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Hebdomades (binae?)1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Joseph Geiger
Joseph Geiger
Affiliation:
Yale University/The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Extract

Varro's Hebdomades vel de imaginibus contained 700 pictures of illustres accompanied by short descriptions in verse and prose, all arranged by the number seven: Gellius provides a detailed excerpt from the first book on the significance of this number. Speculation on the arrangement and content of the fifteen books abounds. On the other hand explicit attestation of personages included in Varro's list is relatively scarce: the discussions in the passage of Gellius on the ages of Homer and Hesiod, and of the former's birthplace in the epigram attached to his portrait certify the rather obvious choice of the two oldest Greek poets, presumably part of a canon of seven.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 305 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

2 Exact title in Gell. 3.10.1.

3 Plin.AJK35.ll.

4 Epigrams: Gell. 3.11.7; Symm. ep. 1.4.2; Non. Marc. p. 528M; for prose texts see F. Ritschl, Opuscula Philologica (Lipsiae, 1877), vol. iii, p. 453. For a recent short discussion of the verse and prose inscriptions of the Imagines see Flower, H. I., Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1996), pp. 182–3, 207.Google Scholar

5 Gell. 3.10. A. Grilli, Sul numero sette, Studi su Varrone sulla retorica storiografla e poesia latino. Scritti in onore di B. Riposati i (Rieti, 1979), p. 203, names the possible source of Varro (Antiochus of Ascalon) and discusses later developments. Cf. also R. Gelsomino, Varrone e i sette colli di Roma (Roma, 1975), who argues that this canon was established by Varro. See now also Tarver, T., Varro and the antiquarianism of philosophy, in Barnes, J. and Griffin, M. (edd.), Philosophia Togata ii: Plato and Aristotle at Rome (Oxford, 1996), pp. 130–64, for the significance of numbers and classification for Varro.Google Scholar

6 The fountainhead is Ritschl (n. 4), pp. 508–22, with all the other contributors in the debate (Mercklin, Brunn, Urlichs, and Moriz Schmidt, all printed in Ritschl) actively participating; see also H. Dahlmann, RE Suppl. vi, 1228; Corte, F. Delia, Varrone. II terzo gran lume romano (Firenze, 1970), pp. 190–3.Google Scholar

7 Gell. 3.11.1–3, 7. In some of the recentiores and in some older editions of Gellius variations of the Greek epigram on the seven cities contending for the birthplace of Homer (AP 16.297, 298) appear, sometimes with a Latin translation; see e.g. the editions of Ant. Thysius and Jac. Oiselius (Lugduni Batavorum, 1666), Joh. Fr. Jac. Gronovius (Lugduni Batavorum, 1706) and Hertz (Berlin, 1893). No doubt the epigram was introduced from the AP and has nothing to do with Varros interest in the number seven.

8 Aus. Mos. 298–404 and cf. e.g. Ritschl (n. 4), pp. 512–4, for his reconstruction of the hebdomad.

9 Non. Marc. p. 528M; cf. Herrmann, L., ‘Notes de lecture’, Latomus 27 (1968), 203.Google Scholar

10 Symm. ep. 1.4.1. Since there is no reference here to illustrations, Ritschl (n. 4), p. 527, opined that Symmachus may have had access only to the epitome in four books, attested in the catalogue of Varros writings. For a spirited discussion of the Roman heroes included in Varros work and the connexion between these and the galleries of heroes in Virgil and in the forum of Augustus see E. Norden, Varros Imagines, ed. B. Kytzler (Berlin, 1990), and, independently, Horsfall, N., ‘Virgil, Varros Imagines and the Forum of Augustus’, AncSoc (Macquarie) 10 (1980), 20–3.Google Scholar

11 Ioh. Lyd. mag. 1.12 and Norden (n. 10), p. 17.

12 These two groups, together with the Seven Wonders of the World, were discussed in Varros exposition in book 1: see Gell. 3.10.16. On the Seven Sages and the development of their canon, as well as on its possible oriental connexions, see now Martin, R. P., The Seven Sages as performers of wisdom, in Daugherty, C. and Kurke, L. (edd.), Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 108–28. I am indebted to Deborah Gera for drawing my attention to this article; she also suggests that there may conceivably have been a double hebdomad of the Seven against Thebes and the Seven Champions in Thebes.Google Scholar

13 Jerzy Linderski, who very kindly read and commented on this paper, points out the numerous writers on agriculture contained in de re rustica 1.1.8–10 and suggests that Varro must have produced a hebdomad of these, even though we are not aware of any canonical group among them. The prominence given there to Mago the Carthaginian, and elsewhere in the work to the Latin writers Cato and the two Sasernae, would concur with the conclusion suggested at the end of this paper.

14 Both the MS evidence and the epigraphic attestations of the name strongly suggest that this, rather than the now–fashionable Dioscorides, is the correct form. I am grateful to Heinrich von Staden for discussing this point with me.

