Compitum

J. N. Adams, Anna Chahoud et Giuseppe Pezzini (éd.), Early Latin. Constructs, Diversity, Reception, Cambridge, 2023.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
xxii-656 pages
ISBN : 9781108476584
£ 130.00

This is the most detailed and comprehensive study to date of early Latin language, literary and non-literary, featuring twenty-nine chapters by an international team of scholars. 'Early Latin' is interpreted liberally as extending from the period of early inscriptions through to the first quarter of the first century BC. Classical Latin features significantly in the volume, although in a restricted sense. In the classical period there were writers who imitated the Latin of an earlier age, and there were also interpreters of early Latin. Later authors and views on early Latin language are also examined as some of these are relevant to the establishment of the text of earlier writers. A major aim of the book is to define linguistic features of different literary genres, and to address problems such as the limits of periodisation and the definition of the very concept of 'early Latin'.

Source : Cambridge University Press

Panayiotis Christoforou, Imagining the Roman Emperor. Perceptions of Rulers in the High Empire, Cambridge, 2023.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
320 pages
ISBN : 9781009362498
£ 85.00

How was the Roman emperor viewed by his subjects? How strongly did their perception of his role shape his behaviour? Adopting a fresh approach, Panayiotis Christoforou focuses on the emperor from the perspective of his subjects across the Roman Empire. Stress lies on the imagination: the emperor was who he seemed, or was imagined, to be. Through various vignettes employing a wide range of sources, he analyses the emperor through the concerns and expectations of his subjects, which range from intercessory justice to fears of the monstrosities associated with absolute power. The book posits that mythical and fictional stories about the Roman emperor form the substance of what people thought about him, which underlines their importance for the historical and political discourse that formed around him as a figure. The emperor emerges as an ambiguous figure. Loved and hated, feared and revered, he was an object of contradiction and curiosity.

Source : Cambridge University Press

José Higuera Rubio (éd), Per cognitionem visualem. The Visualization of Cognitive and Natural Processes in the Middle Ages. Acts of the XXV Annual Colloquium of the Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, Porto, 14–15 and 21–22 June 2021, Turnhout, 2023.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Rencontres de Philosophie Médiévale, 27
x-377 pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-60340-7
75 €

Visual representations were deeply involved in medieval traditions related to the dissemination and teaching of philosophy and science. Consequently, they were not only examples of theological or philosophical interpretation, but rather brought together manifold intellectual activities, illuminating various perceptual, cognitive, and spiritual concerns. Visual tools, which appear frequently in medieval manuscripts, have often been considered as “illustrative material” intended to facilitate the comprehension and interpretation of texts. These “visual aids” offer something more than a straightforward correspondence between a conceptual interpretation and its figurative depiction. They are, in fact, key to understanding the methods of acquiring and shaping knowledge through visual frameworks with didactical, disputational or heuristic purposes. The aim of this volume is to deepen our understanding of medieval visual tools that represented and demonstrated philosophical and scientific knowledge and, to an extent, the accumulation of empirical information.

Source : Brepols

Daniela Gallo, Ars Riuipullensis. Commentum anonymum in Artem Donati, Florence, 2023.

Éditeur : Sismel - Edizioni del Galluzzo
Collection : OPA. Opere perdute e anonime (Secoli III-XV), 04
XI-300 pages
ISBN : 978-88-9290-227-5
68 €

Il volume è disponibile in Open Access

Per oltre mille anni l'Ars di Donato ha rappresentato il manuale di riferimento per l'insegnamento della grammatica latina. Dato il carattere sintetico dell'opera, che risultava di difficile comprensione per gli studenti che non fossero di madrelingua latina, ben presto ad essa vennero affiancati altri strumenti finalizzati a spiegare e ampliare quanto esposto da Donato. Un ruolo fondamentale fu svolto dall'Ars grammatica di Prisciano, che finì con il fondersi con l'opera donatiana all'interno dell'attività pedagogica dei letterati irlandesi e anglosassoni di età carolingia. Il metodo di lavoro passò quindi, per il tramite degli Scotti peregrini, negli ambienti scolastici del continente, influenzando i testi grammaticali di nuova produzione. Tra questi vi è l'Ars Riuipullensis, un commento a Donato scritto in Francia alla fine del IX secolo e incentrato sullo studio delle partes orationis, per la redazione del quale hanno avuto un ruolo imprescindibile le grammatiche di Sedulio Scoto e di Remigio di Auxerre. L'importanza dell'opera, che ripropone la struttura per interrogationem et responsionem, risiede non tanto nell'apporto di nuove riflessioni quanto nell'originalità della presentazione di esse, che testimoniano i numerosi stimoli che potevano nascere attorno a un testo schematico e conciso quale l'Ars di Donato.

Source : SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo

Nicolas Tran, La plèbe. Une histoire populaire de Rome, Paris, 2023.

Éditeur : Passés Composés
284 pages
ISBN : 979-1-0404-0380-7
22 €

Écrire l'histoire de la plèbe romaine, c'est brosser le portrait d'une majorité souvent laissée silencieuse. Les hommes et les femmes mis en lumière dans ce livre furent pourtant bien moins des marginaux au sens strict qu'ils ne furent marginalisés, ou plutôt minorisés, par les auteurs antiques, puis par la science historique. Entre le Ier siècle avant J.-C. et le IIe siècle après J.-C., de génération en génération, ils furent plusieurs millions, appartenant aux catégories sociales inférieures et intermédiaires de la communauté civique, à former la plèbe, par opposition à l'aristocratie. Privilégiant le point de vue des habitants « ordinaires » sur celui de l'élite de la cité et se nourrissant autant que possible de destins individuels, Nicolas Tran dépeint à la fois les rapports sociaux et les espaces de vie collective dans la capitale romaine, raconte la vie quotidienne, familiale, amicale et professionnelle de ses habitants, éclaire leurs revendications. Se refusant à réduire ces hommes et ces femmes à une seule facette de leur identité, qui aurait déterminé leur existence tout entière, c'est finalement une véritable introduction à l'histoire de la Rome antique et des Romains que livre l'auteur.

Source : Passés Composés

Rita Lizzi Testa et Giulia Marconi (éd.), The Collectio Avellana and the Development of Notarial Practices in Late Antiquity, Turnhout, 2023.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Giornale Italiano di Filologia - Bibliotheca, vol. 31
672 p. pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-58836-0
€ 115 (excl. VAT)

The essays collected in this volume study the competences and status of late antique notaries, who from simple stenographers acquired responsibilities and growing importance within the imperial court and in the papal chancellery, being charged with drawing up the acts of the consistorium and the ecclesiastical councils, and with preserving and often delivering sensitive documents from Rome to Constantinople. The analysis of their multiple activities and of the functions they occupied, in the imperial and episcopal archives as well as in the libraries of the great Roman domus, also allows us to verify some new hypotheses on the compiler and on the editing of the Collectio Avellana. Since in the Middle Ages, the collection was transcribed into two main manuscripts both preserved in Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, the essays also try to understand what role the founder of the Monastery, San Pier Damiani, played in preserving this collection.