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The Career of Corippus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Barry Baldwin
Barry Baldwin
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Extract

When Joseph Partsch wrote ‘Flavii Cresconii Corippi de vita paucissima comperta habemus’ in the preface (p. xliii) to his long-standard edition (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1879), he was not exaggerating. Yet this has not prevented scholars (including Partsch himself!) from equipping the poet with a career, largely in Constantinople. Most recently, some of the details have been revived (albeit with decent caution) in the admirable edition of the In laudem Justini Augusti minoris by Averil Cameron. But almost every item is based solely on guesswork; the supposed career may seem to melt away under a fresh and dispassionate look at what has passed for evidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , December 1978 , pp. 372 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1978

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References

1 This commentary (London, 1976) is hereafter referred to by author's name. So is that of U. J. Stache (Berlin, 1976).

2 For details, cf. Partsch, pp. 1-lvi; Cameron, p.20.

3 See Cameron, Alan, ‘Wandering Poets: a Literary Movement in Byzantine Egypt’, Historia 14 (1965), 491.Google Scholar

4 Art. cit.

5 Even allowing for the probability that it occurs in a line consciously echoing Juvenal's ‘si natura negat...’ (it is so regarded by Highet, G., Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford, 1954), p.302).Google Scholar

6 The phrase is Alan Cameron's, art. cit. 490. Similarly, Stache, p.2, assumes that ‘Der literarische Erfolg der johannis ermutigte ihn anscheinend, in die Haupstadt Konstantinopel uberzusiedeln’.

7 Apart from Corippus' epic, cf. Procopius, B. V. 2.28, 45; Marcellinus Comes auct. a. 547 6; Jordanes, Romana 385 (the only source for the name Troglita).

8 1.15 ‘Justiniane, tuis, princeps, assurge triumphis’; 2.24–5 ‘tu, Justiniane, fovendo/ cuncta doce’; 5.43 ‘Justiniane, tuis pugnet fortissimus armis’; 7.145–6 ‘Justinianus apex, orbis dominator Eoi/occiduique potens, Romani gloria regni’.

9 See, e.g., Sidonius, Ep. 4.5; 6.8. In addition to the TLL entries, cf. Zimmermann, O. J., The Late Latin Vocabulary of the Variae of Cassiodorus (Washington, 1944), pp. 87, 146Google Scholar, for the variety of meanings of apex/apices in Cassiodorus and other late authors.

10 Such a word play would be in keeping with the constant punning by Corippus on the names of Justin, Sophia, and Vigilantia.

11 Lactantius, Op. D. 20, has ‘facundiae rivus’; Cicero, de or. 2.27. 117, ‘tardi ingeniest rivulos consectari, fontis return non videre’ is also worth noting.

12 ‘Notes on the text of Corippus’, BICS 17 (1970), 94.Google Scholar

13 After completing the first version of this paper, I discovered that Stache had made the very same point to justify his revival of the Foggini-Petschenig interpretation of sacri apices.

14 Few would want to accept Pliny's inference that Priscus was ‘dubiae sanitatis’ - quite the contrary! Cf. Yardley, J. C., ‘Prisce Tubes again’, CR N.S. 22 (1972), 314–15.Google Scholar This matter bears on the question of what sanctio means in Pan. Anast. 45. Given the interpretation of sacri apices followed in this paper, sanctio (only here in Corippus) has to be explained. Petschenig suggested that it meant ‘dedication’, an unparalleled sense, as Stache points out. Stache himself offers the following: ‘Vielleicht spielt Coripp darauf an, dass Anastasius als magister officiorum und quaestor sacri palatii Dienstherr der Hofbeamten war und somit ihm qua Gesetz die Ftirsorge fur seine Untergebenen oblag’. I am inclined to think that sanctio is merely another expression of the claim, discussed above, that Corippus is writing his poem at the behest of Anastasius. Sanctio did in fact come to mean ‘order’ in late Latin, as is evidenced by Bon. Anast. 362.5: ‘Dorothea sanctionem agebat’ (for this and other references, cf. Arnaldi, F., Lexicon Latinitatis Italicae Medii Aevi (Turin, 1970), s.v.)Google Scholar. For the range of cognate meanings and nuances borne by sanctio see, e.g., Turonensis, Gregory (ed. Krusch, B. in MGHSRM 1 (Berlin, 1950))Google Scholar, Hist. 2.6: ‘dominicae sanctionis sententia’; 9.20; ‘sanctione sacerdotali emendari’; Ennodius, Pro Synodo 80: ‘praeter apostolici apicis sanctionem’; Dict. 22.3: ‘sanctioner de externo lure conscriptas’; Dracontius, Romulea 5.233: ‘instar habent hostis quos sanctio nulls coercet’; Cassiodorus, Var. 8. 13.4: ‘constituta veteris sanctionis’ (cf. Var. 2.27.2). In the line in question, the alleged exhortation by Anastasius to Corippus is simply given by the flattering poet the force of an imperial command or decree.