Notes on Claudius Marius Victor

Abstract

Claudius Marius Victor (or Victorius), a rhetor of Marseilles (according to Gennadius), composed in the first half of the fifth century a metrical paraphrase of Genesis from the creation of the world up to the destruction of Sodom. The work, which amounts to something over 2,000 lines and is supposedly unfinished, is entitled Alethia, seasoned with occasional discussion of philosophic or other matter, and written with the expressed hope of improving the minds of the young. The text depends on a single ninth-century Paris manuscript (P), which contains errors that are numerous but in general rudimentary and susceptible of convincing emendation. The first serious edition—for the edition of J. de Gagny (1536), though it offered many useful emendations, was too full of licentious alterations, excisions, and additions, to rank as such—was that of G. Morel (1560). The next editor, G. Fabricius (1564), in spite of his awareness of Morel's edition, did little more than reproduce the depraved text of Gagny.