Two Fragments of the Carmen Saliare and the Manuscript Tradition
of Varro’s De Lingua Latina
Giulia Sarullo – Daniel J. Taylor
1. Introduction [GS]
The prayers sung by the Salian priests while per-
forming their rituals, known collectively as the Car­
men Saliare, are the most ancient testimony of Latin
archaic poetry, tracing their origin back to the reign
of Numa Pompilius, the legendary second king of
Rome and reputedly of Sabine origin. Only a few
fragments of indirect tradition remain of the ancient
hymn of the Salii. The three longest passages are
quoted by Varro in the De Lingua Latina (LL VII.26
& 27) and Terentius Scaurus’ De Orthographia1,
whereas some sporadic quotations are again in Varro,
Festus and his epitomist Paulus Diaconus, and Ma-
crobius. The intricate text of the Carmen Saliare has
been tackled by both philologists and linguists, but
only a few words have been recognized; the meaning
of the passages as a whole still remains obscure. All
studies have been conducted on the vulgata or on the
scientific editions of the text, and no editor of the
fragments has ever checked what the manuscripts
actually report; thus their interpretations are based
on someone else’s reading or collation. From the me-
thodological point of view, then, it seems extremely
important to establish the actual reading of the text
before attempting to interpret the verses.
Because of the extremely peculiar nature of the
text, the constitutio textus of the Carmen Saliare
requires the removing of three layers of mistakes,
corrections, and emendations. First, the gramma­
rians who cited its verses as an exemplum manifestly
did not fully understand the meaning of the words
of the Carmen, which dates back to approximately
700 years2 before their time, and they undoubtedly
recorded some forms inaccurately. Second, the me-
1
 ) H. Keil, ed., Grammatici Latini. I-VII and supplement.
Leipzig 1855-80 (Repr. Hildesheim 1961 and 1981) VII.28
= F. Biddau, Q. Terentii Scauri de Orthographia: Introduzio-
ne, testo critico, traduzione e commento. Hildesheim 2008
VIII.6.4, 51.
2
 ) According to Varro (LL VII.3), Quorum si Pompili reg­
num fons in carminibus Saliorum neque ea ab superioribus
accepta, tamen habent DCC annos; the reign of Numa dates
traditionally to the end of the 8th and the beginning of the 7th
(715-673) century BC whereas Varro lived in the 1st century
BC.
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dieval copyists who transcribed the works of the
grammarians were facing a not very perspicuous
text and undoubtedly further modified it; so the few
words transmitted to us surely are not the original
text of the Carmen. Last, the editors of the 19th and
20th centuries, in an attempt to give a more Latinate
form to the text, made emendations and corrections
that, in some cases, crystallized to the point of beco-
ming the vulgata of the Salian text. Thus it is highly
improbable that anyone can reconstruct the original
texts of the hymn, but it is perhaps possible to remo-
ve at least the most recent layer of “encrustations” to
get nearer to the ancient text. We will focus here on
the two passages quoted by Varro in his De Lingua
Latina (VII.26 and 27).
2. Varro and his De Lingua Latina [DJT]
Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) is ancient
Rome’s most prolific scholar and most authoritative
language scientist. His corpus amounted to at least
74 separate works of 620 books or modern chapters3.
But unfortunately only 3% of his voluminous corpus
has survived – 600 or so fragments of his Menippean
Satires, the three books of his De Re Rustica, six of
the original 25 books of the De Lingua Latina, which
is his magnum opus, and fragments of several of his
other works. The three major surviving texts all te-
stify to his well-researched antiquarianism and his
deep-seated, abiding love of his native language – its
vocabulary, etymologies, and grammatical structu-
res. He is, as Quintilian famously proclaimed, the vir
Romanorum eruditissimus and the vir peritissimus
linguae Latinae (Inst. X.1.95).
De Lingua Latina V - VII concentrate on the prac-
tice of etymology, and VIII - X on the theory of mor-
phology. Book VII is especially interesting and im-
portant, because it studies poetic diction and there-
fore includes numerous quotations of Latin poetry,
many of which are unknown from other sources. Var-
ro quotes our two fragments of the Carmen Saliare
in a passage of considerable interest to linguists as
3
 ) F. Ritschl, Die Schriftstellerei des M. Terentius Varro.
Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 6 (1848) 481-560; see
especially 551-560.
well as literary critics. The passage is important, for
in it Varro articulates for the first time in the histo-
ry of linguistics the phonetic process of rhotacism,
that is, the well-known change of intervocalic -s- to
-r-, though he does not, it must be noted, restrict the
sound change to only the intervocalic position. Thus
he exemplifies the sound change by Casmena > Car­
mena as well as by plusima > plurima in the course
of his discussion. Our two fragments of the Carmen
Saliare provide a fascinating glimpse into the details
of reading and editing a text of truly archaic Latin
as well as a microscopic view of the tangled and so
far unresolved Renaissance manuscript tradition of
Varro’s De Lingua Latina.
Laurentianus Pluteus 51.10, known as F, is the
codex unicus of Varro’s De Lingua Latina to have
survived the middle ages, and the often repeated
