BMCR 2008.12.14, Franco Bellandi, Aspetti della scuola

Franco Bellandi, Rolando Ferri (ed.), Aspetti della scuola nel mondo
romano: atti del convegno (Pisa, 5-6 dicembre 2006). Supplementi di
Lexis 51.  Amsterdam:  Adolf M. Hakkert, 2008.  Pp. 345.  ISBN
9025612334.  EUR 76.00 (pb).

Reviewed by John Henderson, King's College, Cambridge
([email protected])
Word count:  1753 words
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Here are ten (from an original dozen) papers from a round-table event,
six of them from the home team, that tell us Latin studies are in good
shape in Pisa.[[1]] The collection avowedly[[2]] hangs together
loosely, but enough, through focus on the Latin Glossaries and their
vicinity, concentrated around the preponderant paper from editor Ferri
(pp. 111-77; add Rochette and Rosellini; adjacent, Bonnet and
Aragosti). 'Schooling' in literary embodiments and representations
occupy the other contributions (Seneca the Elder and Martianus Capella;
Petronius and Juvenal,). And the joker in the pack confronts us with
ancient Alexandria's 'Lecture Block A' in central uptown to make us
think harder about what we think counts as a university. The volume is
good-as-perfect edited, and Ferri has provided indices rerum
('argomenti') et locorum that are both thorough and thoroughly thought
through.

1. Francesca Lechi, 'Greco e latino nelle scuole di retorica' (pp.
9-27).

Before settling on the vivid character Cestius Pius the Greek from
Zmyrna who never declaimed in Greek (pp. 20-7), L. neatly nails the
dynamics of the Roman controuersia, where the speaker engages in the
First Person (as in the Athenian but not the Roman courtroom), his
speech must incorporate, and release by implication, its virtual
opponent, and the audience ups the required pleasure quotient. Against
this background, the performance of bilingualism in early imperial
declamation culture makes for a sharply etched topic and a long overdue
enquiry. Teasing out the declaimers' implied presumption of limits to
audience competence in spoken Greek through the Latin 'glossing' , or
'contextual paraphrase', they decide to provide gets us into grappling
with the Elder Seneca's tricky texts up close; so too with Cestius'
cute riffing on Virgilian epic phrasing and his tweaking of Latin idiom
with aplomb. The mutilated surviving scraps from performances in Greek
are convincingly ascribed to Seneca's reading--no matter what he says
about his phenomenal memory bank.

2. Annamaria Cotrozzi, 'I capitoli della scuola nel Satyricon' (pp.
29-48)

First, roving commentary on the Encolpius-Agamemnon dialogue  in
Petronius chaps. 1-5, which provides its own samples of declamatory
style to denounce, and parody. Second, examination of the dynamics of
the Echion-Ganymede rap in chaps. 45-6, where oscillating deference and
aggression towards the Professor -- Agamemnon -- the
teacher/pontificator, 'The One Who Can Speak', threads through the
cliche/s.

3. Franco Bellandi, 'Intellecttuali e insegnanti in Giovenale. La
satira 7' (pp. 49-79)

Thirty years on from first reflections on the poem, B. refines his
'ironic' reading of the mixture of pity and scorn for the penpushers
and educators around the imperial system of sponsorship/exploitation
between the court and the rest of Rome's elite. This, the non-frivolous
wing, of historians, orators, rhetors, grammatici, is both at the mercy
of niggardly patrons and a ridiculous parade of specimens of venality,
bombast, pedantry. In a rousing conclusion, 'recent Anglo-Saxon'
criticism is deplored for taking it all as 'fun', as literary
entertainment: once interset with the blank generalities presented by
Tacitus (esp. Dialogus' Messalla), Pliny and Quintilian, Juvenal's
indictment pins specific flaws to a real, concrete, establishment
configuration. 'Recent'? Plenty of Juvenaliana this millennium for B.
to catch up on.

