reflect the different functions of the Greek and Latin paratexts. The former connected the edition to an established tradition, while the latter provided room for Erasmus’ own contributions to it. This would support the commonly held view that the Novum Testamentum was primarily a Latin edition of the New Testament, despite its (historically significant) inclusion of the Greek text. This text served only to support the revision of the Vulgate but was otherwise of secondary importance.^[14] The paratexts would then reflect a similar instrumental use of Greek alongside a more original use of Latin.

In conclusion, the paratextual apparatus of the Novum Testamentum was an integral part of all major editions – although often omitted in the minor ones, which aimed to be more accessible^[15] – and it served different functions. The lengthy essays prefacing the work were manifestos of biblical humanism, which made a passionate plea to read the Bible and, by studying classical philology and rhetoric, to restore its original text and meaning. The polemical pieces defended against accusations of blasphemy, assuring its readers that the Novum Testamentum did not undermine the primacy of the Vulgate nor the authority of the Catholic Church, but was only meant as an academic tool or instrumentum for the study of Scripture. The biobibliographical paratexts lend credence to this claim by situating the work within the patristic and Byzantine traditions of biblical learning, emphasizing alike its orthodoxy and its scholarly character. Although the apparatus consisted of both Greek and Latin paratexts, only some of the latter were original compositions. This provided further evidence for the instrumental use of Greek throughout the Novum Testamentum, which was primarily conceived as a Latin text. Although originally assigned a minor and supportive role, the Greek text accompanying Erasmus’ Latin translation would have a lasting impact on the history of bilingual biblical scholarship, serving as the textus receptus of the New Testament well into the nineteenth century^[16] – an ironic outcome the author himself might not have anticipated, but would have appreciated, nonetheless.

References

Amalou, Thierry and Alexander Vanautgaerden, eds. 1516. Le Nouveau Testament d’Érasme. Regards sur l’Europe des humanistes. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.

Bloemendal, Jan. “Erasmus and Biblical Scholarship.” In A Companion to Erasmus, edited by Eric MacPhail, 68-89. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Cummings, Brian. “Erasmus, Sacred Literature, and Literary Theory.” In Erasmus on Literature. His Ratio or ‘System’ of 1518/1519 (The Ratio verae theologiae), edited by Mark Vessey, 48-62. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2021.

de Jonge, Henk Jan. “Erasmus’ Novum Testamentum of 1519.” Novum Testamentum 61, no. 1 (2019): 1-25.

de Jonge, Henk Jan. “Erasmus’s Translation of the New Testament: Aim and Method.” The Bible Translator 67, no. 1 (2016): 29-41.

de Lang, Marijke H. “Fidelius, apertius, significantius: The New Testament Translated and Edited by Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1516.” The Bible Translator 67, no. 1 (2016): 5-8.

Elliott, James Keith. “Novum Testamentum editum est: The Five-Hundredth Anniversary of Erasmus’s New Testament.” The Bible Translator 67, no. 1 (2016): 9-28.

Faber, Riemer. “The Argumentum as Paratext: Editorial Strategies in the Novum Testamentum.” Erasmus Studies 37, no. 2 (2017): 161-175.

Faber, Riemer. “The Ratio and Annotations as Theory and Practice of Biblical Interpretation.” In Erasmus on Literature. His Ratio or ‘System’ of 1518/1519 (The Ratio verae theologiae), edited by Mark Vessey, 80-92. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2021.

Seidel Menchi, Silvana and Carlo Martino Lucarini, eds. Scripta Minora ad Novum Testamentum Pertinentia. Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami vol. VI-11. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2025.

Wallraff, Martin. “Paratexte der Bibel: Was Erasmus edierte außer dem Neuen Testament.“ In Basel 1516: Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament, edited by Martin Wallraff, Silvana Seidel Menchi and Kaspar von Greyerz, 145-173. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016.

Footnotes

[1] James Keith Elliott, “Novum Testamentum editum est: The Five-Hundredth Anniversary of Erasmus’s New Testament,” The Bible Translator 67, no. 1 (2016): 19-22; Andrew J. Brown, “The Manuscript Sources and Textual Character of Erasmus’ 1516 Greek New Testament,” in Basel 1516: Erasmus’ Edition of the New Testament, ed. Martin Wallraff, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Kaspar Von Greyerz (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 126-130 and 137-138.

[2] Marijke H. de Lang, “Fidelius, apertius, significantius: The New Testament Translated and Edited by Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1516,” The Bible Translator 67, no. 1 (2016): 5-6.

[3] Silvana Seidel Menchi and Carlo Martino Lucarini eds., Scripta Minora ad Novum Testamentum Pertinentia, Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami vol. VI-11 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2025), 19-21.

[4] For a detailed discussion of Erasmus’ literary theory and his concept of historical and rhetorical accommodatio see Brian Cummings “Erasmus, Sacred Literature, and Literary Theory,” in Erasmus on Literature. His Ratio or ‘System’ of 1518/1519 (The Ratio verae theologiae), ed. Mark Vessey (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2021), 48-62; and Riemer Faber, “The Ratio and Annotations as Theory and Practice of Biblical Interpretation,” in Idem, 80-92.

[5] Jan Bloemendal, “Erasmus and Biblical Scholarship,” in A Companion to Erasmus, ed. Eric MacPhail (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2023), 77, 83 and 88; and Seidel Menchi and Lucarini, 17 and 21-22.

[6] Seidel Menchi and Lucarini, 13n70. The Methodus was later renamed the Ratio verae theologiae (1518/1519) and expanded into a treatise on (biblical) literature and hermeneutics. It served as a manual for Erasmus’ philological and historical method of biblical interpretation. See n4.

[7] Idem, 42-46.

[8] Idem, 29-32; Henk Jan de Jonge, “Erasmus’s Translation of the New Testament: Aim and Method,” The Bible Translator 67, no. 1 (2016): 30-34.

[9] Martin Wallraff, “Paratexte der Bibel: Was Erasmus edierte außer dem Neuen Testament,“ in Basel 1516, 160-162; de Jonge, “Erasmus’ Novum Testamentum of 1519,” Novum Testamentum 61, no. 1 (2019): 14; Thierry Amalou and Alexander Vanautgaerden ed., 1516. Le Nouveau Testament d’Érasme. Regards sur l’Europe des humanistes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), xiv-xv.

[10] Wallraff, 153; de Jonge, “Erasmus’ Novum Testamentum of 1519,” 15; Amalou and Vanautgaerden, xiv-xv.

[11] Wallraff, 148-152; de Jonge, “Erasmus’ Novum Testamentum of 1519,” 15-16; Amalou and Vanautgaerden xvi-xix.

[12] For an in-depth survey of the argumenta see Riemer Faber, “The Argumentum as Paratext: Editorial Strategies in the Novum Testamentum,” Erasmus Studies 37, no. 2 (2017): 161-175.

[13] Wallraff, 149.

[14] de Jonge, “Erasmus’ Novum Testamentum of 1519,” 5-9.

[15] Seidel Menchi and Lucarini, 46-53.

[16] Elliott, 22-24.

How to cite

Truzzu, Laura. 2026. “Greek and Latin Paratexts in the Novum Testamentum.” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 28 October 2026.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: http://doi.org/10.17613/txrkk-cva70.

A “Pindaric Lyre” under the Dragon’s Wing: Tito Prospero Martinengo’s Greek Poetry

Elena Maria Cassol (Università Ca’ Foscari Venice)

On 13 May 1572, Ugo Boncompagni was elected Pope with the name Gregory XIII and his heraldic dragon would come to dominate the cultural and political landscape for the next thirteen years. Meanwhile, somewhere in Northern Italy, Tito Prospero Martinengo was waiting for the storm to pass. Only a year earlier, on 14 February 1571, he had been put on trial for heresy as a follower of the radical doctrines of Giorgio Siculo (Prosperi 2000). Yet, ten years later, a collection of Greek poems signed by Tito Prospero Martinengo would be published in Rome, featuring the papal coat of arms on its frontispiece. How could a man marked by such a dangerous spiritual past find his way back into the graces of the Roman establishment? The answer, perhaps, lies in the ancient language of the Greeks.

Figure 1. Portrait of Gregory XIII with his heraldic coat of arms.

During the 16th century, Italy’s role shifted from being the heart of Hellenic studies to its periphery. The Protestant Reformation had triggered a decisive translatio studiorum toward the North, turning the study of Greek into a core element of its own identity, a vital tool for an autonomous interpretation of the Scriptures. Conversely, this same issue sparked anxiety within the post-Tridentine Church, which progressively marginalized Greek studies. An attempt to reverse this trend was made by Gregory XIII. He sought to bridge the gap with the Greek Eastern Church as an anti-Protestant strategy, founding the Greek College of Saint Athanasius in 1576 and actively promoting the publication of Greek works focused on Christian themes. The shift toward a Philhellenic policy was driven by influential figures within the Curia, most notably Cardinals Antonio Carafa and Guglielmo Sirleto. Both were acquainted with Tito Prospero Martinengo, a Benedictine monk from Brescia belonging to the Cassinese Congregation, a monastic branch of the Benedictine Order founded by Ludovico Barbo at the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua in 1504.

Martinengo, who had been put on trial for heresy in 1571, possessed a great command of the Greek language, a skill that the Church found too valuable to ignore. His philological expertise was harnessed for several editions of Christian texts. Specifically, Cardinal Carafa sought Martinengo’s help to resolve textual issues for the Sixtine Septuagint (1586). Two letters preserved in the Vatican Library (ms. Vat. lat. 9064, ff. 198-200), dated 20 June and 28 July 1579, stand as witnesses to Martinengo’s direct involvement in this monumental edition. It is therefore likely that Martinengo was progressively rehabilitated within the ecclesiastical hierarchy precisely through the mediation of figures like Sirleto and Carafa, and thanks to his mastery of Greek.

This rehabilitation bore fruit during the 1580s, when Martinengo published his works with Francesco Zanetti, the official printer of the Roman Curia. His first major work, the Ποιήματα διάφορα Ἑλληνικὰ καὶ Λατινικά (Poiemata diaphora Hellenika kai Latinika, 1582), stands as a rare exception in the Italian literary landscape of the time. It represents one of the very few collections of Greek poetry produced in Italy since Poliziano’s Liber epigrammatum Graecorum, and it remains the only collection of Greek sacred poetry from the Italian Renaissance.

As we can see in Figure 2, the title page of the Poiemata displays the coat of arms of Gregory XIII. The collection exhibits a remarkable variety of both meter and content; it includes long hexameter compositions dedicated to Christ, Pindaric odes for the Virgin Mary, and hymns for the Saints, alongside encomiastic poems addressed to personal acquaintances, high-ranking Cardinals, and Pope Gregory XIII himself.

Figure 2. Title page of the Poiemata diaphora (1582)

Given the sacred subject matter of the work, the prominent ecclesiastical figures mentioned within it, the choice of the printer, and the presence of the papal coat of arms, it is not difficult to hypothesize that Martinengo and his work were somehow integrated into the Church’s cultural policy of those years. Adopting this interpretive framework, Martinengo’s work represents a successful, yet isolated, expression of the Philhellenic milieu of the Roman Church during those years (Pontani 2025: 44-49).

In this context, the poem dedicated to Guglielmo Sirleto, composed in iambic trimeters and serving as both an encomium and a programmatic manifesto of the Poiemata, deserves particular attention. The composition is divided into two parts. In the first verses, Martinengo celebrates Sirleto’s dual greatness: the Cardinal’s institutional power and his intellectual authority, which makes him a “sparkling star of illustrious knowledge” (ἄστρον φαεινὸν εὐκλεῶν μαθημάτων; Martinengo 1582: 7, v. 2).