story of its discovery and subsequent removal from
Monte Cassino by Boccaccio4 is the stuff of which
novels are made. It is in a Beneventan script easily
dated to the mid5 or late6 11th century and features
six major lacunae, several noteworthy transpositions,
and seemingly innumerable errors due in large part
to features unique to Beneventan, e.g., the letters t
and a, which are often virtually indistinguishable.
These features are found in all the known codices
descripti, which now number around 75, though
some are only partial copies. No complete stemma
has ever been attempted and probably never will be,
since contamination from other manuscripts and/or
printed editions seems to become fairly widespread
as time progresses, but we are confident that we can
make a good start on that endeavor.
The earliest apographon of F is Vallicellianus D.
49.3, which was unfortunately misdated to the late
15th century and has therefore never figured even tan-
gentially in any account of the Renaissance manu-
script tradition of the De Lingua Latina until Taylor7.
In 1987, Vall, as we have come to call it, was proven
by van Rooij8 to be the exemplar from which Esco­
rial III g 20 was copied in 1412 in Florence, thereby
making it the earliest known codex descriptus, and
4
 ) For references, see D. J. Taylor, Varro De Lingua Latina
X: A New Critical Text and English Translation with Prole-
gomena and Commentary (Studies in the History of the Lan­
guage Sciences 85). Amsterdam 1996, 39-40.
5
 ) Taylor, De Lingua Latina X 35-36.
6
 ) F. Newton, The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cas-
sino, 1058 - 1105. Cambridge 1999, 346.
7
 ) Taylor, Lingua Latina X.
8
 ) M. van Rooij, Das alteste Apographon des Archetypus
von Varros ‘De Lingua Latina’ (Codex Vallicellianus D.49.3).
Codices Manuscripti 13.3 (1987) 77-78.
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subsequently de la Mare9 identified the prehumani-
stic script of Vall as that of none other than Coluccio
Salutati and dated the manuscript to the 1390s. Van
Roiij’s and de la Mare’s accomplishments have been
described as “together the most significant discovery
to date regarding the codices descripti and the many
other manuscripts copied from them”10. Salutati’s ad-
vanced age and failing eyesight, of which he often
complained, result in some unique errors in his text
of the two fragments of the Carmen Saliare; he also,
we think, consciously emends his text on occasion.
The next earliest dated apographon is Laurentia­
nus 51.5, known as f, and it is in the elegant and rea-
dily legible humanistic script of Antonio di Mario.
Antonio executed f in 1427, which for him was an ex-
ceedingly busy year since he copied at least six other
manuscripts during it, and thus it is no wonder that
f testifies to considerable carelessness on its scribe’s
part. That carelessness is not manifest in either of the
Salian fragments, but his propensity to emend – often
erroneously – the texts that he is copying is definitely
on display in f.
Obviously F but also Vall and f are the triple fount
of the entire Renaissance manuscript tradition of
Varro’s De Lingua Latina and are therefore the ma-
jor direct or indirect sources for the later codices de­
scripti and the numerous prescientific editions, most
notably the editio princeps of Pomponio Leto. They
naturally also figure prominently in our study of
the two fragments of the Carmen Saliare that Varro
transmits in De Lingua Latina VII.26 & 27, and it is
to those texts in their digital form that we now turn.
3. New readings of F, Vall, and f [GS]
In preparing their editions of classical works, the
scientific editors had to rely for the most part on rea-
dings established by others. Nowadays, the matter
is quite simplified, thanks to the new technologies.
Many of the manuscripts have been digitalized, and
scans of their folios can be obtained via e-mail. It is
true, on the one hand, that a scan cannot substitu-
te for the actual autopsy of a manuscript, but on the
other hand, the possibility of zooming in on an image
is extremely helpful in identifying the strokes on the
parchment or paper. Our research is based on the vir-
9
 ) A. de la Mare, A Paleographer’s Odyssey. In: Sight and
Insight: Essays on Art and Culture in Honor of E. H. Gom-
brich at 85, ed. by John Onions. London 1994, 88-107, 107,
n. 35.
10
 ) Taylor, Lingua Latina X 38.
tual autopsy of thirteen manuscripts11 of Varro’s De
Lingua Latina and is limited to the passages of the
Carmen Saliare. Since the manuscript tradition goes
back to the 11th century codex unicus, F, we shall con-
centrate on it and its earliest apographa, Vall and f.
3.1 First Fragment [GS]
Varro quotes two passages of the Carmen Saliare
in LL VII, a longer one in paragraph 26 (see Appen-
dix I) and a shorter one in paragraph 27 (see Appen-
dix II). The first one occupies a little more than a line
in F that, luckily, has not been damaged. This passa-
ge is quite challenging and has been variously read
by the editors, who proposed quite different readings
over the centuries. Actually, no editor of the De Lin­
gua Latina had ever autopsied F before Schoell did
at the beginning of the 20th century for the Teubneria-
na12. Thanks to his autopsy of F, he was able to cor-
rect some of the mistaken readings published by his
predecessors. In the passages of the Carmen Saliare,
he correctly recognized the sequence pom melios
(pommelios in Corssen13, pom elios in A. Spengel14,
and pos/post in others) and reported the punctuation
