Plautus in der Frühen Neuzeit

9. Conclusion

To sum up, my case remains circumstantial. I doubt the camel FabriciusFabricius, Georg mentions in his 1549 letter is the Vetus, though a palaeographer could change my mind (ch. 6), and I cannot prove it is the Decurtatus (ch. 7), because the Decurtatus contains no notes resembling HassensteinHassenstein, Bohuslaus von’s handwriting, and nothing is written on its untrimmed front, top, or bottom edges. If proof does exist – a shelfmark, say, or a handwritten title – a peek behind its binding might tell us. When I asked the Heidelberg librarian to pull it off and check, however, she politely refused.1

Nevertheless, if the salt road that brought us Plautus did pass through Bohemia, then in these days of increasing interest in provenance, some folks at the Lobkowicz Library might want their book back.

Hactenus en potui; tu nunc succede camelis

curandis, aliquis lector amice, mihi.

Summa: librum Decurtatum decorticet audax,

et Veteri impositas cum veter, ede notas.

Bibliography

Camel B, the Vetus, is digitized online at https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/bav_pal_lat_1615/0001.

Camel C, the Decurtatus, is digitized online at https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpl1613/0001/image.

Camel D, Cusanus’ stick of dynamite, is digitized online at https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.3870.

Bandini, Giorgia: Il CamerarioCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim e la RudensRudens: tracce ‘materiali’ del lavoro nei codici plautini B.e C., in: Renato Raffaelli / Alba Tontini (edd.): Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates XVII: RudensRudens (Sarsina, 28 settembre 2013), Urbino 2014.

Boldan, Kamil: Rekonstrukce knihovny Bohuslava Hasištejnského z Lobkovic, Prague 2009.

CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, Joachim: M. Accii Plauti Comoediae V, Lipsiae, in officina Valentini Papae, 1545 [contains AmphitruoAmphitruo, AsinariaAsinaria, CurculioCurculio, CasinaCasina, and CistellariaCistellaria].

CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, Joachim: M. Accii Plauti Comoediae VI. Lipsiae: in officina Valentini Papae, 1549 [contains EpidicusEpidicus, BacchidesBacchides, MercatorMercator, PseudolusPseudolus, RudensRudens, and PersaPersa].

CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, Joachim: Indicationes multorum quae ad lectionem fabularum Plauti nonnihil momenti afferre possint. Quae collegit Georgius FabriciusFabricius, Georg Chemnicensis. Emendationes editi exempli Plautini a Ioachimo CamerarioCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, de recognitione ipsius, Lipsiae, in officina Valentini Papae, 1553 (= CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim 1553a).

CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, Joachim: Narratio de H. Eobano Hesso, comprehendens mentionem de compluribus illius aetatis doctis & eruditis viris, Nuremberg 1553 (= CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim 1553b).

CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, Joachim. 1566. Letter to Johannes Oporinus. Printed in Ritschl KS 3, 70–73.

CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, Joachim: Joachimi Camerarii (I) orationes, carmina, commentarii, epistolae latinae et graecae (maximam partem apographa), (Ludwig CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, Kalligraf), 1586, 1590 und früher (?) – BSB Clm 10393, [S.l.], [BSB-Hss Clm 10393] (Bavarian State Library).

FabriciusFabricius, Georg, Georg: Letter to Joachim CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim (manuscript), Nr. 183 (p. 201r) of Gelehrte Korrespondenz der Camerarii (ohne Familienbriefe), diplomatische und politische Korrespondenz des Ludwig und Joachim IV. CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, 1549, BSB Clm 10431 (Bavarian State Library).

FabriciusFabricius, Georg, Georg: Elegantiarum ex Plauto et Terentio libri duo. Antwerp: apud Guilielmum Simonem, 1566.

Hardin, Richard: The Reception of Plautus in Northern Europe: The Earlier Sixteenth Century, Viator 43, 2012, 333–356.

Hardin, Richard: Plautus and the English Renaissance of Comedy, Madison 2017.

Mazzi, Curzio: Leone Allacci e la Palatina di Heidelberg, I., Il Propugnatore 4, 1892, 261–307.

Mazzi, Curzio: Leone Allacci e la Palatina di Heidelberg, II. Il Propugnatore 5, 1893, 130–206.

