Isidoro de Sevilla y los comici ueteres. Ad Isid., Orig. VIII 7.7 ; Isidore of Seville and comici ueteres. Ad Isid., Orig. VIII 7.7

In chapter 7 of book VIII of Etymologies dedicated to Roman poets (De poetis), Isidore draws a dividing line between the so-called ueteres and noui comici. Among ueteres he counts Plautus, Accius, Terentius, although Accius, according to our knowledge, composed only tragedies and can hardly be considered a comic playwright. In this paper I try to prove that all the palaeographic, phonetic, historical, and literary arguments speak in favour of emending in the discussed passage the peculiar «Accius» to the expected «Caecilius» (i.e. Caecilius Statius).

There are two types of writers of comedies, that is the Old and the New.The Old, who would amuse by means of a joke, such as Plautus, Accius, Terence.The New, who are also called satirists, by whom vices are generally flayed, such as Flaccus (i.e.Horace), Persius, Juvenal, and others 1 .
Regardless of theoretical and literary aspects of Isidore's division of literary genres, it seems worthwhile to take a closer look at Accius, whom Isidore counts among comici ueteres together with Plautus and Terence.According to our knowledge, Accius composed only tragedies and can hardly be considered a comic playwright, even in Isidore's interpretation of this expression.This fact had already been observed by Juan de Grial in his edition of Etymologies published in 1599 in Madrid and commonly used until the nineteenth century.He emphasized that this place, with the reading «Accius» or «Attius», is most probably corrupt: neque mihi dubium, quin aut haec aliena, aut ualde deprauata sint 2 .On the other hand, Faustino Arévalo, publishing his edition two centuries later but basing his commentary on De Grial's remarks, only suggested an error and limited himself to stating that Accius had been a tragic playwright: Accius tragoediarum scriptor fuit 3 .Lindsay did not take those suggestions into account; he just noticed that manuscript C from Leiden transmitted a different reading for this place, namely: Accius et Terentius 4 .
Although Lindsay emphasizes in the preface that his edition is far from being perfect (editionem inchoatam potius quam omnibus numeris absolutam, p. v), the Oxford edition of Etymologies is regarded as canonical until today and is still almost uncritically used as a basis for translating Isidore's work into modern languages.Among the latest translations, two are especially worth of mentioning: the English one published in Cambridge in 2006 (second edition in 2010) and the Italian one from 2004 5 .In both of them, however, just as in many others that I had chance to read6 , the discussed passage is lacking any appropriate commentary.As has already been noticed, the division made by Isidore influenced the later classification of literary genres, based on stylistic and objective criteria, which is why the discussed fragment is frequently quoted not only in publications on medieval Latin poetry, including the so-called elegiac comedy of the twelfth century, but also in more general works dealing with the medieval genre theory.In most cases, the presence of Accius among Plautus and Terence is commented on in a way similar to that of Arévalo, but sometimes it is even explained in terms of… «medieval ignorance».Such is, for example, the explanation proposed by the author of a recent treatise on Fulgentius, a mythographer from the turn of the fifth to the seventh century; the scholar, quoting the passage from Isidore, added the following footnote: «En réalité, Accius est un auteur tragique.Mais le Moyen Age ne connaît plus rien de théâtre antique, depuis la fermeture des théâtres a Rome en 546»7 .
It is hard to arrive at any unambiguous conclusions concerning the omitting of Horace, Plautus, and Accius by Papias on the one hand and the replacing of Accius with Ovid by Benvenuto on the other.The absence of Accius in both works seems not to be completely accidental, nevertheless.
In attempts at emending the discussed passage of Etymologies, a suggestion was made that the word «Accius» could be a corrupt form of «Maccius», alleged11 Plautus' nomen gentile.Although Usener 2010 (1914 1 ), p. 39, n. 53, recommended renouncing this conjecture already a century ago, it has recently been recalled in a new edition of Etymologies in the Collection ALMA series12 .For this reason, I think that this conjecture should be re-examined.Indeed, at first sight it seems attractive, all the more so since a similar error can be found in codices transmitting Gellius' work.In chapter 3 of book III of Noctes Atticae, Gellius cites, after Varro, the opinion of Accius about the authenticity of some plays ascribed to Plautus, perhaps presented in Didascalia.The comic playwright appears twice in this fragment, once as Plautus and again as Macc[i?]usTitus, a form that Plautus himself used in the comedy Mercator13 : M. tamen Varro in libro de comoediis Plautinis primo Accii uerba haec ponit: 'Nam nec Geminei lenones nec Condalium nec Anus Plauti nec Bis compressa nec Boeotia unquam fuit neque adeo Agroecus neque Commorientes Macci Titi' (Gell., Noct.Att.III 3.9).
