Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer (Classical Presences) 9780192864154, 0192864157

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CLASSICAL PRESENCES General Editors

L O R N A HA R D W I C K

J A ME S I . P O R T E R

CLASSICAL PRESENCES Attempts to receive the texts, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome inevitably run the risk of appropriating the past in order to authenticate the present. Exploring the ways in which the classical past has been mapped over the centuries allows us to trace the avowal and disavowal of values and identities, old and new. Classical Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past.

Homer in Wittenberg Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer WILLIAM P. WEAVER

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © William P. Weaver 2022 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2022 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939682 ISBN 978–0–19–286415–4 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Acknowledgments This project was supported by a research leave from the Honors College of Baylor University, and by generous research fellowships from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation and the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. A generous faculty development grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Baylor University supported the initial research and grant proposal. I am grateful to Jane Siegel and the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library for a research visit in 2010, and for their generous digitization of the Plimpton Homers. I also enjoyed indispensable research visits to the Cambridge University Library and the Vatican Library in 2011. The Vatican Library helpfully created a digital copy of BAV Stamp.Pal.IV.801. I have benefited greatly from conversations with colleagues in my academic home, the Great Texts Program in the Honors College of Baylor University, who gave vital feedback to material presented in faculty research seminars. The faculty of the Classics Department at Baylor, especially Simon Burris, Tim Heckenlively, and Julie Hejduk, have shared generously of their time and scholarship. The stranger’s rights are still sacred among Jeff Fish and his students, who welcomed me to participate in their Homer seminars in the spring and fall semesters of 2018. Kathy Eden, Craig Kallendorf, Luc Deitz, and Phil Donnelly gave guidance on the project from its earliest stages, and for its progress I owe much to them. The late Georg Knauer generously shared from extensive notes he was preparing for a volume of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. Tony Grafton, Manfred Kraus, Richard Strier, and Micha Lazarus gave responses to work in progress presented at the 2011, 2012, 2015, and 2021 meetings of the Renaissance Society of America. For correspondence and stimulating colloquy on various aspects of the project I wish to thank Ann Blair, Richard Calis, Jeanne Fahnestock, Günter Frank, Tobias Jammerthal, David Jeffrey, Manfred Kraus, Micha Lazarus, Jürgen Leonhardt, Volker Leppin, Lutz Mahnke, Olivier Millet, Nick Moschovakis, Doug Pfeiffer, Jonathan Reinert, John Richards, Alden Smith, Leah Whittington, Andy Wisely, Jessica Wolfe, and Michelle Zerba.

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Words can’t express my gratitude to my wife, Katherine Weaver, who encouraged the project, gave me the time to complete it, and talked through it with me on more occasions that I can remember. Baylor Honors College and Classics students Heather McMillion, Ian Campbell, and Jamie Jackson were stellar research assistants. With remarkable accuracy, Jamie transcribed and indexed the Plimpton Homers and the Gasser notes in BAV Stamp.Pal.IV.801. Dr. Axel Lange of the European Melanchthon Academy Bretten compiled the citation index referenced in Chapter 5. I am grateful to the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek for permission to reproduce, in Figure 3.1, Res/4 A.lat.a 609, fol. 2v. Two readers for Oxford University Press offered numerous corrections and suggestions for improvement. The book is better for their feedback. All errors are my own.

Contents List of Abbreviations

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Introduction

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1. Homeric Grammar: Philip’s Institutiones Graecae Grammaticae (1518)

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2. Homeric Eloquence: Philip’s 1518 Lectures on the Epistle to Titus and the Iliad

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3. Homeric Prudence: Melanchthon’s 1523 Homer Lectures

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4. The Homeric Poem

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5. The Wittenberg Scholia on the Homeric Poem

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6. Rightly Dividing the Word

