Laudator Temporis Acti

Dear Mike,

I was intrigued the other day by two consecutive entries in the Index to Jürgen Leonhardt's Latin: Story of a World Language (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), first published as Latein: Geschichte einer Weltsprache (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2009) and translated by Kenneth Kronenburg:

Livius, 63
Livy, 43, 45, 54-55

Could this first entry refer to Livius Andronicus, I wondered? No. Livius Andronicus is found under Andronicus just as Central Italy is found under C for Central. The reference to this Livius on p. 63 reads "Livius's relationship to the Greeks is looser still: Quintilian (10.1.100) places him alongside Herodotus (490–ca. 420 BCE)", yet there is no reference to any Livius in Institutio oratoria 10.1.100. There is, however, another mention of the author, unrecorded in the Index. On p. 56, Livius's dates are given as 59 BCE-17 CE, which would make him an almost exact contemporary of "The Roman historian Livy (59 BCE–16 CE)" mentioned on p. 43. I wonder if they were related?

Just as intriguing is a Greek poet called "Theocrites" (p. 62), who inspired Virgil's Eclogues. On that same page and the following there are mentions of Greek "Apollonios Rhodios" and "Archilochos" but Latinized "Alcaeus" and "Herodotus", while "Callimachos" is neither "Kallimachos" nor "Callimachus" but a hybrid of the two; μέγα κακόν, or mega cock-up in the vernacular, would be the poet-librarian's verdict.

Best wishes,
Eric [Thomson]

Labels: typographical and other errors