Studies in Classical Linguistics

in Honor of Philip Baldi

Edited by
B. Richard Page and Aaron D. Rubin

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Studies in classical linguistics in honor of Philip Baldi / edited by B. Richard Page and Aaron
D. Rubin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-90-04-18866-2 (alk. paper)
1. Linguistics. 2. Language and culture. I. Page, B. Richard. II. Rubin, Aaron D., 1976-
III. Baldi, Philip. IV. Title.

P26.B33S78 2010
410--dc22
2010030371

ISSN 1380-6068
ISBN 978 90 04 18866 2

Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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 CONTENTS

Tabula Gratulatoria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Editor’s Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

A Personal Portrait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Pierluigi Cuzzolin
The Professional History and Publications of Philip Baldi (through
) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Aaron D. Rubin
. A Few Words for Springs in Aeschylus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Daniel W. Berman
. How to Move Towards Somebody in Plautus’ Comedies: Some
Remarks on the Adverb obuiam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Pierluigi Cuzzolin
. Baltic Palaeocomparativism and the Idea that Lithuanian is a
Neo-Latin Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Pietro U. Dini
. Blight and Bugs: The Semantics of Latin Plant Diseases and the
Perils of Latin Translations of the OT book of Psalms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Paul B. Harvey, Jr.
. On Latin (s)tritavus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Brian D. Joseph
. On Complex Syllable Onsets in Latin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Christian Lehmann
. Having Something that You Don’t Own: Apud Possessive
Constructions in Latin and a Comparison with Locative
Possessive Sentences in Irish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Andrea Nuti
. Gender Assignment of Latin Loanwords in Early Germanic:
A Case Study of Latin vinum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
B. Richard Page
vi contents

. The Use of quia and quoniam in Cicero, Seneca, and Tertullian. . . 81

Harm Pinkster
. Dum loquimur, fugerit inuida aetas: On Tense and Actionality
of Latin verba dicendi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Hannah Rosén
. Thoughts on the Origin of the Latin and Indo-European
Nominal Declension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
William R. Schmalstieg
. Latin aliās ‘at another time’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Brent Vine
. Etruscan mlak[ and the Interpretation of the Inscription on the
Santa Teresa kyathos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Rex Wallace
. Poetry in Motion: The Semantic Transformation of poetria in
the Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Stephen Wheeler

Index of Authors Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

 POETRY IN MOTION:
THE SEMANTIC TRANSFORMATION OF POETRIA
IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Stephen Wheeler
Pennsylvania State University

In medieval Latin the Greek loanword poetria changes meaning from

‘woman poet’ to ‘art of poetry’ or simply ‘poetry’. A satisfactory expla-
nation for this semantic change has not yet been given. This paper argues
that the redefinition of poetria occurred at the end of the ninth century,
when the influential Latin grammarian and teacher Remigius of Auxerre
commented on an apparently anomalous usage of the word in a key edu-
cational text, Martianus Capella’s encyclopedic work on the seven liberal
arts. According to Remigius’s reading of Martianus, poetria does not sim-
ply mean ‘woman poet’, but refers to the female personification of the art
of poetry, and hence to poetry itself. Poetria’s old sense of ‘woman poet’
fell out of use in medieval Latin (cf. poetissa), while the new sense gained
currency especially when Horace’s Ars poetica was identified with the title
Ars poetriae or simply Poetria.

. The Semantics of poetria

Poetria, the feminine agent noun corresponding to poeta, entered the

Latin language in the first century bc as a Greek loanword (< ποιτρια).1
Linguistically speaking, the borrowing of poetria follows the common

1 Cf. OLD, s.v. and Lewis and Short (), s.v. A word search in the CD-ROM of

Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina (BTL-) produces only six examples securely dateable
to classical antiquity, which I cite according to the abbreviations in the Index to the
Thesaurus linguae Latinae (): Cic. Cael. ; [Ov.] Epist. Sapph. ; Ter. Maur. ;
Diom. Gramm. .; Mar. Victorin. Gramm. .; Mart. Cap. .. For a small selection
of examples of ποιτρια in the sense of ‘poetess’, see Liddell, Scott, and Jones (), s.v.,
but the article does not include the earliest attested usage of the word as the title of a
comedy by Alexis (PCG, fr. ), written between the s and  bc. Furthermore, as
Arnott (: ) points out, this play title may not refer to a ‘poetess’ but to a clever
woman slave who is literally a ‘female contriver’, a sense of the word also activated by the
late antique novelist Heliodorus (..).
 stephen wheeler