Figure 3. Portrait of Guglielmo Sirleto by Iacopino del Conte

Cardinal Sirleto, depicted in Figure 3, was indeed a key individual in Counter-Reformation culture, engaged in the editing of texts, the fight against heresies, and the revision of the Index of Prohibited Books (Fragnito 2018). Born in Calabria, he soon moved to Rome, where his philological competence attracted the attention of Cardinal Marcello Cervini, who sought him out as a collaborator in his editorial ventures for the recovery of patristic texts. His profound knowledge of Greek and his burgeoning mastery of Hebrew made him a valuable consultant during the Council of Trent, providing Cervini and other legates with translations and research on crucial doctrinal themes. At the same time, he was entrusted with the reorganization and enrichment of the Vatican Library’s holdings, consolidating his reputation as a trusted scholar of the Curia. His skills were fully applied under Gregory XIII, who tasked him with preparing numerous sacred works for print – including a Roman edition of the Vulgate – and deepening dialogue with the Greek Church. In addition to his cultural commitment, Sirleto was involved in implementing censorship and revising the Tridentine Index. Martinengo not only collaborated on that great cultural project in which Sirleto was also engaged (for example, by participating in the edition of the Septuagint, whose commission was appointed by the Cardinal himself), but also had the opportunity to get to know him personally in 1569, through the mediation of the Archbishop of Cesena, Odoardo Gualandi.[1] As further confirmation of the relationship between Martinengo and the Cardinal, several of Martinengo’s poems appear in Vat. gr. 1902, a miscellaneous manuscript that can be primarily attributed to Guglielmo Sirleto (Maronese 2025: 121).

The second part of Martinengo’s Greek composition outlines the poetic project of the entire collection, whose themes Martinengo announces: God, the Virgin, Saints Peter and Paul, and the ensemble of κομψὰ μελύδρια (“refined little songs”; Martinengo 1582: 7, v. 13). This planning, typical of classical proems, confirms the function of the poem as a manifesto of the work. The ideological goal is forcefully declared in the final verses (19-25):

Ἢν δ’ αὖτ’ ὀρέξῃ μοι θεὸς μᾶκος βίου,
φόρμιγγα Πινδάρειον αἰόλον κροτεῖν
οὐκ ἐκλίποιμι, καὶ κρατίστην μητέρα
μολπαῖσι δώσω, καὶ καλαῖς Μουσῶν ῥοαῖς
Σωτῆρά τ’ ἀνδρῶν τῆσδ’ ὑπέρτατον γόνον
ἡμῶν πινύσσων Αὔσονας θεῖα θροεῖν
μύθους λιπόντας, καὶ βέβηλ’ ἀείσματα.

And if God, in turn, shall grant me a long life,
to make the variegated Pindaric lyre resound, 
may I not cease, and the most powerful Mother
I will offer to the songs, and to the beautiful flows of the Muses 
the Savior of men, her supreme descendant, 
and I will inspire the Ausonians to chant aloud our sacred verses, 
having abandoned profane myths and songs.

The poetic architecture of these final verses, particularly the chiasmus spanning lines 21-23, highlights Martinengo’s commitment to celebrate in poetry the “most powerful Mother” and her son, the “Savior of men”. Martinengo professes the will to employ a classical formal apparatus, clearly highlighted by a series of references (φόρμιγγα, Πινδάρειον, καλαῖς Μουσῶν ῥοαῖς), not to celebrate ancient myths, but to raise hymns to God and the Virgin, definitively abandoning “profane songs (βέβηλ’ ἀείσματα)”. This transition is evident in the poem itself, which is woven with refined classical echoes. Martinengo constructs his imagery using a sophisticated mosaic of ancient sources: he borrows the “Pindaric lyre” (φόρμιγγα πινδάρειον) from Nonnus’ Dionysiaca (25.21) and the “flows of the Muses” (Μουσῶν ῥοαῖς) from Pindar himself (Nemean Odes 7.12). By furthermore utilizing Homeric, Euripidean, and Callimachean vocabulary, Martinengo demonstrates that the very language of the “profane” past could be stripped of their mythological charge and reinvested with sacred meaning. This goal does not only have a personal dimension but is announced as a true large-scale cultural project. Martinengo states, in fact, that he wishes to “inspire the Ausonians [the Italians] to chant aloud our sacred verses” (v. 24).

Martinengo’s story remains, in many ways, an open question. A monk tried for heresy who resurfaces years later as a collaborator in the Church’s editorial efforts during the Counter-Reformation; a poet who writes in Ancient Greek at a time when few in Italy still did; a figure who moves, perhaps strategically, perhaps sincerely, between the margins and the centre of Roman cultural life. The Poiemata may well represent the fruit of this difficult navigation: a collection that speaks the language of Pindar and Homer yet places that language in the service of Christ and the Virgin.

Whether Martinengo’s rehabilitation was the result of deliberate patronage, personal ambition, or genuine devotion – or some combination of all three – is difficult to say with certainty. What seems clear is that his command of Greek opened doors that his past might otherwise have kept shut. In the Philhellenic climate fostered by Gregory XIII, a “Pindaric lyre” tuned to sacred themes was not merely a literary curiosity; it was, potentially, a cultural and ecclesiastical asset.

His work was not without recognition among his contemporaries – Torquato Tasso himself wrote a sonnet in his honour – yet his ambition to inspire the Italians to sing divine songs in Greek found no followers. His work stands, for now, as a singular experiment at the intersection of classical learning and religious pressure.

Figures

Figure 1. Portrait of Gregory XIII with his heraldic coat of arms. Source: Chacón, Alfonso. Vitae et res gestae Pontificum Romanorum et S.R.E. Cardinalium. Tomus Quartus. Romae: Philippus et Antonius de Rubeis, 1677, p. 1.
Figure 2. Title page of the Poiemata diaphora (1582)
Figure 3. Portrait of Guglielmo Sirleto by Iacopino del Conte, private collection

References

Fragnito, Gigliola. 2018. “Sirleto, Guglielmo.” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 71. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Maronese, Manoel. 2025. Graeca in angulo Venetorum. La produzione poetica in greco antico nel Veneto di XVI secolo. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.
Martinengo, Tito Prospero. 1582. Ποιήματα διάφορα Ἑλληνικὰ καὶ Λατινικά. Roma: Francesco Zanetti.
Pontani, Filippomaria. 2025. “Su nel ciel altro Elicona: Versifying the life of Christ on either side of the Alps”. In Griechischhumanismus des 16. Jahrhunderts. Lorenz Rhodoman im Kontext und digital, edited by Stefan Weise. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Prosperi, Adriano. 2000. L’eresia del Libro Grande. Storia di Giorgio Siculo e della sua setta. Milano: Feltrinelli.

Footnotes

[1] Cf. ms. Vat. lat. 6190/1, f. 130r (Pontani 2025: 44).

How to cite

Cassol, Elena Maria. 2026. “A “Pindaric Lyre” under the Dragon’s Wing: Tito Prospero Martinengo’s Greek Poetry” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 1 June 2026.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/wcnwr-efj94

Zeus, the Fool?

Criticizing the Pagan Father of the Gods in Lorenz Rhodoman’s Ilias parva (1588/1604)

Karen Lelittka (Bergische Universität Wuppertal)

The Greeks began their education with Homer. Homer retained his reputation as the king of poets throughout the Middle Ages, although his texts could not be read directly except in Byzantium. It was not until the Renaissance that his œuvre returned to the West, where the first translations into Latin were produced laboriously. From that point on, a new exploration of Homer’s texts began. The poet and philologist Lorenz Rhodoman created a special kind of exploration: in his Ilias parva, which was first published in 1588 in Greek and in 1604 in Greek-Latin verse, he used the ancient tradition of composing argumenta and summarised the 24 books of Homer’s Iliad as well as the 14 books of Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica in just 1,700 hexametric verses.

Despite Rhodoman’s self-identification as a Christian, he recommended reading Homer’s (pagan) works. In his poem “Dedicatory poem for the Latin translation of Dion’s speech on Troy” he praised Homer and his knowledge while also drawing attention to the ancient poet’s incorrect theological understanding (Rhod. Dion.praef. 1–3; 17f.):

Χρήσιμα πολλὰ λέγει σενοῖς ἐπέεσσιν Ὅμηρος
πρὸς βίον ἀνθρώπων· ὁ γὰρ ἦν παίδεσσιν Ἀχαιῶν
ἰδμοσύνης ἄρχων πολυειδέος. […]
[…] θεηγορίη δὲ καὶ αὐτή,
οἵη ουλυθέοις ψευδώνυμος ἔθνεσι κεῖτο.

Homer says many useful words with dignified words about human life: for he was the source of diverse knowledge for the children of the Greeks. […] […] and theology itself [originated from him], in the distorted form in which it was common among peoples devoted to polytheism.[1]

With this view he adopted the position of Philipp Melanchthon, who pleaded for reading Homer’s works in his Praefatio in Homerum, pointing out their ethical, moral and linguistic benefits.[2]

This conflict between recommendation and criticism is also evident in the Ilias parva, where Rhodoman sometimes goes beyond summarising the content to express clear criticism of the pagan gods and their behaviour. An excerpt from the Διὸς ἀπάτη scene in the 14th Homeric argumentum offers a telling case.

In this scene, Hera decides to seduce her husband Zeus: as a consequence, he is distracted from the earthly war and is prevented from continuing to support the Trojans, whom Hera despises, and from stopping the intervention of the other gods in the battle. She styles her hair, dresses and adorns herself, and successfully begs Aphrodite for her magic belt under false pretences before setting off to see Zeus, accompanied by Hypnos, whom she has bribed beforehand. The reaction of the father of the gods is as follows (Rhod. Il.parv.Hom. 14,23–30):

ὡς δ’ ὁράα Κρονίδαο γυναιμανὲς ἦτορ ἄκοιτιν,
ὣς ὑπ’ ἔρῳ βέβλητο καὶ ἵππων εἴδετ’ ἀκοίτῃ
ἀγρονόμων, ὃς δὴ πάσαις ἐποχεύμενος ἄλλαις
εἰς μίαν αἰθύσσει πόθον, ἣν ἀρίσημον ἴδηται·
νήπιος, ὅς ῥ’ ἀλόχῳ ζηλήμονί περ μάλ’ ἐούσῃ
εὐνὰς ἃς κατέλεξε παρ’ ἀλλοτρίῃσι γυναιξίν,
καὶ νέφος ἑσσάμενος, τό κεν οὐ θεὸς οὔτε μάλ’ ὀξὺς
Ἠέλιος διέδερκεν, ἑὴν ἕλετ’ ἀγκὰς ἄκοιτιν.

As soon as the women-obsessed heart of the son of Kronos [Zeus] beheld his wife [Hera], it was immediately struck by love and he resembled the husband of the [25] land-grazing mares, who, despite being known to mount all others, quickly directs his desire towards a single one, whom he considers outstanding. The fool, who, although his wife is very jealous, listed his sexual encounters with other women and, after enwrapping himself in a cloud that no god and not even the very [30] sharp-eyed Helios [sun god] could see through, embraced his own wife.[3]

In the beginning, Rhodoman deliberately imitates the Homeric syntax of the ancient Iliad in his successive use of ὡς (ὡς δ’ ὁράα Κρονίδαο γυναιμανὲς ἦτορ ἄκοιτιν, / ὣς ὑπ’ ἔρῳ βέβλητο, v. 23f.).[4] Furthermore, this creates a parallel to a passage from Rhodoman’s Arion, in which Zeus sees Leda for the first time and desires her (Rhod. Arion 942): ὡς δ’ ἴδεν, ὥς σφε τάχ’ οἶστρος ἀθέσφατος ἦτορ ἀνᾶψεν (“As soon as he saw her, a powerful sting quickly ignited his heart”).[5] The apparently deliberate overlap in the sentence structure indicates the insatiability of the father of the gods: as soon as he sees a beautiful woman, whether she is a goddess or a mortal, he falls for her and is captivated by his sexual desire for her. This lust is also emphasized by the use of the noun ἔρος (v. 24) in the excerpt above.

