The tenth volume of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (CTC), published three years after volume 9 (2011) by a new pool of editors and in a new format, successfully continues Paul Oskar Kristeller’s 1958 project of providing scholars with a tool to explore the impact that classical heritage exerted on medieval and Renaissance cultures. The volume presents the standard structure of all CTC volumes: introduction, Greek authors, Latin authors, “Addenda et Corrigenda,” and indexes. The introductory section includes a preface by Greti Dinkova-Bruun, editor in chief of CTC after the late Virginia Brown (to whom the volume is dedicated); a reprint of Kristeller’s preface to volume 1; a general bibliography; and a list of abbreviations. The Greek authors, arranged chronologically, cover a span of about one millennium: Pindar (Francesco Tissoni), Aelianus Tacticus (Silvia Fiaschi), Musaeus (Paolo Eleuteri), and Agathias (Réka Forrai). Aulus Gellius (Leofranc Holford-Strevens) is the only Latin author included in this volume. The treatment of each author conforms to an established outline: discussion of the author’s fortuna, bibliography, translations, and commentaries, with extensive quotations from introductory letters, incipits, and explicits. The addenda and corrigenda section contains three entries with updates, corrections, and additions to authors treated in previous volumes: Lucretius (volume 2; Ada Palmer), Dionysius Periegetes (volume 3; Didier Marcotte), and Sallustius (volume 8; Patricia Osmond and Robert W. Ulery Jr.).
Length and extension of each article are extremely diverse. Since, as the editors state, articles are included in each volume as contributors make them available, it is probably a fortunate coincidence that the five authors treated in this volume belong to different ages and areas and, therefore, illustrate the reception of different literary genres at different levels. Tissoni’s dense article on Pindar offers a remarkably extensive treatment of a famous poet of antiquity who was consistently read in schools from Byzantium to modern times. Fiaschi’s article highlights the importance of Aelianus Tacticus in studies of military tactics and, consequently, emphasizes the reception of nonliterary texts in a cultural context that was open not only to the literature, but also to the technical knowledge of the past. Eleuteri illustrates the success of Musaeus’s poem Hero and Leander, which, in addition to being translated and adapted in several vernacular languages, contributed to a general rediscovery of Hellenistic poetry in the early sixteenth century. Forrai’s study on the sixth-century historian and poet Agathias addresses the reception and influence of Byzantine literature on Renaissance culture, a field of research that still needs full exploration. Holford-Strevens analyzes the large success of Aulus Gellius’s encyclopedic work Attic Nights, which became a model for its “elegant and attractive presentation” (285) of a wide range of notions.
The presence of a section on additions and corrections, a welcome feature of all CTC volumes, is the effect of a continuous increase in scholarly publications as well as ongoing discoveries of new texts, which testify to the vitality of the history of classical tradition as a field of research that is attracting more and more attention. Hopefully, in a not-too-distant future, a data bank accessible online will increase the usefulness of CTC by keeping up with the constant progresses of modern scholarship. Indeed, while the reprint of Kristeller’s preface to volume 1, proposed to be at the beginning of each CTC volume, underlines the intentional continuity with the original project, the content of each article demonstrates that some changes have become necessary. A first change concerns the chronological limit, which Kristeller had established to 1600; most contributors tacitly extend beyond that date. A second change is the room devoted to early modern vernacular translations and scholarship. Both changes reflect new scholarly trends that expand the traditional field of Renaissance studies by considering the influence of the Renaissance on early modern literatures.
Three indexes (manuscripts, translators and commentators, and ancient authors treated in volumes 1 through 10) complete the volume, which provides an impressive amount of material, some of which is still unpublished, along with suggestions for research and discussion for all scholars interested in understanding the role that the classics played in the shaping of medieval and Renaissance cultures. For this and many other reasons, the editors’ effort to continue Kristeller’s project deserves unconditional praise.