pattern by which Greek agent nouns with the masculine suffix -της and
the feminine suffix -τρια are Latinized with the suffixes -ta and-tria: the
pairing of poeta and poetria is comparable with citharista and citharistria
or sophista and sophistria.2
Cicero is the earliest witness for poetria’s usage in Latin and may have
been the originator of the lexical transfer from Greek to Latin. In a
famous passage of the courtroom speech Pro Caelio, he derides Clodia
Metelli for staging a farcical incident at the baths to accuse Caelius, her
former lover, of a plot to poison her:
Velut haec tota fabella veteris et plurimarum fabularum poetriae quam est
sine argumento, quam nullum invenire exitum potest. (Cic. Cael. )
For instance, this whole little play of a poetess, a veteran of very many
plays—how lacking in plot it is, how unable it is to find any ending!
Cicero treats poetria as the feminine form of poeta in its Plautine sense
of ‘playwright’.3 The imported word, however, is insulting. It not only
denigrates a Roman noble woman as a disreputable sort of mime artist.4
It also recalls Cicero’s earlier innuendo that Clodia is a prostitute.5 As
Adams (: ) observes, the Greek suffix -tria becomes associated
in Roman minds with female purveyors of sex.6
In the semantic history of poetria, the ironic nuances of Cicero’s bilin-
gual borrowing prove unique. After Cicero, the loanword appears rarely
in Latin and is generally used as a professional title for a Greek female
lyric poet: poetria appears four times in juxtaposition with the name of
Sappho7 and once with the name of Praxilla.8 In late antiquity Martianus
Capella uses the word in an exceptional passage, to which we will return

2 See André (: –); Biville (: –); Adams (: –).
3 Cf. André (: ). On poeta, see OLD, s.v. b.
4 See Geffcken (: –).
5 Austin (: ) points out that the female roles in mimes were often played by

prostitutes. So the association of Clodia with mime continues Cicero’s earlier tactic of
identifying her as a meretrix: cf. Cael. , meretriciis amoribus; , in meretricia vita
. . . non solum meretrix sed etiam proterva meretrix procaxque videatur. For bilingual
speakers, Cicero’s use of the word poetria may have also evoked a specific kind of Greek
courtesan that entertained men with verse: for the association of women poets with
prostitution in Greek culture, see McClure (: –).
6 Adams (: ) gives as an example the hybrid word formation lupatria (Petron.

.) modeled on πορνε$τρια, but it is based on a noun rather than a verb.

7 [Ov.] Epist. Sapph. ; Ter. Maur. ; Diom. Gramm. .; Schol. Hor. Carm.

...
8 Mar. Victorin. Gramm. ..
 the semantic transformation of poetria 

later: he chides his personified Muse, Satire, for her pretentious grandil-
oquence by calling her a poetria (.). The classical sense of the word
survives in early medieval Latin glossaries based on late antique sources,
which gloss poetria as femina poeta (CGL ..) or poeta femina (CGL
..). However, the manuscripts also transmit poetria in the cor-
rupted form poeria (CGL ..; .; ..; .), suggesting
that familiarity with the word was waning. In the middle of the ninth
century, some Carolingian scholars still knew the meaning of the word.
The theologian and grammarian Gottschalk of Orbais understands poet-
ria in its proper sense (Gramm. .).9 His contemporary, John Scottus
Eriugena uses the word to personify Theology as a poetess in his com-
mentary on the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius (Expositiones in
Ierarchiam coelestem S. Dionysi .).10
At the end of the ninth century, poetria underwent a striking semantic
change. The earlier sense of ‘female poet’ fell into disuse and a new set
of meanings emerged, including ‘art of poetry’, ‘poetry’, and later, in the
twelfth century, ‘poem’.11 The medieval redefinition of poetria led to a
dramatic increase in the word’s usage. In the tenth century, Horace’s Ars
poetica circulated under the title Ars poetriae and later, in the twelfth
century, was identified as the Poetria.12 The word’s new senses of ‘art
of poetry’ and ‘poetry’ also began to appear in Horatian scholia.13 In
the first decade of the thirteenth century, Geoffrey of Vinsauf wrote a
verse treatise on poetics which he titled Poetria nova to signify his work’s

