BMCR 2009.02.22, Gabriella Vanotti, Aristotele. Racconti meravigliosi

Gabriella Vanotti, Aristotele. Racconti meravigliosi. Introduzione,
traduzione, note e apparati. Testi a fronte, 104.  Milano:  Bompiani,
2007.  Pp. 235.  ISBN 978-88-452-5843-5.  EUR 10.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Laura Gibbs, University of Oklahoma ([email protected])
Word count:  1617 words
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To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-02-22.html
To comment on this review, see
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Among the minor works attributed to Aristotle is a treatise known as
the <greek>*Peri\ qaumasi/wn a)kousma/twn</greek>. The conventional
Latin title is De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus or, more simply, De
Mirabilibus. Although the work is certainly not by Aristotle, it is
nevertheless a very curious and useful compendium of ancient lore, and
an important representative of the paradoxography genre. Gabriella
Vanotti, of the Universita\ degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale Amedeo
Avogadro (Vercelli), has produced a handy edition of the book, with the
Greek text (reproducing Bekker's 1831 edition, with emendations) plus a
facing text Italian translation (approximately 80 pages), along with
copious notes and bibliography (approximately 90 pages), as well as a
highly informative introduction (approximately 50 pages). The book will
be of interest to anyone with a penchant for paradoxography, with its
legends of marvelous plants and animals, along with fantastic tales of
myth, history and the geography of the ancient Mediterranean world.

The Greek text consists of 178 short chapters. Approximately two-thirds
of the chapters fall into the category of what could be termed "nature
lore," with anecdotes about plants, animals, minerals and other natural
phenomena such as weather, physical geography, etc. The nature lore
portion of the work is clearly indebted to the work of Theophrastus and
other scholars of the Peripatetic School and its heirs. The remaining
one-third of the chapters are devoted to fabulous legends with
mythological and historical themes. These anecdotes are not as clearly
indebted to the traditions of the Peripatetic School as the natural
history lore surely is, and speculation about their source(s) is
necessarily much more tentative. Vanotti considers Timaeus of
Tauromenium to be one likely source, although any definitive
conclusions are made impossible by the fragmentary and incomplete
evidence. The De Mirabilibus itself is notably reticent on this matter,
only very rarely making any reference to its source materials.

Just as it is reticent about its sources, the De Mirabilibus is silent
about its purposes as well. There is no preamble of any kind and the
author simply plunges into its first anecdote, a description of the
legendary "bolinthos" (called "bonasus" by Pliny, and known as
"bonnacon" in later bestiary texts), a bovine creature which squirts
out burning excrement to a distance of twenty-four feet. You will also
find iron-eating mice and bears whose breath is so bad that it causes
flesh to putrefy, along with all sorts of other amazing animals; a
whirlpool in Cilicia that brings dead creatures back to life and a
river in Crathis that bestows blond hair on everyone who bathes in it,
plus many other bizarre aquatic phenomena; along with all manner of
surprising minerals, such as a type of lead found in India which, if
melted, will jump out when you try to pour it into cold water. As for
the mythological and historical anecdotes, you will find stories here
about Heracles, Daedalus, Diomedes, and the Cumaean Sibyl, to name just
a few. The "marvelous" dimension of these mythological and historical
anecdotes is often connected with the aetiological motifs of the
natural and geographical lore that pervades the De Mirabilibus as a
whole. For example, we learn that there is a place off the coast of
Apulia where Heracles once fought with the giants, spilling so much
ichor that the seaway has been rendered unnavigable as a result.  There
are also stories that have no zoological or aetiological significance,
but which simply qualify as "marvelous" tales, such as the vengeful
statue of a man named Bityos (or perhaps Mityos): when the man who had
murdered Bityos came to gaze upon the statue, the statue fell down on
top of the man and killed him... an event which, as the text assures
us, was no mere coincidence!

There is no clear overarching structure to the chapters of the De
Mirabilibus, but there are some sequences of chapters which are clearly
arranged according to a thematic order, albeit vague. Vanotti's notes
are helpful in identifying the ties, however loose, that connect one
chapter to another, as well as alerting readers to breaks in the
sequence of the chapters that give potentially useful clues to the
evolution of the text, which is certainly the product of several
centuries' worth of editorial revision and expansion. Readers
interested in questions about the work's authorship and provenance will
find a detailed discussion in Vanotti's introduction. To make a long
(and intriguing) story short: Vanotti concurs with those scholars who
contend that the De Mirabilibus contains a core of early material from
the Hellenistic period which was then added to over time, including
some material that was added in the 2nd century C.E. or even later.

