The date of this fine specimen of uncial, or round Roman writing, may be the subject of discussion. The employment of such a kind of writing for several centuries subsequent to the fourth, and the uniformity in its character, may occasion doubt as to the precise determination of the age of a manuscript. The one before us is doubtless one of the oldest of the known Latin manuscripts, and Cardinal Mai does not hesitate to refer it to the second or third century of our era. The éclat of this discovery was deservedly great, especially in Paris, where M. Bernardi, an able jurisconsult, had endeavoured to reconstruct this very treatise by collecting the various citations from it contained in other writings; in all of which the divine principle, that the sovereignty of justice is anterior and superior to all others, is recognized, which Cicero himself, with a rare philosophy, carried out so fully in practice. This treatise has subsequently been translated into French by M. Villemain. St. Augustine was acquainted with, and cites this treatise of Cicero; indeed, Cardinal Mai supposes, that he derived the idea of his City of God from it; at all events it is certain, that he would not himself have effaced the text of Cicero, to write over it his Commentary on the Psalms. It is a portion of this Commentary which is here exhibited by the second writing of the manuscript, which is a fine specimen of another variety of small uncial letters. The uncial capitals of the title, in the middle of the page, and those at the beginning of the paragraphs, are, in general, negligent, and of unequal size, with the tails cut off obliquely; the large initial P of Chapter CXXIV. is ornamented with tessellated work, with the tail fancifully lengthened. The words of St. Augustine upon this psalm commence-" PSALMUS ISTE PERTINENS AD NUMERUM CANTICORUM GRADUŪ, DE QUO TITULO IN ALIIS JAM MULTA DIXIMUS ET REPETERE NOLUMUS, NE VOS OBTUNDAMUS POTIUS QUA INSTRUAMUS," etc. PLATE XCVIII. CURSIVE LATIN WRITING. IIIRD OR IVTH CENTURY. IMPERIAL RESCRIPT IN A SUIT BETWEEN PRIVATE PARTIES. IN a preceding notice we have alluded to the rarity, during the first four centuries of the Christian era, of authentic documents written in cursive Latin letters, and to the doubts entertained as to the use of this kind of writing amongst the Romans previous to the period of the Lower Empire. The fac-simile before us will assist in removing these doubts, as it is one of those rare monuments which throw a clear light on the obscure points of the history of writing among the ancients. It is to Egypt that we are indebted for this precious document, a country which appears to have been destined to collect and preserve, not only the monuments of its own annals, but also those of the foreign nations which successively spread themselves over this ancient land. Rome, having driven out of Egypt the Greeks, who had succeeded to the Pharaohs, imposed on the country her own institutions, and the Latin language replaced that of Greece in all the acts of public administration; the inscriptions which refer to the presence of Roman prefects in Egypt, are in Latin; the decrees of the Emperors, and other acts of the civil authority were also in Latin, as appears from the text here represented, as well as from the celebrated decree of Diocletian, found both in Asia Minor and in Egypt. The sheet of papyrus figured in the Plate is but a portion of a roll of unknown length, which contained, in many pages, the text of a judicial decree, given in the name of the public authority in a suit between private parties; this imperial decision annulling the forced sale of a property, which had been submitted to by a person named Isidorus. This roll of papyrus was found in Egypt, in the island of Philæ, as it is stated, and, according to the custom with the Arabs, when they discover any of these rolls, it was unfortunately cut into pieces, which were distributed to the several persons concerned in the discovery. Of the entire roll two pieces subsequently came to the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris, a third to the Museum of the Louvre, and three others into the Egyptian Museum at Leyden. In 1839, M. Champollion Figeac published fac-similes of the two first-mentioned fragments, in his collection of charters and manuscripts on papyrus, in the Bibliothèque Royale*, admitting his inability to explain their contents. In 1840 M. Massmann, of Munich, having succeeded in decyphering the Leyden fragments, gave fac-similes of them in his work on the Wax Tablets previously described (Plate XCVI.), and enabled M. Champollion Figeac to apply his principle to the determination of the text before us. The two fragments at Paris contain only seven lines in each column or page, but the three at Leyden have eight, which appears to be the regular number throughout. The lines are written with wide spaces, and but little is wanting in the fac-simile to render them complete; the lefthand margin having been somewhat injured. Two of the Leyden fragments have also the commencement of the lines well preserved; one of them has the page entire, but the third contains only the end of the lines. From the perfect conformity both of the writing and text, we are authorized to consider all these fragments as portions of one * In one volume folio, with 27 large plates. Paris, Firmin Didot. and the same roll. The task of reconnecting them together, so as to recover the entire text, has yet to be done. It will be sufficient here to state the manner in which two of the last preserved lines in the fac-simile are to be read: (line 1.) Ab iniquis eorum detentatoribus sibi restitui. (line 4.) Vili pretio dato super possessionibus ad se pertinentibus cons: The characters of the fac-simile are peculiar to it; being less conjoined than those of the charter of Ravenna, which is of the year A.D. 552. The opinion of M. Massmann may therefore be adopted, who assigns the third or fourth century* as the era of these specimens of cursive diplomatic Roman writing. PLATE XCIX. ELEGANT ROMAN CAPITAL WRITING. IVTH CENTURY. THE SQUARE VIRGIL, WITH MINIATURES, IN THE VATICAN LIBRARY, NO. 3225. THE pontifical library of the Vatican possesses three manuscripts of Virgil which have been long celebrated, on account of their great antiquity, as authorities for the text of the poems. The present work will contain exact facsimiles of these precious volumes, with notices of their history, and a resumé of the opinions which have been expressed respecting them. * Massmann writes, "E quibus omnibus statuendum erit, papyrum sicuti vix ante seculum p. Chr. natum tertium scriptum, neque seculum quintum p. Chr. transire," p. 149.—ED. The manuscript now under notice is considered as the oldest of the three. It is of a square quarto size, which was the usual form of the most ancient manuscripts. It is written on vellum, and ornamented with a great number of paintings, the subjects of which refer to the passages of the text in which they are inserted, and which are deserving of much consideration from the style of their execution. Unfortunately but a small portion of the manuscript is now in existence. Mabillon saw and admired this manuscript at Rome in 1686, on which occasion a sort of palæographical congress was held in order to fix its age and value; it was then carefully examined by Emmanuel à Schelestrate, prefect of the Vatican, J. P. Bellorio, and Mabillon himself, and a literary procès-verbal of the result was drawn up by Schelestrate. It is there stated, that the style of the paintings was acknowledged to belong to a period anterior to the age of Constantine, and might even be referred to the time of Septimus Severus (A.D. 193–211), since in them were represented the temples, victories, edifices, ships with two banks of oars (biremes), Phrygian bonnets, costumes, and other objects illustrative of the customs of the Trojans and Romans; that these paintings were better designed than they would have been in the time of Constantine, and therefore indicated a previous epoch, so that the artist appeared to have copied from still more ancient models; and lastly, that nothing is to be observed in them, which does not belong to the higher period of the Roman empire*. The same opinions were expressed by Mabillon in the account of his travels in Italy, published in 1687+. The peculiar forms of some of the letters of this manuscript have afforded grounds for determining its real age, and * Nouv. Traité de Diplomatique, tom. iii. p. 57 n.—ED. + Museum Italicum, etc., tom. i., p. 63, 4to. post, Par. 1687.-ED. |