Melchior, Adam: Vitae Germanorum philosophorum, Frankfurt 1615.

Mitis, Thomas: Illustris ac generosi D. D. Bohuslai Hassensteynii a Lobkovitz etc., baronis Bohemici […] Farrago prima poematum, Prague 1562.

Mitis, Thomas: Viri Incomparabilis, ac D.D. Bohuslai Hassensteynii Lucubrationes Oratoriae, Prague 1563.

PareusPareus, Johann Philipp, Johann Philipp: M. Acci Plauti Sarsinatis Umbri Comoediae XX. Frankfurt 1641.

Pelliccia, Hayden: The Violation of Wackernagel’s Law at PindarPindar Pythian 3.1., Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 109, 2017, 63–82.

Ritschl, Friedrich: Opuscula philologica, 5 vols., Leipzig 1866–1879.

Schäfer, Eckart: Plautus-Philologie im Zeichen des CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, in: Rolf Hartkamp / Florian Hurka (eds.): Studien zu Plautus’ CistellariaCistellaria, Tübingen 2004, 437–475.

Stärk, Ekkehard: CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim’ Plautus, in: Rainer Kößling / Günther Wartenberg (eds.): Joachim CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, Tübingen 2003, 235–248 = Stärk, Ekkehard: Kleine Schriften zur Römischen Philologie, Tübingen 2005, 287–298.

Stockert, Walter: The Rebirth of a Codex: Virtual Work on the Ambrosian Palimpset of Plautus, in: Michael Fontaine / Adele C. Scafuro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Comedy, Oxford 2014, 680–698.

Truhlář, Josef: Humanismus a humanisté v Čechách za krále Vladislava II., Prague 1894.

Vaculínová, Marta (ed.): Bohuslaus Hassensteinius a Lobkowicz: Opera poetica, Munich 2006.

Vaculínová, Marta: The Incorrect Attribution of Aenea Silvio’s Poem De passione Christi to Bohuslaus of Lobkowicz and HassensteinHassenstein, Bohuslaus von and Some Notes on Datation of His Printed Works, Listy Filologické / Folia Philologica 128, 2003, 5–46.

Zangemeister, Karl (ed.): Plautus. Codex Heidelbergensis 1613 Palatinus C. Phototypice editus, Lugduni Batavorum 1900.

The Reception of Plautus’ Fragmentary Plays in the Scholarship of the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Century

Salvatore Monda (Molise)

The question of the authenticity of Plautus’ non-Varronian plays was already in antiquity a critical debate discussed so much that today most of our knowledge of the early Latin grammarians and of the scholarship of Republican Rome is derived from witnesses to the ancient textual criticism of Plautus. In the Middle Ages and at the beginning of Humanism interest in works transmitted in fragments suffered a considerable and general fall, from the sixteenth century it returned to the top of scholars’ interests.

In the Middle Ages Plautus’ plays were not known.1 However, knowledge of his name continued to be widespread, along with that of many other poets who were little known at that time and of whom today there remain only scanty fragments (NaeviusNaevius, EnniusEnnius, PacuviusPacuvius, and many others). This is the case, for instance, of some late-medieval lexica and other scholarly compilations, such as De poetis, De viris illustribus, and similar works.

An interest in the fragments of non-Varronian plays in the modern era would develop only once the corpus of twenty comedies was well known. But the study of fragments is necessarily connected to the cataloguing of the titles of the comedies ascribed to Plautus. When, in the first phase of Humanism, the main activity of scholars consisted in obtaining texts previously unknown, the first step was to compile indices of titles and to realize plans to rediscover and recover a great number of classical Latin manuscripts.2 For an author like Plautus at first there was no difference between titles of Varronian comedies and titles of lost comedies, even though GelliusGellius, who discussed this question, was well known. Let us look at the main stages of this story.