Figure 2 – Juno seduces Jupiter, wearing Aphrodite’s magic belt, by Annibale Carracci (1597)

The subsequent comparison of Zeus with a stud in v. 24 is an addition by Rhodoman that cannot be found in Homer’s Iliad. It is obvious that the German poet criticises the god’s sexual desire and extramarital affairs, which are also discussed later in the text, by using this comparison.[6] Zeus’ (physical) “desire” (πόθος, v. 26) is explicitly mentioned again in the text itself. Outside the text, there is a marginal note, Admissario similis Iupiter (“Jupiter is like a stud”), which also picks up on the comparison made. The use of the noun admissarius, which does appear in an agricultural context in ancient literature yet is also used to describe frivolous and immoral people,[7] draws attention to the immoral behaviour of the pagan god. Needless to say, this stands in stark contrast with what is taught in Christianity and how disciples of God are supposed to behave – in the Decalogue itself, two of the Ten Commandments are already directed against adultery and unorthodox desires.[8]

Particularly striking is Rhodoman’s authorial comment, in which the father of the gods is referred to as νήπιος (“the fool”, “the childish one”, v. 27). While in Homer’s Iliad this adjective is only used to describe humans[9] who are considered νήπιοι due to their ignorance of divine intervention, Rhodoman’s commentary reverses the role of Zeus, the almighty father of the gods: he is accused of infantile naivety, which on the one hand allows him to be manipulated by his wife and on the other hand causes him to reveal his extramarital affairs to her. Despite criticism on the authenticity of the Homeric catalogue of Zeus’ love affairs,[10] Rhodoman decided to mention them in his own work. In doing so, he followed the tradition of Christian literature, which often sharply criticises the love affairs of the pagan father of the gods, as is the case, for example, in Prudentius’ work Contra Symmachum (Prud. c. Symm. 1,59–71).[11]

In the context of the Διὸς ἀπάτη scene, however, it is not only Zeus’ behaviour that can be denounced, but also that of Hera: the perfidy with which she unscrupulously misleads her own husband and deceives and bribes Aphrodite and Hypnos in order to implement her plan and to satisfy her personal desires testifies to her malicious and deceitful character. This also contrasts with Protestant marital ethics, according to which a woman should be obedient to her husband.[12]

This brief examination of the text excerpt from the Διὸς ἀπάτη scene has made it clear that Rhodoman, by adding the comparison of Zeus to a stud, his authorial commentary as well as his choice of words (νήπιος) and the reference to Zeus’ extramarital affairs, expresses a criticism of the pagan father of the gods. I have drawn particular attention to Zeus’ lack of castitas and to the fact that his marriage to Hera is not a coniugium pium, which makes the contrast with Protestant ideas of marriage notably clear. For Rhodoman’s readers this means: yes, one should read Homer, but from a critical distance!

Figures:

Figure 1 Unknown Artist, Portrait of Lorenz Rhodoman, 16th century. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lorenz-Rhodomann.jpg 

Figure 2: Annibale Carracci, Jupiter and Juno, 1597, Galleria Farnese, Rome. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jupiter_and_Juno_by_Annibale_Carracci#/media/File:Jupiter_and_Juno_-_Annibale_Carracci_-_1597_-_Farnese_Gallery,_Rome.jpg

References:

Bartelink, Gerard Johannes Marinus (1994): Homer, in: Dassmann, Ernst et al. (eds.): Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der Antiken Welt. Band 16: Hofzeremoniell – Ianus. Stuttgart, 116–147.

CR = Bretschneider, Karl Gottfried (Bd. 1–15)/Bindseil, Heinrich Ernst (Bd. 16–28) (eds.) (1834–1860): Corpus Reformatorum. Philippi Melanthonis opera quae supersunt omnia. Vol. 1–28. Halle/Braunschweig.

Gärtner, Thomas (ed.) (2024): Widmungsgedicht zur Ausgabe von Dions Trojarede (= Rhod. Dion.praef.), https://www.rhodomanologia.de/html/rhod-dion-praef.html.

Krieter-Spiro, Martha/Bierl, Anton/Latacz, Joachim (eds.) (2015): Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar (Basler Kommentar/BK). Band X: 14. Gesang. Faszikel 2: Kommentar. Berlin/Boston.

Ludwig, Walther (2008): Eine protestantische Ehelehre – die Sammlung der Carmina et Epistolae de coniugio ad D. Davidem Chytraeum (1562), in: Ludwig, Walther/Steiner-Weber, Astrid (eds.): Supplementa Neolatina. Ausgewählte Aufsätze 2003–2008. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, 185–215.

Murray, August Taber (ed.) (1925): Homer, The Iliad II. With an English translation by A. T. Murray. Cambridge.

Snell, Bruno et al. (eds.) (2004): Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos. Band 3: M–P. Göttingen.

Weise, Stefan (ed.) (2023): Arion (= Rhod. Arion), https://www.rhodomanologia.de/html/rhod-arion.html.

Weise, Stefan (2025a): Rhodoman’s Odyssey – Between Admiration, Alienation and Appropriation, in: Weise, Stefan (ed.): Griechischhumanismus des 16. Jahrhunderts. Lorenz Rhodoman im Kontext und digital. Stuttgart, 325–340.

Weise, Stefan (ed.) (2025b): Ilias parva (1604), Teil I: Griechisch-lateinische Periochen zu den 24 Büchern von Homers Ilias (= Rhod. Il.parv.Hom. 1–24), http://www.rhodomanologia.de/html/rhod-il-parv-hom-1-24.html.

Weise, Stefan (2025c): Mythos und Evangelium. Studien zu den mythologischen Gedichten Argonautica, Thebaica und Troica von Lorenz Rhodoman (nebst Edition des griechischen bzw. griechisch-lateinischen Textes und deutscher Übersetzung). Im Januar 2025 an der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal eingereichte Habilitationsschrift.

West, Martin (ed.) (2000): Homeri Ilias. Recensuit et testimonia congessit Martin L. West. Volumen alterum rhapsodias XIII-XXIV et indicem nominum continens. Monachii et Lipsiae.

Footnotes

[1] The Greek text and its translation are cited from Gärtner 2024.

[2] See CR XI, 397–413. On the benefits of reading Homer, see in particular 400–404. For a comparison of Rhodoman’s image of Homer and Melanchthon’s Praefatio in Homerum, see Weise 2025a, 337f.

[3] The Greek text and its translation are cited from Weise 2025b.

[4] Hom. Il. 14,294: ὡς δ’ ἴδεν, ὥς μιν ἔρος πυκινὰς φρένας ἀμφεκάλυψεν (“And when he beheld her, then love encompassed his wise heart about”, translation by Murray 1925). Cf. the apparatus in Weise 2025b on Rhod. Il.parv.Hom. 14,23f.

[5] The Greek text and its translation are cited from Weise 2023.

[6] In this context, Weise draws attention to the criticism of Zeus’ sexual desire expressed in Rhodomans’ Troica (Rhod. Tro.^.2 102‒110), cf. Weise 2025b, note 33 on Rhod. Il.parv.Hom. 14,26. In another work, he also provides an overview of the central role of “libido and adultery” in Rhodoman’s mythological works, see Weise 2025c, 63f.

[7] For the use of the noun in an agricultural context, see, for example, Varro rust. 2,7,1, Colum. 6,27,3 et al. and Plin. nat. 28,217; for its use in a pejorative sense, see, for example, Cic. Pis. 69, Plaut. Mil. 1112, Sen. nat. 1,16,2 and Anth. R. 149,9.

[8] See Ex 20,14: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and Ex 20,17: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife”.

[9] Only in Hom. Il. 15,104 does Hera once refer to herself and the other gods (except Zeus!) as νήπιοι. The Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos lists only two other instances in which gods are described with this adjective: in the Homeric hymn h.Merc. 406, Apollo describes his half-brother Hermes as νήπιος, and in h.Ven. 223, Eos is called νηπίη because she asked Zeus to grant immortality to the mortal Tithonos, but not youth.

[10] Even in ancient times, this catalogue of women was sometimes rejected, for example by Aristophanes of Byzantium, see Krieter-Spiro et al. 2015, 145.

[11] Bartelink’s article in the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum also provides an overview of Christian criticism of Homer, see Bartelink 1994, 116–147.

[12] This view is probably based on the Bible passage Eph 22–33, which appears to be the “biblische Kernstelle zur christlichen Ehe” (Ludwig 2008, 194). However, Ludwig 2008, 189–195 points out that the interpretations of this passage could differ considerably. The description of Hera as uxor imperiosa (“imperious wife”), which can be found in a marginal note to Il.parv.Hom. 1,28–30 and in the text itself in Il.parv.Hom. 16,29, also emphasizes that the goddess is sometimes imperious and not always submissive to her husband.

How to cite

Lelittka, Karen. 2026. “Zeus, the fool? Criticizing the pagan father of the gods in Lorenz Rhodoman’s Ilias parva (1588/1604)” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 1 April 2026.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/65xhf-chs29

Trojan Heroes of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648): New Ancient Greek, Liberty and Remembrance

Thijs Kersten (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)

Writing to one of his pen pals on January 21, 1605, the Lowlandish scholar Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) could not help but address the elephant in the room. However pleasant his contact with the Spaniard Francisco Quevedo (1580–1645) had been, Lipsius felt the need to mention the wars Quevedo’s king had been waging on the Low Countries for years. First, the Guelders Wars (1502–1543) had ravaged the Low Countries, and now the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) followed suit. Lipsius took to the Trojan War as a frame of reference. He exclaimed “And now you happily serve Mars! […] We have become a shared grave for Europe. If only Minerva with her Odysseus would have stood next to your Agamemnon! How good would that do both you and us.” [Atque utinam felicius Marti! […] Commune sepulchrum Europae sumus. O si Agamemnoni vestro Minerua cum suo Vlysse adsistat! Vestrum et nostrum sit bonum.] Simply put, if only the Habsburg king had some wisdom, then this violence might have been avoided.

Lipsius calls the Low Countries a commune sepulchrum Europae, referencing a line from the Roman poet Catullus, who described Troy as commune sepulcrum Asiae Europaeque.[i] These references to Troy were not unique. Both upper class (humanist) and lower class popular audiences evoked the war at Troy to confront their experiences of war and suffering at the hands of the Habsburg Spanish, a process I have called associative memory elsewhere.[ii] Similarities between the destruction of the Low Countries and the Fall of Troy were expressed in Dutch, Latin, and New Ancient Greek – the latter being the rarest of the three linguistic registers. In Dutch popular songs, for instance, the Spanish sieges of Breda in 1590 and Oostende in 1604 were compared to the Trojan horse, by both locals and historians across the Low Countries.[iii]

Figure 1. Map of the siege of Haarlem, from Braun and Hogenberg’s *Civitates orbis terrarum* (1575).

This contribution centres around the role of Hellenism in this discourse of remembrance and resistance. Lamers (2023) recently studied the symbolic value of Ancient Greek in the Low Countries. He tentatively states that both the language and its script could evoke Dutch liberty and resistance. Detaching themselves from Latin (and its modern progeny, Spanish), the Dutch may have adopted Greek as a symbol of political liberty. This contribution aims to support Lamers’ (2023) argument and adds the dimensions of remembrance and heroic victimhood to the mix. To do so, I discuss a poetry zine from Zwolle about the Guelders Wars from 1553 as well as the largest New Ancient Greek epic of the Low Countries (1605), written to remember a siege in the Eighty Years’ War.

**The Ἀληκτὼ sive somnium furoris bellici (1553)**

Although vernacular media often referenced the Trojan War, such as in public theatre plays by rederijkers, in prints, or in vernacular histories, the most direct and obvious engagement with Troy occurred in humanist works. One of these is a booklet of Neo-Latin and New Ancient Greek poetry, published in Zwolle in the wake of the Guelders Wars. The booklet was produced in 1553 by Joannes Telgius, a schoolmaster born in Apeldoorn about whom little is known. He titled the work ΑΛΗΚΤΩ SIVE SOMNIVM furoris bellici, quo nunc passim mundus tumultuatur. In this multilingual title, Telgius hints at the New Ancient Greek and Neo-Latin poetry inside and introduces his topic: a dream of the rage of war that currently shook up the world, stirred by Alecto, one of three Greek furies.

It is made up of several parts, with the first part in Latin: a dedicatory letter to the youth of Zwolle (iuuentuti Suollanae; A1), an elegy by Telgius of 234 lines, a Distichon cuiusdam docti of 2 lines, a Latin-language Παρανετικὸν to the Muses of 44 lines, and a Latin EXPOSTVLATIO PESTILENTIAE or ‘Complaint about the famine’ of 46 lines. These are then followed by works in New Ancient Greek, namely a translation of the first section of Telgius’ long elegy (6 lines) and a summary of its remainder (2 lines), an ode to the youth of Zwolle (12 lines), and a ‘summary’ of a prayer to God (6 lines).

