Page 316 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Appendix iv

THE TEXT OF SENARIUS’ EPITAPH

The textwas firstpublished by Pierre Pithou in 1590 among anonymous epitaphs,
1
despite Senarius’ name in line 2. Pithou edited Latin poems from manuscripts,
inscriptions, and earlier printed editions, but gave no indication of provenances
for individual poems. After his edition was typeset, but before publication, Pithou
¸
sought advice on this and other poems from the philologist Francois Juret, editor
inter alia of Symmachus’ Epistolae; unfortunately, Juret’s extant reply sheds no light on
2
the source of the epitaph. It is thus unclear whether, in the sixteenth century, the
epitaph was preserved in the original inscription or in a syllogue. The latter, however,
appears more likely; certainly, the epitaph does not appear in early collections of Latin
3
inscriptions. It is therefore not possible to determine the locality of Senarius’ tomb. 4
All later editions and citations appear to be derived from Pithou’s. 5
1
Pithou (ed.), Epigrammata et poematia vetera, 108, 463.
2 Collection Dupuy,vol. 700, folio 128, Paris, Biblioth` eque Nationale; cf. Pithou, 463 n. to p. 108.
Burman (below, n. 5) wrongly cites Juret’s edition of Symmachus, Epistolarum ad diversos libri decem
(Paris, 1580), i, 17, 20 (recte 11–12) as an earlier edition and commentary on the epitaph. On
Pithou: Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language,Law,and History
in the French Renaissance (New York, 1970), 241–70.
3 E.g. Janus Gruterus, Inscriptiones antiquae totius orbis Romani (Heidelberg, 1602), rev. Joannes
Georgius Graevius (Amsterdam, 1707); Paulus Aringhus, Roma subterranea novissima (Rome, 1651).
Mommsen did not include the epitaph in CIL, presumably because itcannotbe localised.
Pithou’s suggested emendations (Epigrammata, 463; ‘Epitaph’, lines 4, 13) suggestpalaeographic
rather than epigraphic corrections.
4 The epitaph of Liberius, the praetorian prefect of Italy and Gaul and patricius with whom Sena-
rius was associated, was preserved at Ravenna (CIL xi, 382); epithets of other palatine officials
under Theoderic are preserved atRavenna (CIL xi, 268, 310, 317)orRome(CIL vi, 1794 and
31933, 32003) (Otto Fiebiger and Ludwig Schmidt (eds.), Inschriftensammlung zur Geschichte der
Ostgermannen [vol. i] (Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-historische Klasse,
Denkschriften 60.3; Vienna, 1917), nos. 182–4, 187–8). Contra Sch¨ afer, Der westr¨ omische Senat,
190, Ennodius’ claim of a family tie with Senarius need not make the latter of north Italian origin.
5
I.e. Friedrich Lindenbrog, Codex legum antiquarum (Frankfurt, 1613), 1379 (citing lines 15–16);
Avitus of Vienne, Opera, ed. J. Sirmond (Paris, 1643), repr. in Sirmond’s Opera varia ii (Paris,
1696), 76–8 (omitting lines 5–6) = PL 59; Thomas Reinesius, Syntagma inscriptionum antiquarum
comprimis Romae veteris (Leipzig and Frankfurt, 1682), xx, 182 940 (lines 1–5 only, incorporating
Juretus’ unnecessary reading legum for regum); Pieter Burman the Younger, Anthologia veterum
latinorum epigrammatum et poematum i (Amsterdam, 1759), ii, 133 318–19, 734; ii (Amsterdam,
1773), 723–34; rev. Henric Meyer, i (Leipzig, 1835), 256, notes 210; Pasquale Amati, Collectio
Pisaurensis omnium poematum carminum fragmentorum latinorum, iv (Pisauri, 1746), 449; Cass., Variae,
‘Index personarum’, 499; Otto Fiebiger (ed.), Inschriftensammlung zur Geschichte der Ostgermannen
[vol. iii] (Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften
72.2; Vienna, 1944), 10 no. 8.
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