present in F. Our new virtual autopsy of F has re-
vealed that his version can be further improved.
The first improvement concerns the initial se-
quence, variously read by the editors but since A.
Spengel interpreted as Cozeulodorieso. A more ac-
curate look at the locus in the manuscript, though, re-
veals that there is a space between Cozeulodori, with
the typical Beneventan ligature ri, and eso. Actually
the space is quite small, but it agrees with the spaces
between the other words in the same line that are
all very close to each other. Moreover, the other oc-
currences of the ligature ri show that when it occurs
in the middle of a word it is attached to the following
letter, whereas when it is found at the end of a word,
11
 ) Florentinus Laurentianus Pluteus 51.10 (F), Vallicel­
lianus D.49.3 (Vall), Florentinus Laurentianus Pluteus 51.5
(f), Escurialensis III g 20, Parisinus a and Parisinus b, Hav­
niensis (H), Gothanus (G), Guelferbitanus (M), Vindobo­
nensis (V), Basiliensis (p), Ambrosianus (Ambr), Mutinensis
(Mod). This small selection of the manuscripts of the LL
includes the codices most frequently cited by the scientific
editors. In Appendix III, a table of comparison will show the
different readings of the fragments of the Carmen Saliare
­attested in these manuscripts and in the editio princeps.
12
 ) G. Goetz – F. Schoell, eds., M. Terenti Varronis De Lin-
gua Latina Quae Supersunt. Leipzig 1910.
13
 ) W. P. Corssen, Origines Poesis Romanae. Berlin 1846
56.
14
 ) A. Spengel, ed., M. Terenti Varronis De Lingua Latina
Libri. Berlin 1885, 128.
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it is followed by a space, as witnesses the sequence
pro quo in saliari versu scriptum est in paragraph 27.
The space before eso had been seen by Antonio
di Mario and other scribes15. Antonio copies the
first sequence as Co/zeu lodori eso. in f. The space
is also present in the editio princeps of Pomponio
Leto, who, as in f, separates the first sequence into
three parts, obtaining a list of words, Orculo dolosi
eso, to which he adds an additional explanation of
the words as examples of rhotacism, i.e., pro osculo
dolori ero. Leto’s reading of the first word is com-
pletely different from that of the manuscripts, for he
doesn’t put an initial capital C and reads z as r and e
as c. He probably recognized the form eso as a pos-
sible antecedent of classical ero, but in order to make
sense of the middle section of the sequence, dori, he
supposed that the scribe committed an error of haplo-
graphy by omitting a second instance of lo (Leto did
not know that, in theory at least, it is the first instance
of two identical syllables that is usually omitted.).
This gives him lodori, which through his metathesis
of the syllables lo and do, results in dolori. He then
changes the r to an s to obtain an ancient form dolosi,
which he can then convert to dolori in Varro’s La-
tin. Notably, in his elaboration of the passage he not
only changes intervocalic s to r (to fit into a passage
explaining rhotacism), but he also changes orculo
to osculo, thus creating an example of a passage r
> s not present in either F or, presumably, in Varro.
Leto’s idiosyncratic reading of the passage is at the
base of many of the successive interpretations of the
Carmen Saliare. Although our new reading confirms
the separation of the form eso, which could in all pro-
bability be a form of the verb esse, the rest of Leto’s
conjectural additions are editorial fantasy, which in
view of his flamboyant personality and intellectual
style is not all that surprising.
A second interesting development in the established
readings that we observed through virtual autopsy is
the definite presence of an l at the beginning of the
sequence lancusianes in F. The recentiores vacillate
somewhat randomly between an l and an i, however,
for f’s initial symbol, just like F’s, can easily be read
as either an l or an i; only Vall offers an unambiguous
symbol, namely, an i. The source of the original con-
fusion between an l and an i-longa in Beneventan is
readily understandable since the only difference is the
small upstroke on the foot of the l. In any case all
15
 ) In addition to f and its descendant H, V and p, both
copied from F, and b, perhaps copied from F (see note 21
below), all read a space before eso.
the scientific editors print an i, thereby implying that
the scribe of F erroneously copied an l instead of an
­i-longa. That is entirely possible, perhaps even likely,
especially if he was copying from a Beneventan ex-
emplar as several scholars suppose16.
Moreover, only a few editors present the sequence
as one word, whereas in many cases17, perhaps be-
cause of the influence of Leto’s Iā cusianes, a space
separates the first part ian/iam from cusianes. The
macron above the vowel is a common abbreviation
for a sequence of vowel + nasal consonant. So iā can
stand for either ian or iam: the first one could be in-
terpreted as a reference to the god Ianus, who is men-
tioned later in the passage, whereas iam would be a
perfect Latin word. In order to make some sense of
an obscure form lancusianes, then, which would also
be the lectio difficilior, many editors preferred to re-
tain both Leto’s reading with the i (probably derived
from either Vall or M) and his insertion of a space
not present in F. The isolation of iā, though, did not
make the interpretation of the remaining cusianes
any easier. With these improvements our final rea-