Manuscripts give the reading «m.(with tilde) accii» or «m.(with tilde) actii» instead of «Macci»14 , presumably under the influence of the form «Accii» appearing earlier in the text.It cannot be excluded either that the copyist assumed that Gellius had in mind an author other than Plautus, who appears one line above, hence he interpreted the form 'Macci' as the initial of the praenomen («M.») and the nomen gentile («Accii»).To acknowledge a similar mistake also in Isidore's work would require that at least three additional assumptions should be fulfilled: Firstly, that in this place Isidore called the Roman playwright by his nomen gentile, while in the remaining seventeen cases he called him simply Plautus; secondly, that he did not precede the nomen and cognomen with «T.», that is the initial of Plautus' name; and thirdly, that the form «Maccius Plautus» transformed into «Plautus Maccius» and then into «Plautus Accius», losing on the way the «M» in the onset, differently than in manuscripts with Gellius' work.It is also hard to suppose that the word «Maccius» was a gloss, inserted in the text by a subsequent copyist, because the name of Plautus did not require additional explanations, and certainly not with the use of the doubtful and unused (except sporadically) 15 nomen gentile.The corruption of the form «Maccius» in Gellius' text could, by the way, be considered a proof that Plautus' nomen gentile was unknown in the Middle Ages.
From the historical and literary perspectives, a person expected in this place should be Caecilius Statius.Just as Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes constitute the trinity of the Old Attic tragic playwrights, and Philemon, Diphilus, and Menander the trinity of the New Comedy16 , so Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence are the trinity of palliata, among whom Caecilius was awarded the first place by Volcacius Sedigitus17 .They are listed together in Varro's Saturarum Menippearum: … in argumentis Caecilius poscit palmam, in ethesin Terentius, in sermonibus Plautus (Var., Menip.frg 399), and, subsequently, in one of Horace's letters as the only authors of the palliata: Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi, uincere Caecilius grauitate, Terentius arte (Hor., Ep.II 1.58-59).
Already Usener 2010 (1914 1 ), p. 39, n. 53, pointed to Caecilius as the author required in the discussed Isidore's passage, yet he did not venture to propose such a conjecture.He considered it probable that Isidore himself wrote «Accius» in his text, and that the error was on the part of Isidore's source manuscript.A similar mistake, as observed by Usener, can be found in the Evantius' preface to a lost commentary to Terence's plays, published as De fabula hoc est de comedia, where Accius is also mentioned, although the whole passage pertains to palliata: Haec cum artificiosissima Terentius fecerit: tum illud est admirandum, quod et morem retinuit, ut comoediam scriberet, et temperauit affectum, ne in tragoediam transiliret.Quod cum aliis rebus minime obtentum et a Plauto et ab Afranio et Accio et multis fere magnis comicis inuenimus (Euanth.3).
In the nineteenth century the phrase «et Accio» was emended to «et Atta» or «et Atilio».However, already Usener noticed that both these conjectures disregard the preposition «a», which per analogiam to «a Plauto» and «ab Afranio» is stylistically prerequisite in this place.Hence, according to Usener's reasoning, the process of corruption could have assumed the following pattern: a caecilio > a cecilio > acccilio > accilio > accio the exclusion of IV 20.12, where Gellius explains that the name Statius belonged to slaves and that this was the original name of Caecilius, who only later started to be called Caecilius Statius).In the second century, the only exception to the rule is Apuleius, who consequently calls the playwright Caecilius Statius (Apul., Ap. 5); apart from encyclopaedic works, which sometimes give both his nomen gentile and cognomen (e.g.Hier., Chron.Abr.1838), all the remaining authors, both ancient and medieval, call him simply Caecilius.pears to mean both «the Old Comedy» 20 and «the ancient/early comedy» 21 .In view of the above facts, in order to consider Evantius the source of Isidore's mistake, we would have to assume that the bishop of Seville, having Evantius' corrupted text at his disposal, disagreed with the genre theory described there, but he derived from there the information about the authors of the New Comedy, whom, in contrast to Evantius, he called ancient/early (ueteres).