The collection was directed at the youth of Zwolle to teach them a “poem for Saint Martin” (carmen Martinianum; A1), one that should stick with them. As every student was made to buy a booklet, they could consult it as they grew up (nostram operam boni consule; A1). From its successive poems, we can gather a clear point. The youth of Zwolle were to understand the horror of war and to stop it, similar to Trojan heroes. It was 19 years later, before most of Telgius’ students had reached the age of forty, that Zwolle would be massacred by the Spanish general Don Frederik (1537–1585). Through arrangement of the poems and their development from Neo-Latin to New Ancient Greek, the booklet supports Lamers’ theory on Ancient Greek as a symbol of Dutch liberty.

Figure 2. Title page of Telgius’ Ἀληκτώ (1553).

Step one was to establish the scene. In the first poem, Telgius’ long Latin elegiac, he recounts the Guelders War and complains that “the golden peace has quietly left the lands it hates” (tacite exosas linquit pax aurea terras; A2, recto). The reason is simple. Charles V sought to expand his territory, moving towards France first. Telgius writes: “Don’t you see that Charles surrounds you with many kingdoms on all sides, by land, by sea?” (Nonne uides Carolum numerosis undique regnis / Cingere te terra, cingere teque mari?; A2). The war spreads across the world, with devils coming out as “incurable fury, known across this criminal world” (furor insanus, scelerato notus in orbe; A2).

Step two was to introduce Trojan heroism into the mix. Telgius does this in two steps. First, a Latin Παρανετικὸν to the Muses, anonymous but possibly written by Telgius himself tells us of past empires turned to ruin. War threats to wipe out Zwolle, as it had Rome, Alexander the Great’s empire, and Troy.

Magna fuit quondam Romanae gloria gentis,
Magna, sed è medio lenta ruina tulit.
Pellaeo iuueni, cui non suffecerat orbis,
Quid superest regis nomen inane nisi?
Somnia sunt Hector, nihil huius uictor Achilles, [...]

Once, the Roman race enjoyed great glory,
great, but a slow ruin destroyed it,
and that youngster of Pella, for whom the world did not suffice,
What is now left of this king except his hollow name?
Hector is a mere dream, his victor, Achilles, is nothing anymore [...]

Figure 3. Map of the siege of Haarlem, based on a copper engraving by Antonio Lafreri (1573).

In part, the poem has a didactic aim. The poet hopes to incite the youth of the city to study the arts and to realise that, even in the midst of war, learning serves its purpose. At the same time, the concurrent theme of the horrors of war and the need to respond sticks.

The final Latin poem of the collection, an equally anonymous Expostulatio Pestilentiae, or ‘Complaint by Pestilence’, returns to the horrors of war from the perspective of Pestilence itself. Among other things, the personification asks whether “the Trojans, pained by the harsh lash of a whip, did not know why they were being hurt?” [Non sapiunt Phrygii duro nisi verbere caesi / cur?]. As the poems frequently return to the Trojan War as a frame of reference for war-torn Zwolle, we reach a shift in language.

The first of the New Ancient Greek poems is a translation of the opening of the booklet made by Boetius Epo (1529–1599), a Frisian scholar with ties to the Collegium Trilingue, who was working in Zwolle at the time.[iv] His translation eases the students into the linguistic shift, by recalling the core idea that λάθρα Εἰρήνη κατελείψατο χρύσεα γαῖαν [“the golden Peace has secretly left the land”]. As the booklet itself attests, these few Greek verses were even meant to be sung by the students (decantandum pueris; A4). The following ὨΔΗ ΤΩΝ ΝΕΩΝ ΖΟΥΩΛΛΑΙΩΝ [“Ode on the Youths of Zwolle”; A5] was written by a local man with ties to humanist circles in Leuven, the humanist Stephanus Mommius, who eventually became rector in Zwolle.[v] He laments Ares and his love for strife (ἔρις) and πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε – a reference to Iliad 5.891. Centralising the Iliad, Mommius presents the violence of the Guelders War through its similarity to the strife, wars, and battles Troy. This takes us a step further than the earlier evocations of Troy in the Latin-language poems. Ancient Greek becomes a language of remembrance, of heroism, of resistance against Habsburg Spain.

Σχέτλιε καὶ βροτολοιγὲ Ἄρες τε βιοφθόρε δαῖμον
ἀεὶ γάρ τοι ἔρις τε φίλη πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε
καὶ μέροπας μαχέσασθαι ἐνὶ κρατερῇ ὑσμίνῃ

Merciless, plague of humans, Ares, you life-crushing demon,
strife and war and battle are forever dear to you,
as is making humans battle through powerful combat.

The final poem of the collection continues these themes. The anonymous poet, perhaps Mommius, prays to God to “stop this evil strife so that / both the old and the young people will show you more honour” [ληγέμεναι δ’ ἔριδος κακομηχάνου, ὄφρα σε μᾶλλον / τιῶσιν λάοι ἢ μὲν νεοὶ ἢε γέροντες] – adapting line 257 from book 9 of the Iliad. Noteworthy is the use of eris in both poems, an indirect, yet clear reference to the goddess Eris who was responsible for starting the Trojan War.

If we are to believe that Telgius’ students paid as much attention to his publication as he wanted them to, they picked up a message along these lines: war and suffering were imminent, learning remains a worthwhile endeavour, and look to the past for inspiration – to the Romans, to Alexander, and especially to Troy. This booklet underscores Lamers’ (2023) point, as it turns Ancient Greek into a language of anti-Spanish resistance and remembrance of Spanish violence.

**The Harlemias (1605)**

Figure 4. Title page of Nicholaas van Wassenaer’s Ἁρλεμιάς (1605).

The weight of Ancient Greek as a language of liberty and anti-Spanish resistance carried more heavily in the Ἁρλεμιὰς ἢ Ἐξήγησις τῆς πολιορκίας Ἁρλεμίης, Γενομένης τῷ ἔτει ͵α φ ο β [“The Harlemias or the Story of the Siege of Haarlem, which Occurred in the year 1572”]. Written by Nicholaas van Wassenaer in 1605, it is a New Ancient Greek epic of 1462 verses paired with a Latin translation propter Tyrones, for beginners (*2 verso), one of two New Ancient Greek epics to survive from the early modern Low Countries.[vi]

Like most Neo-Latin epics, the Harlemias is a poem of praise that sought to legitimise structures of power and the local status quo. What it sought to praise was not princely power, however, but Dutch power and liberty. After 1573, Haarlem was destroyed and sunk into religious conflict. By 1605, when van Wassenaer wrote his Harlemias, Haarlem and the broader Northern Low Countries of which it was part were in need of a shared story about anti-Spanish resistance and Dutch liberty. Homeric Greek not only portrayed this heroism by its Trojan associations, but also by its symbolic power as suggested by Lamers (2023).

I note here only two small points taken from the larger work. First, just like Telgius and Mommius, Van Wassenaer does not place blame for the ongoing wars squarely with the Habsburg kings, but also directs his attention at Eris. In lines 58-60, he writes:

Ἀλλ’ οὐ τοῦτ’ Ἔριδι θρασυμηχάνῳ ἥνδανε θυμῷ,
ἐς Βασιλῆα Φίλιππον ἀπῆλθ’ ἀπατήλια βάζειν,
βασκαίνωσα ἀποστάσεως τὴν Βελγίδα γαῖαν,

But this did not please Eris, manipulative as her heart is,
and to King Philip she went to speak her wily words to him,
claiming that the Belgian land wanted to revolt.[vii]

In a continuation of the sentiments we find in Telgius’ booklet, the Eighty Years’ War, too, must start like the Trojan War had done. Haarlem seems to suffer a fate similar to what Telgius had predicted for Zwolle. Both cities fell at the hands of the Spanish general Don Frederik, whom the Harlemias calls an ἀνδροφόνος [“killer of men”].

Second, a stock phrase is sprinkled across the Harlemias to underscore why the Dutch are fighting (back) against the Spanish. This core message encapsulates the ideals of the Harlemias. It is expressed in lines 76-77, lines 80-81, lines 162-163, lines 397-398, and line 1146. To quote but one, in ll. 80-81, we hear that the Dutch are fighting:

Κάλλιστόν γε δοκεῖ Βέλγαις φρεσὶ τοῦτο, μάχεσθαι
γῆς περὶ, παίδων τε, κτεάνων τε, ἐλευθερίης τε.

For it seemed the most beautiful thing to Dutch minds to fight
for their country, their kids, their possessions, their liberty.

This summary of the aims of the Dutch shows how strong the desire for liberty was. Although the passage in itself might not prove Lamers’ point, it is part of a larger symbolic value of Greekness that he has traced in the Pleumosias and that I believe to find in the Ἀληκτὼ sive somnium furoris bellici and Harlemias. According to this preliminary reading of these two texts, I argue the symbolic charge of Ancient Greek as a language of liberty holds up.

Conclusion

While my conclusion remains as careful and tentative as the one expressed by Lamers in his 2023 paper, I hope to have shown that the symbolic status of New Ancient Greek as a language of Dutch liberty and resistance has some sturdy legs to stand on. Not only the Pleumosias, but the Ἀληκτὼ sive somnium furoris bellici and the Harlemias use New Ancient Greek in a similar fashion. Their use of the language reveals how it served to create an independent Dutch identity, a feeling of resistance, and a heroic memory of a traumatic series of wars that would last decades more. When we study these works against the backdrop of popular works that continuously reference Troy, from histories and plays to songs and paintings, we also get a better view of the position New Ancient Greek had. Although writing and reading works in New Ancient Greek was, without question, an elite commodity and certainly not accessible to the large majority of people in the Low Countries, it did not exist in a cultural vacuum.

Figures

Figure 1. Map of the siege of Haarlem, from Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum (1575).

Figure 2. Title page of Telgius’ Ἀληκτώ (1553).

Figure 3. Map of the siege of Haarlem, based on a copper engraving by Antonio Lafreri (1573).

Figure 4. Title page of Nicholaas van Wassenaer’s Ἁρλεμιάς (1605).

References

Bleau, J. (1649) Toonneel der Steden van de Vereenighde Nederlanden, Met hare Beschrijvingen. Amsterdam.

Boers, B. (2013) “Een 16^de-eeuws schoollied uit Zwolle.” Nieuwsbrief Stichting Vrienden van het Johan van Oldenbarnevelt Gymnasium Amersfoort no. 2: 15-19.

Duym, J. (1606) Een Ghedenck-boeck, Het welck ons Leert aen al het quaet en den grooten moetwil van de Spaingnaerden en haren aenhanck ons aen-ghedaen te ghedencken. ENDE de groote liefde ende tou vande Princen uyt den huyse van Nassau, aen ons betoont eervvelick te onthouden. Leiden.

Kersten, T. (2023) “Een Nederlands Troje: Herdenking via homerische epiek in Nicolaas van Wassenaers’ Harlemias.” In: De kracht der herinnering, edited by M. Clement, H. Mooiman, & I. de Smalen, 156-175. Utrecht.

Kersten, T. (under peer review) “Revisiting Multidirectional Memory: Associative Memory.” Memory Studies Review.

Lamers, H. (2023) “A Homeric Epic for Frederick Henry of Orange: The Cultural Affordances of Ancient Greek in the Early Modern Low Countries.” Humanistica Lovaniensia 72: 323-348.

Parrado, P.C. (2017) “Argutae et litteratae: una nueva mirada sobre el intercambio epistolar entre Francisco de Quevedo y Justo Lipsio (1604-1605).” In Quevedo en Europa, Europa en Quevedo, edited by J.S.A. Veloso, pp. 36-78. Vigo.

Telgius, J. (1553). ΑΛΗΚΤΩ SIVE SOMNIVM furoris bellici, quo nunc passim mundus tumultuatur. Zwolle.