In the late Middle Ages many scholars compiled works in which they attempt to outline the biography of the Latin authors.3 Plautus is mentioned in the Speculum historiale by the Dominican Friar Vincent de BeauvaisBeauvais, Vincent de, which contains a chapter entitled De Plauto poeta comico et dictis eius,4 with scanty biographical information derived from GelliusGellius and a collection of sayings from the AululariaAulularia. The lemma Plaucius (later corrected to Plautus in the printed editions) that we find in the Liber de vita et moribus philosophorumBurley, WalterLiber de vita et moribus philosophorum by the scholastic philosopher Walter BurleyBurley, Walter5 certainly depends on Vincent de BeauvaisBeauvais, Vincent de. BurleyBurley, Walter’s work, which had an enormous fortuna, as witnessed by a very high number of manuscripts, is full of wrong attributions and gross chronological errors.6 On Plaucius BurleyBurley, Walter begins as follows: poeta comicus, Tulli discipulus, Rome claruit. From Gellius he draws the report that slavery for debts forced the poet to write and sell comedies. These data, however, will then be taken up, corrected, and supplemented by some Italian scholars of the Veronese and Paduan prehumanism,7 starting with Giovanni ColonnaColonna, Giovanni and his De viris illustribusColonna, GiovanniDe viris illustribus and Mare historiarumColonna, GiovanniMare historiarum.8 The chapter De Plauto comico poeta of the Liber de viris illustribus repeats almost word for word the passage of BurleyBurley, Walter, while in the Mare historiarum (De Ennio, Pacubio, Plauto et Nevio atque Possidonio qui per ea tempora in Italia claruerunt) ColonnaColonna, Giovanni also quotes Plautus’ epitaph. However, none of these works mentions Plautine titles or recalls the question of the uncertain attribution of some plays, at least not in terms of the problem raised by GelliusGellius. The first scholar to focus widely on the works of the authors he quotes is Guglielmo da PastrengoPastrengo, Guglielmo da,9 jurist and literatus from Verona, also known for his friendship and correspondence with Francesco PetrarcaPetrarca, Francesco. His De viris illustribus10 is structured according to the alphabetical order used already by BurleyBurley, Walter. He mentions some titles of Plautus’ comedies (p. 180–181 Bottari):

Plautus, poeta comicus, post secundum bellum Punicum non multum ultra annos XV, ut refert Agelius, in scena florens, scripsit comedias: Captivos, Cassinam, Deiphebum, Cistellariam, Pseudodoneam, Rudentem, Gurgilionem, Menechos, Bachides, Mustelariam, Asinariam, Truculentum, Militem gloriosum, Aululariam, Penulum, De natura deorum, Epidicum, Menegnos, Vidulariam, Amphidrionem, Persas, Merchatorem, Lenones, Calceolum, Astrabam, Bacariam.

The main source is PriscianPriscian (NoniusNonius Marcellus was not yet known to the scholars of Verona and for Festus we must wait for the recovery of the codex Farnesianus). Eighteen of the twenty-one extant plays of Plautus are cited (PseudolusPseudolus, StichusStichus, and TrinummusTrinummus are missing). The presence of the Deiphebus (sic) should be explained by the confusion of Plautus’ nomen, which was then thought to be AcciusAccius; the title is in fact also present among Accius’ tragedies (p. 14, 8 Bottari), who, again because of the same mistake, is called poeta comicus by GuglielmoPastrengo, Guglielmo da.11 VarroVarro’s Menippean satire Pseudodonea (for Pseudaeneas) and CiceroCicero’s De natura deorumCiceronat. deor. are errors due to the praenomen Marcus assigned to Plautus too.12 Menechos and Menegnos are of course the MenaechmiMenaechmi. The last four are non-Varronian plays: Lenones quoted by Priscian, Calceolus by MacrobiusMacrobius, Astraba by GelliusGellius, and Bacaria again by Macrobius. Other non-Varronian plays, together with StichusStichus and TrinummusTrinummus, appear under the entry dedicated to PacuviusPacuvius (p. 179 Bottari).

Compared to these first attempts at a bio-bibliographic arrangement of the material, the next generation of Renaissance humanists takes a major step forward, thanks, above all, to their very careful and intelligent use of ancient sources. As regards Plautus an example is the erudite work of Sicco PolentonPolenton, Sicco.13 In the second of his Scriptorum illustrium Latinae linguae libri XVIIIPolenton, SiccoScriptores illustrium Latinae linguae the section on comic poets is inspired by the canon of Volcacius SedigitusSedigitus, Volcacius (considered, as often happens among the humanists, to be Nigidius Figulus). The second poet is Plautus (pp. 53–55 Ullman). Sicco PolentonPolenton, Sicco provides essential information on Plautus’ life and art, also recalling the poet’s self-epitaph. He is the first scholar to deal with the number of the comedies (he uses Gell. 3, 3 and Serv. praef. in Aen. p. 4, 15 Thilo-Hagen):

Comoedias vero edidit Plautus multas […] quales autem et quot essent, quod multae dubii atque incerti nominis vagarentur, magnum inter peritos certamen fecit. Eas quidem numero esse nonnulli quinque et viginti, multi XL, aliqui centum, quidam XXX etiam super centum putant (p. 54 Ullman).