9 Text in Lambot (: . ff.).

10 For the text, see Barbet (: .). This usage of poetria is discussed by Dronke
(: –).
11 For an overview of the semantic change, see Curtius (: ). The entry in

Niermeyer (), s.v. ‘poetria’, is deficient, quoting only one example for the meaning
‘art of poetry’ in the tenth century: Rather of Verona, Epist. . Over time the prosody of
poetria also changed: the penultimate syllable was lengthened and accented, on which see
Stotz (: ).
12 Cf. the incipit of the MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, , saec. IX–X, Incipit

quintus de arte poetriae (‘Here begins the fifth book on the Art of Poetry’), which is
reported in Brink (: ). For the medieval title Poetria, see Huygens (: .
and .). These alternate titles for the Ars poetica may be a response to uncertainty
about the work’s true title, which has been the subject of debate since the Renaissance: cf.
Frischer (: –).
13 Schol. Hor. Epist. .., , ,  in Keller (: . [app. crit.], ; .,

); Φ-Schol. Hor. Carm. . in Noske (: ). These scholia, according to Noske
(), belong to different collections that arose at different times from the seventh to
the ninth century; however, I assume that the uses of the word poetria for ars poetica in
the scholia were interpolated into the manuscript tradition in the tenth century or after.
 stephen wheeler

improvement on Horace’s Poetria.14 Toward the end of the fourteenth

century, Chaucer introduced the word ‘poetrie’ into the English language
according to its medieval sense (cf. OED, s.v. ‘poetry’). As is clear from
this cursory view of the medieval evidence, the literal meaning of poetria,
‘woman poet’, faded and became inactive. One could speculate that the
word, which referred to a profession in classical Greece, was not needed
in the Christian Middle Ages.15 But new words were invented, such as
poetissa in the corpus of the Hisperica famina, to name a woman poet.16
Why then did the medieval users of Latin pick up poetria, a rare word,
and invest it with new meaning at the end of the ninth century?17

. The Semantic Change of poetria in the

Medieval Interpretation of Mart. Cap. .

Philologists of medieval Latin have addressed the question of what moti-

vated the semantic change of poetria and suggested that the shift in the
word’s meaning occurred at the end of the ninth century through a mis-
understanding of Martianus Capella’s use of the word in his prosimetric
encyclopedia on the seven liberal arts (.). In order to understand the
semantic problem of poetria in Martianus, it is necessary to look at the
wider context in which the word appears. The work in question, com-
posed by Martianus toward the end of the fifth century ad and usually
titled De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercuri, became the foundational text-
book in the Middle Ages for the study of the trivium (grammar, dialec-
tic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and
music).18 Writing in the tradition of Menippean satire, Martianus sets his
encyclopedia on the liberal arts within a poetic, that is to say, mythologi-
cal framework in which he represents the allegorical union of eloquence
(eloquentia) and scientific learning (sapientia) in terms of the marriage of
Philology and Mercury (Books –). At the wedding, Philology receives

14 Cf. Friis-Jensen (: ). In the second quarter of the thirteenth century John
of Garland wrote a work known as the Parisiana poetria de arte prosaica, metrica, et
rhythmica, which treats the composition of both prose and poetry.
15 Cf. Stotz (: ).
16 See Rubisca  in Herren (: ) with his commentary (–); cf. Stotz (:

).
17 The etymological note of the OED, s.v. ‘poetry’ (now updated in a draft version

posted March  on OED Online), declares that the relationship between the word’s
classical and medieval meanings is unclear.
18 Stahl (: –).
 the semantic transformation of poetria 

