Aesticampinus' edition of the Tabula attributed to Cebes

rords of Plato written after Cebes’ death and on the ree of = m nor in the dialogue, are generally agreed that the work could char of Socrates’ pupil. This Tabler is an allegory of human life vin AESTICAMPIANUS' EDITION OF THE TABULA ATTRIBUTED TO CEBES By Cora E. Lutz CCORDING to one of his biographers, the chief claim of the German humanist Johannes Rhagius Aestic to fame ampianus is the fact that he was the first to introduce the Tabula (Tablet or Table) attributed to Cebes to the lands north of the Alps, The was Easter of che year 1501, and the place, Basel, where pianus expounded the text to a group of friends.” time Aesticam- In 1507 his edition of the work, printed by N. Lamperter and B. Murrer , was published in Frankfurt, and in 1512 it was reprinted in Leipzi g by Jacobus Thanner Herbipolitanus. Who was this Cebes, the supposed author of a such a prominent role in the career of a distin scholar? The historical Cebes was a citizen of work which played guished teacher and Thebes and a disciple, first of Philolaus the Pythagorean, and then of Socrat in the Crito (45B), that Cebes was one of a close who offered money to help effect Socrates’ escape es. Plato records, group of friends from prison. Again, in the Phaedo (59D-63B and passim), Plato represents Cebes discussing with Socrates the meaning of death on that last day of Socrates’ life. Legend has it that Cebes had purchased Phaed o, who had been a slave, and had him instructed in philosophy. Little else is known of Cebes, but Diogenes Laertius, in his Lives of the Philosophers (II, 125), credits him with the authorship of three dialogues, of which no trace has been found; one of these was entitled Ilivaè. the Tablet. By some curious error of identity, a short philo sophical work written in the first century A.D. became known as the Tivas* and was long considered to be the work of Cebes the Theba n. Modern critics, basing their conclusions upon the internal evide nce of quotations from works 1. Cf. H. Grimm, Neue Deutsche Biogra phie (Berlin, 1953), I, 92-93. 2. Aesticampianus mentions this in an introductory letter to his text. 3. Cf. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae. 11, 17. 4. It is first mentioned by Lucian in the second century (cf, De merce de conductis, 42, and Rhetorum praeceptor, 6). Tertullian also mentions the dialog ue, which he says a relative of his had paraphrased in Latin verse ‘cf. De praescriprione haereticorum, Ch. xxxix) , : tation | IC represen Ak to the early symbolic form of a dialogue.2 Akin an to the longer as. . af Py goras ‘ay; of life- byby the Y off Pytha two diverse ways report en W wi h Xen ophon racles, les, , whic Hier 201 e of Herac nown’ as thee Choic apologue know of proto Pilgrim n dhe work of Prodicus the Sophist,” it is a kindo eu of Progress. The Tablet reccives its title from the focal point in tne sete cà i the dialogue. As some visitors are looking xi che war: e) ir me et up to a ta are depicred numerous strange figures and devices An pinness . 1 attracted is on temple of Cronos, their atten tion ‘hi 3he© saysays Wa Ferme he i the meani| ng of the picture which to explain thempiethat, tellst er a philosopher from a f oreign land long ago. taHege then she : in the picture, the circular e nclosure with smaller circle ng E re seeki orn, n, are sents Life, ro which a great crowd of people, the unbor of u entrance. At the gate an old man, the Genius or guiding spiritlen er individual, offers a scroll wich advice to those who are on Despite this help, the pilgrim setting out on the path of li | oder dure great temptations and grave dangers as he passes nise a n figures as Deceit, Lust, Avarice, an d such awesome perso Sorrow, and Despair. Finally,; wiwith the aid of Repentance, er the way farer, though still beset by False nn TrueDocar es a he reachi | h. Eventually it ed by Courage and Strength. assist = no Kn the radiant meadow of the Blest, where he is welcomed Dy Tr e rat in se and Happiness, attended by all the ene va ir ments and crowned with a nevrer-fading garland of flower False is £ by jew the others, w‘ho are being held ' ed to view rmitt understands that those lives an and other mistaken values, and hedialo gue ıs Socratic in ar N never find happiness. The whole attempts to show that only by development of his mind by know a sal x : r of the truth and by his attainment of real virtues can man e + achı happiness. 6. Cf. Memorabilia, II, 1, 21-34. It is retold by Cicero, De officits, I, 32. S, C. Chew, i rs the repre in his The Pilgrimage of Life (New Haven, 1962), 174-181, conside tions of this tale. senta-