ding of the first fragment of the Carmen Saliare in F
is: Cozeulodori eso. Omnia uero adpatula coemisse.
lancusianes duonus ceruses. dunus Ianusue uet pom
melios eum recum.
We now know, of course, that the earliest apo-
graphon of F is the Codex Vallicellianus D.49.3.
Coluccio’s manuscript presents many differences
from F due only in part, we think, to his failing eye-
sight. As noted above, he writes Cozeulodorieso as
one word and mistakenly interprets lancusianes as
iā-cusianes, which he hyphenates at the end of the
line, thereby making it possible for the sequence to
be misread as two words, i.e., exactly what Escorial,
M, and Pomponio do. He also separates duonus ce­
ruses into duo nusceruses, thus isolating the word
for the number two18 and at the same time creating
a word of difficult interpretation, namely, nusceru­
ses. The most compelling emendations by Coluccio,
though, concern the sequence dunus Ianusue uet that
he renders as dumque ianusque ue uet by inserting a
q on two occasions.
16
 ) For references, see Taylor, Lingua Latina X 96.
17
 ) For example, Spengel, Lingua Latina 128 and Goetz –
Schoell, Lingua Latina 100.
18
 ) This construction would go against the established rea-
ding duonus ceruses, which seems to be supported by the te-
stimony in Paulus ex Festo: In Carmine Saliari Cerus manus
intellegitur creator bonus (109L). All the passages by Festus
and Paulus are taken from W. M. Lindsay, ed., De Verborum
Significatu Quae Supersunt cum Pauli Epitome. Leipzig
1913.
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Coluccio’s dumque corresponds to F’s dunus,
which in the manuscript is abbreviated as dun;. In
Beneventan script the semi-colon indicates final -us
after any letter but q, where it denotes -ue19. It is pro-
bable, then, that Coluccio knew the semi-colon only
as an abbreviation of -ue after q, and in seeing a form
dun; he thought of a mistake by the copyist, who had
forgotten a q. He next reintegrates the missing let-
ter in order to read -que, a perfect Latin enclitic. But
dunque is not a Latin word, and so he also changes
-n- to -m- and creates dumque, which is. That Co-
luccio had problems in recognizing the semi-colon
as an abbreviation for final -us is further proven by
the form vetque in paragraph 28 just below, which
corresponds to F’s vet; = vetus. In fact, Coluccio uses
a different sign for -us, a sort of superscript comma,
as can be seen in ianusque. The insertion of an en-
clitic -que after ianus, instead, must be an invention
by Coluccio that does not find any justification in F’s
script. Furthermore, in this way he separates -ue from
ianus, thus resulting in a single, difficult-to-explain,
monosyllabic ue, whereas the form ianusue as one
word could be easily interpreted as ianus (theonym)
+ enclitic particle -ue. Finally, he transforms F’s pom
into pos. This change can not be due to a misinterpre-
tation of the abbreviation sign for final -m, because
it is perfectly understood by Coluccio in the last two
words of the verse, eum recum, which he correctly
renders with a macron on the final vowels (eū recū);
moreover, his abbreviation for final -s is everywhere
the same, and his pos is therefore a conscious altera-
tion. That reading, though, does not seem to be easier
to interpret than pom, which has, in fact, been com-
pared with a passage in Festus (222L): Po pro potis­
simus positum est in Saliari carmine.
Lastly, we must examine the first passage of the
Carmen Saliare in f even though Antonio di Mario’s
copy of the Salian fragments presents very few dif-
ferences from F. As mentioned above, he separates
the first sequence into three words Co/zeu lodori
eso. The isolation of the form eso, also noted e­ arlier,
corresponds to the correct reading of F, whereas
no space is actually to be seen between -u- and -l-.
It is possible that Antonio interpreted the first se-
quence as a sentence beginning with a capital letter
and closed by a verbal form followed by a period;
he then tried to make sense of it by separating the
first part into two words, perhaps perceiving the
form Cozeulodori as too long to be a single Latin
19
 ) E. A. Lowe, The Beneventan Script: A History of the
South Italian Minuscule. Oxford 1914, 196.
word. He also separates ad from patula, presumably
and probably correctly interpreting it as a sequence
of preposition + neuter plural accusative. As for the
abbreviated forms, Antonio’s use of contractions is
inconsistent: he spells out Omnia in full but for some
reason re­tains the contracted uo, but with a different
superscript symbol, a small-case omega, which is his
contraction for uero as opposed to the ūo in F; he
then writes eum but recū.
What is most interesting in Antonio’s use of abbre-
viations regards the use of the semi-colon to indicate
a final -us in dunus. As we have seen, this symbol
was problematic for Coluccio, who totally misunder-
stood it and created the form dumque. Antonio ac-
tually copied the contracted form dun; that is a rare
instance of a semi-colon for final -us in f. In fact,
following the early Renaissance movement to clarify
as much as possible in ancient spelling, Antonio de-
cided to spell out those semi-colons indicating final
-us and changed the semi-colon to a colon when in-
dicating a -ue after q. How do we explain the form
dun; then? Antonio is always anxious to justify his
right margins; so perhaps he retained the contracted
form merely for the sake of justification, but he could
just as easily have done so by abbreviating elsewhe-