And, in this regard, Sicco PolentonPolenton, Sicco also forms his own judgment: quid autem verius, credi potius quam certo discerni potest. He recalls VarroVarro’s thesis on the possible confusion between two poets, Plautus and Plautius (auctorem hac in re Varronem sequor, p. 55 Ullman); he also claims that neque vero defuerant qui vere scriptas a Plauto sua vel temeritate vel arbitrio usurpassent, and then mentions GelliusGellius’ account, according to which Plautus would amend the comedies of previous poets too. His sources are almost all that we possess today to reconstruct the Plautine question. Sicco PolentonPolenton, Sicco never mentions any comedy titles, but his exposition is extremely clear and can be appreciated for the lucidity of his judgment. Much of his information was then taken by a pupil of PolitianPoliziano, Angelo, Pietro Ricci or del Riccio, better known as Petrus CrinitusCrinitus, Petrus, in his De poetis LatinisCrinitus, PetrusDe poetis Latinis.14 This work enjoyed a great success, so much so that the extract of Plautus’ life was printed in almost all editions of Plautine plays until the eighteenth century.

Some titles of non-Varronian comedies are collected, together with the testimonia on the life of the poet, in humanistic manuscripts containing the twenty comedies of Plautus. On more than one occasion these lives indicate the number of plays and mention the problem of authorship of some of them: always cited is GelliusGellius (often named Agellius) and what he wrote on this subject in 3, 3, 10–11.15 The composite ms. Escorialensis T. II. 8, which contains the corpus of twenty comedies in two parts, the first written about 1420 and the second about 1435, is the oldest known exemplar of the so-called Itala recensio. The manuscript presents a great number of marginal notes, ascribed by Alba Tontini to Antonio BeccadelliBeccadelli, Antonio, also known as Panormita.16 Before the text of the comedies there is a series of titles of non-Varronian plays from NoniusNonius Marcellus: Apud Nonium Marcellum has quoque allegatas inveni in:17 Cornicularia, Chryses (the final -s is added), Medicus (Medico then corrected), Astraba, Frivolaria, Plocinus (Plocino then corrected), VidulariaVidularia, Carbonaria. The author of the marginal notes must therefore have drawn this list of comedies from NoniusNonius Marcellus alone (the only author who calls the Cornicula by the name Cornicularia and who, this time like PriscianPriscian, abbreviates the Parasitus medicus as Medicus). The presence of PacuviusPacuvius’ Chryses is explained by the fact that NoniusNonius Marcellus (p. 105 Lindsay), after two quotations from Plautus, mistakenly quotes a line of the Chryses, assigning it to Plautus instead of Pacuvius (trag. 93 Ribbeck³). On the left margin is written: De astraba tamen dubitare se NoniusNonius Marcellus (p. 97 Lindsay) dicit utrum ea Plauti sit in vocabulo: apludas.

All this demonstrates a secondary interest in Plautus’ fragmentary plays: the scribe reported only titles found by chance, for, had he wished, he could have composed a more complete list of titles, since at that time VarroVarro, GelliusGellius, NoniusNonius Marcellus, and PriscianPriscian were available. The discovery, by Nicholas of CusaKues, Nicolaus von, of a manuscript with twelve new comedies is recent: Plautus is now a well-known playwright. But the lists of titles are still written in the hope of new discoveries: in the fifteenth century there is still no awareness of selecting and collecting fragments as such.

Niccolò PerottiPerotti, Niccolò, in his CornucopiaePerotti, NiccolòCornucopiae, a commentary on MartialMartial’s Liber spectaculorum and First Book of Epigrams, quotes a lot of passages unknown to us from various authors, including Plautus.18 These fragments are mentioned without giving them any particular weight. If they were authentic and not composed by PerottiPerotti, Niccolò himself or found in humanistic glossaries, we would think that he had not understood their importance, or perhaps even that he was not particularly aware of it. But most likely they are false fragments, which the scholar quoted in good faith. In 1947 Revilo Pendleton Oliver19 was the first to notice the presence of new fragments, especially of Latin authors of the Republican era. Oliver claimed that these fragments came from an edition of NoniusNonius Marcellus that was augmented, in comparison to the edition we now possess (NoniusNonius Marcellus auctus).20 However, Oliver’s proof of the existence of an exemplar of NoniusNonius Marcellus in the margin of which some learned monks added passages of lost glossaries that were still extant at that time is far from convincing. Ferruccio Bertini, on the other hand, presented in numerous articles his theory of the existence of a NoniusNonius Marcellus plenior.21 In my opinion this possibility is to be rejected too: many fragments cited by Perotti concern authors such as Apuleius who never (or almost never) appear in NoniusNonius Marcellus. In the fifteenth century there were in fact interpolated copies of the De compendiosa doctrina22 and the interpolations seem generally humanistic. Sebastiano Timpanaro, who examined the EnniusEnnius quotations, considered them a humanistic fake, arguing mainly on metrical and linguistic grounds.23 Among the authors most frequently quoted by Perotti the name of Plautus stands out, also for the presence of numerous ‘new’ fragments of the playwright.24

After the 16th March 1477 PerottiPerotti, Niccolò returned to Sassoferrato where he died on the 15th December 1480; it was in these years that he worked on the CornucopiaePerotti, NiccolòCornucopiae. The nephew, Pirro, to whom we owe the preface, says that the work served his uncle as personal study notes. Perhaps his library in Sassoferrato was not well-stocked with books. I suspect that often Perotti did not check the sources, quoting them from memory, and sometimes inventing some quotations. When a line seems perfect but contains a serious metrical error, the possibility that it could be a humanistic quasi versus is very high. I am thinking, for example, of a line attributed to Plautus by Perotti (ed. 1526, 10 = I 53 Charlet):

Coniice, conde, cela ne quis vĭdeat.

Furthermore, the assumption that conicere means abscondere, as PerottiPerotti, Niccolò argues, is simply untrue. In another passage Perotti assigns to Plautus a verb, fortificare, that is attested for the first time in Caelius Aurelianus. The fragment is (ed. 1526, 34 = I 168 Charlet):

fortifica animum

Robert EstienneEstienne, Robert in his Latin dictionary25 specifically mentions PerottiPerotti, Niccolò’s CornucopiaePerotti, NiccolòCornucopiae among his sources. Estienne usually gives very accurate quotations of the passages chosen as examples, while for the lemma fortifico (I 324) he simply writes Plaut. fortifica animum. It is clear that this example originated with Perotti. The erroneous attribution to Plautus of the verb will be questioned only by Forcellini: «quod ex Plauto afferunt quidam Lexicographi fortifica animum, suspectum, ne dicam falsum, valde est».26

Perotti is not an isolated case. In Domizio CalderiniCalderini, Domizio’s writings too we find incorrect and false lines, almost always from second-hand quotations.27 This is not surprising for someone who even invented the ancient historian Marius Rusticus, nor is it surprising that he, like PerottiPerotti, Niccolò, gives no emphasis to the ‘new’ fragments of Plautus. That someone in the fifteenth century would be interested in fragments is not self-evident.

Angelo Ambrogini, known as PolitianPoliziano, Angelo, was one of the few at that time to take an interest in the texts transmitted in fragments. He worked on CallimachusKallimachos’ Lock of Berenice, Hecale, and Aetia when other scholars were dealing only with the hymns, and he studied EupolisEupolis’ DemoiEupolisDemoi.28 PolitianPoliziano, Angelo dedicates chapter 91 of his Miscellaneorum centuria primaPoliziano, AngeloMiscellaneorum centuria prima to this comedy and, with regard to collections of fragments, writes:29

agedum (si placet) ipsos ex EupolidosEupolis δήμοιςEupolisDemoi (id enim comoediae nomen) versiculos subiiciamus, gratum puto futurum studiosis, si ceu spicilegium racemationemque faciamus, aut si tabulas veluti quaspiam ex hoc literarum naufragio collectas, in corpus aliquod restituamus.30

