Introduction to the Colloquium Stephani

Summary

This colloquium is found only in a sixteenth-century printed edition and has received very little scholarly attention. It is worthy of more consideration, because it is much older than the source in which it appears, indeed probably earlier than some of the other colloquia.

Sources for the text

The only source for this colloquium is Glossaria duo e situ vetustatis eruta: ad utriusque linguae cognitionem & locupletationem perutilia, published in Paris by Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne) in 1573. This is the same work that is one of two witnesses to the colloquium Leidense–Stephani (siglum therefore remains S); for more information on it, see section 3.1.2 above. The colloquium Stephani (or colloquium Stephani ii, as it is sometimes called to distinguish it from LS, the Stephanus version of which is often called ‘colloquium Stephani i’) follows immediately after LS in Estienne’s edition, of which it occupies pp. 286–94. I have examined Stephanus’ edition both in person (using three copies in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) and via photographs.