re. Another possibility is that he did not understand
F’s dun; and decided to leave it as it was, thereby
also obtaining, as a contingent benefit, the space he
needed to justify his right margin.
Two major emendations, which will be very much
followed by the subsequent tradition, are also attri-
butable to Antonio di Mario: the separation of the se-
quence ianusue uet into ianus ueuet and the reading
of F’s po3 (with superscript 3) as post. The isolation
of what could seem a verbal form ueuet with ianus as
its subject must be understood as an attempt to make
sense of F’s uet. Unfortunately, the verb ueuet is not
much easier to explain. As for post, we have already
seen that Coluccio has nicely emended F’s po3 to pos,
but neither for Coluccio nor for Antonio can this be
the result of a misinterpretation of the abbreviation.
The superscript 3 is correctly read as an m in all its
other occurrences, even when it occurs in the middle
of a word as in the empta of the second fragment.
Again, Antonio seems to be supplying a real Latin
word for a form that is not recognizable as Latin.
3.2 Second Fragment [GS]
Varro’s second fragment of the Carmen Saliare is
shorter and poses fewer problems than the first; it ex-
emplifies the use of the imperative cante instead of the
regular canite. Our virtual autopsy of F did not reveal
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any new reading of the passage, save for the absence
of a space between divum and deo and a p­ ossible
small space that would separate suppli and cante20.
The passage in F then reads as follows: Divum empta
cante divumdeo supplicante (or suppli cante).
Antonio di Mario spells out all the abbreviations,
whereas Coluccio Salutati makes an extensive use of
contracted forms, even abbreviating forms that are
not contracted in F. What attracts our attention, how­
ever, is the rendering of the last sequence. Antonio
considers it as one word, whereas Coluccio writes
the sequence as suplice cante, perhaps on the as-
sumption of a supposed haplography in the text of F;
the simplification of geminates is not uncommon in
Coluccio’s script, and thus the single p is not really
relevant. As we have said, there is actually a small
space between suppli and cante in F; so Coluccio is
within his rights to write the sequence as two words.
Compared to supplicante, which could be a present
participle of the verb supplico, Coluccio’s choice
would have the advantage of repeating the form
cante, which is the specific ancient word that Var-
ro is exemplifying in this paragraph; nevertheless, it
would also leave a sup(p)lice that would have to be
explained (ablative of the adjective supplex or adver-
bial form?). It is important to notice that the two-
word expression will be used by Pomponio in his
editio princeps and will then be repeated in many of
the prescientific editions of the LL. The substitution
of exta for empta is purely an invention by Pompo-
nio, who could not resist an emendation introducing
a ritualistic word into a religious text. Significantly,
exta was also later adopted by the prescientific editi-
ons but then abandoned since L. Spengel’s 1826 edi-
tion, the first of the scientific editions.
4. Contributions to a new stemma of the ma-
nuscript tradition of Varro’s LL [GS]
Our analysis of the two fragments of the Carmen
Saliare has provided a few insights into the labyrin-
thine manuscript tradition of Varro’s De Lingua La­
tina. For example, Antonio di Mario proposed four
emendations in his copy of F:
1. Cozeulodori eso as three words: Cozeu lodori
eso
2. adpatula as two words: ad patula
3. ianusue uet → ianus ueuet
4. pom → post
20
 ) Goetz and Schoell print supplicante but read supplj
cante; see the apparatus criticus in Goetz – Schoell, Lingua
Latina 101.
 Nr. 1 is not to be found in any of the manuscripts
we checked, whereas nr. 2 is attested in all but the
Codex Vindobonensis (V), which was copied from F
with its adpatula. What is more interesting is that nrs.
3 and 4 are both attested in the Codex Parisinus a, in
the Codex Havniensis (H), and in the Codex Ambro­
sianus (Ambr). Since these two emendations seem to
be intentional modifications of the text on the part of
the copyist, they provide additional evidence for the
traditional derivation of Paris. a, H, and Ambr from
f. Nr. 4 is also found in the Codex Gothanus (G), also
derived from f, and in Pomponio’s editio princeps.
The introduction of Vall into the stemma as the
earliest apographon of F allows us to clarify a few
points in the transmission of the text. Because of its
having been misdated, Vall has not figured in any
stemma whatsoever, but our study of the verses of
the Carmen Saliare shows how at least two of the
manuscripts we have examined used Vall as a (pri-
mary?) source. We also remember that in copying
the De Lingua Latina Coluccio introduced a num-
ber of modifications and emendations due both to
his age or failing eyesight and to his will to improve
the text. Limiting our analysis to just the two Salian
fragments, we find the following differences from F
in Vall:
1. Cozeulodorieso as one word
2. iā-cusianes with initial i-longa and hyphenated
3. duonus ceruses → duo nusceruses
4. dunus Ianusue uet → dumque ianusque ue uet
5. pom → pos
6. supplicante → suplice cante
Obviously not all of these emendations have the
same value, and it is perhaps no surprise to find that
the manuscripts we examined vary and present the in-
itial sequence as one, two, or three words. As for the
