Poster: Digital Humanities applied to Classical Philology: a case study - ManuSciences15 Franco-German Summer School

Digital Humanities applied to Classical Philology: a case study The Sinod. Gr. 413 and the Excerpta J of Agathemerus’ Sketch of Geography

Agathemerus’ Sketch of Geography: from manuscript to digital

Agathemerus in John of Damascus: the Excerpta J

The PhD Project “Agathemerus’ Sketch of Geography – from the manuscript tradition to the digital edition” aims to a comprehensive study of the textual tradition of a precious pre-Ptolemaic geographical opuscule, and to the creation of the first native digital and critical edition of the text, combining methodologies of traditional Classical Philology and the innovation of the Digital Humanities.

The indirect tradition of Agathemerus suggests a new possible hypothesis. Three long excerpts of the opuscule are attested in many manuscripts of John of Damascus’ De Fide Orthodoxa, literally merged with one fragment from Ptolemy’s Geography and one from Aristotle’s Meteorologica. They are the so-called Excerpta J. Since the fragments are blended into John’s text and irregularly attested in his tradition, most probably they originated from an interpolation. Johannes, c. 25 Ptolemy, Geography VIII 29

A mysterious collection of manuscripts in Byzantium Agathemerus’ text belongs to the so-called Corpus A of the Minor Greek Geographers, attested in the Palatinus Graecus 398, which is part of the large and mysterious Collection Philosophique: a collection of rare Neoplatonic and scientific texts assembled in a uniform style and in a very characteristic minuscule. Being dated to the IX century and possibly traced back to the Patriarch Photius, it was certainly the result of progressive accumulation of texts coming from various areas of the Empire. The origins of the texts collected is totally unknown: perhaps they were the result of the dispersion of the Neoplatonic schools of Athens and Alexandria (VI century).

Agathemerus, 2.7

Johannes, c. 25

Palat. Gr. 398, Collection Philosophique. The manuscript contains the largest corpus of Minor Greek Geographers.

Lond. Add. 27862, a manuscript of the De fide Orthodoxa, capp. 22, 24, 25

Aristotle, Meteor. II 361a30

Agathemerus, 2,6

The Excerpta have a strong textual connection with the Collection Philosophique. Hand I, which copied the Palatinus of the Greek geographers, wrote a scholion citing Ptolemy’s Geography. Moreover, the most important witnesses of Aristotle’s Meteorologica (Vindob. Phil. Gr. 100) and of Ptolemy’s Syntaxis Mathematica (Vat. Gr. 1594) have the same origin.

Introducing the Synodalis Graecus 413 The oldest witness of the Excerpta J is the Sinod. Gr. 413, a manuscript of various works by John of Damascus, including De Fide Orthodoxa. It is dated to the first half of the IX century, therefore being contemporary with the Collection Philosophique. Its text shows an already advanced stage of contamination, with the excerpts completely merged with the De Fide. Therefore, the interpolation must have occurred before the IX century, most probably after John’s death in Syria, in 750. Probably these rare texts were attested in the East before the Collection Philosophique was assembled in Byzantium. This might provide new evidence for the origin of the geographical texts of the Collection. The combination of Digital Humanities and Classical Philology will provide the methodological framework to verify this hypothesis. Agathemerus’ Pelagios.

Sketch

annotated

in

Lond. Mus. Old Royal 16 C. IV pt. II, an apograph by Isaac Vossius owned by Casaubon

Multitextual visualization

Geographical annotation Integrated into the Pelagios Project, it provides a visualization of the image of the world according to Agathemerus, helping to inspect his relation with his sources.

An example: RTI technology applied to an Illuminated manuscript. Credits: CHI Cultural Heritage Imaging 2002-2015

Ptolemy

Agathemerus

The importance of the textual tradition will be visualized in the transcription and reproduction of the most important manuscript sources, direct and indirect, from the Byzantine to the Modern Age.

Lond. Add. 19391, XIV century. Part of the dismembered Vatoped. 655, the main witness of Agathemerus

Codicological analysis Together with palaeographic analysis, it can confirm the estimated date and the origin of the manuscript, contributing to reconstruct the circulation of John’s work in the IX century and perhaps to hypothesize the area where the interpolation happened originally.

Representing fragments in the textual tradition Johannes

The Sinod. Gr. 413, f. 8v (microfilm reproduction)

Agathemerus’ work contains unique fragments from other ancient geographers, and is also attested as fragments in a surprising variety of sources. The digital interface offers a unique opportunity to represent these fragments in their context, to analyse their connection with the text and their contribution to the textual tradition.

Textual re-use detection Automatic textual re-use detection has been performed experimenting the TRACER tool developed in the Göttingen Centre of Digital Humanities. It has shown that the same excerpt of Ptolemy has been used by another Syriac author, in the VII century.

A good example: Istros the Callimachean in the Leipzig Open Fragmentary Texts Series

Preliminary results: the Syriac trace In the VIII century, a commentator apparently used some rare geographical texts to annotate John’s De Fide Orthodoxa. Those texts may have then contaminated John’s work, giving origin to the Excerpta J. An experimental test on automatic re-use detection has shown the presence of Ptolemy’s excerpt in Jacob of Edessa, a Syriac author of the VII century. Therefore, there may have been a circulation of geographical texts in the Syriac area before the IX century; as those works were considerably rare, it is possible that they formed a part of the original corpus, which was afterwads collected and assembled in the Collection Philosophique. Should the Syriac trace be enforced, it would provide strong evidence to a possible Eastern origin of a part of the Collection, the corpus of the Minor Greek Geographers in particular. Chiara Palladino, PhD Università degli Studi di Bari