Apud antiquos. La ricostruzione dell’antichità nell’insegnamento di Poliziano
Abstract
The recollectae of Politian, notes taken at lectures by the students attending the courses he taught, allow us to enter into the heart of late Quattrocento humanist instruction. They are thus ideal texts with which to analyse the processes by which antiquity was canonized: which authors were considered ancient? To what was the concept of antiquitas applied? Does it have different degrees? And what roles does it play? For Politian ‘ancient’ applies primarily to codices: they can be antiqui, antiquissimi, veteres, perveteres, vetustissimi and so on, adjectives that take on the role of more or less precise indicators of date, but above all of authority. The vetustas of codices is assessed not only from a philological point of view: one sees in fact a process of ennobling the monumenta of the past, to which positive characteristics are attributed, in opposition to the improbitas of the scribes of the saeculum ineruditum. From the linguistic-literary point of view the antiquitas of Politian coincides in large measure with that of the late grammarians and commentators, whose authority, far from being absolute, is based on their privileged access to sources from classical antiquity. This however does not imply an a-historical view of the ancient world: from the linguistic point of view as from the literary one, Politian stresses the plurality, also on the temporal axis, of an antiquitas seen as in continuous evolution, which is to be reconstructed in its entirety by philology.
Abstract
The recollectae of Politian, notes taken at lectures by the students attending the courses he taught, allow us to enter into the heart of late Quattrocento humanist instruction. They are thus ideal texts with which to analyse the processes by which antiquity was canonized: which authors were considered ancient? To what was the concept of antiquitas applied? Does it have different degrees? And what roles does it play? For Politian ‘ancient’ applies primarily to codices: they can be antiqui, antiquissimi, veteres, perveteres, vetustissimi and so on, adjectives that take on the role of more or less precise indicators of date, but above all of authority. The vetustas of codices is assessed not only from a philological point of view: one sees in fact a process of ennobling the monumenta of the past, to which positive characteristics are attributed, in opposition to the improbitas of the scribes of the saeculum ineruditum. From the linguistic-literary point of view the antiquitas of Politian coincides in large measure with that of the late grammarians and commentators, whose authority, far from being absolute, is based on their privileged access to sources from classical antiquity. This however does not imply an a-historical view of the ancient world: from the linguistic point of view as from the literary one, Politian stresses the plurality, also on the temporal axis, of an antiquitas seen as in continuous evolution, which is to be reconstructed in its entirety by philology.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- List of Abbreviations IX
- Introduction 1
-
I. Thinking the past: categories and structures of the antique
- Mankind’s Past: Evolution or Progress? 17
- Semantica senecana del primitivo 27
- Quando i romani ‘scoprirono’ gli armeni: il re Tigran e la tigre (Varrone, ling. 5.100) 39
- The past in Pausanias: its narration, structure and relationship with the present 49
- Tarda antichità anacronica. Tra storiografia e panegirico 65
-
II. Functionalizations of the past
- Livy’s antiquities: rethinking the distant past in the Ab urbe condita 87
- Princeps et res publica: Des multiples façons de se référer au passé 111
- Apud antiquos. La ricostruzione dell’antichità nell’insegnamento di Poliziano 131
- I nuovi antichi. Classicismo e petrarchismo fra Bembo e Tasso 155
-
III. Veteres: the relation to past authorities
- The Burden of Antiquity in Horace and in the Dialogus de oratoribus 175
- Fronto’s and Gellius′ veteres 199
- Vetustas e antiquitas, veteres e antiqui nei grammatici latini 213
- Quando i giuristi diventarono ‘veteres’. Augusto e Sabino, i tempi del potere e i tempi della giurisprudenza 249
- Convertire l’enciclopedia: Agostino e Varrone 303
- Index Nominum et Rerum Potiorum 319
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- List of Abbreviations IX
- Introduction 1
-
I. Thinking the past: categories and structures of the antique
- Mankind’s Past: Evolution or Progress? 17
- Semantica senecana del primitivo 27
- Quando i romani ‘scoprirono’ gli armeni: il re Tigran e la tigre (Varrone, ling. 5.100) 39
- The past in Pausanias: its narration, structure and relationship with the present 49
- Tarda antichità anacronica. Tra storiografia e panegirico 65
-
II. Functionalizations of the past
- Livy’s antiquities: rethinking the distant past in the Ab urbe condita 87
- Princeps et res publica: Des multiples façons de se référer au passé 111
- Apud antiquos. La ricostruzione dell’antichità nell’insegnamento di Poliziano 131
- I nuovi antichi. Classicismo e petrarchismo fra Bembo e Tasso 155
-
III. Veteres: the relation to past authorities
- The Burden of Antiquity in Horace and in the Dialogus de oratoribus 175
- Fronto’s and Gellius′ veteres 199
- Vetustas e antiquitas, veteres e antiqui nei grammatici latini 213
- Quando i giuristi diventarono ‘veteres’. Augusto e Sabino, i tempi del potere e i tempi della giurisprudenza 249
- Convertire l’enciclopedia: Agostino e Varrone 303
- Index Nominum et Rerum Potiorum 319