a dowry of seven handmaidens who are the seven liberal arts. In the next
seven books, one devoted to each handmaiden, Martianus describes the
appearance of each liberal art and lets her make a speech about her disci-
pline (Books –). At the beginning of Book , which is concerned with
astronomy, Martianus inserts a comic interlude in which the drunken
wedding guest Silenus has fallen asleep after the speech of the hand-
maiden Arithmetic, and the gods enjoy laughter at his expense. This
scene prompts Martianus’s Muse, lady Satire, to appear to the author and
rebuke him for indulging in such ribaldry when introducing the sublime
art Astronomy. Satire then proceeds to deliver a hymn of fourteen hexam-
eters in the loftiest epic mode to praise Astronomy properly. After Satire
finishes, Martianus mocks her for her uncharacteristic poetic bombast.
Dick’s Teubner edition gives the following text of Mart. Cap. .:
‘euge’ inquam, ‘Satura mea, an te poetriam fecit cholera? coepistine Per-
mesiaci gurgitis sitire fontis?’19
“Well done,” I say, “Can it really be that an attack of bile made you a poetess,
my Satire? Did you begin to thirst for the springs of the river Permessus?”20
It is here that Martianus deploys the word poetria, as he jokes that the
Muse of his prosimetric satire has become like a female poet with epic
pretensions.
The modern interpretation of Mart. Cap. . is clear enough, but the
passage was not so understood in the Middle Ages. Curtius (: )
observes that the poorly transmitted text of Mart. Cap. . was trou-
blesome to medieval readers, and that they responded to it by reinter-
preting the sense of poetria. He writes: “From the list of various readings
for this passage, one sees that the strange word was not always under-
stood here, and was by many readers taken to mean ‘poetry’.” Unfor-
tunately, Curtius does not specify what the various readings were, or
what readers took the word to mean ‘poetry’. Klopsch (: , n. )
agrees with Curtius that poetria’s semantic reinterpretation arose through
a misunderstanding of Martianus and credits the tenth-century writer
Odo of Cluny (Occupatio .) as the first witness of the word’s new
meaning. Klopsch, however, was apparently unaware that Dronke (:
, n. ) had already found an earlier witness of poetria’s semantic

19 Dick’s text (: .–) is to be preferred in this instance to that of the more

recent Teubner edition byWillis (: .), who conjectures that Martianus wrote
poeetriam, an otherwise unattested orthography.
20 ‘The springs of the river Permessus’ is a learned toponymic reference to the waters

of Mount Helicon, which the Muses imbibe for poetic inspiration.

 stephen wheeler

change in the late ninth-century grammarian Remigius of Auxerre (a

teacher of Odo of Cluny) who wrote a commentary on Martianus Capella
in which he explained his usage of poetria.21 Remigius glosses poetria in
Mart. Cap. . as follows (Comm. in Mart. Cap. .):
POETRIAM ipsam artem FECIT COLERE id est diligere.22
[Satire] MADE [me] DEVOTE MYSELF TO, that is love, POETRY, the art
itself.23

Dronke points out that this interpretation of Mart. Cap. . is at odds
with the modern understanding of the text (cf. Satura mea, an te poetriam
fecit cholera? ‘Can it really be that an attack of bile made you a poetess,
my Satire?’) but does not explain why Remigius’s text is different and why
he understands poetria as ‘poetry’.
Stotz (: ) picks up the problem where Dronke leaves off, con-
firming that the commentary of Remigius is the first place where one can
see that poetria’s meaning has changed: “Wohl erstmals fassbar ist dieser
Bedeutungssprung in der irrigen Auffassung einer Martianus Capella-
Stelle durch Remigius von Auxerre.” Here Stotz expands on Dronke
in a significant respect. He attributes the cause of semantic change to
Remigius’s erroneous understanding of Martianus and so finds the first
guilty culprit for Curtius’s view that medieval readers of Martianus no
longer knew what poetria meant in classical Latin. Stotz thus classes the
semantic change of poetria in the category of semantic innovations in
medieval Latin that result from misunderstandings of words used in clas-
sical Latin.
Such an account of the semantic change of poetria ignores the evidence
that Remigius did understand what poetria originally meant. The very
fact that Remigius glosses poetria as ipsa ars suggests that he and his
sources are aware of the classical sense of the Greek loanword and that the
word’s use in Martianus requires another interpretation. The semantic
change may therefore not be a result of lexical misunderstanding. As
Curtius notes, the textual transmission of Mart. Cap. . is confused.24

21 On the sources and influence of Remigius of Auxerre’s commentary on Martianus

Capella, see Lutz (: –).

22 The text is based on the early tenth-century MS London, British Museum, Royal

Library XVA  edited by Lutz (: .); on the MS, see Lutz (: –).
23 Here I translate poetriam according to Dronke’s reading (poésie). I will offer a

different interpretation below.