following five, however, two manuscripts share them
all with Coluccio’s text, and those are Escorial III g
20 and Codex Guelferbitanus (M), which present the
exact same forms as Vall (even suplice with one p),
except for nr. 2, where they have iam cusia­nes, with
a regular spelling-out of the macron above a as iam,
which has then been interpreted as a classical Latin
word and thus separated from the following cusia­nes.
The only difference between Vall and the Escorial
and M, besides nr. 1, is the form adpatula that in Vall
is one word, as in F, whereas in the Escorial and M
it is separated, as in f. The prepositional phrase may
hint at the possibility of a mixed tradition in Esco­rial
and M, but an independent emendation by the copyist
is probably more plausible. Another inter­esting ele-
ment supporting the hypothesis that M was copied
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from Vall is the presence, as in the Escorial, of the
form vetque in VII.28 just below, which, as we have
seen, is an idiosyncratic error by C­oluccio, who did
not recognize the semi-colon as an abbreviation for
final -us. It is then highly ­probable that Vall was the
primary source of M also.
Another manuscript influenced by Vall is the Co­
dex Mutinensis (our Mod, Antonibon’s m). For nr. 4,
Mod has dumque Ianusque neu et, which greatly re-
sembles Coluccio’s text: the exchange of a u for an
n is quite understandable, whereas the separation of
neu et is probably due to the isolation of the con-
junction. A second point of contact is nr. 6, where
Mod has supplice. Cante, with a double pp in the first
word. Although we can be sure that the copyist of
Mod used Vall or one of its apographa (M?), neither
would have been his primary source, as the readings
ad patula, lancusianes, duonus Cereuses and post
demonstrate.
Finally, four out of the six emendations initiated
by Coluccio are found in Pomponio Leto’s editio
princeps: nr. 2 Iā cusianes (but as two words as in
M); nr. 3 duo nuseruses (the dropping of the c trans-
mitted by every manuscript could be simply a mi-
stake on Leto’s part); nr. 4 dūq; Ianusq; uenet (with
the isolation of a verbal form uenet, in which an n
substitutes for a u); and nr. 6 supplice cante as two
words (but with the integration of the missing p).
These alterations are obviously of great importance
to the identification of the possible manuscript sour-
ces of Pomponio’s text.
5. Pomponio Leto and Vall: the solution of an enig-
ma [DJT]
Pomponio Leto’s editio princeps of Varro’s De
Lingua Latina is a unique combination of highly
competent Latin and daring emendation, for he both
understood the rhotacism that Varro was describing
and also edited, we might even say revised, the trans-
mitted text accordingly. What he does not tell us,
how­ever, is what manuscript is transmitting the text
he is editing, and that omission, probably conscious
and perhaps even duplicitous, has led to endless
­speculation and debate among his successors.
Neither Leto nor any of the other prescientific edi-
tors were aware that Laurentianus Pluteus 51.10 was
the extant archetype of all the other manuscripts; no
editor had consulted F; and no editor was even 100%
sure of the precise nature of the text at his disposal.
Their method was simplicity itself: find a manuscript
(or several), alter the text as deemed appropriate
­either by emending on one’s own or by copying from
an earlier printed edition, especially the editio prin­
ceps, which enjoyed a well-deserved and privileged
reputation, and then publish a new printed edition.
These editions are sometimes little more than hori-
zontally contaminated and interpolated manuscripts.
Nonetheless, in their attempts to sort out the tangled
web of relationships between the numerous codices
descripti or recentiores, subsequent editors and cri-
tics have been studiously trying to determine which
manuscripts were used by which editors, and no edi-
tion has received more attention than Leto’s editio
princeps.
Thanks to the collective efforts of the scientific
editors and their philological colleagues throughout
Europe, a scholarly consensus about the affiliations
of the better-known manuscripts of the De Lingua
Latina slowly but surely emerged in the course of the
19th century, and we can now group a score or so of
manuscripts into three families. Thus f, the Gotha (G)
and Copenhagen (H) manuscripts, and Paris a form
a closely-knit group, to which the Paris b perhaps21
and Paris c, the Ambrosian (Ambr), Barberini, and
Chigi codices are also related. These manuscripts are
often termed archaizing, because they write quom for
cum and so forth. So f is obviously the head of this
family. The Vienna (V) and Basil (p) manuscripts and
arguably the lost codex Turnebus form a small family
deriving directly from F; various other manuscripts,
e.g., Riccardianus 599 and Laurentianus Pluteus
51.6, also derive from F, but they are rarely cited due
to their condition, quality, and/or date.
The largest family consists of a number of codi­
ces deteriores, which are probably not quite as bad
as their appellation would suggest. Its most notable
members are M, which is the Wolfenbüttel manu-
script, and the three Vatican codices lettered small-
case alpha, beta, and gamma. What is of most impor-
tance to us is that the editio princeps is clearly deri-
ved from a manuscript of precisely this sort, as the
Spengels and Goetz and Schoell22 unequivocally af-
firm. Other relatives include the Leipzig manuscript,
the infamous and no longer identifiable B (unless it is