Therefore, I believe that Isidore's mistake originated independently of Evantius' De fabula, which could by no means be the source of the part of Isidore's work dedicated to the poets (De poetis).Where then did Isidore's inspiration to divide the comic playwrights into ueteres and noui (satirici) come from?Among many authors from which Isidore derived while writing Etymologies, St Jerome was certainly the most important.Isidore mentions him by name ten times, which places him after Aristotle (mentioned fifteen times), but before Cato (nine times), Plato (eight times), Pliny (seven times), Donatus (six times), and St Augustine (five times) 22 .He is the only author whom Isidore explicitly cited as his source 23 : Beatissimus Hieronymus, uir eruditissimus et multarum linguarum peritus, Hebraeorum nominum interpretationem primus in Latinam linguam conuertit.Ex quibus pro breuitate praetermissis multis quaedam huic operi adiectis interpretationibus interponenda studui (Isid., Orig.VII 1.1).
The study of Isidore's text has proven that the bishop of Seville made use of not only Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum but also other Jerome's works, most importantly Chronicle, as an indispensable tool in establishing chronological sequence 24 .In this work Isidore found a remark about Accius, which could prevent him from counting the writer among the comic playwrights: 20 Cf.Cic., Leg.II 37, Brut.224; Hor., Ars 281; V. Max.VIII 9ext.2. 21Cf.Plin., Ep. 6.21.2,where Vergilius Romanus is mentioned, an author who wrote come dies «ad exemplar ueteris comoediae», imitating plays of Menander and his contemporaries; cf. also Suet.Aug. 89.1,where the term uetus comoedia almost certainly designates the New Comedy (see Goldberg 2005, p. 163, n.º 49).
Persius Flaccus, satiricus poeta … (Hier., Chron.Olymp.CCIII)-However, it is other Jerome's works that appear to be crucial in the interpretation of the discussed passage from Etymologies, namely his letters and commentaries, where he presented his views on the best translation method.As a proof of the validity of his concept, put forward in the famous postulate non uerbum e uerbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu, Jerome always cites the same set of model translations whose authors did not render original works word for word, but rather attempted at expressing their sense.These examples are Cicero's translations of, most importantly, Plato's Protagoras and Xenophon's Economics, and the comedies of Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence.The three comic playwrights are referred to in such a context in the letter Ad Sunniam et Fratelam: The term ueteres comici used here undoubtedly designates the authors of the New Comedy, Philemon and Diphilus, and not the Old Comedy, as is maintained by Bartelink 1980, p. 55, one of the most prominent commentators of Jerome's treatise.Indeed, Jerome used the term uetus comoedia in the meaning «the Old Comedy» in letter CXXV to Rusticus26 , but in this fragment he wrote about the ueteres comici in the same sense as Quintilian quoted above (Inst.I 7.22), namely as «other comic playwrights as ancient as Menander».It is worth noticing that for a reader of this letter living at the end of the sixth century, like Isidore, Terence, Plautus, and Caecilius must have been as ancient as Philemon and Diphilus, thus they all were considered ueteres comici.
Putting together the pieces of information about the comic playwrights and satirists found in Chronicle and the three mentions about Plautus, Ter-ence, and Caecilius, including most of all the one in the letter to Pammachius, I think that it was Jerome who influenced Isidore's concept expressed in the passage under scrutiny.Isidore listed the comic playwrights in the chronological order: Plautus (died 184 BC), Caecilius (died c. 168 BC), and Terence (died after 160 BC).He was equally scrupulous in the case of the three comici noui: Horace (died 8 BC), Persius (died AD 62), Juvenal (died AD 130).It is worthwhile to note that Isidore did not mention or cite Accius at all, but he very well knew Caecilius by his own name27 .He even quoted fragments of Caecilius' plays unknown from other sources: Therefore, I conclude that the discussed fragment originally read as follows: Duo sunt autem genera comicorum, id est, ueteres et noui.Veteres, qui est ioco ridiculares extiterunt, ut Plautus, Caecilius, Terentius.
The corruption of «caecilius» into «accius» resulted from the coincidence of two factors, palaeographic and phonetic.In new Roman cursive as well as in book semicursive scripts deriving from it, the letter a is open and resembles a u or a double c (cc).Many instances of mistaking a and u in codices with Isidore's text prove that the archtype was written in such a script: