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  • The Date, Purpose, and Historical Context of the Original Greek and the Latin Translation of the So-called Excerpta Latina Barbari
  • R. W. Burgess

The Excerpta Latina barbari, also known as the Barbarus Scaligeri, is a peculiar and unfairly neglected text that has been compared to a Russian nested doll.1 It survives alone in Parisinus latinus 4884 of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, a manuscript of sixty-three folios, usually dated to the late seventh or early eighth century. The nature of the text demonstrates that it was translated from a Greek exemplar, usually dated to the second half of the first quarter of the fifth century, which was lavishly illustrated. Although spaces were left for illustrations in the Latin translation, no attempt was ever made to undertake them. Little is generally known about the origins or purpose of this Latin translation or the Greek original, in spite of a magisterial study by Carl Frick in 1892, and recent renewed interest in this text makes it imperative that it be subjected to a careful analysis in the light of modern paleographical research and a better understanding of the sources of its Greek exemplar.2 [End Page 1]

First, I must begin with a description of the text itself. It was given its strange names — “The Barbarian’s Latin Excerpts” and “Scaliger’s Barbarian” — because in the editio princeps in J. J. Scaliger’s Thesaurus temporum of 1606 it was introduced with the heading “Excerpta utilissima ex priore libro chronologico Eusebii, et Africano, et aliis Latine conuersa ab homine barbaro, inepto, Hellenismi et Latinitatis imperitissimo” (“Quite useful excerpts from the first chronological volume of Eusebius, Africanus, and others, translated into Latin by a senseless ignoramus who had no skill at Greek or Latin”).3 But it is not a set of excerpts, as we shall see, and the derogatory barbarus is a typical Scaligerian insult, not a proper title. Nor is it a “world chronicle,” as Garstad has recently called it. It is a complete text (except for the loss of the ending) and a compilation of the type that has elsewhere been defined as a chronograph, not [End Page 2] a chronicle,4 and so I shall refer to it as the Chronographia Scaligeriana (Chron. Scal.), in honor of Scaliger’s role in both publishing the first edition and recognizing its importance.

That this is a translation of a Greek text is made obvious by many factors. First of all, there are the frequent mentions of Alexandria, Alexandrian bishops and praefecti augustales (governors of Egypt), and of events and buildings in Alexandria towards the end of the consularia text in section three, as well as the use of Egyptian day and month dates (see p. 15 below) and the Egyptian Diocletianic Era (see n. 24 below), and the constant reference to Alexander the Great as “conditor” (i.e., of Alexandria; 244.16; 268.15, 16, 24; 270.10, 12–13, 15; 276.1; 310.3; 314.28; 316.15, 20; 320.29). Furthermore, the list of Ptolemaic kings in the original source was replaced by a list of kings of Egypt from the second century AD Alexandrian Canon of Claudius Ptolemaeus (“Ptolemy’s Canon,” 276.4–280.4 passim, 320.7–18). No other independent late Roman or Byzantine text exhibits this list (see n. 22 below). So strong is the Alexandrian character of this work that the first published reference to it, in 1579, calls it a “chronica Alexandrina.”5 Second, almost all the works that its content parallels are Greek, particularly the Συναγωγὴ χρόνων καὶ ἐτῶν ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου ἕως τῆς ἐνεστώσης ἡμέρας (“A Collection of Chronologies from the Creation of the World to the Present Day”), better known through the Latin translations that are collectively called the Liber generationis; the Chronicon Paschale; the breviarium history of Malalas; the Chronographiae of Julius Africanus; the Chronographia of Eusebius of Caesarea; the Anonymus Matritensis; and the apocryphal Proteuangelium Iacobi (for all of which, see appendix one). Of the only two Latin works that some of its content parallels, one is itself based on Greek sources, the Breviarium Vindobonense (on which see n. 111 below). Third, the text cites only Greek, not Latin, authors as sources: Euripides, [End Page 3...

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