Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-7262s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-10T09:02:49.862Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

HORSING AROUND: A SUPPRESSED CELTICISM IN A FRAGMENT OF HELVIUS CINNA’S POETRY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2026

Matthew F. Payne
Matthew F. Payne*
Affiliation:
Leiden University
*
m.f.payne@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article argues that the text of a hendecasyllabic fragment of Cinna, transmitted by Aulus Gellius, is defective, and that a neglected conjecture made by the sixteenth-century scholar Gyraldus gives a better reading. mannis, a loanword from Cisalpine Gaulish, may be the first usage of this word in Roman literature. Furthermore, reading mannis allows for the recognition of echoes of Cinna’s poem in the elegies of Ovid and Propertius. While Gellius definitely read nanis (since he builds an entire chapter around the reading), a palaeographical corruption in Gellius’ text of Cinna is simple to explain, although conjecture cannot be dismissed. The article shows the danger of linguistic biases in texts which transmit fragments: in this case, a bias towards reading Greek loanwords in place of those from Celtic languages.

Keywords

CinnaGelliusCisalpine Gaulishpoetae nouifragmentsTranspadane Gaulnanusmannus

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 5
Check for updates
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

FPL 4 Cinna fr. 9:Footnote 1

at nunc me Genumana per salicta
bigis raeda rapit citata nanis

1 genumana Ψ : Cenumana J. Gronovius

2 citata Fγ : citana δ  nanis Ψ : mannis L.G. Gyraldus

For nanis, read mannis (‘ponies’). mannis is a conjecture made by Gyraldus in 1545, and repeated several times by different early modern scholars.Footnote 2 But this conjecture is not to be found in the apparatus criticus of any of the recent editions of Cinna’s poetry, that is, in FPL 4, FRP, or FLP 2, nor in the apparatus criticus of any other editions of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries, nor for that matter in any edition of Gellius’ Noctes Atticae (the fragment’s citing text) since the nineteenth century. The conjecture was last reported, for the text of Gellius, in Hertz’s (1883–5) edition of Noctes Atticae and, for the text of Cinna, in Baehrens’s (1886) edition of the fragments of the Roman poets. The conjecture is cogent and deserves what the early modern scholars did not give it: a defence. I argue that serious consideration should be given to adopting this conjecture into the text of Cinna’s fragment in future editions, for two reasons: (i) the linguistic status of mannus as a loanword from Cisalpine Gaulish; (ii) adopting mannis restores the place of Cinna’s fragment in the Roman literary tradition.

The Cinnan fragment is quoted at the end of a chapter of Gellius’ Noctes Atticae (19.13) defending the Latinity of the word nanus (‘dwarf’).Footnote 3 The chapter narrates a conversation, overheard by Gellius, between the orators M. Cornelius Fronto and M. Postumius Festus and two grammarians, C. Sulpicius Apollinaris and another individual merely referred to as a friend of Fronto (Frontonis familiari, 19.13.4). The quotation from Cinna is the only one given in the chapter.

The Gellian chapter begins with Fronto asking Sulpicius (19.13.2) if he is right to prefer using the word pumiliones to the word nani when referring to human beings with dwarfism, given his belief that the word nanus is colloquial (sordidum) and barbarous (barbarum). Sulpicius tells Fronto (19.13.3) that on the former count he is correct, but not on the latter, since nanus derives from the Greek νᾶνος.Footnote 4 At this point Postumius intervenes, enquiring of the anonymous grammarian whether ‘the use of the word by the common folk to describe mules and little horses’ (de mulis aut eculeis humilioribus uulgo dicitur, 19.13.4) is a valid usage in good Latin and, if so, in which author it could be found. Fronto’s friend then points to the Cinnan usage.

The chapter’s narrative, given that Postumius’ question asks for a specific author, is clearly constructed around the Cinnan quotation and Gellius’ desire to defend the use of nanus with a transferred meaning for small, domesticated equines, that is, mules or ponies. This means that nanis must have stood in Gellius’ own copy of the Cinnan lines. But this would be the only instance in extant Latin literature in which nanus is used of an animal rather than a human being.Footnote 5 Likewise, the Greek noun νᾶνος is used of human beings with dwarfism, not of animals.Footnote 6 Therefore, nanis is likely a corruption introduced into the Cinnan lines between the time Cinna published his poetry and the preparation of the Noctes Atticae, a corruption which Gellius makes into exemplary usage.