15 There exist two facsimile editions: de Karabacek, J., Dioscurides, Codex Aniciae Julianae, picturis illustralus, mine Vindobonensis Med. gr. 1, phototypice edictus (Lugduni Batavorum, 1906), and Dioscurides, Codex Vindobonensis medicus graecus 1 (Graz, 1970), with H. Gerstinger, Kommentarband zu der Faksimileausgabe.Google Scholar

16 Buberl, ‘Die antiken Grundlagen der Miniaturen des Wiener Dioskurideskodex’, JbDAIR 51 (1936), 114–36 at 124–9.Google Scholar

17 Diez, E., Die Miniaturen des Wiener Dioskurides, Byzantinische Denkmaler (Wien, 1903), vol. 3, p. 36; Mantuani (n. 15), p. 243; Buberl (n. 16), p. 128.Google Scholar

18 Salis, A. v., Imagines illustrium, Eumusia. Festgabe. E. Howald (Erlenbach–Zurich, 1947), pp. 11–29 at 14–17. At pp. 21–4 he discusses representations of the Seven Sages and at 24–5 he suggests that it is their number that may have suggested Varros arrangement; also the seven poets of the tragic Pleiad are suggested as included in the Hebdomades.Google Scholar

19 Gerstinger, Zu den Hebdomades des M. Terentius Varro und den Arzte– und Pharmakologenbildern des ‘Wiener Dioskurides’, JOeByzG 17 (1968), 269–77, repeated by him in his commentary (n. 15), p. 29, followed by O. Mazal, Pflanzen, Wurzeln, Sdfte, Samen. Antike Heilkunst in Miniaturen des Wiener Dioskurides (Graz, 1981), p. 27. The contention that the Vorlage of the codex had to be a codex rather than a roll, and thus to be dated in the fourth or fifth century, seems to me irrelevant to the present investigation.Google Scholar

20 Ritschl (n. 4), pp. 352–402. Architecture is safely attested by Vitr. 7.praef. 14, medicine is persuasively argued by Ritschl (n. 4) at pp. 366–8.Google Scholar

21 Cf. also Ritschl (n. 4), p. 516; the illuminated Dioscurides codex is adduced by H. Brunn, Ibid., p. 580.

22 Geiger, J., ‘Cornelius Nepos, de regibus exterarum gentium’, Latomus 38 (1979), 662–9.Google Scholar

23 Gell.3.10.17.

24 CK.AU. 16.11.3 and Shackleton Bailey ad loc.

25 Jenkinson, E., Genus scripturae lew. Cornelius Nepos and the early history of biography at Rome, ANRWU (Berlin, 1973), p. 704.Google Scholar

26 Geiger, J., Cornelius Nepos and Ancient Political Biography, Historia Einzelschriften 47 (Stuttgart, 1985), pp. 81–2.Google Scholar

27 Ritschl (n. 4), pp. 514–15. Strong circumstantial evidence is the construction of the work of Nepos on such a juxtaposition.

28 Gera, D. L., Warrior Women. The Anonymous Tractate De Claris Mulieribus (Leiden, 1997).Google Scholar

29 Gera (n. 28), p. 30. Though there is a dearth of obvious Roman candidates, one still wonders whether the total exclusion of Roman women does not suggest some terminus post quern non.

30 Even if Varro stated his sources, its seems highly improbable that the author of de Claris mulieribus would always repeat these.

31 One cannot refrain from mentioning the coincidence that Odysseus enumerates by name fourteen of the wives and daughters of heroes he encounters in the Nekyia (Od. 11.225ff.): Tyro, Antiope, Alcmene, Megara, Epicaste, Chloris, Leda, Iphimedeia, Phaedra, Procris, Ariadne, Maera, Clymene, and Eriphyle.

32 Gera (n. 28), pp. 40–2.

33 Gell. 3.10.16–7 and cf. e.g. Holford–Strevens L., ‘The harmonious pulse’, CQ 43 (1993), 475–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Ritschl (n. 4), p. 514.

35 Geiger (n. 26), pp. 85,97.

36 Hominum was inserted in Detlefsens edition but dropped in the Teubner of Mayhoff. Among those reading hominum is Norden (n. 10), at p. 6, n. 4.

37 Cf. Geiger (n. 26), pp. 39–40, with perhaps excessive skepticism: the warrior women may indeed well have belonged in the paradoxographic tradition. Id. (n. 22) at pp. 662–4 suggests possible books on women by Nepos.

38 The playwright Thomas Heywood (d. 1641) published, a year before his death, The Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts of Nine the Most Worthy Women of the World: Three Jewes. Three Gentiles. Three Christians. They were Deborah, Judith, Esther, Bunduca [Boudicea], Penthesilea, Artemisia; Elpheda [=Aethelflaed], Margaret of Anjou, and Elizabeth. Each entry started with a page of verse with an opposing portrait, followed by a prose text of between a dozen and two dozen pages. I found no evidence that Heywood was aware of Varros Hebdomades. On Heywoods book, apparently never reprinted in a modern edition, see also Waith, E. M, Heywoods Women Worthies, in Reagan, J. and Burns, N. T. (edd.), Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Albany, 1975), pp. 222–38.Google Scholar