What is more interesting than the specific question of dating the
present work is the discussion Vanotti provides of the origins of
paradoxography itself, and its connections to the ancient libraries and
the scholars who worked in those libraries. Although the <greek>*Peri\
qaumasi/wn a)kousma/twn</greek> claims to be about things "heard," it
is far more likely that the contents reflect things read and copied
from books, rather than things actually heard in the field by anyone
gathering information from local informants. Vanotti acknowledges the
literary tradition of "marvel tales" going back to Homer's Odyssey and
the inclusion of fantastic legends in historical writers such as
Herodotus, but she argues that  the decisive factor in the emergence of
paradoxography as a genre of its own was the advent of the ancient
library at Alexandria. It is no coincidence that the first works that
can be classified as actual "paradoxography" were compiled by
Callimachus of Cyrene, working in that library and engaging in
conversations with other scholars there. As Vanotti explains: "It is
clear that the author of a paradoxography could not manage without a
big library, any big library: Alexandria, Pergamum, Athens, etc. It's
natural that paradoxographers worked not only at Alexandria, but also
at Pergamum, Athens, and at Antioch" (p. 27). Vanotti also discusses in
some detail the fate of Aristotle's own personal library, and the role
that its transmission may have played in the formation of the
Peripatetic core materials that she sees at the heart of the De
Mirabilibus.

As for the intended audience of the text, Vanotti hypothesizes that
this could be both a popular and a scholarly work. While she does not
explore this aspect of the topic in detail, she does provide some
suggestive comments about the way in which the disjointed format of
paradoxographical texts could reflect the activities of a scholar
engaged in the preliminary task of simply collecting and compiling
materials, prior to reformulating those materials for other, more
elaborate purposes, such as their use in a scientific or historical or
philosophical treatise. Just as the De Mirabilibus might have served
different purposes for different audiences in the ancient world, the
same is true today. As Vanotti states in the concluding words of the
introduction, the De Mirabilibus could appeal to two quite different
modern audiences: "With its own endowment of curious tales,
occasionally rare and sometimes unique, the De Mirabilibus can be used
as a valuable research tool for scholars of mythography, ethnography,
historiography, and antiquities in general, while also serving simply
as a literary divertissement" (p. 53).

While there are two easily accessible English translations of the De
Mirabilibus (W.S. Hett's 1936 translation for Aristotle's Minor Works
volume in the Loeb Library, and Launcelot Dowdall's earlier 1909
translation which is available online in various formats, although with
several pages missing, at the Internet Archive
(http://www.archive.org/details/demirabilibusaus00arisrich) ), there is
no commentary in English comparable to what Vanotti provides in this
book. Even readers who do not read Italian will find her extensive
citations of ancient and modern works to be of great value in their
study of the Greek text.

There is, however, one extremely serious drawback to Vanotti's book: it
has no indexes. Given the way people are most likely to consult the De
Mirabilibus, the absence of indexes is a serious deficit. The real
value of this kind of ancient anthology is in the bits and pieces of
information it supplies about a whole range of topics, from plants and
animals to place names and people. Yet without indexes, there is no way
to find the chapters that might provide the information you are looking
for. As it stands, readers can try to make do with the indexes in the
Loeb edition, and there are also indexes in A. Giannini's
Paradoxographorum Graecorum reliquiae (which includes the De
Mirabilibus). What is really needed, however, is a set of indexes to
Vanotti's book that encompass both the text of the De Mirabilibus  and
the extensive materials in her introduction and commentary. Perhaps
this lack of indexes might be remedied in future editions of the book,
or perhaps the author might be able to publish some indexes to the book
online. Such indexes would considerably enhance the book's value for
research purposes.

Except for the peculiar lack of indexes, all the other features of
Vanotti's book are quite commendable, both as a literary divertissement
and as a research tool. As a scholar who specializes in Greek
historiography and ethnography, Vanotti is able to provide extremely
detailed comments on the mythological and geographical chapters, which
are likely to be the materials of most interest in the De Mirabilibus,
in addition to the thorough commentary she also supplies for the
chapters on animal and plant lore. The genre of paradoxography recently
got a big boost with William Hansen's English translation of Phlegon of
Thralles's Book of Marvels (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997).
With this handy Italian edition of the De Mirabilibus, aficionados of
ancient "news of the weird" have yet another valuable book to add to
their shelves.