Thomas, W. (2004) De Val van het Nieuwe Troje: Het Beleg van Oostende, 1601-1604. Leuven.

van Wassenaer, N. Jnsz. (1605). ΑΡΛΕΜΙΑΣ Η ΕΞΗΓΗΣΙΣ ΤΗΣ ΠΟΛΙΟΡΚΙΑΣ ΤΗΣ ΠΟΛΕΩΣ ΑΡΛΕΜΙΗΣ, Γενομένης τῳ ἔτει ͵α φ ο β. HARLEMIAS SIVE ENNARATIO OBSIDIONIS URBIS HARLEMI, Quae accidit Anno 1572, Graeco carmine conscripta A NICOLAEO IOHAN. à WASSENAER Amsterdamaeo. Leiden.

Footnotes

[i] Lipsius’ letters to Quevedo are stored in the library of the Universiteit Leiden. They were recently made accessible by Parrado (2017). The reference to Catullus is drawn from carmen 68, line 89, where the poet curses the city for its association with death.

[ii] Kersten, under peer-review. The principles behind this theory were already expressed in Kersten 2023.

[iii] For Breda, inter alia J. Duym, Ghedenck-boeck (1606). For Oostende, inter alia J. Bleau, Toonneel der Steden (1649). Cf. Thomas 2004.

[iv] Boetius Epo (https://www.dalet.be/person/83) taught Hesiod and Homer in Leuven and also edited a book on Homer that was published in Leuven in 1555.

[v] Stephan Mommius (https://www.dalet.be/person/563) also wrote a liminarium for the Hebrew grammar of Joannes Isaac, published in 1557.

[vi] For the second, the Pleumosias, see the work by Lamers (2023). The work is currently under study by Han Lamers (Rome / Oslo) and Dries Nijs (Leuven).

[vii] The word form βασκαίνωσα is a dialectal variant of the standard (Attic) βασκαίνουσα. It illustrates how Van Wassenaer imitates the Homeric dialect. He also applies dialect forms to his neologisms, such as Βαταβοστυγέεσσιν (‘Haters of Dutchmen’) in Aeolic dialect.

How to cite

Kersten, Thijs. 2026. “Trojan Heroes of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648): New Ancient Greek, Liberty and Remembrance” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 1 February 2026.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/c346a-4v323

A Woman Writing New Ancient Greek Poetry for a Leiden Disputation (1686)

Dries Nijs (KU Leuven)

Leiden University library houses an extensive collection of printed disputationes. These broadsheets and pamphlets present the theses that university students — the respondentes — defended against opponentes, under the supervision of a professor acting as praeses. This corpus extends from shortly after the founding of Leiden University (1575) into the 20th century, filling several bookcases in the Special Collections.¹Next to the theses, primarily in Latin, these ephemeral academic prints contain liminary dedications and congratulatory poems in a range of vernacular and learned languages. A medical disputation from 1686 features one of the most remarkable felicitations: a New Ancient Greek poem by an unknown woman, Margareta Ripen.

Figure 1 – Title page of Philippus Maximilianus Helvetius’ disputation on atrophy

The professors, students and acquaintances attending the medical disputation of Philippus Maximilianus Helvetius on 1 October 1686 in Leiden, must have paused in surprise when, leafing through the pamphlet printed for the occasion by Elsevier, they encountered at the end—among the usual congratulations in Latin and Dutch—a New Ancient Greek poem written by a woman.² The majority of the audience, no doubt, could not read the Greek text, let alone understand its meaning. Yet we can imagine that they were struck by the learned and exotic language in which it was written—and even more so by the signature, which identifies a female author: Margareta Ripen of Bremen. Poetry in New Ancient Greek is relatively rare, especially in the final decades of the seventeenth century. The production of Greek gratulatory verses for disputations peaked in Leiden around 1600, but soon receded to the margins, where it seems to have stagnated as a peripheral phenomenon throughout the seventeenth century. Of all 1708 poems in Leiden disputations that I have been able to trace up to the year 1700, only 42 (2,46%) are in Greek, with their proportion decreasing in the last quarter of the century compared to Latin and vernacular verse. Within this context, Margareta Ripen’s poem is all the more exceptional: it is not only the sole Greek composition among the forty-five carmina gratulatoria from 1686, but also the only New Ancient Greek poem written by a woman, at least within the corpus of the early modern Low Countries, which is currently being mapped by the HellBel project at KU Leuven.

Little is known about this Margareta Ri(jp)pen or her connection to Philippus Maximilianus. Her name appears at the end of three other liminaria in Latin: two poems for Petrus Rabus’ translations of Herodian³ and Ovid,⁴and a dedication to his son Guilielmus in a schoolbook of fables.⁵The latter signature includes an additional surname: Margareta Harwich Ripen Bremensis. This points us to her husband, Maternus Harwich, teacher at the Latin school of Rotterdam and author of a bilingual schoolbook on rhetoric.⁶The couple had two children, one of whom—a son named Sophronius—was baptized in Rotterdam on 11 June 1682.⁷ Rotterdam seems to be the only place to which Margareta can be linked, as no trace of her self-proclaimed Bremen origins is known. She appears to have died young and was buried in that same city on 27 December 1694, leaving her children still underage.⁸

Figure 2 – Margareta Ripens gratulatory poem

Ἔπος⁹ 
εἰς τὴν
Φιλίππου Μαξιμιλιανοῦ
Ἑλβετίου
θέσιν ἰατρικὴν
περὶ
Ἀτροφίας

Ἐνδόξως τῆξιν τὺ φίλε Φίλιππε χαλινοῖς
λυγράν, ὅθεν μετά μου αἰνεῖ τότε πᾶς πατριώτης.
Δήπου νῦν τεθεράπευκας φθίσιν καπυρὰν. Καὶ
ἐν θείης ἔργῳ σοφίας σὺ Φίλιππε φιλεργοῦ.
Φύσεος ἀρρήτου καρποὺς ἐγκώμια λήψῃ.
Margareta Ripen
Bremensis

Poem
for 
Philippus Maximilianus
Helvetius’
medical thesis
on
Atrophy

Gloriously, dear Philippus, you restrain the 
mournful tuberculosis, for which together
with me, every compatriot praises you. Surely 
now you have cured the drying phtisis.¹⁰ And 
be industrious, Philippus, in this work of
divine wisdom. As praise, you will reap
the fruits of ineffable nature.
Margareta Ripen
of Bremen

Although the author of these verses is exceptional, their content and poetic quality are not. Like other New Ancient Greek occasional poetry of this period, the text shows several errors against the Greek, its accentuation and printing, listed in the footnotes below. The dactylic hexameter used here is one of most common meters for this kind of poetry, likely chosen for its solemn tone as well as its relative accessibility and straightforwardness. The content is like that of most gratulatory poems in disputations: somewhat superficial flattery, generic and derivative. Typical features are the wordplay on the respondent’s name (φίλε Φίλιππε, Φίλιππε φιλεργοῦ), the repeated reference to the disputation’s subject (τῆξιν, φθίσιν), the intertextual engagement with (late) antique or early Christian sources, usually only superficial (Φύσεος ἀρρήτου καρποὺς¹¹), and the excessive praise of the student’s achievement, which is said to have a revolutionary impact on society as a whole and possess a divine quality. In this way, even though it was written by a woman, this poem is a textbook example of the Greek gratulatory verses found in early modern disputations. Their significance lies not in what they say, nor in how well they say it, but simply in the language they use.

Figure 3 – Promotion at Leiden University, Hendrick van der Burgh, circa 1650

The practice of including gratulatory poems in disputations served as a form of self-presentation. Through these poems, students and authors could shape their imago, show off their learned connections and define their position in the intellectual network of Leiden University. The choice of writing or including Greek texts was relatively exceptional, offering a way to stand out further and distinguish oneself among the more conventional Latin and vernacular felicitations. By choosing Greek, authors and students demonstrated that they belong to an in-group of Hellenists who possess an extraordinary kind of cultural capital:¹²knowledge of a learned language and literature incomprehensible for the broader public. In this context of impressing peers and standing out among them, a Greek poem written by a woman is of course especially striking. We can only speculate about the audience’s reaction to this specific poem, but since learned women were already admired and regarded as extraordinary at the time,¹³ it is easy to imagine that this composition made an especially powerful impression, lending Philippus Maximilianus and his disputation a distinctly erudite and exceptional aura.

Footnotes

My research on this collection was made possible by a Brill Fellowship at the Scaliger Institute in Leiden in the summer of 2025, for which I express my gratitude.
Philippus Maximilianus Helvetius (1665–1708), the third son of Johann Friedrich Schweitzer, settled as a city physician in Middelburg after completing his studies. In 1704, he was appointed military doctor in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, and later became lecturer in anatomy in Rotterdam. In addition to this disputation on atrophy, he wrote a handbook for midwives entitled Teel-thuin van ’t menschelijk geslagt (Leiden, Frederik Haaring, 1698). Cf. also Molhuysen, P.C. & Blok, P.J. (1914) Helvetius, Philippus Maximiliaan. In Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek (Deel 3, p. 573); A. W. Sijthoff. and Van Heiningen, T. W. (2014) La dynastie des Helvétius. Histoire des Sciences Médicales, 68(4), 447–456.
Herodianus’ Acht boeken Der Roomsche Geschiedenissen. Rotterdam, Isaak Naeranus, 1683.
Publii Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseωn Libri XV. Rotterdam, Reinier Leers, 1686. With multiple reprints.
Compendium Fabularum, quae serviunt ad intelligentiam Virgilii, Ovidii, Senecae, Homeri, Euripidis et aliorum in usum scholarum. Rotterdam, Petrus vander Slaart, 1695. Reprinted in 1705.
Orator Belgico-Latinus, demonstrans quo laboris compendio eloquentiæ candidatus ad oratoriam pervenire possit. Amsterdam, Jakob van Royen, 1701. The work was reprinted in 1729 and is in fact a translation of the first chapter of Christian Weise’s Politischer Redner (Leipzig 1679). Cf. also Meerhoff, K. (2020) Le persiflage enseigné en classe de rhétorique (L’Orator Belgico-Latinus, 1701). In C. Deloince-Louette & C. Noille (ed.), Expériences rhétoriques. Mélanges offerts au professeur Francis Goyet, pp. 55–68. Classiques Garnier.
Rotterdam City Archives: https://hdl.handle.net/21.12133/19932BEACB6546FE9B142335776CAC53
Rotterdam City Archives: https://hdl.handle.net/21.12133/03CFE518D3104E66873E33219B8D7E4F
Text: Disputatio medica inauguralis de atrophia, seu tabe notha quam, summo favente numine, ex auctoritate magnifici rectoris D. Johannis Voet, I.U.D., eiusdemque facultatis in illustri academia Lugduno-Batava professoris ordinarii, necnon amplissimi senatus academici consensu et nobilissimae facultatis medicae decreto, pro gradu doctoratus summisque in medicina honoribus et privilegiis rite et legitime consequendis, publico examini subicit Philippus Maximilianus Helvetius, Haga-Batavus, die 1 Octobris, loco solito, a decima ad duodecimam, Leiden, Abraham Elsevier, 1686, B3^v. Crit.: title Μαξιμιλιανοῦ] ΜΑΞΙΜΙΛIA´ΝΟΥ ἰατρικὴν] Ι῾ατρικὴν 1 Φίλιππε] Φιλίππε χαλινοῖς] χαλινεῖς 2 μετά μου] μετάμου 3 καπυρὰν] καπυραν || 4 Φίλιππε] Φιλίππε || 5 ἀρρήτου] ἀῤῥήτου.
Old scientific term for tuberculosis, attested in Ancient Greek texts by authors such as Hippocrates and Galen and commonly used in similar seventeenth-century disputations.
The expression Φύσεος ἀρρήτου καρποὺς has parallels in several early Christian writings. In this case it might have been drawn from Cyrillus of Alexandria’s de sancta trinitate dialogi, 395 d, 25, of which Bonaventura Vulcanius owned a manuscript and made a Latin translation in Leiden. Cf. De Durand, G. M. (1976). Cyrille d’Alexandrie. Dialogues sur la Trinité, Tome I. Cerf; Codex Vulcanianus 52 & 12, Leiden University Library.
The concept of cultural capital was coined by Pierre Bourdieu and refers to non-financial assets like knowledge, skills, education, and tastes that can be used to demonstrate one’s cultural competence and social status. Cf. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. In J. Karabel, & A. H. Halsey (ed.), Power and Ideology in Education, 487–511. Oxford University Press.
A notable example is Anna Maria van Schurman, Europe’s first female university student and, with her letters in the Opuscula (Leiden, Elsevier, 1648), the only other female author of New Ancient Greek in the Low Countries we could identify so far. She was widely celebrated and honored as the tenth muse and the virginum eruditarum decus. Cf. notably the research of Pieta van Beek.

Figures

Figure 1: Title page of Philippus Maximilianus Helvetius’ disputation on Atrophy (ustc 1836756). UBL, Special Collections, 236 C 5:33
Figure 2: Margareta Ripen’s gratulatory poem (UBL, Special Collections, 236 C 5:33, B3^v)
Figure 3: Promotion at Leiden University, Hendrick van der Burgh, circa 1650, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

How to cite

Dries, Nijs. 2025. “A Woman Writing New Ancient Greek Poetry for a Leiden Disputation (1686).” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 1 December 2025.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/5gyan-3p804

Laonikos Chalkokondyles: The Last Byzantine Historian and the Dawn of Ottoman Historiography

Riccardo Stigliano (Universität Innsbruck)

Should the last Byzantine historian be considered an early modern Hellenist? Yes, because he lived through the crucial years of the fall of Constantinople. After all, he started writing as soon as Constantinople fell, which was at the very beginning of the Modern Age. Yes, if we consider the literary genre with which he engaged and the classical spirit with which he approached it. Indeed, yes, if we take into account not only the chronology of his work, but also the cultural climate in which he operated.

Laonikos Chalkokondyles, also known as Nikolaos Chalkokondyles, stands as one of the principal chroniclers of the fall of Constantinople. His ten-book work, Demonstrationes historiarum (Ἀποδείξεις Ἱστοριῶν), covers the period from 1298 to 1463, and offers a profound historical account that reaches beyond a simple chronological narration. Although primarily known for his account of the demise of the Byzantine Empire, his historiographical approach offers insights into the rise, expansion, and consolidation of the Ottoman Empire, which he presents as a major force in the formation of European modernity.

Early modern painting of Laonikos Chalkokondyles National Historical Museum of Greece

Chalkokondyles was born into an aristocratic family with close ties to the Florentine Acciaiuoli family, who controlled the Morea during the final years of the Byzantine Empire. His familial connections placed him at the intersection of Byzantine decline and the rising Ottoman power. It is in this context that Chalkokondyles’ work emerges not merely as a chronicle of events but as a critical analysis of the changing political and cultural landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean.

A chronicle not of Byzantine demise but of Ottoman expansion

Chalkokondyles’ Demonstrationes historiarum is not simply a detailed account of the fall of Constantinople but a broader investigation into the history of the Ottoman Empire and its impact on the Byzantine world. On the one hand, stylistically, Chalkokondyles draws on the prose of Thucydides. On the other hand, his narrative approach and content clearly echo Herodotus. In fact, his work blends historiography with ethnography, offering a nuanced examination of the peoples and cultures that shaped the Empire. In this sense, Laonikos transcends the role of a mere chronicler of Byzantine decline. Instead, he assumes the role of an investigator (the first meaning of the term ἱστορία), delving into the rise and consolidation of the Ottomans as they supplanted the Byzantine Empire.

Like a new Herodotus, his approach to the Ottoman Empire is particularly noteworthy: while many of his contemporaries and successors focused on the fall of Constantinople as the defining moment of Byzantine – and European – history, Chalkokondyles frames the Ottomans not merely as an external threat but as a dynamic force in the development of continental modern history. His history of the Ottomans is not limited to military conquests but extends to cultural exchanges and the interactions between different peoples under Ottoman rule. This approach broadens the scope of his narrative, presenting the Ottomans as a complex and multifaceted entity, and underscores Laonikos’ understanding of his Empire’s transformation into a new socio-political order.

The Herodotean legacy

While some have rightfully called him the “Thucydides of Greek Humanism”, it is crucial to emphasize one important methodological aspect of his work: his adherence to a Herodotean principle of impartiality. Although Chalkokondyles is not always the most reliable historian, he does strive for a balanced perspective in his judgments. His history is marked by an attempt to understand the motivations behind the rise of the Ottomans, rather than merely recording events as they happened. This intellectual curiosity reflects the classical tradition of seeking not just to record history but to understand its causes and consequences. By framing his work as both an ethnographic and historical investigation, Laonikos echoes the methods of both Herodotus and Thucydides, blending narrative with analysis in a way that was ‘novel’ for his time (at the end of the Middle Ages), but at the same time ‘traditional,’ since it was the ancient method of history writing. In this respect, Chalkokondyles is truly a humanist, reasonably an early modern Hellenist.

The reception of his work

Often confused with his more famous cousin Demetrios Chalkokondyles and frequently compared to his contemporaries (the last Byzantine historians and chroniclers), Laonikos remains largely unknown, both within the field of late Byzantine literature and in the realm of humanist literature, which was primarily produced in the West and in Latin. The question of where Laonikos wrote his history is a subject of scholarly debate, as is even his own name! The traditional view holds that he composed it either in exile in Crete or in Italy shortly after the conquest of Constantinople. However, a recent hypothesis by Anthony Kaldellis suggests it was authored in Constantinople at the very heart of the Ottoman court. Thus, Laonikos’ legacy is further complicated by the dual identities preserved in tradition: Laonico Calco(co)ndila (his Italianized name) and Nikolaos (his Greek name). The Demonstrationes historiarum were predominantly read in a Latin translation (1556) by Konrad Klauser, whose version was so faithful to the original that it did not Latinize the Greek names or render them in a Western style. This translation became the standard for scholars studying the Ottoman expansion, and even major orientalist works, such as Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall’s History of the Ottoman Empire (1827–1835), relied on Klauser’s Latin text, not the Greek original.

As mentioned above, it is unclear whether Chalkokondyles wrote his work in the remaining Venetian territories in Greece or in Constantinople, as some scholars, such as Kaldellis, have suggested. Nevertheless, it is notable that, of the four leading historians of the fall of Byzantium, Chalkokondyles has received comparatively little attention, particularly in the West. This is largely due to the challenging style and language of his writing. In Italy, for instance, Laonikos’ presence is largely a historiographical reconstruction based on the fact that his cousin Demetrios resided on the Italian peninsula. Nevertheless, Chalkokondyles’ work remains essential for understanding the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire.

A historical vision in transition

Chalkokondyles’ work can be considered as a bridge between the classical tradition of Greek historiography and the early modern understanding of the Ottoman Empire. His treatment of the Ottomans as both a political and cultural entity, rather than simply a military conqueror, reflects the beginning of a new intellectual perspective, one that recognizes the complexity of history and the interplay of different civilizations.

Map of Constantinople in the 1662 French translation of Chalkokondyles’ *Demonstrations of History*

Moreover, his examination of the Ottoman state reflects the intellectual climate of the time. Whether Laonikos composed his Demonstrations of History in Italy is debatable. Instead, Laonikos seems to have observed the new Ottoman masters of Constantinople from the city itself rather than as an exile observing from afar. This is reflected in the paradoxical ideological efforts of his mentor, Georgios Gemistos Plethon, to create a new ethnic identity for the fatigued and exhausted Eastern Roman Empire. The idea of Romanitas and Rome, though transformed into “Romanism” and transplanted to the “New Rome,” no longer functioned after the atrocities of the Fourth Crusade and the Latin occupation of the Empire. Plethon, under whose tutelage Laonikos studied, proposed a new, Platonically pagan national identity rooted in elements that had predated foreign conquests, long before the creation of Greco-Roman classical culture. In essence, one should look at Greek classical identity alone.

Thus, despite these efforts – which are perhaps more of a temptation than a certainty – Laonikos remained open to the possibility of viewing the Ottomans not just as conquerors, but also as an alternative embodiment of Greek identity. On the one hand, the Latins, also known as the Franks, claimed the Eastern territories in the name of a long-dead Roman Empire (the Fourth Crusade). In contrast, the Ottomans maintained a state apparatus that incorporated various peoples, religions and languages. One vision sought to impose order under the dominance of Latinity and Roman rites, while the other offered an administration uninterested in the Eastern schism and the language of the conquered people, and more focused on their territories.
It is worth noting that these were the same Ottomans against whom the Greeks would later wage a war of liberation, and that they had no particular interest in converting the Greek population to Islam. However, it appears that Laonikos studied the origin, expansion and state organisation of the Ottomans from the walls of Constantinople in order to understand what his people might expect under their new rule. In other words, he wondered whether the Greeks would still be permitted to remain Greek at the beginning of a new era.

Conclusion

This “Herodotus of Byzantium”, the last Byzantine historian, can no longer be confused with the homonymous academic historian from Milan. He should not be considered merely a chronicler of the fall of Constantinople, nor an inaccurate continuator of his predecessor’s chronicles. Ultimately, Laonikos deserves to be recognised as an investigative historian in his own right. Otherwise, we risk making further mistakes about his role in the final stages of Byzantine historiography and the early years of the Ottoman Empire.

Figures

Figure 1. Early modern painting of Laonikos Chalkokondyles National Historical Museum of Greece.
Source: https://www.librairieclavreuil.com/en/chalcondyle-laonicus-histoire-general-des-turcs-contenant-lhistoire-de-chalcondyle-traduite-par-blaise-de-vigenaire-avec-les-illustrations-du-meme-auteur-et-continuee-jusques-en-lan-m-d-c-xii/
Figure 2. Map of Constantinople in the 1662 French translation of Chalkokondyles’ Demonstrations of History.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laonikos_Chalkokondyles#/media/File:Laonikos_Chalkokondylis.JPG

References

Kaldellis, Anthony. “The Date of Laonikos Chalkokondyles’ Histories.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 52 (2012) 111–136.
Kaldellis, Anthony: “The Interpolations in the Histories of Laonikos Chalkokondyles.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 52 (2012) 259–283.
Kaldellis, Anthony. “The Greek Sources of Laonikos Chalkokondyles’ Histories.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 52 (2012) 738–765.
Kaldellis, Anthony. Laonikos Chalkokondyles, The Histories, 2 vols. Cambridge: MA/London, 2014 (English translation).

How to cite

Stigliano, Riccardo. 2025. “Laonikos Chalkokondyles: The Last Byzantine Historian and the Dawn of Ottoman Historiography.” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 1 October 2025.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/v1vec-88257

Laudes urbium, ἐγκώμια φίλων: Two friends writing city encomia and congratulating each other

Adriaan Demuynck (KU Leuven / FWO)

On 27 February 1565, the new city hall of Antwerp was formally inaugurated, exactly four years after the first stone was laid. To adorn the opening of this prestigious Renaissance building, two young poets joined forces and wrote a collection of city encomia or laudes urbis on the city of Antwerp. The first poet, Georg Schrögel (Georgius Schroegelius), was a stranger in Antwerp: he was born in the Bavarian town Neudek (present-day Nejdek in Czechia) and had only arrived six months earlier in the port town on the river Scheldt.¹ His English friend Daniel Rogers (Daniel Rogerius), on the other hand, had strong familial ties to Antwerp, since his mother was born there. Rogers wrote a Latin Oda Sapphica and nine other poems in honor of Antwerp, but these were an appendix to the magnum opus of Schrögel: a 714-line laudatory poem, titled Elegia ἐγκωμιαστικὴ in clarissimam et praestantissimam Belgarum urbem Handoverpiam Georgii Schroegelii Boii (‘Elegy in praise of the most renowned and excellent city of the Belgians, Antwerp, by Georg Schrögel from Bavaria’), written entirely in Ancient Greek.