With this passage PolitianPoliziano, Angelo inaugurates the successful tradition of the shipwreck simile comparing the remains of ancient authors to those of a sunken raft, which was destined to become a topos when referring to the collections of fragments.31

When PolitianPoliziano, Angelo argues about the linguistic variety of a classical author or when he himself makes use of rare Latin words, he often turns to Plautus.32 In a couple of cases, fragments are involved. A few years ago, attention was drawn by Silvia Rizzo to a fragment taken from Plautus’ Frivolaria:33 on the basis of early manuscripts PolitianPoliziano, Angelo restored the term sororientes in Pliny the ElderPlinius d.Ä. (nat. hist. 31, 66). He used this hapax also in his poem Puella.34 Later, however, after finding in Plautus the attestation of sororiare (Frivol. VIII Monda, quoted by Festus p. 380 Lindsay), PolitianPoliziano, Angelo thought that Pliny’s reading should be corrected to sororiantes35 and so he wanted to replace this form also in his poem.36 Another Plautine fragment (inc. XV Monda), also drawn from Festus, is quoted by PolitianPoliziano, Angelo in his commentary on line 35 of TerenceTerenz’sTerenz AndriaTerenzAndr. (p. 42, 14 Lattanzi Roselli): ‘Deiurare’: eiuratio – ut Festus – significat id quod desideretur non posse praestari. Plautus: eiuravit militiam.

So, in the fifteenth century, excepting perhaps PolitianPoliziano, Angelo, there was no great interest in fragmentary works, nor for collecting them. In the case of Plautus (though the point can be extended to all the playwrights) there are no traces of editions of fragmentary plays in humanistic manuscripts. The advent of the printing press, however, favoured larger and more complex publishing operations.37 The VidulariaVidularia, of course, at this point remained one of the lost plays.

The editio princeps by Giorgio MerulaMerula, Giorgio (1472) and the two editions by Eusebius ScutariusScutarius, Eugenius (1490 and 1495) did not contain the fragments, but at the end of the fifteenth century the times were ripe for a collection of Plautus’ lost plays.38 Thus, in the Plautus cum correctione et interpretatione Hermolai, Merulae, Politiani et Beroaldi et cum multis additionibus, probably published in Milan in 1497,39 we find in the appendix a small sylloge of fragmentary texts: Ex multis Plauti comoediis hae reperiuntur citatae a gravissimis authoribus: M. Tulio C., Au. Gellio, Nonio Marcello, Festo Pompeio et Prisciano, quas ordine litterarum dissposuimus (sic). The collection contains only fragments of plays of which the titles are preserved: Astrabacum, Carbonaria, Commorientes, Cornicularia, Epodus, Frivolaria, Lenones, Lipargus, Medicus, Moechus, Nervus, Plotium, Polegus, Saturio, Stematicus, Synephoebi (sic), VidulariaVidularia. Many of them are clearly wrong; for instance the Synephebi is assigned to Plautus instead of Caecilius StatiusStatius; Epodus is the EpidicusEpidicus (35–36); from the Polegus is quoted the line ut rem video te inventum a vanitudine, which is actually Capt.Captivi 569 (with variant readings), which begins with the words pol ego, which have been mistaken for a title; the Moechus is explicitly taken from GelliusGellius 1, 7, 3, who writes ut in Plauti comoedia moechus eqs.; but, if moechus were a comedy title, it would be in the ablative case in Gellius’ passage: in the nominative case it must be the subject of the sentence and therefore this adulterer has to be recognized as a character (the situation recalls Bacch.Bacchides 918 or Poen.Poenulus 862).

Many other editions follow, including one, with a commentary, by Giovan Battista PioPio, Giovan Battista (Mediolani 1500) which does not contain fragments, but which often compares or restores Plautine passages with the help of fragments, or the edition by Symon CharpentariusCharpentarius, Symon (1513) which reproduces exactly the same fragments as those of the Milanese incunable.40

