PLATE CV. ROMAN CAPITAL WRITING. VITH CENTURY. FRAGMENTS OF VIRGIL IN THE VATICAN LIBRARY, NO. 3256. THESE fragments, which formerly consisted of fourteen leaves, (two of which were lost at the fire, which occurred in the department of the printed volumes at the Vatican,) must have originally formed part of a volume consisting of several hundred leaves. These fine remains, with which no other manuscript will bear comparison, were formerly in the library of the brothers Pithou, the younger of whom died in 1621. A note of earlier date, proving them to have belonged at one time to France, is found on the first page of the manuscript, in these words;- Claudius Puteanus Fulvio Ursino D.D., (dono dedit). Claude Du Puy, named in this note, was brother to the learned Jacques and Pierre du Puy, and died in 1594, and Fulvio Ursini in the year 1600. These fragments were unknown to Mabillon, when he composed that part of his great work, (De Re Diplomatica, 1681, folio,) which treats of the Roman writing of manuscripts of the first age; but he appears subsequently to have obtained a notice of them, as is proved by the following observations of another learned Benedictine, D. Ruinart, made in 1709;" Virgilii fragmentum, quod ex bibliotheca Pithoeana aliquandiu præ manibus habuit ipse Mabillonius, mihi et aliis nonnullis non sine admirationis sensu ostendit"." In * Appendix nova ad tractatum De Re Diplomatica, à D. Th. Ruinart, p. 635. connexion with this passage, D. Ruinart published a fac-simile, taken from one of these fragments, containing four lines of the Æneid, (lib. 4,) commencing with the word Thyias, and it is from this specimen that these remains have hitherto been known. It is probable, that Mabillon obtained a knowledge of these fragments at Rome, during his travels in Italy, in 1685 and 1686. Ruinart regarded this manuscript as affording a specimen of the finest, most elegant, and largest Roman writing he had ever seen, and the only one with which he was acquainted written throughout in such a form, and in so large a letter. The same opinion is given by the authors of the Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique*, who recognize in it all the characteristics of the highest antiquity. The fac-simile in the Plate contains the verses 41 to 49, of the first book of the Georgics, which commence thus:IGNAROSQ. VIAE MECUM MISERATUS AGRESTES, INGREDERE, ET VOTIS JAM NUNC ASSUESCE VOCari. The writing is in large Roman capital letters, elegant, and wide, with simply formed summits and bases, those of the E being slightly curved; the cross-strokes not truncated; the top of the T circumflexed, and the A without the middlestroke, with the full-stroke a little elevated. Smaller letters occur at the ends of the lines; a short stroke after B is used to indicate Bus; Q stands for QUE; the Y is without a dot, and on a basal stroke; A E and ET are not conjoined; the words are not separated; and, lastly, some faults are found in the text. A large ornamental letter is placed at the beginning of the page, and as the word IGNAROS does not form the commencement of a paragraph, it is probable that the Roman calligrapher placed a large decorated letter at the head of each *Tom. ii., pp. 504, 505. Tom. iii. pp. 41, 42. page, thus giving a more magnificent appearance to the fine execution of this volume, which appears to belong to the sixth century. PLATE CVI. RUSTIC ROMAN CAPITAL WRITING. VITH CENTURY. LATIN POETRY OF PRUDENTIUS, A CHRISTIAN POET. AURELIUS PRUDENTIUS CLEMENS was born at Saragossa, in Spain, A.D. 348, and after having exercised the profession of an advocate, and filled the office of a governor of various cities, having also been known as a soldier and a courtier under the Emperor Honorius, he renounced the world at the age of 57 years. Amongst his writings, his poetry has obtained and retained the greatest fame. The manuscript from which the fac-simile has been copied, proves that, even in his own days, his poems were highly esteemed. It would be, in fact, difficult to meet with a finer manuscript, or (among Latin works,) with a volume of greater antiquity. Mabillon did not hesitate to refer it to the fourth century, and thus contemporary with the author. The volume is written on vellum of unequal fineness, but without a single faulty leaf. It is rather more tall than broad, and in its present state consists of 158 leaves, arranged in quaternions, or gatherings of four leaves, which are numbered with Roman cyphers, preceded by the letter Q, and placed at the foot of the page, as is the case in all the oldest manuscripts. This valuable volume affords many proofs of the great care which was taken, even in the last days of Roman literature, to obtain accurate copies of texts then held in esteem. The excellent writing of the manuscript shews that a very skilful calligrapher was employed, whilst its freedom from errors proves him to have been a scholar. The manuscript was collated and corrected as soon as finished, the corrections being made in a hand very similar to that of the text, but smaller; thus, in the second page, where the scribe had written mortis imago est, the corrector has added at the commencement of the verse, est forma, allowing the word mortis to remain, and by placing a dot under each of the letters of the two following words (imago est) has indicated that they are to be suppressed or expunged. A letter, word, or even a verse omitted, has been interlined by the corrector, but if several verses have been missed, he has added them at the foot of the page, and their proper position in the text is pointed out by a reference mark, and the word sub, the additional verses bearing the same mark, and the word hic. It is well known that the nobles of the Roman empire did not disdain this literary labor, and that Flavius, although Prefect of Rome in A.D. 399, performed also the function of a corrector of books. In the manuscript are inscribed, in the vacant space of the forty-fifth leaf, three words (slightly effaced) in semi-uncials, containing the name of Sextius Agorius Bacilius, who was Consul of the West in A.D. 527. The question therefore arises, was this Consul, like the Roman Prefect Flavius, the corrector of the manuscript before us? His name is preceded by a cross. * The title of each poem (as shewn in the fac-simile) is written in vermilion. A marginal note in semi uncial *See a fac-simile of this name in the Nouv. Tr. de Dipl. tom iii. pl. 46, p. 208.-ED. characters, corresponding with the title, indicates the species of verse in which the poem is composed. For the funeral hymn, of which the commencement is in the Plate, we find written in the margin, Anapesticum dimetrum brachicatalectyn. There are twenty lines in each page of the manuscript, slightly ruled with a hard point, which add much to the regularity of the writing. This writing is in Roman capitals, somewhat negligent, or rustic, but rectangular in all those letters formed of horizontal and vertical lines. The chief character of this kind of writing consists in having the summits, bases, and cross-strokes circumflexed. The letters are tall and elegant, with the words continuous; with thick oblique strokes, and slender vertical strokes; the letters upright; the F and L rising above the line; the A without a cross-stroke; the middle bar of the E extending on each side of the perpendicular stroke; the H nearly resembling K+; and the U and V triangular. Some of the letters are conjoined in the body of the text, but more commonly at the end of lines. In the middle of the thirteenth line is a correction much more recent than the text itself. Although the words are not separated, the text is not difficult to be read, HYMNUS CIRCA EXSEQUIAS DEFUNCTI. DEUS IGNE E[T] FONS ANIMARUM DUO QUI SOCIANS ELEMENTA, etc. On the whole, the manuscript is certainly one of the most ancient as well as most elegant productions of the graphic art in Latin Europe. * This peculiar form of the H has occurred previously in the facsimiles taken from the Vatican Terence and Sallust, Plates c., CIII.-ED. |