The Antwerp City Hall today
The Antwerp City Hall in 1582/1588, etched by Peeter I van der Borcht

The collection of city encomia was printed by Christophe Plantin in January 1565, just in time for the inauguration of the city hall. The laudations of Schrögel and Rogers graced this ceremony, and especially Schrögel’s Greek poem must have added lustre to this event. Understandably, the two young authors devoted ample attention in their poems to the description of the new city hall. Rogers wrote a Latin poem titled De curia nuper extructa, seu de domo civica, which compares the new city hall to the seven wonders of the ancient world. Schrögel included an ecphrasis of the building in his Greek poem, which opens with these verses (ll. 149-158):

Ἐν μέσσῃ ἀγορᾷ τὸ πολιτικὸν οἰκοδόμημα,

φύει χρυσοφαές, θαμβάλεον μέγεθος

ὅττι ὑπερτέλλει οἴκων πανυπείροχον ἄλλων,

θάμβος καὶ παρέχει πᾶσι βροτοῖσι μέγα.

Τοῦ μῆκος μὲν ἀπειρέσιον, πλάτος ἄπλετόν ἐστι,

τοῦ δὲ κάρηνα τρέχει οὐρανὸν αἰπύτατον.

Ἠΰτ’ ἐν ἀκροτάτῳ τῷ οὔρει πῦρ ἀΐδηλον

καίεται, οὕ οὗ αὐγὴ λάμπει ἐπ’ ἄστρα πόλου·

ὣς αἴγλη φαιδροῦ διὰ αἰθέρος εὐρὺν ῎Ολυμπον

ἥκει χρυσαυγοῦς παμφανόωσα δόμου.

[…]
Georg Schrögel, Elegia ἐγκωμιαστικὴ, fol. B3v

“In the middle of the market stands the city hall, it shines with gold, a marvelous grandeur as it towers above the other houses, evoking great awe in all mortals. It is immeasurable in length, gigantic in width, its roof running across the highest heavens. Just as a devastating fire rages on the mountaintop, its glow reaching the stars in the sky, so too does the brilliant radiance of the golden-shimmering house pierce through the clear air up to the broad Olympus.”²

On the page preceding the start of the Greek city encomium, Rogers wrote a short poem in Latin to congratulate Schrögel on his tour de force. In his wishes, Rogers emphasizes the fact that Schrögel wrote his encomium in Greek. This way, the immigrant Schrögel surpassed earlier, local poets like Cornelius Grapheus and Melchior Barlaeus who had praised Antwerp in Latin.

In Elegiam Handoverpianam Georgii Schroegelii Boii.

Docta tuas laudes facundi Musa Graphaei

ante dedit Latiis urbs generosa notis:

nunc tibi Schrogelii laudes decantat easdem

Pieris, imparibus vecta Pelasga rotis.

Scilicet Aonio celebrandis carmine divis

laudibus et meritis nata Thalia fuit.

Dummodo tu facias dignum Respublicae laude,

Pierii deerit non tibi turba chori.

Daniel Rogerius

Georg Schrögel, Elegia ἐγκωμιαστικὴ, fol. A4v

“On the Elegiac Poem on Antwerp by Georg Schrögel of Bavaria.

Earlier the learned Muse sung your praise through the Latin characters of the eloquent Graphaeus, eminent city. Now the Pierian goddess sings through Schrögel praise for you, again, but this time it is a Greek muse, carried on unequal wheels. Certainly, Thalia was born to celebrate gods with Aonian poetry and deserved praise. As long as you do what is worthy of praise, dear Republic, you will not lack a Pierian choir.
Daniel Rogers.”³

After writing the laudations on Antwerp, Rogers seems to have acquired a taste for laudes urbium. Some ten years later, Rogers wrote a collection of 35 Latin poems on 31 English cities like London, Oxford and Coventry, fittingly titled Urbes. The collection remains unpublished and is preserved in a hefty manuscript containing plenty of writings by Rogers, now kept at the Huntington Library in San Marino (CA), USA (mssHM 31188). This time Schrögel returned the favour to Rogers, embellishing the collection of city encomia with a laudatory poem for his friend Rogers. Schrögel sticked to the language of which he had showcased his proficiency earlier, Greek. As a result, the language distribution in the Urbes is reverse compared to the Elegia ἐγκωμιαστική: a Greek congratulatory poem for a series of Latin city encomia.

Schrögel emphasized Rogers’ merit in having visited the cities he praised. He described the results of these visits as a bidirectional process: Rogers profited from his visits to these cities, because they left lasting impressions on him, and the cities profited from Rogers’ visits, since his poems bring them eternal glory.

Ad urbes Danielis Rogerii, Georgii Schroegelii Boii Epigramma

Πολλὰς ὠφελείας Δανιὴλ μὲν ἀφεῖλε Ῥωγῆρος

ἐκ τοῦ εἰσοράειν χώρια ἅττ’ ἔγραφε·

δηλαδὴ εἰσενόησε νόμους, ἔθη, ἤθεα λαῶν

ἐξ ὧν κόσμησεν νοῦν, κρίσιν, ἠδὲ φυὴν.

Ὑμεῖς ἀλλὰ, τόποι πολυόλβιοι, εἵλετε αὐτοῦ

ὠφελείας πλείονας, κέρδεα καὶ πλείονα.

Οὕτος ἐφεῦρ’ ἐμπειρίην μεθ’ ἑοῖο θανοῦσαν·

ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς κύδη ἔνθεα ἀθάνατα.

Οὕτω ὄναιο νέος πολὺ ἡνίκα πλείονα ὄψει

χωρία καὶ τούτους κύδεα ταῦτα πόρει.

mssHM 31188, fol. 195v, Huntington Library, San Marino (CA), USA.⁴

“An epigram by Georg Schrögel of Bavaria on the Urbes of Daniel Rogers

Daniel Rogers gained a lot of advantages out of looking at the cities that he described. 
Clearly he observed the laws, customs and characters of peoples, on the basis of which he adorned their mind, judgement, and nature. 
But you, most blessed places, have got a lot more advantages than him, and a lot more benefits. 
He found an experience that  will die with him, but you found a divine, immortal fame. 
This way, young man, may you profit a lot, when you will see much more places and lend them such renown.”

Schrögel described Rogers as a true Odysseus: Rogers visited many cities in England, in order to study and get to know the different people and their customs. Based on his impressions of these towns, he wrote these city encomia, which bring eternal glory to these cities. Even though Rogers profited from his visits by being able to study the different customs of cities, the profit for the cities from these poems is more durable than Rogers’ perishable impressions. Rogers’ poems will bring these cities a lasting fame that will outlive the experiences of their author.

This Greek poem of Schrögel is the last sign of the friendship between him and Rogers. The two young poets found pleasure in writing city encomia: firstly in a joined effort praising Antwerp, ten years later in a collection on English cities. While Rogers sticked to Latin, Schrögel found a platform for showcasing his knowledge of Greek in these poems. The composition of city encomia also provided the friends with the opportunity to praise each other. At first, Rogers praised Schrögel on his Greek encomium. Later on, Schrögel praised his English friend for writing a large collection of city encomia. This way, the oeuvre of both authors was marked by praises of cities and friends.

mssHM 31188, fol. 195v (detail), Huntington Library, San Marino (CA), USA.
© The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

Footnotes

Schrögel (1565: A3r), ll. 55–56: Dumque tuos video fines auguste Senatus, / iam reficit sextam menstrua luna rotam. (“While I am looking over your territory, venerable Senate, / the moon already makes its sixth monthly cycle.”) ↩︎
Translation cited from Demuynck and Van Rooy (2025: 117). ↩︎
Translation cited from Demuynck (2024: 43, n. 67). ↩︎
The transcription of the manuscript is mine. I regularized the spelling, and added spirituses and punctuation. ↩︎

Figures

Figure 1. Antwerp City Hall.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Antwerp_City_Hall#/media/File:Antwerpen_Stadhuis_crop1_2006-05-28.jpg/2. CC BY-SA 3.0
Figure 2. Peeter I van de Borcht, Domvs Senatoria Antwerpiensis. 1582/1588, paper, 23,4 x 31,8 cm. Antwerp, UAnwerpen print collection, MP 12.2.
Source: https://anet.be/record/opacuaobj/tg:uapr:561/E
Figure 3. mssHM 31188, fol. 195v (detail), Huntington Library, San Marino (CA), USA.
© The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

References

Rogers, Daniel. 1565. Danielis Rogerii Albimontani De Laudibus Antverpiae Oda Sapphica Ad amplissimum et ornatissimum Virum D. Johannem Van Hove. Accesserunt etiam alii eiusdem versiculi quidam. Antwerp: Plantin.
Schrögel, Georg. 1565. Elegia ἐγκωμιαστικὴ in clarissimam et praestantissimam Belgarum urbem Handoverpiam Georgii Schroegelii Boii. Antwerp: Plantin.
Demuynck, Adriaan. 2024. “Inverting the Hierarchy: Greek and Latin in a Sixteenth-Century Poetical Encomium of Antwerp.” Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures (10): pp. 29-57. DOI: 10.21825/jolcel.89653.
Demuynck, Adriaan and Van Rooy, Raf. 2025. “In search of a genre: Georg Schrögel’s Elegia ἐγκωμιαστικὴ in Handoverpiam (1565) between Bavaria and Brabant.” In Griechischhumanismus des 16. Jahrhunderts. Lorenz Rhodoman im Kontext und digital, edited by Stefan Weise. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

How to cite

Demuynck, Adriaan. 2025. “Laudes urbium, ἐγκώμια φίλων: Two friends writing city encomia and congratulating each other.” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 1 August 2025.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/4pept-tny04

On the Hem of Daniel Heinsius’ ‘Peplus Graecorum epigrammatum’: Poetry, Philosophy, and Paratexts in New Ancient Greek

Domenico Graziano
(Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II – Universität Innsbruck)

In 1613, Jan Jacobszoon Paets, Leiden University’s printer (1603-1619), published a mature fruit of Daniel Heinsius’ (1580–1655) ‘Hellenizing Muse’: the Peplus Graecorum epigrammatum. Aside from an appendix of ἐρωτικά, which fills the final pages of the last gathering (removed in subsequent editions), the work is a collection of fifty-six Greek epigrams outlining a history of ancient philosophy through sketches of its protagonists; a combination of pseudo-Aristotle’s Peplus, Diogenes Laertius’ Vitae philosophorum, and – in its use of rare words and antipathy towards sophistry – Timon of Phlius’ Silloi, woven into an allusive tapestry by an author as learned as he was creative.

Figure 1 – Portrait of Daniel Heinsius (c. 1607) with a Latin epigram by Hugo Grotius, dedicatee of the *Peplus* (in my English translation: “If the appearance reflected the heart as the portrait reflects the appearance, in the image of this unique young man would manifest the heavenly honey produced in the shadow of Socrates, both the thoughtfulness of Callimachus and the *cothurnus* of Sophocles, and finally, all the playfulness of the Paelignus [i.e., Ovid] and the audacity of Horace.”)

Heinsius was a leading figure of the late Renaissance: scholar and librarian, editor of ancient texts, literary theorist, and poeta trilinguis (Ancient Greek, Latin, and Dutch). His Greek poetry is renowned, but remained little explored in any depth, until Elisabeth Aydin’s preparations for critical edition of the Peplus with Les Belles Lettres began.

The care Heinsius took in producing such a refined work in Greek and the knowledge required to appreciate it spur questions about the Peplus’ genesis, aims, and intended audience. The first source of insights into these aspects of Heinsius’ poetic endeavour are its paratexts, which function as a δαίμων connecting the literary work to its intellectual and socio-cultural context. In this blogpost, I will focus on two paratextual elements, related respectively to the dedication and the epilogue of the collection.

Figure 2 – Portrait of Hugo Grotius (1636) accompanied by two elegiac couplets by Daniel Heinsius, dated one year after the first edition of the *Peplus* (1614) (in my English translation: “A prodigy placed on earth by the heavens, before whom the motherland Batavia justly shivers, unable to believe that she gave him birth – so excellent Hugo presented himself in his eyes, so excellent in his face. Consider his image human; everything else, divine.”)