There is another word, palaeographically close to nanus, which refers to an equine animal. mannus, ‘pony’, is a loanword from the varieties of the Celtic languages spoken in Cisalpine Gaul.Footnote 7 The palaeographical confusion would be even simpler if nannus were occasionally found as an alternative form for nanus as νάννος is for νᾶνος, so that a scribe could mistake mannis for nannis rather than nanis.Footnote 8 We find mannos for nan(n)os, the corruption in the other direction, in a ninth-century manuscript (Parisinus lat. 1661) of Arnobius’ Aduersus nationes.Footnote 9 mannis would only be distinguished from nannis by a single extra stroke in the capitalis script, the common bookhand between the time of Cinna and Gellius.Footnote 10 However, one cannot rule out conjecture. We may hypothesize that a Greek-speaking scribe, unfamiliar with the word mannus, might mistakenly emend his exemplar to the visually similar and more familiar word nan(n)us.Footnote 11 We can compare how in Latin manuscripts canthus is often found for cantus (‘wheel rim’, ‘circle’, a loanword from Gaulish), most likely under the influence of the semantically unrelated Greek word κανθός (‘corner of the eye’, ‘eyelid’).Footnote 12 Regardless, Gellius (like Cinna’s modern editors) might be expected to know better, since Lucretius’ De rerum natura is quoted by him five times (1.304, 2.1153–4, 4.223–4 [identical to 6.929–30], 4.528–9, 6.1275) and in that work the word mannos appears at 3.1063.Footnote 13

Gellius himself complains about misguided corrections by editors in the era between the first century b.c. and his own day, such as the erroneous reading of stetisses for stitisses circulating in copies of a speech of Cato the Elder.Footnote 14 And Gellius regales us repeatedly with ancient critics supporting their readings with manuscripts of alleged authority, such as at 1.21, where Julius Hyginus claims to have seen sensus … amaror at Verg. G. 2.247, instead of sensu … amaro, in a manuscript supposedly discovered in Virgil’s house.Footnote 15

Regardless of whether one reads nanis or mannis, one matter must be corrected, which is that bigis in Cinna’s line should be read as an adjective rather than a substantive modified by an adjectival nanis as previously suggested.Footnote 16 This contracted form is indeed almost always found in our extant texts as a substantive (bigae), but there is an extant usage in Manilius which shows that it could be used adjectivally, in conformity with its original identity as an adjective.Footnote 17 There is no attested instance (other than in the Cinnan fragment as previously interpreted) where either nanus in Latin or νᾶνος in Greek is anywhere used as an adjective rather than a noun.Footnote 18 Therefore, given that bigis could be understood by a Roman audience as adjectival, in a choice between which noun to take with it, nanis or mannis, mannis seems easier: ‘twin-yoked ponies’ rather than ‘twin-yoked dwarves’.

Reading mannis, which—like raeda—is a Celtic loanword, rather than nanis, a borrowing from Greek, suits Cinna’s geographical focus on Gallia Transpadana (Genumana per salicta) in these lines.Footnote 19 It also establishes the Cinnan fragment as a counterpart to several passages from the Roman literary tradition describing swift chariots drawn by manni: Lucr. 3.1063–4; Hor. Epod. 4.14, Carm. 3.27.6–7, Epist. 1.7.77–8; Ov. Am. 2.16.49–50; Prop. 4.8.15–16. Of these, Ovid closely echoes Cinna: paruaque quamprimum rapientibus esseda mannis | ipsa per admissas concute lora iubas (Am. 2.16.49–50).Footnote 20 The close relationship between the Ovidian and Propertian lines (Prop. 4.8.15–16) has been noted, but we have overlooked the Cinnan lines as the common parent to these siblings.Footnote 21 And while we cannot be sure of the relative chronology of the Cinnan fragment and Lucretius’ poem, there is the distinct possibility, if the lines were written in Cinna’s youth, that Gellius was not wrong that Cinna did indeed introduce a word from another language into Latin literature, but it was from Cisalpine Gaulish, not Greek, and the word was mannus, not nanus.Footnote 22

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Francesco Busti and Basil Nelis for their feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, as well as Bruce Gibson and the anonymous reader for their comments and suggestions. This study was financially supported by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) through the Dutch Research Council (NWO), part of the project Experiencing Fragments (NWO project number 406.21.CTW.011) and of the Anchoring Innovation Gravitation Grant research agenda of OIKOS, the Dutch National Research School in Classical Studies (NWO project number 024.003.012). Open Access funding has been provided by Leiden University.

