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Notes on Claudius Marius Victor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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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.
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page 296 note 1 As Hovingh in his edition maintains, it may well be, rightly.
page 296 note 2 A few also proposed by Petschenig, in Wien. Stud., x (1888), 163f.Google Scholar, referred to below by ‘loc. cit.’
page 296 note 3 Parts of the poem have been translated and commented upon: in the dissertation of A. Staat (1952) on 2. 1–202 and in that of Hovingh (1955) on the Precatio and 1. 1–170.
page 296 note 4 Gamber, S. (Le livre de la Genèse dans la poèsie latine au Ve siècle, 1899Google Scholar) holds that Victor was principally influenced by the Vulgate, seldom by the Itala. Maurer, H. (De exemplis quae Cl. Marius Victor in Alethia secutus sit, 1896)Google Scholar had previously taken the opposite view. There are, at all events, undoubted traces of the old versions (cf. notes on I. 518 and 2. 260 ff.).
page 296 note 5 Cf. my article ‘Imitative echoes and textual criticism’, C.Q. N.s. ix (1959), 61–72.Google Scholar
page 297 note 1 Cf. 104–5 teneros formate animos et cordi paramus │ ad uerum uirtutis iter puerilibus annis; he does not wish his unorthodox prosody anc language to impair the inculcation of faith.
page 297 note 2 But in 1. 91 uīrescere, ‘quod coniciendc exstirpari non potest’ (Schenkl), Chatelair may well be right in conjecturing uiridescere and comparing its use in Ambros. Hex. 5. 1 1; the conjecture is adopted by Hovingh.
page 297 note 3 Schenkl (p. 354) expresses his surprise that a scholar and rhetor, whose task it was ‘pueros instituere et ne similes committerent errores monere errantesque castigare’ should not shrink from exposing the teneri animi to such perils as these. He concludes that composition and publication were conducted in excessive haste. Mishaps such as these, however, are not peculiar to Victor.
page 298 note 1 For P's potari Schenkl reads in his text patrari, but p. 640 records his preference for Petschenig's conjecture putari, which is clearly right and is adopted by Hovingh.
page 298 note 2 ‘Intorno alle fonti del poema di CI. Vittore', Mario, Didaskaleion i (1912), 66.Google Scholar
page 298 note 3 See Löfstedt, , Eranos xlvii (1949), 148 ff.Google Scholar
page 298 note 4 So Schenkl, Phison Hovingh; neither refers to the manuscript reading.
page 299 note 1 The recording of these conjectures at 277 and 299, which are not noticed by Hovingh, does serve the useful purpose of pointing to a difficulty which requires explanation.
page 299 note 2 See Getty on Luc. 1. 401 for other passages.
page 300 note 1 The reading of Augustine (Gen. ad Litt. 11. 1) in Gen. iii. 17.
page 301 note 1 Cf. expressions like I. 180 operum … facta piorum, 2. 420 populo … coactae plebis, 3. 374 tota pauor formidine mersa ingruit, etc.
page 301 note 2 As Staat says, there can be no justification for Schenkl's assertion (s. cibus) that 4599.2 cibus above is distinct from esca and designates human food. Staat calls attention to the source of 32, viz. Luc. 6. 113 uellere ab ignotis dubias radicibus herbas.
page 302 note 1 Schenkl (p. 356) calls attention to the similarity between tellus non iamfida satis (cf. too 164 pinguia decipient mentilo germine culia) and the corresponding passage Aleth. 1. 515 nee tibi terra fidem seruet (cf. Luc. 1. 647 segetes tellus infida negabit?). While admitting occasional similarities between Victor and Avitus, he is sceptical about any wide-scale indebtedness of the latter; for two passages not mentioned by him see notes on 2. 340 and 456 ff. below.
page 302 note 2 Staat preserves pura but wrongly regards it as part of the predicate and = purificata, purgata, ‘cleansed of weeds’.
page 303 note 1 For this episode see Krappe, A. H., ‘A Persian myth in the Alethia of CI. Marius Victor’, Speculum xvii (1942), 255–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 304 note 1 But 3. 730, cited by Schenkl, is a dubious example of consecutive quod (see my note below).
page 304 note 2 Considerably more noteworthy, if the text is sound, is Apul. Met. 10. 12. 1 ad istum modum seniore adorante placuit, et itur confestim … ad illud sepulchrum (<experiri> placuit van der Vliet).
page 304 note 3 Explained by Vollmer as ‘i. scelere solutus.’
page 304 note 4 Schenkl ind. s. abl. notes this case only of the abl. sing. pres. participle ending in -i in the absolute construction; e and i are frequently confused in the manuscript; ‘fort. carente’ observes Hovingh reasonably enough.
page 304 note 5 Hovingh notes Auson. Parent. 4. 23 tu nouies denos uitam cum duxeris annos.
page 305 note 1 For the language cf. too 3. 583 (cum Abram) octoginta super bis ternos clauderet annos
page 305 note 1 Thes. L.L., s. effectus 131. 63 ff.
page 305 note 1 The necessary comma after ardua is omitted in Hovingh's text (quae—uetaret is parallel with quid f. permitteret).