LIBRARY GAZETTE Somehow this short Greek dialogue survived the hazards and vicissitudes to which books were subjected during the Middle Ages. Of the thirteen manuscripts that have preserved the text, only two were written before the fifteenth century: one from the eleventh century is now in Paris (MS. Parisinus graec. 858), and the other, from the fourteenth century, is in Rome (MS. Vaticanus 112). With the revival interest in the Classics in Italy when the Florentine Academy was of endeavoring to recover and study the philosophical texts associated with Plato and his followers, the ITivaë received the attention of scholars. Translated into Latin by Ludovicus Odaxius and edited by the illustrious scholar Philip Beroaldus, it was printed in Bologna in 1497. Strangely enough, the first edition of the Greek text, publishe d by Z. Calliergus in Rome, seems to have been later: although undated, it is considered to have been printed in 1498. Aldus printed an edition of the Greek text with a Latin translation in Venice in 1 512, but there is reason to believe that this was nor the first Aldine printing : the Beinecke Library has a small manuscript (MS. 59) recordin g the books printed by the Aldine press before 1534 and listing as the very first item a volume containing Lascaris’ Erotemata, the Tabula of Cebes. the Carmina of Pythagoras, and the Carmina of Phocylides. It would therefore be reasonable to conjecture that the book was first printed by Aldus sometime between 1495 and 1502. During this period of high interest by the Italian humanists in the ancient Greek philosophical works. the German scholar Aesticampianus was studying in Bologna. Having become acquainted with the Latin translation of the Ilivag, undoubtedly through Beroald us, he introduced it to his circle of learned friends in Basel in 1 501.5 Aesticampianus was one of the first of a class of profess ors whom one might call international scholars. Born Johann es Rack (Rak), in Sommerfeldt in Lower Lusitania in 1460, he early adopted the name 7. Apparently the Yale manuscript is unique. Its list does not correspond to the one given by A. A. Renouard in his Annales des Aldes (Paris, 1825), I, 1. That begins with a volume dated 1495 which opens with the work of Lascaris, but ir does not contain the Tabula. 8. The boast that Aesticampianus was the first to introduce the Tabula to the lands north of the Alps is true only in the very strictest sense, for a Latin translation was printed in Paris by Guy Marchant in 1498. The Beinecke Library has a copy of this book, which contains Athenagoras’ De resurrectione translation. along with the Tabula in Odaxius' 113 A, by which he is known to scholarship, Johannes Rhagiusing crab, ctical form mean lanus Rak is said to be an old diale nrennet hence che Latinized Greek ve pue a Lace x pianus was the Latin for his birt place. | othin ln iculation at the University of Cracow in 1491, gine o pa Celtes. With che pari ci air Conowent to Vienna in eamn©= ae ne il hi eminent scholar, he di E de ua became the pupil of Philip Beroaldus in per laureate became a friend of Jacob Questenberg and was crowne daNim ee by Pope Alexander VI. His studies and his reaching a | 1. thence to Augsburg, Strassburg, and the University porli rieu to serve as professor ci rhero In 1506 he was calledfurt. dirne From 1597 t the University of Frank = g nti and Plautus at Leipzig. There one of his students wasrs the utten, who later recalled in his Lette of O scure from ich v driven ad Celtes before him.toue:aes nan seliketheConr ik ac os Re the University becau ing and the fresh approach of the humant nn au il | ‘anderines took him to Freiburg, where he seems 1 to re “nn: eher 2° as poet laureate by ,thewherking, e he mo : uiE ne to be named doctor of theology, to Paris in 1513 to Cologne. Finally he spent the years from de !7 u of the death in 1520 at Wittenberg as me oPink =des, Aesticampianus was one of the mos eae | anists. He was also a friend to the leaders of the eform t pa de hon and Luther. His extan ce MelanchtCarm ina, Epigratemata, Mo ri aere di; of four original works: and Hymnus in landem Barbarac. His need for texts in Ñ È him to edit a number of works: the De grammatica ana o gie hie the me orica of Martianus Capella; the Seprem epistolae of ae 5 o Ad Vespasianum epistola of Pliny; the Germania Libellus de vita Christiana of Saint Augustine; = e nn Cicero; the Grammatica of Petrus Helias; the Epastolae of ; Li and the Tabula attributed to Cebes. in his Biblioteca Latina Mediae| ed by J. A. Fabricius _ 9. This information is suppli o | , 1736), V/VI, 198. — mburg 1 anu: difficulties and his eventual ex “ = arts > mine the story of Aestied.campi F. G. Stokes (London, 1925), PP. 47-5 pulsion icf Epistolae obscurorum virorum,

LIBRARY GAZELir By some curious turn of circumstances, none of the larger works of Aesticampianus engendered so much enthusiasm as the little dialogue, 4 , the Tabula attributed to Cebes. His edition stimulated such a vogue for , Cabula Crattis phil ofophi fo 2 crafici.cu Ioannis Actticampiani Epiftola, Li. “a ts rn SEs niin the work that numerous other versions and translations into the verins. pis naculars appeared shortly thereaïter. Often it was printed with the Manual of Epictetus, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Characters of Theophrastus, or similar works. Of the many editions before the year 1600,!? the British Museum now has thirty-six. A translation into English, by Sir Francis Poyntz, was published about 1530; an Italian translation, by F. A. Coccio, appeared also in 1530; a Spanish one, by "El doctor poblacion,” in 1532; a French one, by G. Corrozet, in 1543, and a German one, by H. Sachs, in 1570. In 1522 Hans Holbein the Younger made a large woodcut title border illustrating the Tablet for the title page of Froben's edition of Erasmus’ New Testament. He used the same cut again for the Geography of Strabo.