References

1 Identical text is printed in FPL 4 (J. Blänsdorf, Fragmenta poetarum Latinorum epicorum et lyricorum [Berlin and New York, 20114]), FRP (A.S. Hollis, Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 BC–AD 20 [Oxford, 2007]) and FLP 2 (E. Courtney, Fragmentary Latin Poets [Oxford, 20032]). The sigla are according to the signa codicum offered by L. Holford-Strevens, Auli Gelli Noctes Atticae (Oxford, 2020).

2 Attributed to Scriverius by Hertz and Baehrens, but the conjecture already appears at L.G. Gyraldus, Historiae poetarum tam Graecorum quam Latinorum dialogi decem (Basel, 1545), 1094. The conjecture is mentioned without attribution at H. Stephanus, Fragmenta poetarum ueterum Latinorum, quorum opera non extant (Geneva, 1564), 413, and was also later offered by N. Heinsius but without his endorsement, owing to the conflict with the Gellian chapter (‘nisi Gellii obstaret auctoritas, mallem … ’): see P. Burmannus, Publii Ouidii Nasonis opera omnia, 4 vols (Amsterdam, 1727), 3.536 (NB the printing error of a repeated page 536).

3 Gellius mentions nanus in an earlier chapter as a word used by Laberius in place of pumilio, the established Latin word for ‘dwarf’ (16.7.10).

4 On the tripartite division Latinus Graecus barbarus, see A. Garcea and V. Lomanto, ‘Gellius and Fronto on loanwords and literary models: their evaluation of Laberius’, in L. Holford-Strevens and A. Vardi (edd.), The Worlds of Aulus Gellius (Oxford, 2004), 41–64, at 44–50.

5 Cf. TLL 9.1.46.59–47.28. One of the only two usages (the other attested in Athenaeus, see n. 6 below) of either nanus or νᾶνος for anything other than a human being is for a kind of water jar, mentioned by Varro and Festus, as the transliteration (cum Graeco nomine, Ling. 5.119) of its Greek name (i.e. νᾶνος), apparently so-called because it was ‘short and curved’ (humilem et concauum, Paul. Fest. 185). When Pliny talks of dwarfism in animal species, he uses pumilio, not nanus (cf. HN 10.156, 11.260, 12.13, 17.176): see C. Panayotakis, Decimus Laberius: The Fragments (Cambridge, 2009), 122.

6 Cf. e.g. Lycoph. Alex. 1244; [Longinus], Subl. 44.5; Ptol. De iudicandi facultate et animi principatu 12.3 (Lammert page 18). Aristotle seems to confine his usage of νᾶνος to human beings with dwarfism, as distinct from animals with dwarfism: see e.g. Hist. an. 577b26–7 ὥσπερ ἐν μὲν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις οἱ νάννοι (human dwarfs are compared to the offspring of the crossing of a mule and a mare, οἱ γίννοι); cf. [Pr.] 892a6–7, where a specific question about the origin of dwarfism in human beings, in which νάννοι is used (διὰ τίνα αἰτίαν οἱ νάννοι γίνονται;), is widened to a general question about dwarfism in human beings and animal species where the term μικρά is used (ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον καθόλου, διὰ τί τὰ μὲν ὅλως μεγάλα, τὰ δὲ μικρά;); cf. also Part. an. 686b2–26. The lexicographical writers continue Aristotle’s distinction in their entries on γίννος/ἰννός, where they make the same analogy that γίννοι, as stunted (κολοβοί) offspring, are to horses as νάννοι are to human beings (cf. Phot. Lex. ι 138 ἴννος; Suda ι 385 Ἰννοί; [Zonar.] s.v. Ἰννοί [Tittmann page 1109]). Athenaeus (646c) refers to a bread called νᾶνος, the only other extant use of nanus or νᾶνος for something inanimate. However, words derived from νᾶνος were used of animals. A scholiast uses νανούδιον of a Maltese puppy, but notes that νᾶνος is used of humans (ἔστι γὰρ ὑποκοριστικὸν τοῦ νᾶνος· νᾶνον δὲ τὸν μικρόν ϕασιν ἄνθρωπον, schol. ad Clem. Al. Paedagogus 3.30.2 [Stählin page 337]). The adjective νανώδης is used by Aristotle both of animals (see Paru. nat. 467a32; Part. an. 686b3–23, 689b25, 695a8) as well as of humans (see Paru. nat. 453a31, 453b6, 457a22–4; Part. an. 686b25; IA 710b13). νανοϕυής is used by Aristophanes (Pax 790) of human dancers.

