Philology, Philosophy and Boccaccio Christopher S. Celenza (bio) Sed aliquid praecipientium vitio peccatur,qui nos docent disputare, non vivere, aliquiddiscentium, qui propositum adferunt adpraeceptores suos non animum excolendi,sed ingenium. Itaque quae philosophia fuit,facta philologia est (now there are mistakes made by thosewho teach, when they instruct us in how toargue, rather than how to live; and thereare also mistakes made by those who seekto learn, when they come to their teacherswith the deliberate goal of developing theirwit, rather than their spirit. And so, what wasonce philosophy has become philology) —Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae 108.23 (my transl.) Sometime in the first century CE, Seneca the Younger wrote these words in one of his Ad Lucilium epistulae morales (Letters to Lucilius), his penetrating short epistolary conversations fictively recreated into moral essays to stimulate thought, to teach, and to inspire. It is obvious that he is setting one enterprise off against another. Here, "philosophy" represents the endeavor whose practitioners teach one how to live and whose students seek to improve the development of their characters. But "philology" seems to stand for a love of empty words, of fatuous argumentation rather than wisdom. The letter is a [End Page S-126] model summary of the Stoic approach to moral philosophy, directed to a Lucilius who, apparently quite eager for knowledge about moral philosophy, displayed his "cupiditas discendi" ("avid desire to learn") that, while in some ways admirable, threatened to "ipsa se inpedi[re]" ("get in its own way").1 Though Seneca had every intention of sending along comprehensive materials that would address Lucilius's interests, at the moment it was therefore necessary to remind Lucilius that, no matter how eager for knowledge one might be, the acquisition of knowledge was a painstaking process; eagerness to learn must be regulated to be beneficial. As much as this letter represents Seneca's Stoicism, it stands even more for a model of ancient philosophy in the specific key in which the scholar Pierre Hadot has examined it.2 One thing that all schools had in common was the notion that true philosophy represented a search for wisdom and that the processes of that search were important enough to warrant critical reflection. The case in this letter is particularly noteworthy because under examination one finds both education and different disciplinary propensities. Here is another passage from the same letter, in which Seneca discusses the appropriation of texts: [n]on est quod mireris ex eadem materia suis quemque studiis apta colligere; in eodem prato bos herbam quaerit, canis leporem, ciconia lacertam. Cum Ciceronis librum de Re Publica prendit hinc philologus aliquis, hinc grammaticus, hinc philosophiae deditus, alius alio curam suam mittit (there is no need for you to wonder at the fact that each man can gather from the same material things suitable for his own studies; for in the same meadow the cow seeks grass, the dog the hare, and the stork the lizard. When Cicero's book On the Republic is taken in hand by a philologist, a scholar, or a follower of philosophy, each pursues his investigation in his own way).3 Seneca goes on to say how this process works: "[p]hilosophus admiratur contra iustitiam dici tam multa potuisse. Cum ad hanc eandem lectionem philologus accessit, hoc subnotat: Duos Romanos reges esse, quorum alter patrem non habet, alter matrem" ("the philosopher is astonished that so many things are said there against justice, whereas when the philologist arrives at the same book he then comments that there were two Roman kings, of whom one had no father, the other no mother").4 The philologist Seneca imagines is said to go on to list [End Page S-127] interesting facts about the historical circumstances behind the text: the philologist is by temperament someone interested in facts surrounding and radiating from the text, so much so that he sometimes loses sight of the larger arcs of meaning that that text contains. There is finally the figure of the grammaticus who explains the language of the text, who notes changes in the meanings of words, matters of syntax, and so on. To read in a way that...