24 On the poor conditions of the manuscripts transmitted from antiquity, see Stahl

(: –); cf. Shanzer (: ).

 the semantic transformation of poetria 

Moreover, scholars have recognized that Remigius reads a different text

from that printed in the modern editions of Dick (: .–) and
Willis (: .–). Yet they have not taken adequate notice of the
text that he reads. If Remigius’s interpretation of Mart. Cap. . is the
first locus for the semantic change of poetria, it would seem imperative to
establish the text that he comments on before drawing conclusions about
what motivates him to gloss poetria as ipsa ars. As we shall presently see,
Remigius’s new gloss of poetria appears to be a semantically informed
solution to a textual problem in the manuscripts of Martianus, which had
far-reaching consequences for the reading of Martianus’s encyclopedia
of the liberal arts, the medieval titling of Horace’s Ars poetica, and the
medieval Latin usage of poetria.

. Remigius of Auxerre’s Understanding

of poetria in Mart. Cap. .

Let us re-examine the lemmata in Remigius’s commentary on Mart. Cap.

. to reconstitute the text that he explains (Comm. in Mart. Cap.
.):
EUGE adverbium gaudentis. INQUAM dico ego Martianus. ANTE adver-
bium pro antea, POETRIAM ipsam artem, FECIT COLERE id est diligere.
The lemmata indicate that Remigius reads the following text:
‘euge’ inquam, ‘Satura me ante poetriam fecit colere.’
The manuscripts give the readings meante (by universal consensus), on
the one hand, and colera or colere, on the other, according to the collation
of Willis (: ). Remigius indicates elsewhere in his commentary
that he has access to different codices with variant readings (e.g. Comm.
in Mart. Cap. .).25 So his decisions to read meante as me ante and to
choose colere instead of colera must be reckoned his own editorial solu-
tions to an otherwise unreadable passage in the manuscripts. Compare,
again, the text of Dick’s edition which has a different subject and object
(: .):
‘euge’ inquam, ‘Satura mea, an te poetriam fecit cholera?’

25 See, e.g., Lutz (: .).

 stephen wheeler

Now Dronke (: , n. ) states that Remigius does not account
for his divergences from this text, and Stotz (: ) alleges that Remi-
gius misunderstands it. Neither scholar observes that Dick’s text is based
on the emendations of the nineteenth-century Finnish philologist Fred-
erik Julius Petersen (: ), who unravels the textual crux, meante, as
mea an te, and reconstructs from the manuscript variant colera the Greek
loanword cholera. Moreover, they do not consider the fact that Remigius’s
version of Martianus’s text was the critical orthodoxy in printed editions
before Petersen emended the text.26 Consequently, Dronke and Stotz
fault Remigius for two things beyond his knowledge: first; that he does
not know about Petersen’s emendations and the editorial consensus of
modern philologists; second, that he does not know or explain why his
reading of the text differs from that of modern editions.
Here is not the place to test the validity of Petersen’s emendations
of Mart. Cap. .. Rather my purpose is to probe the logic behind
Remigius’s attempt to understand the sentence that he reads in Mart.
Cap. .: Satura me ante poetriam fecit colere. Let us assume, to start,
that Remigius knows what poetria means.27 One possible English trans-
lation of this text is: “Satire earlier made me devote myself to the poetess.”
This reading of poetria is supported by the fact that Remigius glosses col-
ere as diligere ‘to love’, indicating that colere is supposed to take a per-
sonal object of devotion or affection. So Remigius appears to under-
stand poetria as a female person. Yet the concept ‘poetess’ does not make
sense without further explanation and Remigius gives it: ‘the art her-
self ’ (POETRIAM ipsam artem). Remigius thus interprets Martianus
to mean that poetria is a female poet figure who personifies the art of
poetry.
This interpretation of poetria is not arbitrary but based on analogy to
the seven liberal arts which Martianus likewise presents as female per-
sonifications. That is to say, Remigius treats poetria as a personified art.
His rereading of poetria as an ars may also be based on false morphemic
similarities: the agent noun suffix -tria can be paralleled in geometria or
it can be reanalyzed as the feminine abstract noun suffix -ia, putting poet-
ria in the same conceptual class of geometria, astronomia, and harmonia.
Just as the liberal arts are personified and given proper names, so too

26 Cf. Dick (: , app. crit. ).

27 He clearly knew the commentary of John Scottus Eriugena on the Ierarchia coelestis
of Pseudo-Dionysius, in which poetria was used in its proper sense; see the discussion
below in section .
 the semantic transformation of poetria 

Remigius appears to understand poetria in Martianus both as ‘Poetess’

or ‘Lady Poetry’ and as ‘poetry’. The semantic shift of poetria thus hinges
on the word’s ambiguity in the text of Martianus as it is reconstructed
and read by Remigius.