7 mannus is described as a Gaulish loanword by Consentius: cf. Gramm. Lat. 5.364.8–10 Keil. The linguistic evidence supports a sound change from */nd/ in Proto-Celtic to /nn/ in Cisalpine Gaulish (and Late Lepontic): see further J. Uhlich, ‘More on the linguistic classification of Lepontic’, in P.-Y. Lambert and G.-J. Pinault (edd.), Gaulois et celtique continental (Geneva, 2007), 373–411, at 384–93. On Gaulish mandus, see X. Delamarre, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise: une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental (Paris, 20032), 215. That mannus referred to ponies is made clear by Porphyry’s comment on Hor. Carm. 3.27.7 (Meyer page 114): manni equi dicuntur pusilli, quos uulgo burichos uocant (‘very small horses are named manni, which the common folk call burichi’).

8 All the principal manuscripts read νάννοι twice at Arist. Hist. an. 577b27–8; at [Pr.] 892a6, Laurentianus gr. 87.4 (Bekker’s Ca) has νάννοι. νάννος/νᾶνος may be a babble-word formed by hypocoristic gemination: see E. Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik (Munich, 1939), 1.422–3; R. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden, 2010), 995.

9 Adu. nat. 3.14. Arnobius’ text survives otherwise only in a single copy (Brussels KBR 10846–7) of this same manuscript. It was corrected to nanos in the editio princeps.

10 On the capitalis script, see B. Bischoff, Paläographie des römischen Altertums und des abendländischen Mittelalters (Berlin, 19862), 78–85, with the chart at 88, which illustrates the similarity between M (a double-lambda shape composed of four strokes) and N (like M, but without the fourth stroke). For examples of the mistake, cf. Plaut. Mil. 739, domi] doni A; St. 182, me] ne A.

11 For examples of the interference of Greek in Latin caused by biliteracy, see J.N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language (Cambridge, 2003), 494–7, 509–11, 519–21.

12 Cf. Quint. Inst. 1.5.8 cantus against Pers. 5.71 canthum: for Gaulish cantos and Greek κανθός, see Delamarre (n. 7), 105 and Beekes (n. 8), 635–6, respectively.

13 On Gellius’ ignorance of Gaulish and other languages apart from Greek or Latin, see L. Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and his Achievement (Oxford, 20032), 322–3. On Gellius’ quotation of Lucretius, cf. Holford-Strevens (this note), 219–20; D. Butterfield, The Early Textual History of Lucretius’ De rerum natura (Cambridge, 2013), 53.

14 Gell. 2.14.2 recte quidem ille ‘stitisses’ scripsit; sed falsa et audaci emendatione editores ‘e’ scripto per libros ‘stetisses’ fecerunt, tamquam ‘stitisses’ uanum et nihili uerbum esset. Ironically, falsa et audaci emendatione editores is H.J. Müller’s reading for the corrupt reading of the manuscripts, falsa et audax emendatores.

15 See further L. Holford-Strevens, ‘“And by the bitter taste disclose the ground” (Gell. I 21 on Verg. Georg. II 246f.)’, Eikasmos 11 (2000), 309–34.