*? It is to the good fortune of Yale that the Beinecke Library owns one of the very few known copies of Aesticampianus’ edition of the Tabula printed in 1512. It is a slim little book of only rwenty-seven numbered pages, with a full-page woodcut of the Tabula on the title page (see illustration), apparently copied, like the text, from the earlier edition of 1507. This woodcut is less ornate, but in many respects more charming than the later title-page border of Holbein. The text begins with a Latin letter from Aesticampianus, "rhetor et poeta laureatus,” to a beloved pupil, Christopher Ziegler. After complimentary remarks on the noble family of the young man. he suggests that in the Tabula Christopher will find a mirror of all human life and lessons to be learned from it. Aesticampianus then gives a Latin poem in the hendecasyllabic meter, which he says he wrote six years earlier (1... in 1501) in Basel when he was studying the dialogue with his friends. There follows the “Argumentum,” a summary of the plot, again addressed to young Ziegler. Still another poem, an “Epigramma,” is also directed to the young man. In it Aesticampianus gives a Christian 11. For the most nearly complete listing of the editions see $. F. W. Hoffmann, Bibliographisches Lexicon der Griechen (Amsterdam. 196:3—a reprint of the Leipzig 1838-45 edition—I, 438-48. Among these, the first critical edition by H. Wolf, printed in Basel in 1560 and reprinted many times, is one of the most noteworthy, and the first to raise the question of the authorship of the dialogue. 12. This is reproduced as fig. 50, p. 50, in H. Knack:uss, Hulbein, tr. by C. Dodgson (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1899).

A man who, as the epitaph states, taught rhetoric, philosophy, and the masterpieces of the poets for twenty-three years in the far-spread territory watered by the Danube, the Rhine, the Oder, the Elbe, and the point of view to the dialogue when he says that he has observed in life that nothing is lasting save virtue, work, and the Grace of Christ, part of which has been indicated in the Tabula and part in our free will. The Seine must have passed on his enthusiasm for the Tabula to an uncounted number of students and their students. Would it be sheer fantasy to imagine that this little book might be considered the small pebble that set in motion ever-widening circles of interest in the work? text of the Latin translation of the Tabula then follows,'? and the book ends with an elegiac poem, an exhortation to virtue, by the brilliant young student, Ulric von Hutten. The sixteenth century certainly claimed the Tabula for its own. Besides the many editions, there was published in Leyden in 1551 another Latin translation by Justus Velsius, who included a 440-page commentary on this “treasury of all moral philosophy.” Interest in the work continued to be lively for another century, testified to by the multiplicity of editions’? and translations into more and more languages. One of the most unusual editions is one prepared by J. Elichmann and published after his death by C. Salmasius in Leyden in 1640: it presents three parallel texts—an Arabic paraphrase, probably of the ninth century; the Latin translation; and the Greek original.'? Milton, in his famous letter On Education, written in 1644, takes the occasion to recommend the study of the Tablet as a delightful book to win over the young to a “love of vertue and true labour.”** The universal love for allegory was doubtless an important factor in the phenomenal popularity of the dialogue, particularly in northern Europe, for two hundred years after it was first printed. But there is an additional clue, perhaps, in Aesticampianus’ epitaph. When one bears in mind that Aesticampianus was a dedicated teacher who loved what he was teaching and who had deep concern and affection for his pupils, then the lines have added significance: Rhetoricen, Sophiam vatum monumenta professus, Annis viginti plusve minusve tribus. gs TU Danubius, Rhenus testatur, et Odera, et Albis, Spiraque, cum docta Sequana Gallus aqua.** 13. This is not the Odaxius translation and there is no indication of the translator. It was used again in an edition published in Antwerp in 1547. 14. The text attracted some of the greatest philologists, e.g., Gronovius, who published an edition in 1689 in Amsterdam. 15. Yale has a copy of this unusual text, Since the Greek text is incomplete, many of the Latin translators have used the Arabic to supply the ending. 16. Cf. “Letter to Master Samuel Hartlib on Education” in The Works of John Milton, Columbia edition (New York, 1931), XIV, 281. 17. Cf. Fabricius, op. cst., p. 198. A of the wa bobe> tea+ veie‘n MET abe ei q Ue \estieampiet ot LME ne TAN pi , copy oi . Se 5 sury at ti 1 añ i i 9 Lr? ANS vece Len le 104101 \ = ¡nroguciió A disc SS Libr me riper * cially NI sa Tone cepetis a ‘ ni x! sian” pe ADS: pese ne vy (jarotte brani : ine Tab p Cehes 4 «su cary un of rhe nds N ist «pes + 151 any see of Yale union yale Û si spe pp versità” Lala LE