4. B. Rochette, 'L'enseignement du latin comme L2 dans la Pars orientis
de l'Empire romain: les Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana' (pp. 81-109)

After outlining a bilingual Roman elite who were taught the ropes in
Greek before they pitched into Latin studies between Cicero and
Quintilian, R. goes on to track a shift within the 'bilateral
bilinguism' of early empire culture toward late-antique selective
entrenchment of Latin in eastern provinces, within the repertoires of
administrative documents, inscriptions, and other apparatus of
post-Tetrarchy court bureaucracy. Here Beirut becomes a special oasis
and breeding ground of Latinity (pp. 88-90). So much, it proves, by way
of puffing the Corpus Glossarium Latinorum, which is efficiently and
lucidly characterized by R. before being probed for the light its
playlets shed on the two-way street of teaching less than exalted
Greeks and Romans to learn how to teach and learn each others'
language, and begin to take on board some of the other culture's
characteristic ways (esp. 300-500 CE). The glosses are about enabling
speech through written instruction, from the ABC on up, yet they
practise a translationese style of phrase by phrase rendering (kata
poda/s, uerbum de uerbo); they list vocabulary by theme as well as
alphabetically, but rise to stylized rendering of Cicero (esp.
Catilinarians I-III) and Virgil (esp. Aeneid I-VI, esp. esp. I-II, esp.
esp esp. I)--and of unversed Babrian fables. R. gets to grips
presenting and 'marking' the effort in PapAmherst II.26 (pp. 103-07).
As it must seem to us, syntax, and so making sense, is the glossers'
lowest priority.

5. Rolando Ferri, 'Il latino dei Colloquia scholica' (pp. 111-77)

Staying with CGL III, we next explore a sharp selection of offerings
that jumble efforts from late antiquity with materials through to the
Fifteenth Century. In devising tactics for prising 'bona fide'
developments in Latinity away from ad hoc precipitates of
translationese, F. ingeniously hits on ways to 'mark' Colloquium
Harleianum--and vice versa (pp. 114-20). Next he looks to date
materials by content, before turning on the heat and grilling the
language samples phonetically, morphologically, lexically, in terms of
syntax, word-order and use of personal pronouns, and finally as cases
of shifting pragmatic conventions (protocols of greeting, yes/no, the
politesse of nice and nasty...). Fittingly this clever essay itself
boasts an impressive sprawl of hermeneutic strategies, aiming to try
out interpretative procedures for size rather than clinch any
comprehensive take on the amassed word bites.

6. Guillaume Bonnet, 'La forme des Artes grammaticae, reflets de la
pratique des mai^tres' (pp. 179-88)

Surely ancient teaching manuals adapted their course materials to suit
their victims as do ours? B., if anyone, knows the clamorous Artes well
enough to detect different programmatic aims in Dositheus' Greek's for
Greeks version as against Donatus', and to indicate why he could omit
'metre' and 'vices and virtues of speech'. Anon. Bobiensis looks to be
pegged to Greek pupils insecure in Latin, where other trimmings may be
down to attribution to its envisaged public of expertise in either or
both grammatical analysis and Latin: a 'superior' course meant for
Greek teachers converting into Latin professors? Dositheus' own
redaction tools up with detailed shots at correct prepositions and
conjunctions; and works in blessings from a commentary on Terence,
Hecyra; whereas poor Bobiensis caters for a less advanced class still
thinking in Greek when facing Latin expressions? The ambitious manual
can risk suppressing elementary clarification and cultivate silently
insinuated nuances; and we can detect them? Finally, Priscian on
prepositions (CGL III 35.4-19) looks to smuggle Priscian's notes and
marginalia into a mixed-level hybrid textbook.

7. Michela Rosellini, 'Varrone, Palemone, Prisciano: effetti di un
insegnamento grammaticale sulla pratica della lingua' (pp. 189-98)

Can we pinpoint effects of grammar teaching on Roman linguistic
practice? Take the future perfect indicative in -ero. In antiquity
(Varro, De Lingua Latina 9.96, 99, 100 apart--no teaching manual this)
this tense is a future subjunctive: see esp. Priscian CGL III
260.20-61,2 (and 251,18-23). All futures being uncertain, there is for
Latin grammarians no category of 'anteriority in the future'. 'Might
always never be gonna have happened.' R. reckons to catch Apuleius and
Julius Valerius (Res Gestae Alexandri Macedonis) putting this Truth
into their practice.