. How Remigius of Auxerre Redefines poetria

If Remigius reinterprets poetria as a personified art to makes sense of the

sentence that the manuscripts of Martianus Capella give him, he must
explain why Satire made Martianus devote himself to poetria ‘earlier’
(ante). Remigius understands Martianus to mean that Satire made him
love poetria in the first two books of his treatise: that is, when he wrote
the myth of the wedding of Mercury and Philology and clothed philo-
sophical truths in the allegorical dress of a poetic fiction. It is Remigius’s
explanation of this point—unnoticed by scholars—that establishes and
secures the new semantic dimensions of poetria.
Remigius supports his interpretation of poetria in the text of Martianus
by explaining the rhetorical question: coepistine Permesiaci gurgitis sitire
fontes? ‘Did you begin to thirst for the springs of the river Permessus?’
He first comments (Comm. in Mart. Cap. .):
COEPISTINE id est nonne . . . SITIRE id est desiderare me fecisti ut sitiam
poemata quae in Mesiaco gurgite componuntur.28
DID YOU BEGIN that is, you began, did you not? . . . TO THIRST that is,
long for: you made me thirst for poetic compositions which are fabricated
in the river (Per)messus.
Unlike modern editors, Remigius does not understand the rhetorical
question posed by Martianus as a rebuke of Satire’s change of tone to high
epic. Rather he takes the question to be an objection: Satire made him
begin his work by wanting to write poetic compositions, did she not?
This explanation reinforces the reading proposed earlier: ‘Satire earlier
made me devote myself to lady poetry, the art herself.’ It also links poetria
to the Mesiaci gurgitis . . . fontes ‘springs of the river (Per)messus’, which
Remigius glosses as poemata ‘poetic compositions’.
Remigius’s commentary includes a second set of scholia on the inter-
pretation of the same rhetorical question:

28 Lutz (: .–).

 stephen wheeler

Utique COEPISTI quia duos primos libros fecisti me componere per

poetriam et rursum fecisti me artem scribere.29
In any case YOU BEGAN because you made me write the first two books
through lady poetry and once again you made me compose the art.
The phrase duos primos libros fecisti me componere per poetriam is another
explanation of Satura me ante poetriam fecit colere. Earlier, in the first
two books of his encyclopedia, Satire made Martianus write poetically
in describing the wedding of Philology and Mercury. The reference to
practicing the art once again (rursum) recalls the beginning of Book 
where Martianus is compelled by his Muse to write poetically to intro-
duce the liberal art grammar (.): Rursum Camena parvo / phaleras
parat libello ‘Once again the Muse prepares embellishments for her little
book’. Martianus objects initially that his Muse had promised at the end
of Book  that he would not have to use poetic ornament to introduce
the precepts of the liberal arts. At the beginning of Book , however, the
Muse changes her mind and prefers that the arts be clothed with poetic
fictions rather than be presented naked to the bridal pair Philology and
Mercury (.).
Remigius connects his interpretation of Mart. Cap. . with the
beginning of Book  a second time and explicitly associates poetria with
the liberal arts (Comm. in Mart. Cap. .):
In Grammatica, quando volebat Martianus absque figmento poetico artes
scribere dicens: “Fruge vera omne fictum dimovent,” et Satyra EUM FACIT
POETRIAM COLERE et artibus inserere.30
In the third book on Grammar, when Martianus wanted to write an
account of the arts without poetic invention saying, “They displace every
fiction with true food for thought,” (.), Satire also MAKES HIM
DEVOTE HIMSELF TO LADY POETRY and include her among the arts.
Here Remigius recalls the dispute Martianus had with Satire in Book 
when the encyclopedic satirist intended to stop writing poetic fictions.
On Remigius’s reading, Satire encouraged him to be a devotee of Poetria
and to include her among the arts, meaning that Martianus should
continue to use the poetic art to treat the individual liberal arts and so
continue the allegorical fiction that they are handmaidens personifying
their disciplines.

