Piero Vettori’s edition of Sallust

Vettori’s edition

Vettori’s edition of Sallust was published in 1576 by the Giunti of Florence. With the very title, C. Sallustii Crispi coniuratio Catilinae et bellum Iugurthinum. E bibliotheca Medicea, Vettori sheds light on his philological method: the edition relied on manuscripts and not on corrections made ope ingenii. Modern scholars have frequently highlighted Vettori’s conservative attitude towards the manuscript tradition and his polemic remarks against scholars who resorted too light-heartedly to conjectures.¹⁴ According to what he wrote in the Variae lectiones, Vettori excluded the Appendix Sallustiana from his edition. The fragments from the Historiae are excluded too, probably because the only extant manuscript of this work had already been published and it was impossible to add something new on the subject.¹⁵ The final part of the book (from f. L1r^o) contains the letter to the reader, followed by some Varietates lectionum and Adnotationes that deal strictly with textual criticism of Sallust’s monographs. The letter to the reader is of great interest: Vettori uses it to explain his philological method, creating a short “handbook” of Classical philology:

Contigit extremo hoc tempore, quo multarum mearum vigiliarum opus edebam ut Iuntis nostris, typographis, commodum esset excudere, quae restant, monimenta C. Crispi. Impulsus igitur amore, quo semper hunc magnum rerum scriptorem prosecutus sum, experiri volui, si possem opera ac studio meo meliorem ipsum reddere, idest aliquid macularum delere, quae adhuc pulcherrimum ipsius corpus deformant, quamvis non defuerint qui hoc sedulo prius fecerint, et non parum etiam ipsi profuerint, praesertim cum nactus olim essem vetustissimum ipsius exemplar, litteris Longobardis exaratum, et, ut videbatur, satis correctum atque emendatum, plurimis certe locis valde distans a pervulgata lectione, atque non inepte, neque imperite.

The time has finally come to publish the result of my sleepless nights, so that my dear Giunti, the printers, might publish the extant works of C. Crispus. Driven by the love that I have always had towards this great historian, I wanted to put to the test if I could, through my hard work and endeavour, make him better, that is, to delete some of the stains that, to this day, still affect his beautiful body (even though many tried this same thing sedulously in the past, and even proved to be of great help to him), especially since I came across a really old book of his works, written in litterae Langobardae¹⁶ and, as it appeared to be, sufficiently corrected and emended, and quite different in several passages from the vulgate, in a proper and clever way.

In addressing the readers, Vettori explains that his main goal in editing Sallust’s monographs is to delete some of the mistakes that, despite the great improvements made by previous scholars, still affect his text. To achieve this, he used an old manuscript, whose readings were different and, apparently, better than those of the vulgate, that is, of the printed editions.¹⁷ The book, as Vettori confirms in the following passage, is the same he had used over twenty years earlier for the Variarum lectionum libri XXV. Nevertheless, Vettori did not rely exclusively on the vetustissimum exemplar:

Vt autem tutius hoc facerem, deprompsi duos antiquos itidem libros e Medicea bibliotheca, quod consulerem, ac viderem, si conveniret ipsis cum priore illo, quo multum antea usus fueram, cuiusque ope locos non nullos restitueram, ut si consentientes omnes inter se animadvertissem, audacius possem me totum ad auctoritarem eorum conferre. Quod minime factum est. Cautius igitur, timidiusque multo aliquid immutavi, praesertim cum ex variis duabus, pluribusque etiam unius loci lectionibus, satis idoneus sensus, nec sordidis etiam vocibus expressus, eliceretur.

To do so with a higher degree of certainty, I drew out two old manuscripts from the Medicean Library, and I examined them to see if they agreed with the first one, that I had used a long time ago and had employed to correct some readings, because, if they all had the same text, I could resolutely rely on their authority. But this only happened sporadically. Therefore, I intervened on the text in a much more cautious and hesitant manner, especially when a proper meaning, expressed by fitting words, could be obtained through two or even more variant readings in the same passage.

Vettori, opposing the use of a codex optimus¹⁸ and hoping to confirm the trustworthiness of the ancient book, collated it with two manuscripts from the Medicea bibliotheca. The outcome was disappointing: where the text was controversial, the manuscripts had different readings, all plausible. For a conservative philologist such as Vettori, this is clearly a worst-case scenario. Nevertheless, the humanist takes the opportunity to discuss how the philologist should act in this circumstance. First, one should be cautious and ponder each reading carefully. When this is not enough, other tools come to the aid:

Cum autem alia quoque sit ratio, non mala illa quidem, tollendi menda quaedam e veteribus auctoribus, observare videlicet, quomodo grammatici superioris aetatis legerint, cum testimonia inde citant, quo libri, si non integri, saltem minus multo contaminati erant, hanc quoque non omnino certam, et indubitatam inveni: neque enim semper illi libros ante oculos habebant, sed plerumque memoriam sequebantur, quae saepe imbecilla et fluxa est. Perspicitur hoc verum esse: Demetrius namque, ille Phalereus, adducit exempla non pauca e Platone, et aliis quoque scriptoribus, longe aliter, atque illa nunc apud auctores ipsos in fidelibus etiam libris legantur: legique prorsus debeant. Sed etiam Quintilianus, cum locum eum illustrem huius ipsius scriptoris significaret, quo de Carthaginis immensis opibus, imperiique amplitudine loquitur, inquit “Nam de Carthagine tacere satius puto, quam parum dicere”, cum apud auctorem legatur “silere melius puto”. Quin etiam M. Varro apud Terentium legit et interpretatur “Scortatur, potat, olet unguenta, de meo”, cum in omnibus libris (habemus autem huius comici antiquissimos et fidelissimos) scriptum sit “obsonat, potat”.

But, since there is another method, reliable enough, to delete errors in ancient authors’ works, that is, to see how ancient grammarians read them when they quote them, and, according to this method, the manuscripts, if not undamaged, are at least less corrupted, I actually discovered that this, too, is not completely sure and unquestionable: because, in fact, the grammarians rarely resorted to the books directly, but quoted by memory, and memory is feeble and unsteady. This is easy to see: Demetrius Phalereus quoted frequently in an incorrect way Plato and other writers, and now the wrong quotations can be found even in trustworthy manuscripts of these authors and must be read directly. Quintilian, too, referring to the famous passage of this very historian, in which he talks about the enormous wealth and the vast empire of Carthage, says Nam de Carthagine tacere satius puto, quam parum dicere, while in the manuscripts it is written silere melius puto. Likewise, Varro reads and comments on Terence Scortatur, potat, olet unguenta, de meo, whereas in all the manuscripts (and for this comic poet I have access to extremely old and trustworthy books) it is written obsonat, potat.

This short paragraph effectively depicts the upsides and downsides of indirect tradition. Vettori was one of the first scholars to realize the importance of indirect and secondary tradition for textual criticism, as shown in his editions of Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1548) and Poetic (1560), in which he successfully used the medieval Latin translation by William of Moerbeke to restore the original Greek text.¹⁹ This time, however, he warns the reader: indirect tradition can also be deceptive, since ancient writers often quoted from memory. He gives some interesting examples. Demetrius Phalereus quoted incorrectly Plato and other writers, but his work was so influential that the wrong quotations made their way even into reliable witnesses of these authors. Quintilian (Institutes of Oratory 2, 13, 14) quotes incorrectly Iugurtha 19, 2; Varro (On the Latin Language 7, 84) does the same with Terentius’ The Brothers 117. Having discussed the issue of indirect tradition, Vettori summarizes his philological method:

Haec igitur me semper hortata sunt, ut considerate admodum me in hoc negotio gererem: parumque, aut nihil, coniecturae atque ingenio tribuerem. Quare, quod antea custodivi, idem nunc in parvo hoc meo labore diligenter servavi, quo instituto meo valde delector; video enim non paucos, qui aliter manus admoverunt optimis auctoribus, ipsisque prodesse studuerunt, potius illis non mediocriter obfuisse.

All these considerations have always urged me to act very cautiously in this work and to give little or no value to conjecture and intuition. For this reason, the same rule I cherished on before, now I entrusted it to this small work of mine, in which I am satisfied with my habits, because I see that many, who intervened in a different way on the text of Classical authors and wanted to improve it, in the end caused a great damage.

After a lifetime devoted to philology, Vettori states here the foundation of his method: cautiousness and skepticism toward invasive conjectures and those who feel too comfortable in using them. To say it in his own words “malo cum antiquis libris errare quam nimio amore rerum mearum”.²⁰ It is easy to identify the targets of this criticism: the French editors and scholars, with whom the Italian humanist was often at odds.²¹ In the final lines of the letter, after having explained his method, Vettori issues a challenge:

Cum autem de incerta variaque lectione huius scriptoris locutus sim, adponam hic non nullas e multo pluribus varietatibus, quas in ipso nactus sum, difficultatis huius facti declarandae causa.

Since I spoke about uncertain and variant readings in this author, I will add here some selected from the many that I came across, to show how difficult it was.

The reader, being given the tools of the philologist, will now decide for himself what readings are best suited to Sallust.

Before discussing the variant readings listed by Vettori, it is necessary to focus on the manuscripts used by the humanist for this edition. As pointed out in the letter to the reader, Vettori used three manuscripts: the vetustissimus codex and two books from the Medicean Library. The latter two are still in Florence and have been identified with Plutei 64.23 and 64.26.²² Too little is known about the vetustissimus to identify it with certainty. Yet, there is reason to believe that Vettori used at least one more manuscript. In the Adnotationes at the end of the volume, he discusses some readings of the vulgate corrected by him with the support of the manuscripts:

Pro “Bocchus scilicet”, emendavi “Bocchus feliciter”, ut in omnibus manu scriptis inveni, et quodam etiam olim excuso. Apparet locum depravatum postea fuisse a quodam sinistro correctore, qui mutavit, quod saepe indocti et audaces faciunt, quod non intelligebat. Scholion etiam in vetusto exemplari, a me inventum, declarat antiquam ac veram hanc esse lectionem, quam ut confirmarem, ipsum adposui, neque enim ad sententiam inde eruendam, magnopere requirebatur. Est autem hoc, “idest suam felicitatem”.

I corrected Bocchus scilicet with Bocchus feliciter, as I found in all the manuscripts and also in some printed books. It looks like the passage was corrupted by a bad scribe, who, as ignorant and unscrupulous men often do, changed what he didn’t understand. A gloss in an old book that I found proves that this reading is the ancient and true one, and to confirm it, I put the gloss here, and it wasn’t difficult to tear out the wrong meaning. The gloss is idest suam felicitatem.

At Iugurtha 103, 2, the archetype of the extant tradition had Bocchus feliciter, so it is just natural that Vettori found this reading in all the manuscripts. Way less common is the marginal note mentioned by the humanist, that, interestingly, doesn’t appear in the two Laurenziani. The gloss can be found, however, in another manuscript from the same library, Pluteus 64.18. The book dates to the 11th-12th century, it was written in littera antiqua and the same hand that wrote the main text also added some glosses, including the one mentioned by Vettori (f. 58r^o). Some later notes are attributed to Francesco Petrarca, and the manuscript was included in the inventory of Cosimo de’ Medici’s library in 1418.²³ With the hope of identifying the vetustissimus codex, I compared the readings ascribed to it by Vettori in the Variarum lectionum libri with the text of Pluteus 64.18. Unfortunately, they did not match. To learn more about the vetustissimus, then, it is necessary to analyze the Varietates lectionum added by Vettori at the end the volume.

Variant readings

In the following list, the first variant reading is the one Vettori printed in his edition, and the order is the same one he followed in the Varietates lectionum (ff. L2v^o-L3r^o). After each variant reading, I added the signature of the manuscripts used by Vettori that contain it. When the reading cannot be found in one of the Laurenziani, it is marked by (?). When there are differences between the readings quoted by Vettori and the text of the manuscripts, I have put the signature next to the reading that was more similar and noted the differences between brackets after the signature. The asterisk at the beginning of the variant reading indicates that the text corresponds to Reynolds’ edition.²⁴

Varietates lectionum

1. Sall. Cat. 26, 4 *ne contra rem publicam sentiret Pl. 64.23,²⁵ Pl. 64.26: ut contra rem publicam dissentiret (?)
2. Sall. Cat. 47, 1 *fingere alia Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26: fingere alia omnia (?)
3. Sall. Cat. 52, 18 *omnes feroces aderunt Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26: illi audaciores erunt (?)
4. Sall. Cat. 40, 4²⁶ neque… tam facile (?): *nil… tam difficile Pl. 64.26 (neque), Pl. 64.23 (neque difficile)
5. Sall. Cat. 52, 35 *neque consuli Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26: neque consiliari (?)
6. Sall. Iug. 6, 1 *ingenio validus Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: ingenio valido (?)
7. Sall. Iug. 6, 3 *dolis interfecisset Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: fraude interfecisset (?)
8. Sall. Iug. 14, 24 *nunc neque Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: nunc quoniam neque (?)
9. Sall. Iug. 50, 4 *infensi adesse Pl. 64.23: infessi (?): infesti Pl. 64.18
10. Sall. Iug. 53, 2 *clamore concurritur Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.18: clamore curritur (?)
11. Sall. Iug. 60, 5 *lenius agere Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: lenius agitare (?)
12. Sall. Iug. 61, 1 *frustra incoeptum Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: frustrari incoeptum (?)
13. Sall. Iug. 64, 4 *tum contra Metellum Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: tum propter filii imprudentiam contra (?)
14. Sall. Iug. 65, 2 *eorum modo Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: eorum solummodo (?)
15. Sall. Iug. 65, 3 *in imperatorem Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.18: imperatoris (?)
16. Sall. Iug. 66, 3 *alius alium Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: alii alios (?)
17. Sall. Iug. 67, 1 milites perculsi improviso Pl. 64.18: *milites improviso Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26
18. Sall. Iug. 72, 2 *nequa ex eo negotio seditio oriretur Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26: ne quod ex eo negotio bellum oriretur (?)²⁷
19. Sall. Iug. 75, 4 *et alia aquae idonea Pl. 64.23 (aliaque), Pl. 64.26 (aeque), Pl. 64.18: atque alia idonea (?)
20. Sall. Iug. 79, 1 memorabile facinus (?): *mirabile facinus Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18
21. Sall. Iug. 79, 2 *eam rem nos Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: eius rei nos (?)
22. Sall. Iug. 81, 1 *exercitus conveniunt Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: exciti convenient (?)
23. Sall. Iug. 83, 1 *incerta pro certis Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: certa pro incertis (?)
24. Sall. Iug. 87, 4 *laxius licentiusque Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: latius licentiusque (?)
25. Sall. Iug. 91, 1 *distribuerat Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: distribuebat (?)
26. Sall. Iug. 93, 6 *pollicetur se se itineris periculique ducem Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26: pollicetur sese esse ducem itineris, periculique nihil esse docet Pl. 64.18
27. Sall. Iug. 95, 2 *persecutus parum Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18 (persecutus est parum): persecutus historiam parum (?)
28. Sall. Iug. 96, 2 *humillimis agere Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: humillimis et magnis agere (?)
29. Sall. Iug. 101, 6 *ad pedites convertit Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: ad pedites convertitur (?)
30. Sall. Iug. 104, 4 *respondetur Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: responderunt (?)
31. Sall. Iug. 105, 3 *sed in itinere quincto denique die Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: sed quincto die (?)
32. Sall. Iug. 109, 4²⁸ vir iurat ex sententia amborum ac Pl. 64.23 (ambobus)²⁹: vir ex sententia amborum adhibetur (?)
33. Sall. Iug. 110, 7 *ego populo R. […] id omitto Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: ego cum populo R. […] id vero omitto Pl. 64.23
34. Sall. Iug. 113, 1 *sed plerumque Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: nam plerumque (?)

Five more readings are listed by Vettori in the Adnotationes. Before discussing them, the humanist explains why he focused on these loci: “Libet quoque paucos quosdam ex his, quos correxi ope eorundem librorum, locos indicare, primumque, ubi perperam in excusis erat” (“It seems proper to indicate some of the passages that I restored using these same manuscripts, and chiefly where the printed books were erroneous”). Each variant reading is preceded by the number of page containing the text discussed by the scholar:

17. “Cum ad iusiurandum populares sceleris sui addiceret” restitui “adigeret”. Cum autem planum sit ita morem fuisse loquendi, cum id gereretur, exemplis, quae multa occurrunt, supersedebo.

61. “Aciem, quam diffidens virtutis militum, arte statuerat”, perspicuum est “arcte” legi debere, quod confirmat ἀντίϑετον, infra positum, latius. Plautus quoque hoc adverbio usus est “Quamquam illum mater arcte contenteque habet”. In cunctis tamen excusis falso prima legebatur “arte”. Infra etiam 68, “quam arctissime” legi debet, ubi tamen, culpa operarum, “quam artissime” in nostro quoque legitur.

84b. Pro “Bocchus scilicet”, emendavi “Bocchus feliciter”, ut in omnibus manu scriptis inveni, et quodam etiam olim excuso. Apparet locum depravatum postea fuisse a quodam sinistro correctore, qui mutavit, quod saepe indocti et audaces faciunt, quod non intelligebat. Scholion etiam in vetusto exemplari, a me inventum, declarat antiquam ac veram hanc esse lectionem, quam ut confirmarem, ipsum adposui, neque enim ad sententiam inde eruendam, magnopere requirebatur. Est autem hoc, “idest suam felicitatem”.

Visum est etiam mihi monere lectorem, ut, quod adnotavi in varii lectionibus 66 [= n. 13 supra] diligenter ponderet. Neque enim arbitror omnino, quod adiunxi spernendum esse, maxime cum invenerim in vetustissimo libro “Propter filii imprudentiam”. Duo enim videtur ostendere auctor voluisse, quae ambo valde³⁰ molesta fuerint Mario, cum accepit vocem illam Metelli. Unum autem solum expositum est, quod scilicet adversatus sit voluntati honorique ipsius, alterum, quod fortasse significant ea verba, ut verisimile est, quod fecit illum similem puero rerumque imperito.

Page 17. I corrected Cum ad iusiurandum populares sceleris sui addiceret with adigeret. Since it is clear that this was an idiom, I will leave out the many examples that occur.

Page 61. It is better to read Aciem, quam diffidens virtutis militum, arcte statuerat, instead of arte, as the following antithesis latius confirms. The same adverb is used by Plautus too: Quamquam illum mater arcte contenteque habet. The wrong reading, arte can be read in all the previous printed editions. Later too, at page 68, quam arctissime is the correct reading, but, because of the typographs, quam artissime is written in my edition too.

Page 84b. I corrected Bocchus scilicet with Bocchus feliciter, as I found in all the manuscripts and also in some printed books. It looks like the passage was corrupted by an unfortunate scribe, who, as ignorant and unscrupulous men often do, changed what he didn’t understand. A gloss in an old book that I found proves that this reading is the ancient and true one, and to confirm it, I put the gloss here, and it wasn’t difficult to eradicate the wrong opinion from there. The gloss is idest suam felicitatem.

It seems worthy to urge the reader to consider carefully what I wrote about the variant reading of page 66. I am not entirely sure that the alternative reading is to be overlooked, especially since I found Propter filii imprudentiam in an old manuscript. It looks like the author wanted to display two things that were unpleasant to Mario when he heard Metellus’ statement. But only the first one, that is, that Metellus undermined his desire and office, is openly exposed, the second one, that is what these words might mean, is that he made him look like a young and unskilled man.

I sum up the readings in the following list, with the same editorial criteria as those of the Varietates lectionum:

Adnotationes

1. Sall. Cat. 22, 1 *adigeret (?): addiceret Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26 (adic-)
2. Sall. Iug. 52, 6 arcte Pl. 64.18: *arte Pl. 64.23³¹
3. Sall. Iug. 68, 4 arctissime (?): *artissime Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18
4. Sall. Iug. 103, 2³² feliciter Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: scilicet (?)
5. Sall. Iug. 64, 4 *tum contra Metellum Pl. 64.23, Pl. 64.26, Pl. 64.18: tum propter filii imprudentiam contra (= n. 13 supra) (?)

Firstly, it should be noted that, except for seven cases (nn. 4, 17, 20, 32, b, c, d), the variant readings that Vettori printed coincide with the text of Reynolds’ edition. Yet, most of these readings are not discussed in modern critical editions: only six out of thirty-nine are mentioned by Reynolds in his apparatus (nn. 1, 15, 20, 32, a, d).³³ These loci are not as controversial as Vettori considered them. It is also worth mentioning the fact that at Catilina 22, 1 the correct reading, adigeret, is preserved only by indirect tradition (in Eugraphius’ commentary to Terentius’ Phormio 35), against adiceret of all known manuscripts. Nonetheless, Vettori states that this passage was corrected by him “ope eorundem librorum”, through one of the codices mentioned in the letter to the reader. Since Plutei 64.23 and 64.26 have adiceret, and 64.18 does not contain this monograph, it seems safe to assume that adigeret was in the vetustissimus. As shown in the previous lists, in most cases the identified Laurenziani manuscripts have the same reading. What was, then, the source for the alternative lectiones listed by Vettori, the ones that did not make it in the text of his edition?

At the beginning of the Adnotationes, Vettori declares that he corrected the text of the excusi, the printed books, using manuscripts, and the above list confirms his statement: of the five readings discussed in the Adnotationes, four of the neglected ones (nn. a, b, c, d) can be found in the latest aldine edition.³⁴ In the Adnotationes, then, the printed editions represent the vulgate, corrected by Vettori through the manuscripts. The fifth case (n. e= 13), however, seems different: Vettori openly identifies the vetustissimus as the source for the reading he rejected in his edition, while accepting the text of the printed editions and all the Laurenziani, tum contra Metellum. Thereby, here the vulgate is represented by both the printed editions and the Laurenziani. The situation for the Varietates lectionum looks similar to this last case. Only four out of the thirty-four neglected readings (nn. 2, 4, 8, 27) are printed in the 1563 aldine, and just one more (n. 1) can be added if we consider the more influential 1509 edition.³⁵ Two observations emerge from the above:

1. in the Varietates lectionum the text of the vulgate and that of the Laurenziani is the same;
2. therefore, Vettori did not rely on the printed editions for the readings opposing those of the Laurenziani, but he must have resorted to a different source.

According to the informations given by the humanist, I believe that these readings can be ascribed to the vetustissimus codex. Vettori pointed out in the letter to the reader that the text of this manuscript was often different from that of the vulgate. Two of the readings opposed to those of the Laurenziani and neglected in the edition are openly attributed to the vetustissimus in the Adnotationes (n. e = n. 13) and in the Variae lectiones (n. 23; cfr. VII 14, p. 101). It seems natural to conclude that when a reading is opposed to the vulgate (that is represented, in the Varietates lectionum, by the Laurenziani) it can be ascribed to the vetustissimus. If this assumption is correct, we can learn more about the text of this mysterious manuscript through the Varietates lectionum: by comparison with the Laurenziani, we can list the readings that Vettori found in the vetustissimus (the numbers follow the previous list):

1. Sall. Cat. 26, 4 ut contra rem publicam dissentiret

2. Sall. Cat. 47, 1 fingere alia omnia

3. Sall. Cat. 52, 18 illi audaciores erunt

4. Sall. Cat. 40, 4 neque… tam facile

5. Sall. Cat. 52, 35 neque consiliari

6. Sall. Iug. 6, 1 ingenio valido

7. Sall. Iug. 6, 3 fraude interfecisset

8. Sall. Iug. 14, 24 nunc quoniam neque

9. Sall. Iug. 50, 4 infessi

10. Sall. Iug. 53, 2 clamore curritur

11. Sall. Iug. 60, 5 lenius agitare

12. Sall. Iug. 61, 1 frustrari incoeptum

13. Sall. Iug. 64, 4 tum propter filii imprudentiam contra

14. Sall. Iug. 65, 2 eorum solummodo

15. Sall. Iug. 65, 3 imperatoris

16. Sall. Iug. 66, 3 alii alios

18. Sall. Iug. 72, 2 ne quod ex eo negotio bellum oriretur

19. Sall. Iug. 75, 4 atque alia idonea

20. Sall. Iug. 79, 1 memorabile facinus

21. Sall. Iug. 79, 2 rei nos

22. Sall. Iug. 81, 1 exciti conveniunt

23. Sall. Iug. 83, 1 certa pro incertis

24. Sall. Iug. 87, 4 latius licentiusque

25. Sall. Iug. 91, 1 distribuebat

27. Sall. Iug. 95, 2 persecutus historiam parum

28. Sall. Iug. 96, 2 humillimis et magnis agere

29. Sall. Iug. 101, 6 ad pedites convertitur

30. Sall. Iug. 104, 4 responderunt

31. Sall. Iug. 105, 3 se quincto die

32. Sall. Iug. 109, 4 vir ex sententia amborum adhibetur

34. Sall. Iug.113, 1 nam plerumque

With the same criteria, two more readings from the Adnotationes can be added to this list: adigeret at Cat. 22, 1 (n. a) and arctissime at Iug. 68, 4 (n. c). In four of these instances the reading of the vetustissimus is noted as of secondary relevance in Reynolds’ apparatus (nn. 1, 15, 20, 32). Some readings might have originated through paleographical errors (nn. 5, 10, 11, 22, 24), and others could be attributed to a lapsus calami (n. 6, 9, 12) or to the replacement of one word with its synonym or antonym (nn. 4, 7, 18, 23). A couple of readings suspiciously look like glosses included in the main text (nn. 3, 27). Due to the high number of Sallustian manuscripts, identifying the vetustissimus is an extremely difficult task. It is not even sure that it is still extant. Nevertheless, thanks to the paratextual sections of the 1576 edition it is possible to learn something more about this manuscript. Firstly, according to the readings listed in the Varietates lectionum and in the Adnotationes, the vetustissimus was probably a heavily corrupted manuscript of the extant tradition, and not a witness of a previously unknown branch of the stemma codicum. All the readings attributed to this manuscript are blatant errors, except for adigeret at Catilina. 22, 1. Still, this correction could have been easily made by a scribe who knew Eugraphius’ commentary to Terence or had read some Latin historians, since there are parallels for iusiurandum adigere in both Caesar and Livy.

Conclusion: a Medicean Sallust?

To assert his authority, and that of his edition, Vettori relies on two means. At the very beginning of the letter, he suggests that his edition of Sallust will be different from the others because its text derives from an ancient manuscript, whose readings are different from the vulgate: the antiquity of this codex would seem to be the source of the editor’s authority. However, Vettori immediately admits that he also collated the vetustissimus codex with two old manuscripts from the Laurenziana and, since the three books had different texts, he had to choose between their variant readings. In doing so, he recalls his past works, gives examples of corruption in direct and indirect tradition, and emphasizes his life-long experience as a philologist. The first Classical work edited by Vettori was published in 1536; in the forty years that preceded the Sallust’s edition he worked as editor, commentator, and teacher on dozens of Classical authors, and he maintained relations with scholars from all Europe. He was the most prolific and authoritative Italian philologist of his century, and he was aware of it. This emerges clearly in the letter to the reader, especially at the end, where the use of the past tense and of the adverb semper underlines that Vettori is sharing with his readers the method he acquired through decades of philological activity. In the end, the humanist establishes the text of the edition through his akribeia and his own authority, and not through the vetustissimus codex: in fact, of the thirtyish readings that can be ascribed to this manuscript, only three are adopted in the edition (nn. 4, 20, c). Vettori chose to rely not on the vetustissimus but on the Laurenziani, and he was right in doing so: the readings he printed match with those of modern editions. Yet, in the end, at least according to the loci selected by the humanist, Vettori’s edition of Sallust is not that distant from the vulgate. Why, then, did he decide to work on Sallust’s text, in a period when his energies were mainly devoted to his Aristotelian studies?³⁶ Besides from his early works on Cicero and the scriptores rei rusticae, Vettori edited exclusively Greek authors.³⁷ In the Variarum lectionum libri, he focused only sporadically on textual criticism for Sallust’s monographs, his main interest being the relationship between the Roman historian and his Greek sources. He had access to an old manuscript, whose readings were mostly erroneous. Could it be that the main reason behind his edition of Sallust was not a strictly philological one?

At the beginning of the letter to the reader, Vettori claims that he started to work on Sallust’s text “ut Iuntis nostris, typographis, commodum esset excudere quae restant, monimenta C. Crispi”³⁸ (“so that my dear Giunti, the printers, might publish the extant works of C. Crispus”). The humanist started working on Sallust upon request by the Giunti publisher of Florence. In the late 16th century, the book market mainly profited from the vernacular literature, while Classical authors, even those that were best-sellers in the previous decades, remained unsold. This is also the case for Sallust, as shown by a letter from Paolo Manuzio, dating 1559: “An nescis libros latinos, optimos veteres, ita nunc jacere, ut paene sordium in genere putentur; vix iam Ciceronem ipsum, Caesarem, Sallustium legi a multis etiam ne legi quidem, planeque contemni?”³⁹ (“Do you not know that the books of the best Latin classics now lay abandoned as if they were works of the lowest squalor; that hardly Cicero himself, Caesar, Sallust are read by someone, or not read at all, and entirely despised?”). Since the 1520s, the Giunti published very few Latin classics, and, especially in the second half of the century, they usually resold editions obtained from Venice.⁴⁰ Therefore, it probably was not for profit that they decided to print Sallust’s monographs, but there might be a political explanation for this choice. In 1575 the conspiracy of Orazio Pucci against the Grand Duke Francesco I was discovered and suppressed.⁴¹ The times when Sallust’s monographs, especially Catilina, embodied the republican and anti-tyrannical ideals were long gone;⁴² Poliziano’s Coniurationis commentarium clearly showed that the new political interpretation of the historian’s work “was clearly and unequivocally the praise of civic concord and the condemnation of conspiracy”.⁴³ Only one year after his accession to power, the Grand Duke faced a serious threat, that put him on his guard. It is not unlikely that the Giunti decided to print Sallust’s work to support the cultural and political agenda of the Duke, in the attempt to gain his favors. As noted by Richardson “editors in Florence were working in a strongly nationalistic and introspective culture”.⁴⁴ To this end, it might not be a coincidence that Vettori dedicated his edition to Geronimo Guicciardini, one of his pupils. After stating that there is no need to discuss the greatness of Sallust’s work “cum laudes ipsius satis notae omnibus explorataeque sint”, Vettori explains why he chose the young man as dedicatee for this edition:

Restat potius ut consilium meum comprobem, cur te potissimum delegerim, cui hoc, quasi donum quoddam, darem, cum omnem nostram iuventutem, deditam studiis litterarum, valde amem, et quacunque re possum ornare studeam, atque id merito faciam. Sed hoc quoque obscurum esse non potest: cui enim cognitum non est, hanc dotem scribendi historia propriam esse vestrae familiae? In qua cum plures omni tempore prudentes viri, honesteque versati in republica, floruerint, non unus ipsorum tantum, aut alter ad hanc gloriam aspiravit. Enituit tamen maxime inter ceteros, qui tamquam peculiare suumque opus hoc fecit, magno ingenio praeditus singularique eloquentia patruus tuus magnus, omni sua vita versatus in magnis rebus gerendis, publicisque negotiis administrandis; hi namque rerum memoriam monimentis recte mandare possunt, qui magnum usum rerum habent, domique ac militiae publicam personam sustinuerunt, quales apud Graecos Thucydides et Polybius extitere. Similis itaque his undequaque Franciscus, unus e maioribus tuis, fuit.

I still have to explain my decision to dedicate this book to you, almost like a gift, since I deeply love the whole youth of our city, devoted to learning, and I wish to honour it as much as I can, and rightfully so. But this cannot come as a surprise: who does not know how your family excel in writing history? From it, in each generation many righteous men stood out, looking after the State honourably, and more than one aimed at this noble act. But one shone brighter than the others, the man who, gifted by a great mind and unique eloquence, wrote an outstanding work, your noble uncle, who devoted his whole life to bear the great events and to manage the public duties. Only those who took part in history, who undertook a public role in peace and war, can truly write history, like Thucydides and Polybius did for the Greeks. Similar to them in all respects was Francesco, unmatched among your ancestors.

Vettori chose Geronimo because several members of his family were historians, and the most important was, undoubtedly, Francesco Guicciardini. Yet, interestingly, Vettori focuses more on the political commitment of the Guicciardini family, that supported the Medici from the very beginning, and of Francesco, who was the main architect of the rise to the power of Cosimo, father of Francesco I and first Grand Duke of Tuscany.⁴⁵ Dedicatory letters are means of obtaining profit and support from influential patrons,⁴⁶ but this is clearly not the case for Vettori’s edition: the dedicant is way more famous and powerful than the young dedicatee. If the reason for the dedication is not profitability, then, its purpose is to deliver a message, to promote an ideological and political orientation.⁴⁷ The 1576 edition might show a “Medicean” Sallust, that urges the citizens of Florence to defend pax and support the princeps. The very next year, as a 1604 petition testifies, Francesco I granted some privileges to the Giunti.⁴⁸ When he was young, Vettori fought for the republic,⁴⁹ but, after all the possibilities of leaving Florence were gone, and especially from the ’60s onwards, he became fully implicated in the political project of the Dukes, as his encomia show.⁵⁰ Vettori’s political story reflects, to some extent, that of Sallust’s fortuna in the Renaissance: it was due “to the versatility and adaptability of his thought and writing” to the “changing mental climate of a complex and protean age” that Sallust became the most influential Latin historian until the 17th century.⁵¹

Notes

1. Reynolds 1991: V.
2. Osmond 2003: 197.
3. Smalley 1971: 168; Grendler 1989: 261-262.
4. Osmond 1995: passim.
5. ISTC No. is00051000. Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Opera, Venice, Wendelin von Speyer, 1470.
6. Capezzali 2004: passim.
7. C. Sallustii Crispi Coniuratio Catilinae & Bellum Iugurthinum. E bibliotheca Medicea, Florence, Giunti, 1576 (CNCE 47692).
8. On Vettori’s life see Piras 2020: passim.
9. Published in two volumes: Petri Victorii Variarum lectionum libri XXV, Florence, Giunti, 1553 (CNCE 34608) and Petri Victorii Variarum lectionum XIII noui libri, Florence, Giunti, 1568 (CNCE 34761).
10. Schindel 1980: 94.
11. Ernout 1962: 7-23; Seel 1966: passim; Vretska 1961: 12-26; Pasoli 1974: 7-10.
12. Legere is, in fact, the reading of the main manuscript (Reynolds 1991: ad loc.).
13. Reynolds 1983: 341-347.
14. Timpanaro 1985: 6; Grafton 1983: 52-70; Porro 1983: passim; Accame 2018: passim.
15. La Penna and Funari 2015: 43-44.
16. Rizzo 1973: 114-116.
17. Rizzo 1973: 72.
18. Porro 1983: 328.
19. Reynolds and Wilson 1991: 165; Cesarini Martinelli 1983: 725.
20. Petri Victorii Epistolarum libri X […], Florence, Giunti, 1586, (CNCE 28506), 166.
21. Cesarini Martinelli 1983: 715; Grafton 1983: 69-70.
22. Niccolai 1912: 258-259; Maracchi Biagiarelli 1971: 59-60.
23. Cavallo 1992: 125-126.
24. Plut. 64.18 only contains Iugurtha and Plut. 64.26 has a lacuna between Iug. 16, 1 and 56, 2. Clearly, when Vettori discussed variant readings regarding these passages in the Varietates lectionum, he must have been consulting other manuscripts. To my knowledge, the gap in 64.26 has never been noted. It occurs at the end of f. 22r^o, where after Iug. 16, 1 (eum Iugurtha tametsi) the text continues with Iug. 56, 2 (edoctus magnis). The lacuna might be attributed to a mutilation (fall of a quire?) in the exemplar of the Medicean ms.
25. A gloss also reports the variant reading dissentiret.
26. The proper order is altered because of an error in number paging (p. 23 becomes p. 33).
27. Pl. 64.18 has seditio aut bellum.
28. Reynolds’ edition has vir et ex sententia ambobus.
29. The other two manuscripts have a text more distant from that quoted by Vettori: Pl. 64.26 vir dabar ex sententia iurat ambobus, Pl. 64.18 vir iuraverat et ex sententia ambobus intrat. Still, they all have iurare and not adhibere.
30. Valda in the edition.
31. In the edition arte and artissime (c.) are printed at Iug. 52, 6 and 68, 4, but the mistake is reported both in the Adnotationes and in the Errata operarum.
32. Both readings are omitted in Reynolds’ edition.
33. In two cases, however, the alternative reading is not the one mentioned by Vettori (nn. 15, 32).
34. C. Sallustii Crispi Coniuratio Catilinae, et bellum Iugurthinum […], Venice, Paolo Manuzio, 1563, (CNCE 28236).
35. C. Crispi Sallustii De coniuratione Catilinae. Eiusdem De bello Iugurthino […], Venice, Aldo Manuzio-Andrea Torresano, 1509 (CNCE 37431).
36. Rüdiger 1896: 74, Cesarini Martinelli 1983: 722-723.
37. The only exception being the revision of the posthumous edition of Terence by Gabriele Faerno P. Terentii Comoediae, Florence, Giunti, 1565 (CNCE 28286). For a list of Vettori’s works see Mouren 2014: 113-116.
38. See above 3.
39. Leicht 1912: 79, n. 1.
40. Pettas 2013: 83.
41. Berner 1971: 238-239; Boutier 1996: 327-342.
42. La Penna 2017: 409-431.
43. Osmond 1995: 111.
44. Richardson 1994: 180.
45. Lo Re 2005: 258.
46. Genette 1989: 115; Chartier 1999: 35-53; Paoli 2005: 157-164.
47. Santoro 2002: 75.
48. Maracchi Biagiarelli 1965: 356.
49. Lo Re 2006: passim.
50. Pettas 2013: 89.
51. Osmond 1995: 129.