Monday, September 29, 2014
Spurcum Additamentum
M. Zimmerman, ed., Apulei Metamorphoseon Libri XI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. xxiii:
For a recent discussion of the spurcum additamentum see Robert H.F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 67-71.
Thanks to Timothy Robertson, who writes:
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This addition, traditionally called 'The Spurcum Additamentum', ever since Eduard Fraenkel nicknamed its medieval forger 'Spurcus',49 is found not in F, but in the lower margin of fol. 66r of φ, as well as in the margin of Boccaccio's autograph copy L1 (Laur. 54.32).I don't have access to Fraenkel's article. Unless I'm misunderstanding Zimmerman's sentence, she seems to claim that no one ever called the marginal addition to Apuleius, Metamorphoses 10.21, the spurcum additamentum before Fraenkel did so. If that is her meaning, then the statement is incorrect. I don't know who first used the phrase as a description of the marginal addition, but I do know that it can be found well before the date of Fraenkel's article, e.g. in J. van der Vliet, "Codices Apulei Italici," Mnemosyne 23 (1895) 353-359 (at 358: "Continet spurcum illud additamentum libri X"...), and D.S. Robertson, "The Manuscripts of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. I," Classical Quarterly 18 (1924) 27-42 (at 31).
49 E. Fraenkel. 1953. 'A Sham Sisenna', Eranos 51, 151-4.
For a recent discussion of the spurcum additamentum see Robert H.F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 67-71.
Thanks to Timothy Robertson, who writes:
I wonder if J van de Vliet's phrase 'spurcum illud additamentum' might have been inspired by a similar expression used by an earlier editor of Apuleius, Gustav Friedrich Hildebrand, 'spurcissimum illud fragmentum' ('Oud.(sc. Franz van Oudendorp) ipsi, quamquam spurcissimum illud fragmentum genium Apuleianum satis spirare videatur, valde tamen suspectum est, potissimum quum in Luciano nullum eius extent vestigium'. Hildebrand, G. F., ed. 1842. L. Apuleius: Opera omnia. Reprint Hildesheim, 1968. Leipzig. p. 931). 'Spurcissimi ... loci' can also be found on the same page. 'Spurcitiei' of course occurs within the additamentum itself.