29 Lutz (: .–).

30 Lutz (: .–).
 the semantic transformation of poetria 

At the beginning of Book , on the other hand, Remigius observes that

Martianus criticizes Satire for changing her policy about the practice of
the poetic art (Comm. in Mart. Cap. .):
Non minus irasceris nunc quam fecisti irata contra versutiam poetarum.
Tangit hic rhetoricam et poetriam. Placuit enim tibi magis rhetorica quam
poetria et modo converteris ad astrologiam.31
You do not rage less now than you did when angered against the crafti-
ness32 of poets. Here he touches on rhetoric and poetry. For you liked
rhetoric more than poetry and now you turn to astronomy.
According to this explanation of Mart. ., Satire was angry with
Martianus in Book  because she was more pleased with rhetoric than
poetry, and now, in Book , she prefers astronomy to poetry. Such an
interpretation of the quarrel between Martianus and Satire about how to
introduce the eighth book on astronomy may strike modern readers as
idiosyncratic or self-contradictory, but it provides further evidence that
Remigius treats poetria as the conceptual equivalent of the liberal arts
rhetorica and astronomia. Remigius’s extended discussion of the meaning
of poetria in Martianus not only attests to an expanded understanding
of the word, but it also grounds the word’s new semantics in a reading
of the encyclopedia as a whole that explains the relationship of the first
two books on the wedding of Philology and Mercury, ars poetica, to the
following seven books on the artes liberales.

. John Scottus Eriugena’s Understanding of poetria

I have made the case that Remigius’s semantic reinterpretation of the

agent noun poetria as the personified art of poetry and poetry itself is
a learned response to the word’s usage in a textually corrupt passage
of Martianus Capella. Ever since Petersen emended Mart. Cap. .,
however, Remigius’s innovative understanding of poetria in Martianus
has lapsed into obscurity and been taken for ignorance of the word’s
proper meaning. Remigius’s exposition of the sense of poetria in Mar-
tianus proves, nonetheless, to be a watershed in the word’s lexical history.
This point can best be appreciated by comparison with the treatment of

31 Lutz (: .–).

32 In an earlier discussion of Mart. .  (Comm. in Mart. Cap. .), Remigius
glosses versutia ‘craftiness’ as tergiversatio ‘hanging back’, which appears to mean that
Satire, in Book , allegedly mocked Martianus qua poet for his reluctance to use rhetoric.
 stephen wheeler

the terms ars poetica and poetria by John Scottus Eriugena, a generation
earlier. In his commentary on the second chapter of the Ierarchia coelestis
by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, John Scottus discusses how theol-
ogy reveals divine or heavenly things through fictional representation.
The text (also translated from the Greek by John Scottus) and commen-
tary run as follows (Chapt. .–):
ETENIM, VALDE ARTIFICIALITER THEOLOGIA FACTITIIS SACRIS
FORMATIONIBVS IN NON FIGVRATIS INTELLECTIBVS VSA EST,
NOSTRVM, VT DICTVM EST, ANIMVM REVELANS, ET IPSI PRO-
PRIA ET CONNATVRALI REDVCTIONE PROVIDENS, ET AD IPSVM
REFORMANS ANAGOGICAS SANCTAS SCRIPTVRAS . . . Ac si aperte
diceret: quemadmodum ars poetica, per fictas fabulas allegoricasque simil-
itudines, moralem doctrinam seu physicam componunt ad humanorum
animorum exercitationem—hoc enim proprium est heroïcorum poeta-
rum, qui uirorum fortium facta et mores figurate laudant—ita theolo-
gia, ueluti quedam poetria, sanctam scripturam fictis imaginationibus ad
consultum nostri animi et reductionem a corporalibus sensibus exteri-
oribus, ueluti ex quadam imperfecta pueritia, in rerum intelligibilium per-
fectam cognitionem, tanquam in quamdam interioris hominis grandeui-
tatem conformat.33
THE FACT IS, THEOLOGY HAS VERY ARTFULLY USED FACTI-
TIOUS HOLY FORMS IN THE CASE OF SHAPELESS MATTERS OF
THE INTELLECT, REVEALING OUR MIND, AS IT HAS BEEN SAID,
AND MAKING PROVISION FOR IT WITH A RESTORATION PROP-
ER AND NATURAL TO IT, AND REFORMING THE ELEVATED HOLY
SCRIPTURES IN ACCORDANCE WITH IT . . . As if he were saying: just
as the art of poetry formulates moral or physical doctrine through fictional
myths and allegorical comparisons for the exercise of human minds—
for this is the concern of epic poets, who praise the deeds and character
of brave men figuratively—so theology, just as a poetess, shapes the holy
scripture with fictional imaginings for the inquiry of our mind and for
its restoration from the outer corporeal senses, just as from an imperfect
childhood, to a perfect understanding of intellectal matters, just as to a
certain maturity of the inner man.
Here John Scottus employs poetria properly as an agent noun and femi-
nine complement of poeta to personify theologia as a poetess.34 This is no
surprise given the fact John Scottus knew Greek.35 Moreover, he main-
tains a distinction between poetria and ars poetica, which is defined in
terms of fictas fabulas allegoricasque similitudines ‘fictional myths and