actually Vall itself!), the Modena (Mod), Parma (P),
and Veneto manuscripts, and Escorial III g 20.
That last manuscript, we now know, was copied
in 1412 from Vallicellianus D.49.3, the manuscript
21
 ) See P. Flobert, Varron La Langue Latine Livre VI. Pa-
ris 1985, XXVIII, who places b with V and p and also states,
“Le manuscrit b, mêlé et composite, est incontestablement
celui dont l’histoire est la plus compliquée... .”
22
 ) Spengel, Lingua Latina XIV; Goetz – Schoell, Lingua
Latina XXXII.
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executed by Coluccio Salutati in the late 1390s and
therefore the earliest apographon of F. Until now,
however, and mainly because the correct dating of
Vall was unknown until the late 20th century, no one
has reached the perfectly obvious conclusion to the
scholarly consensus attained by those 19th century
scholars who investigated the affiliations of the nu-
merous codices descripti. Vallicellianus D.49.3 is the
direct or indirect exemplar of the third and probably
largest family of deteriores and was the primary ma-
nuscript used by Pomponio Leto when he edited the
editio princeps of Varro’s De Lingua Latina.
Anyone who compares Leto’s text with Vall can
easily determine that he used it or one of its descen-
dants. Likewise one can equally as easily determine
that Vall is “a manuscript similar to M”23, upon which
Leto’s text is believed to rest. In the course of our
research we slowly but surely became convinced that
Vall is indeed the mysterious but so far undiscove-
red primary manuscript that Leto used for his edi­
tion. The several unique readings in the two Carmen
Saliare fragments that Vall offers and that recur in
both the third family of the codices deteriores and
also in the editio princeps and that we have discussed
above are what convinced us. We then decided to try
a quantitative check on our conclusion, and the re-
sults were striking.
In the Spengels’ (1885) copious apparatus criti­
cus, Pomponio is credited with a total of 180 “emen-
dations” to the text of books nine and ten of the De
Lingua Latina, of which 63 have no manuscript
authority whatsoever and which are therefore pre-
sumably actual emendations of his own. Another 26
are attributed to M but not to Vall and are therefore
the sorts of readings that contributed to the 19th cen-
tury establishment of the third and perhaps largest
family of codices deteriores. Of the remaining 91, 68
are all readings of Vallicellianus D.49.3. So almost
38% of all the so-called “emendations” attributed to
Leto are actually from Vall, 58% of those not attribu-
table exclusively to Leto are from Vall, and a whop-
ping 74% of those attributable to neither Leto nor to
M are from Vall. The quantitative figures based on
Leto’s putative “emendations” to books nine and ten
therefore support our qualitative assessment of the
influence of Vall on the text of our two fragments of
the Carmen Saliare and reaffirm the general validity
23
 ) R. G. Kent, ed. and trans., Varro: On the Latin Langua-
ge. Rev. ed., I-II. London, Cambridge 1951 (Repr., 1958; first
ed., 1938), XXVII.
of 19th century scholarship on the broader manuscript
affiliations.
Our threefold conclusion is simple and straight-
forward. Varro’s two fragments of the Carmen Sa­
liare provide a fascinating glimpse into the details of
digitally reading and editing a text of truly archaic
Latin, suggest that f and Vall may have produced
more offspring than F itself, and have also contribut-
ed mightily to answering what has heretofore been
the most puzzling and vexing question in the history
of the Renaissance manuscripts and printed editions
of Varro’s De Lingua Latina.
References
G. Antonibon, Supplemento di lezioni varianti ai l­ ibri
De Lingua Latina di M. Ter. Varrone. Bassano
1899.
F. Biddau, Q. Terentii Scauri de Orthographia: Intro-
duzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento.
Hildesheim 2008.
W. P. Corssen, Origines Poesis Romanae. Berlin
1846.
A. de la Mare, A Paleographer’s Odyssey. In: Sight
and Insight: Essays on Art and Culture in Honor
of E. H. Gombrich at 85, ed. by John Onions.
London 1994, 88-107.
P. Flobert, Varron La Langue Latine Livre VI. Paris
1985.
G. Goetz and F. Schoell, eds., M. Terenti Varronis De
Lingua Latina Quae Supersunt. Leipzig 1910.
H. Keil, ed., Grammatici Latini. I-VII and supple-
ment. Leipzig 1855-80. (Repr., Hildesheim 1961
and 1981.).
R. G. Kent, ed. & trans., Varro: On the Latin Lan-
guage. Rev. ed., I-II. London, Cambridge 1951
(Repr., 1958; first ed., 1938).
G. P. Leto = J. P. Laetus, ed., M. Terentius Varro: De
Lingua Latina. Rome: 1471. Year and place are
probable but not proven.
W. M. Lindsay, ed., De Verborum Significatu Quae
Supersunt cum Pauli Epitome. Leipzig 1913.
E. A. Lowe, The Beneventan Script: A History of the
South Italian Minuscule. Oxford 1914.
F. Newton, The Scriptorium and Library at Monte
Cassino, 1058 - 1105. Cambridge 1999.
F. Ritschl, Die Schriftstellerei des M. Terentius Var-
ro. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 6 (1848)
481-560.
A. Spengel, ed., M. Terenti Varronis De Lingua Lati-
na Libri. Berlin 1885.
D. J. Taylor, Varro De Lingua Latina X: A New Cri-
tical Text and English Translation with Prolego-
mena and Commentary (Studies in the History of
the Language Sciences 85), Amsterdam 1996.
M. van Rooij, Das alteste Apographon des Archety-
pus von Varros ‘De Lingua Latina’ (Codex Val-
licellianus D.49.3). Codices Manuscripti 13.3
(1987) 77-78.

Appendix I

First fragment (LL VII.26). Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Laurentianus Pluteus 51.10. c. 12v.
Image used by permission of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and of Tourism.
Every further reproduction is forbidden.

First fragment (LL VII.26) in Vallicellianus D.49.3. c. 211v.

Image used by permission of the Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Rome. Every further reproduction is forbidden.

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 First fragment (LL VII.26). Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Laurentianus Pluteus 51.5. c. 47r.
Image used by permission of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and of Tourism.
Every further reproduction is forbidden.

First fragment (LL VII.26) in Pomponius Laetus’ Editio princeps.

Property of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. (http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0005/bsb00057050/images/
index.html?fip=193.174.98.30&id=00057050&seite=98).

Appendix II

Second fragment (LL VII.27). Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Laurentianus Pluteus 51.10. c. 12v.
Image used by permission of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and of Tourism.
Every further reproduction is forbidden.

Second fragment (LL VII.27) in Vallicellianus D.49.3. c. 211v.

Image used by permission of the Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Rome. Every further reproduction is forbidden.

Second fragment (LL VII.27). Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Laurentianus Pluteus 51.5. c. 47r.
Image used by permission of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and of Tourism.
Every further reproduction is forbidden.

Second fragment (LL VII.27) in Pomponius Laetus’ Editio princeps.

Property of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. (http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0005/bsb00057050/images/
index.html?fip=193.174.98.30&id=00057050&seite=99).

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 Appendix III

Tab. 1. Readings of the first fragment of the Carmen Saliare (LL VII.26) in the 13 manuscripts and the editio princeps.

Tab. 2. Readings of the second fragment of the Carmen Saliare (LL VII.27)
in the 13 manuscripts and the editio princeps.

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