8. Chiara O. Tommasi Moreschini, 'Il De Nuptiis di Marziano Capella: da
manuale 'privato' a testo canonico' (pp. 199-219)

Never heard of Martianus Capella's weird version of sevenfold elevation
of the soul through the curriculum of Artes? Here is a convert's
induction to author and work. Date; title; name; genre/unity;
paganism/esotericism; Nachleben; Christianizing allegorization. (How)
Did discussion flow?

9. Konrad Voessing, 'Alexandria und die Suche nach den antiken
Universitaeten. Alte Fragen unde neue Funde' (pp. 221-51)

What makes a university a university? After running through and
knocking out precursors in Athens, Rome, Carthage, etc, V. finds
Constantinople under Theodosius II in 425 comes close to satisfying his
chosen criteria (p.234). But lo! Fresh excavations published by Gregor
Majcherek (University of Warsaw)[[3]] offer a long row of twenty
uniform auditoria just off a main road near the late antique city
centre of Alexandria, each suite complete with stone 'professorial
chair' and a 'lecturer's' stone 'desk'. Dating to c.500 and indications
of use until 642 do not preclude earlier versions back into an earlier
heyday, and elicit a neat roll-call of the city's scholar heroes. Yes,
here is a striking talking-point, as provocative as it is unexpected:
V.'s definition sets sights on a higher education establishment, the
teaching phase of a syllabus to graduation, a multi-disciplinary
programme, a role in the formation of the citizen with broad social
acceptance, institutional connection between teachers--i.e.
departmental faculty (pp. 222-5). And V.'s lively conclusion sets
self-reflexive sights on his seminar paper: I bet the question he pops
prompted plenty of discussion in Pisa; it deserves to wherever. 'Auf
der Suche nach antiken Universitaeten--wozu?' (pp. 250-1).

10. Andrea Aragosti, 'Frammenti plautini nella tradizione di Calcidio'
(pp. 253-88)

'I asked for water and she gave me gasoline.' The early fourth-century
translation of and commentary on Plato, Timaeusby Deacon (?) Chalcidius
in the tenth- or eleventh-century Bamberg Misc. Class. 18 = Codex
Bambergensis Bibliothecae publicae M.V. 15 includes on fol. 117 verso a
short prose letter to some comrades, in which a certain Regulus (see
pp. 285-6) is fed up when he'd asked for Plautus and was posted Plato
instead. As he sends up his chagrin and twits his mates, he puts
together an urbane page stuffed with phrases from the plays advertising
what's missing juxtaposed against disappointments of the dialogue. A.
provides text and translation before extensively annotating what is
known or can be documented, paralleled, or inferred about the
provenance, meaning, and presumed construal of these Plautine
testimonia and fragments. Which include extant, lost, dubious, and
non-Varronian plays: Asinaria, Epidicus, Dyscolus, Cornicula,
Vidularia, Aulularia, Stichus, Menaechmi, Amphitryo, Artemo,
Frivolaria, Synaristosae (and a note on Pacuvius). All these
phrase-taking and -making jeux trace to some epitome of
(Verrius-)Festus, De uerborum significatu that also fuelled a welter of
matching glossary entries. The paper gives comprehensive and minute
scholarly treatment of each and every literary/philological item as
well as informative studies of all players, materials, and contexts.
Maybe this goes back to my schooldays when an order of Theocritus was
answered by the bookseller with an apology for not having the book and
delivery instead of a Theophrastus, or maybe we all have some version
of this whimsy; anyhow, I rate this, no contest, the gem of the
collection.

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Notes:


1.   Seven are in Italian, two in French, one in German.

2.   The editors waste no time with preliminaries, prefixing a
single-page notification by way of 'Introduzione'.

3.   G. Majcherek, 'The Late Roman Auditoria of Alexandria: An
Archaeological Overview' in T. Derda, T. Markiewitz, and E. Wipszycka
(eds.) Alexandria. Auditoria of Kom el-Dikka and Late Antique
Education, Journal of Juristic Papyrology, Supplement 8 (Warsaw, 2007),
11-50.