33 Barbet (: –).

34 Cf. Dronke (: ).
35 On John Scottus’s Greek, see Berschin (: –) and Jeauneau ().
 the semantic transformation of poetria 

allegorical comparisons’. Stotz (: , n. ) suggests that later readers
may have misunderstood this passage and taken poetria to be a discipline
like theologia, given the earlier comparison to ars poetica. But the oppo-
site seems to be true in the case of Remigius. John Scottus’s text theologia
ueluti quaedam poetria provides Remigius with a model for viewing the
ars poetica as a poetria, that is, as a poetess.36

. Epilogue: Conrad of Hirsau’s Understanding of poetria

The aim of this paper has been to argue that the semantic change of poe-
tria from ‘woman poet’ to ‘poetry’ arose in response to an apparently
anomalous usage of the word in a corrupt passage of Martianus Capella
as it was transmitted and understood in the Middle Ages. The shift was
facilitated by Remigius of Auxerre’s conception of poetria as a female per-
sonification of the art of poetry. At the beginning of the twelfth century,
the idea that poetria could mean ‘woman poet’ and be a personification of
poetry continued to live on in the commentary tradition of Horace. Con-
rad of Hirsau, a Benedictine monk and schoolmaster in the Schwarzwald,
treats the question of why Horace’s Ars poetica is called Poetria in his Dia-
logus super auctores, a dialogue between a student and his Latin teacher:
(D) Quare librum istum insignivit hoc titulo, id est Poetria? Quid est
Poetria?
(M) Poetria vel poetrida est mulier carmini studens; quo titulo hac de
causa usus putatur iste poeta, quod ipsum operis sui principium quasi
mulierem superne formosam premonstrat, per quam ipsam materiam
vult intellegi, in qua vel ex qua sententiae sunt vel procedunt, quae
corpus totius operis congrua rationum dispositione perficiunt.37
Student: Why did he identify that book with this title, that is Poetria?
What is a poetria?
Teacher: Poetria or poetrida is a woman who applies herself to poetry;
this poet is thought to have used this title for this reason, because
the very beginning of his work shows in advance a woman beautiful
in her upper part, through which he wishes his subject matter to

36 Dronke (: , n. ) assumes that John Scottus also read poetria as ‘poetess’ in

his commentary on Martianus (Annotationes in Marcianum) because he does not gloss

it: cf. Lutz (: ). However, a scholarly consensus has emerged that the glosses in
Books – of the Annotationes in Marcianum are an abridged version of the Remigian
commentary; cf. Stahl (: –, n. ).
37 Huygens (: .–).
 stephen wheeler

be understood, in whom consist his sentences or out of whom they

proceed, which complete the body of the whole work with a fitting
arrangement of thoughts.

Here the teacher teases out the double meaning of poetria. The gloss
poetrida, an otherwise unattested form in Latin,38 makes it clear that a
‘woman who applies herself to poetry’ (mulier carmini studens) is a Latin
circumlocution for ‘woman poet’.39 The teacher explains, further, that
the title of the work refers to the mulier formosa superne whom Horace
describes at the beginning of his work (Ars ). On Conrad’s reading, this
female figure is the personification of Horace’s subject matter, poetria,
whose beautiful body the poet completes with his thoughts. Conrad’s
second explanation of the mulier as poetria and poetria as the ars poetica
must be accounted a misunderstanding of Horace. (Horace says that the
woman’s body ends with a hideous black tail and is an example of bad art.)
But Conrad’s error, which can be traced back to Remigius’s interpretation
of Martianus, is the result of a coherent and knowledgeable attempt by
medieval scholars to name a discipline (ars poetica) and locate it within
a system of knowledge.

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