16 Cf. L.C. Watson, ‘Cinna and Euphorion’, SIFC 54 (1982), 93–110, at 99: ‘[nanis] functions anomalously as an adjective’; Watson parallels this with Euphorion’s use, condemned by Hermogenes, of personal names as adjectives (ἀτρέα [from Ἀτρεύς] δῆμον … χεῖρ᾿ ἱπποδάμεια<ν> [from Ἱπποδάμεια], fr. 123 Lightfoot), but this etymological play with proper nouns by Euphorion is not the same phenomenon as Cinna’s supposed adjectivization of a common noun; cf. also Courtney (n. 1), 221: ‘The word nanus, meaning “dwarf”, is used adjectivally with bigis’; Hollis (n. 1), 41: ‘As a noun, “nanus” is applied to dwarfs’, i.e. elsewhere than FPL 4 Cinna fr. 9.

17 Manilius 5.3 quadriiugis et Phoebus equis et Delia bigis (‘and Apollo with his four-yoked horses and Diana with her two-yoked horses’), which also highlights that bigae and quadrigae were understood by the Romans themselves as contracted forms of the adjectives biiugae and quadriiugae, with equae understood: cf. Priscian’s explicit comments (Gramm. Lat. 2.126.21–4 Hertz). However, biiugae may well be a back formation, with the contracted form bigae deriving from an earlier stage in Proto-Italic (bīgae < *dwi-jug-ā-): see M. de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden, 2008), 71.

18 No attributive usages of either nanus or νᾶνος are attested. Arnobius (Adu. nat. 3.14) juxtaposes nanos with two adjectives expressing size, nanos medios longos, but within a list of both nouns and adjectives describing physical characteristics (ergo esse dicendum est quosdam capitones cilunculos frontones …), where all the words are being used substantively.

19 On Cinna’s form Genumāna, see A. Grilli, ‘Sul nome dei Galli Cenomani’, Maia 37 (1985), 245–7. Although the initial Genu- instead of Ceno- is an oddity, we should remember that Cinna is writing poetry for a Roman audience and may well have preferred a variant ethnographic form current in the contemporary Roman context (cf. the variant manuscript reading Genumanhorum at Cic. Balb. 32) to faithfully reproducing an endonymic ethnonym of the Cenomani according to the pronunciation and orthography of their own language and script. On Cinna’s use of loanwords, see Watson (n. 16), 97–8.

20 rapientibus ≈ rapit, esseda ≈ raeda. The parallel with Ov. Am. 2.16.49–50 was already noted by Heinsius, reported by Burmannus (n. 2), 3.536. esseda is a loanword from Gaulish: cf. Delamarre (n. 7), 167.

21 Cf. J.C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores, 4 vols; 3 (Leeds, 1998), 364: ‘It does not seem possible, however, to establish whether Ovid was influenced by, or influenced, the Propertian elegy.’ J. Hudson, The Rhetoric of Roman Transportation (Cambridge, 2021), 202 points out that mannis appears in the same position in both the Propertian and the Ovidian hexameter lines, i.e. the final foot, but both would seem to look back to Cinna’s hendecasyllable. The literary relationship between the Cinnan fragment and the Ovidian and Propertian poems will be discussed further by Francesco Busti in a forthcoming monograph on Cinna.

22 For recent defences of the traditional dating of the publication of Lucretius’ De rerum natura to the mid 50s b.c., see K. Volk, ‘Lucretius’ prayer for peace and the date of De rerum natura’, CQ 60 (2010), 127–31 and C.B. Krebs, ‘Caesar, Lucretius and the dates of De rerum natura and the Commentarii’, CQ 63 (2013), 772–9. They argue against the suggestion of G.O. Hutchinson, ‘The date of De rerum natura’, CQ 51 (2001), 150–62 of 49 b.c. as a terminus post quem. Catullus’ description of the Smyrna as nine years in the making (Catull. 95.1–2) would put Cinna as composing poetry at least by the 60s b.c.: T.P. Wiseman, Cinna the Poet and other Roman Essays (Leicester, 1974), 49–50 suggests publication of the Smyrna in 56 or 55 b.c., with Cinna beginning its composition in 65 or 64 b.c. after returning to Rome from Bithynia.