The World on a Fingernail: An Unknown Byzantine Map, Planudes, and Ptolemy

Abstract

THE WORLD ON A FINGERNAIL: AN UNKNOWN RYZANTINE MAP, PLANUDES, AND PTOLEMY By FILIPPOMARIA PONTANI These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods. . . . — E. Bishop 1. Vat. Gr. 915, Fol. 47v MS Vat. Gr. 915 (bombyc, ca. 266 ? 170 mm, 258 fols.) is a most interesting collection of archaic, classical, and Hellenistic Greek poetry (from Homer and Hesiod to Pindar, from Theocritus and Lycophron down to Moschus and Musaeus) put together during the early Palaeologan Renaissance , more exactly between the last years of the thirteenth century and 1311 (the terminus ante quern is provided by the subscription on fol. 258v). The contents of this codex as well as the textual fades of several of its items have led various scholars, each from a different perspective, to conclude that it was produced in the circle of Maximus Planudes, the most outstanding Greek scholar of his age (of which he is also in a sense the "eponymous hero");2 more on this will be said below in §3. 1 A lengthy and meticulous description is provided by P. Schreiner, Codices Valicani Graeci: Codices 867-932 (Vatican City, 1988), 125-36. See already P. Eleuteri, Storia della tradizione manoscritta di Museo (Padua, 1981), 28-29 and 46-48. Some basic information on the manuscript's contents had been provided by H. Hinck, "Beschreibung des Codex Vaticanus 915," Jahrbücher fur classische Philologie 14 (1868): 336-39, and (especially on the Theognidean section) by W. Studemund, De Theognideorum memoria libris manu scriptis servato, Index lectionum in Univ. Litteraria Vratislaviensi per hiemem anni 1889-90 . . . habendarum (Breslau, 1889). 1 owe first collations and reproductions of manuscripts G and P to Aude Skalli, and a collation of manuscript B to Francesco Valerio: my warmest thanks to them both for their invaluable help. My thanks also to P. Gautier Dalché and J. Koder for comments on a previous draft of this paper. 2 J. Irigoin, Histoire du texte de Pindare (Paris, 1952), 260-61; C. Gallavotti, ed., Theocritus quique feruntur Bucolici Graeci (repr. Rome, 1993), 325-27; Eleuteri. Storia, 152; P. Derron, ed., in Ps.-Phocylides, Sentences (Paris, 1986), xcv; I. Tsavari, Histoire du texte de la Description de la Terre de Denys le Periége'te (Ioannina, 1990), 175; F. Pontani, Sguardi su Ulisse (Rome, 2005), 293-97. See N. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium (London, 1983 [rev. ed. 1996]), 237. 178TRADITIO As was customary in learned manuscripts of this age, several scribes were simultaneously at work: Paolo Eleuteri and Peter Schreiner have detected eight different hands, all of them anonymous except A (Georgios) and B (Isaías, identified by a subscription on fol. 49v: ????e s?s?? µe t?? ?µa?t?- ????sa?a?, "oh Lord save me, Isaías the sinner").3 The one single folio that will detain our attention in this paper belongs precisely to the part (fols. 22-50) copied by Isaías, and more specifically to a section mainly occupied by texts of gnomic character (Orphic sentences, fol. 23; Theognis, fols. 25-34; Phocylides, fols. 34-45; Ps.-Pythagoras's Golden Verses, fols. 35v-36; Menander's Gnomai monostichoi, fols. 45-47; sentences from Pindar, fol. 47r). In this miscellaneous section, however, we also find some short poetic works (Theocritus's Syrinx in Holobolus's edition, but equipped with scholia Vetera, fol. 22v;4 Moschus's Europa, fols. 36-37v; Musaeus's Hero and Leander, fols. 37v-38v), as well as an interesting series of excerpta from Eustathius of Thessalonica's bulky commentary on the Orbis descriptio by Dionysius the Periegete (fols. 39-45), to which we shall come back below in §2. Now, fol. 47v (Plate 1) is a mosaic of different materials, most of which — though by no means all — were written by the same Isaías; a quick examination of the handwritings and the mise en page reveals the following sequence for the items assembled on this folio. 1. In the top right corner, Isaías drew a cross, adorned with the wellknown siglum IC XC NI KA ("Jesus Christ conquers"), and surrounded by a series of numbers from 1 to 29 (a' to ??', but 9, 10, and 27...