The first real edition of Plauti deperditarum fabularum fragmenta is that of Georg FabriciusFabricius, Georg,41 printed in the second edition of Plautus’ plays by Ioachim CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim in 1558.42 The first edition of this work,43 as is well known, marks a milestone in the history of modern Plautine criticism: CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim, who had at his disposal the manuscript B (Vat. Pal. Lat. 1615, 10th–11th century, the so-called Vetus Camerarii), was able to read, at the end of the TruculentusTruculentus, the note (f. 211v) Plauti | TruculentusTruculentus explicit incipit VidulariaVidularia | VidulariaVidularia.44 And so he was the first scholar to understand that VidulariaVidularia was one of the twenty-one Varronian comedies. His first edition did not contain the fragments, but in the introductory letter some titles of non-Varronian comedies are mentioned. The text is as follows (pp. 900–901):

Viginti tamen et unam Varronem Plauto sine dubitatione attribuisse accepimus quae et ‘Varronianae’ appellatae fuerunt. Eae, ut opinor, quae adhuc extant, et praeter illas insuper VidulariaVidularia, cuius et in nostro veteri libro nomen exaratum cernitur, sed in hac inscriptione ille finitur, cum magno crimine inertis et pigris scriptoris qui non addiderit ad titulum etiam fabulam. Verum, praeter illas, haec a grammaticis Latinis nomina fabularum Plautinarum commemorata annotavimus: Astraba, quod vehiculi genus est (Straba etiam legitur, haud scio an falso, in Nonio interpretante verbum ‘reciprocare’), Cornix, Cornicula, Cornicularia (nescio una ne a librariis mutato nomine, quod scriberetur in veteribus exemplaribus dimidiatum, an tres diversae), Parasitus, Medicus, Nervolaria, Frivolaria, Plocinona, Sisennaria, Carbonaria, Colax (quo nomine et Naevii fuit fabula), Lepargus, Lenones, Gemini (quod nomen in libro VI Prisciani legitur; in Gellio autem Gemini et Leones, ut videtur, mendose), Dyscolus, Artemona, Phasma, Patina vel Patinaria, Hortulus, Persae, Caecus, Praedones, Trigemini, CaptiviCaptivi (nam alia haec fuit, quam ea quae extat, cuius est nomen CaptiviCaptivi duo), Addictus, Saturio (quas in pistrino scripsisse perhibetur), Anus, Condalium, Bis compressa, Boeotia, Ἄγροικος, Fretum, Calciolus, Baccaria, Cacistus.

In the second edition45 the same text of the Epistola is anastatically reproduced: this implies that CamerariusCamerarius d.Ä., Joachim mentions titles that present differences and omissions compared to FabriciusFabricius, Georg’ edition of fragments printed in the same volume. The edition of the fragments is preceded by a letter (p. 912) from FabriciusFabricius, Georg dated 1550, which testifies that his work was ready in 1550: we do not know why it was published only in 1558. FabriciusFabricius, Georg for the first time collects both fragments of comedies of which we know the title and fragments incertae sedis (pp. 913–935); there follows a list of sources (pp. 925–935). There are still many errors and wrong attributions, both often due to errors of transmission in the texts of the sources used.

The greatest difficulty in collecting fragments at that time lay in the fact that there were no reliable editions of their sources. And there was not yet any scholar who was really interested in collecting fragments. That remained the case until the debut on the philological scene of the figure who was destined to become the greatest scholar of his time, as was PolitianPoliziano, Angelo in the previous century: Joseph Justus ScaligerScaliger, Joseph Justus. ScaligerScaliger, Joseph Justus never published an edition of Plautine fragments, and his emendations in our critical apparatuses are flanked by those of other authors of adversaria philologa, such as Schoppius, Canter, Turnebus, and many others.46 Why, then, should we consider him the scholar who contributed most of all to the philological reconstitution of the texts transmitted in fragments?

ScaligerScaliger, Joseph Justus is not only the author of important writings on the sources of the fragments,47 but was also the promoter of many other works. In the same years in which he was working on VarroVarro, a collection of fragmentary Latin poets by Robert EstienneEstienne, Robert came out posthumously.48 The work was completed, after the death of Robert EstienneEstienne, Robert, in 1559, by his son Henri. The volume includes epic poets and playwrights, such as LiviusLivius Andronicus, NaeviusNaevius, EnniusEnnius, Caecilius, PacuviusPacuvius, and poets such as Lucilius, the neoteroi, and Petronius. There are no fragments of Plautus, which were also absent from the edition of the M. Plauti Comoediae XX edited by Stephanus in 1530.