The Peplus opens with a dedicatory letter in Latin addressed to the jurist, humanist, and diplomat Hugo Grotius (1583–1645). Discussing this letter as befits its interest for scholarship would require more than a few words, which I intend to do in a work I am developing as part of a forthcoming volume on early modern printed paratexts. Here, I wish only to draw attention to one remarkable aspect of Heinsius’ dedication to Grotius, namely that it is performed twice: firstly through the aforementioned Latin letter and secondly by a Greek liminal text, printed at the end of the collection. After the last poem devoted to an ancient philosopher, in fact, there is another Greek epigram, serving both as the final portrait in the gallery of wise men and as a carmen liminare, through which Heinsius consolidates the dedication at the beginning (p. 27): [The following transcriptions reflect the orthography and the use of diacritics found in the editio princeps, except for the accents in the title]

ΕΙΣ ΓPΩTION TΟN ΠΑΝΥ.

Γρωτιάδη περίπυστε, τετιμένε πᾶσι θεοῖσιν,

Ἄρχων ἱστορίης, ἕρμα δικαιοσύνης,

Πᾶσαν τὴν σοφίην μεμυημένε, δέχνυσο τούσδε

Ἀνέρας, ἀρχαίης ἡγεμόνας σοφίης.

Εἰσὶ δὲ τεσσαράκοντα καὶ ἐννέα· τῶν κλέος αἰεὶ

Ἔσσεται, ἐκ Μουσῶν πάντῃ ἀειδόμενον.

Εἰ δὲ περισσοὶ ἔασι, τὶ τὸ πλέον; εἷς γὰρ ἀριθμὸν

Λείπων Γρωτιάδης ἄρτιον ἐκτελέσει.

“To the excellent Grotius

Illustrious Grotius, revered by all the gods,

master of history, pillar of justice,

you who are initiated in all wisdom, accept these

men, leaders of the ancient wisdom.

There are forty-nine of them; their glory will last

forever, sung in every possible way by the Muses.

But if they are odd in number, what to add? One, Grotius,

leaving the number even, will bring it to its end.”

Thus, the Peplus begins and culminates with Grotius’ name. While the prose dedication letter in Latin stands clearly outside the core text, with this Greek epigram Heinsius blurs the line between text and paratext, having the dedicatee be both the addressee of the Peplus, paradigm of its ideal reader, and one of its characters – in a way, the most important. Heinsius uses the standard dedication at the beginning to provide the intellectual framework to understand his opus and associate it with the prestigious name of Grotius, but at the end he makes Grotius himself an integral part of the collection, using Greek poetry to consecrate him as not only an excellent scholar of philosophy, but a great philosopher himself, towards whom the gallery of wise men almost tends teleologically.

However, even though this poem literally puts the word ‘end’ (ἐκτελέσει) to the collection, the reader finds still another text before the erotic appendix. The epigram to Grotius is followed by a composition that serves as a coda and might provide a key to understanding Heinsius’ work. After a short prose introduction in Greek, which establishes the topic and expands the contents of the poem, the author writes (pp. 27–28):

Ἡ σοφίη θρεφθεῖσα παλαιγενέων ὑπʼ ἀοιδῶν,

Οἷα παρ’ ἄχραντος μητέρι παρθενική,

Εἰς τοὺς λεσχομάχας μεταβαινομένη φύγεν ἄνδρας,

Τοὺς Μουσῶν φθορέας, τοὺς ἐρίδων προπόλους,

Ὡς δ’ ἴδε τὸν πώγωνα μέγαν Zήνωνος ἄνακτος,

Αὐτὸν δὲ μαλακῶς πὰρ πυρὶ κεκλιμένον,

Θέρμους ἀμφαφόωντα σοφῶς μάλα, καὶ τὸν ἀλήτην

Ἥρω βακτροφόραν, τὸν κύνα Διογένη,

Τόνθʼ Ἡράκλειτον μάλα δάκρυσιν ἀμφὶ ῥέοντα,

Τόντʼ Ἐπικούρειον νοῦν ἀτομοπλοκίδαν,

Οὐδὲν ἀνευροῦσα μεγάλη θεός, ἢ κενὸν ἀσκὸν

Δοξοσόφου μανίης, καὶ λογοδαιδαλίης,

Ἐψεῖν μὲν Zήνωνα φακὴν ὡς πρῶτον ἒασσε [sic pro ἐάσσε],

Τὸν κύνα δὲ ῥιγοῦν ὡς πάρος, ἠδ’ ὑλάειν,

Κλαίειν δʼ Ἡράκλειτον, ὅσον φίλον ἔπλετο θυμῷ,

Τὸν δʼ ἀτόμους τέμνειν τὰς ἀπεραντολόγους·

Αὐτὴ δʼ ἐς Μουσέων γλυκερὸν πάλιν ἤλυθε κόλπον

φεύγουσα, προτέρην ὧν ἔχε τὴν κομιδήν.

“Wisdom, nurtured by the ancient bards, like an immaculate maiden by a mother, 
ran away, turning to quarreling idlers,
the corrupters of the Muses, the ministers of conflicts.
But as she saw the great beard of lord Zeno,
and himself laying languidly reclined by the fire,
filling his hand with lupin beans – wisely indeed! –, and the wandering 
stick-bearing hero, the dog Diogenes,
and Heraclitus overflowing with tears,
and the Epicurean mind weaving atoms, 
the great goddess, who found nothing but an empty sack
of pretentious madness and word-craft,
she let Zeno stew his lentil-soup as before, 
she then let the dog shiver as before and bark,
she let Heraclitus weep to his heart’s content, 
and she let him cut the atoms, endless in their discourse (?);
but she returned fleeing to the sweet embrace of the Muses,
from them she got the care she used to receive”.

Figure 3 – Allegory of inspired (numine afflatur) poetry, by Raphael.

Leaving aside a broader discussion of Heinsius’ poetics and critical positions, I wish to highlight some suggestions raised by the epilogue of the Peplus, including both the epigram and its prose preamble. Here, Heinsius outlines the ‘misfortunes of wisdom’, which he situates in the shift from the prisca sapientia of poet-philosophers (e.g. Orpheus, Homer, Empedocles) to the mundane rhetoric of the ‘sophists’. As in Timon’s Σίλλοι, the thinkers labeled as sophists, devoted to empty quarrels, are leaders of philosophical schools promoting conflicting ideas, which includes the stoic Zeno, the cynic Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Epicurus. On the other hand, Heinsius’ sarcasm seems to spare Plato and Aristotle, who are not among those who scare wisdom away and whose doctrines he may have regarded, in line with Renaissance Neo-Platonism, as intrinsically harmonious and compatible with the divine truth expressed by poets.

Figure 4 Allegory of philosophy, specifically physics and ethics (note the volumes she is holding, labeled naturalis and moralis respectively), by Raphael.

In an age heavily influenced by the debate surrounding Aristotle’s Poetics (which Heinsius himself had edited in 1611, two years before the first edition of the Peplus), where poetry and philosophy are considered separate fields, the Peplus seems to suggest that true wisdom is rooted in poetic inspiration, and as such it can be attained exclusively through a poetic practice of thought. In this case, Heinsius is not merely advocating a return to such philosophy, but moreover enacting it himself, since in the dedicatory letter he regards doxography and history of thought as branches of philosophia themselves. Therefore, the eventual return of Σοφίη to the embrace of the Muses that marks the end of the Peplus would be a metaphor for Heinsius’ own work, which presents itself as more than an erudite endeavour: it fulfills the reconciliation of poetry and philosophy, established in New Ancient Greek verse.

Figures

figure 1. Willem Swanenburgh, Portrait of Daniel Heinsius at the age of twenty-six, c. 1607, engraving, ink on paper, Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Daniel_Heinsius,_librarian_and_professor_of_Poetry,_Greek_and_History_at_Leiden_University,_at_the_age_of_26_PK-1884-P-13.tiff.
figure 2. Crispijn van de Passe, Portrait of Hugo Grotius at the age of fifty-three, 1636, engraving, ink on paper, Collectie van prenten van C.G. Voorhelm Schneevoogt te Haarlem. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portret_van_de_Nederlandse_rechtsgeleerde_en_schrijver_Hugo_de_Groot,_op_53-jarige_leeftijd._In_het_randschrift_van_de_omlijsting_de_naam_en_functie_van_de_geportretteerde_in_het_Latijn._In_,_NL-HlmNHA_1477_53011410.JPG
figure 3. Raffaello Sanzio, Allegory of Poetry, 1509–1511, fresco, 180 x 180 cm, Città del Vaticano, Stanza della Segnatura. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Volta_della_stanza_della_segnatura_03_poesia.jpg
figure 4. Raffaello Sanzio, Allegory of Philosophy, 1508, fresco, 180 x 180 cm, Città del Vaticano, Stanza della Segnatura. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Volta_della_stanza_della_segnatura_02,_filosofia.jpg

Sources

Heinsius, D. (1613), Peplus Graecorum epigrammatum, In quo omnes celebriores Graeciae philosophi, encomia eorum, vita, et opiniones recensentur, aut exponuntur, Jan Paets Jacobszoon, apud Lodewijk I Elzevier, Leiden (USTC 1015759).

References

Aydin, E. (2018), Le “Peplus Graecorum Epigrammatum” de Daniel Heinsius, une adaptation de Diogène Laërce à la Renaissance, in «Neulateinisches Jahrbuch» 20, pp. 29-55.
Becker-Cantarino, B. (1978), Daniel Heinsius, Boston.
Golla, K. (2008), Daniel Heinsius’ Epigramma auf Hesiod, in Daniel Heinsius: Klassischer Philologe und Poet, edd. Lefèvre, E. – Schäfer, E., Tübingen, pp. 31–55.
Kern, E. (1949), The Influence of Heinsius and Vossius upon French Dramatic Theory, Baltimore.
Lamers, H. – Van Rooy, R. (2022^a), “Graecia Belgica”: Writing Ancient Greek in the Early Modern Low Countries, in «Classical Receptions Journal» 14, 4 (2022), pp. 435-462.
Lamers, H. – Van Rooy, R. (2022^b), The Low Countries, in The Hellenizing Muse: A European Anthology of Poetry in Ancient Greek from the Renaissance to the Present, edd. Pontani, F. – Weise, S., Berlin, pp. 249-251; 253-254.
Meter, J. H. (1984), The Literary Theories of Daniel Heinsius: A Study of the Development and Background of His Views on Literary Theory and Criticism During the Period from 1602 to 1612, Assen.
Sellin, P. R. (1968), Daniel Heinsius and Stuart England, Oxford.
Wels, V. (2013), Contempt for Commentators: Transformation of the Commentary Tradition in Daniel Heinsius’ “Constitutio tragoediae”, in Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700), edd. Enenkel, K. A. E. – Nellen, H., Leuven, pp. 325-346.

How to cite

Graziano, Domenico. 2025. “On the Hem of Daniel Heinsius’ ‘Peplus Graecorum epigrammatum’: Poetry, Philosophy, and Paratexts in New Ancient Greek.” Hermes: Platform for Early Modern Hellenism (blog). 1 June 2025.

Deposit in Knowledge Commons: https://doi.org/10.17613/76npd-xfn77

Pieter-Jan Mannens (KU Leuven)

Manuscripts

References

Footnotes

How to cite

Tobias Heiss (Universität Innsbruck)

References

Footnotes

How to cite

Laura Truzzu (KU Leuven)

References

Footnotes

How to cite

Elena Maria Cassol (Università Ca’ Foscari Venice)

Figures

References

Footnotes

How to cite

Criticizing the Pagan Father of the Gods in Lorenz Rhodoman’s Ilias parva (1588/1604)

Karen Lelittka (Bergische Universität Wuppertal)

Figures:

References:

Footnotes

How to cite

Thijs Kersten (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)

The Ἀληκτὼ sive somnium furoris bellici (1553)

The Harlemias (1605)

Conclusion

Figures

References

Footnotes

How to cite

Dries Nijs (KU Leuven)

Footnotes

Figures

Further reading

How to cite

Riccardo Stigliano (Universität Innsbruck)

A chronicle not of Byzantine demise but of Ottoman expansion

The Herodotean legacy

The reception of his work

A historical vision in transition

Conclusion

Figures

References

How to cite

Adriaan Demuynck (KU Leuven / FWO)

Footnotes

Figures

References

How to cite

Domenico Graziano (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II – Universität Innsbruck)

Figures

Sources

References

How to cite

**The Ἀληκτὼ sive somnium furoris bellici (1553)**

**The Harlemias (1605)**

Domenico Graziano
(Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II – Universität Innsbruck)