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Epilogue Bibliography Index

204 213 223

List of Abbreviations ASD CR

CWE HWR MBW

MBW.T

MSA Opera Philosophica VD 16 WA

Erasmus. Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami. Amsterdam, 1969–. Corpus Reformatorum. Vols. 1–28. Philippi Melanchthonis opera quae supersunt omnia. Edited by Karl Gottlieb Brettschneider/Heinrich Ernst Bindseil. Halle–Braunschweig, 1834–60. Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto, 1974–. Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik. 12 vols. Edited by Gert Ueding. Tübingen–Berlin, 1992–2015. Melanchthons Briefwechsel. Kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe. Edited by Heinz Scheible. Regesten. 9 vols. Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt, 1977–98. Melanchthons Briefwechsel. Kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe. Edited by Heinz Scheible and Christine Mundhenk. Texte. Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt, 1991–. Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl. Edited by Robert Stupperich. 7 vols. Gütersloh, 1951–75. Partial 2nd ed. 1978–83. Philipp Melanchthon. Opera Omnia: Opera Philosophica. Edited by Günter Frank and Walter Sparn. Berlin, 2017–. Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des XVI. Jahrhunderts. 25 vols. Stuttgart, 1983–2000. Martin Luther. Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Weimar, 1883–.

Introduction Philip Melanchthon is often described as a man in the middle. Since Wilhelm Maurer’s 1967 study of the young Melanchthon, many academic titles describe him as if suspended between historical, disciplinary, or conceptual pairs. There is a Melanchthon between humanism and Reformation, between logic and literature, between society and scholarship, and (most recently) between belief and knowledge.¹ A scholarly edition in progress divides his collected works into two series: philosophy and theology, a division that reflects in part the disciplinary boundaries within the late medieval university.² Then as for his particular role, he is described by his biographer Heinz Scheible as Vermittler, “negotiator,” and by a prominent American scholar as “speaker.”³ He is credited by twentieth-century philosophers with pioneering a science of hermeneutics, that in-between discipline named for the Greek messenger god.⁴ In a partisan biography, he has been called traducer.⁵ Such boundaries and polarities are convenient and have a certain plausibility, given the intellectual landscape of northern Europe in Melanchthon’s lifetime, divided as it was between humanists and scholastics, and between evangelicals and Catholics.⁶ As has been mentioned, faculties at the university ¹ Wilhelm Maurer, Der junge Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967–9); Kees Meerhoff, Entre logique et littérature: Autour de Philippe Melanchthon (Orléans: Paradigme, 2001); Nicole Kuropka, Philipp Melanchthon: Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Ein Gelehrter im Dienst der Kirche (1526–1532) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002); Günter Frank, ed., Philipp Melanchthon: Der Reformator zwischen Glauben und Wissen. Ein Handbuch (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017). ² The first volume appeared in 2017. Philipp Melanchthon, Opera Omnia: Opera Philosophica 2.2. Principal Writings on Rhetoric, ed. William P. Weaver, Stefan Strohm, and Volkhard Wels (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017). ³ Heinz Scheible, Melanchthon: Vermittler der Reformation. Eine Biographie (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2016); Timothy J. Wengert, Philip Melanchthon, Speaker of the Reformation: Wittenberg’s Other Reformer (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010). ⁴ Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Rhetorik und Hermeneutik,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2 (Tübingen, 1986), 282–91; for Melanchthon’s relationship to earlier traditions, see Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and its Humanist Reception (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 79–89. ⁵ Franz Hildebrandt, Melanchthon: Alien or Ally? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946). ⁶ Humanist challenges to scholastic philosophy were met with significant resistance in northern Europe, where scholasticism had been longer established in the universities. Erika Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 63–95.

Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer. William P. Weaver, Oxford University Press. © William P. Weaver 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.003.0001

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were divided, and the philosophy faculty of Melanchthon’s alma mater, in Tübingen, was subdivided into two Bursas or fellowships, representing the two viae of realist and nominalist scholasticism.⁷ The “Prince of Humanists” Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose writings had an enormous influence on Melanchthon and literary education in general, divided abundance of discourse (copia) into abundance of words and things.⁸ Lutherans were preaching Scripture as law and gospel.⁹ In northern Europe, the verbal arts, conventionally numbered three, were seemingly reduced in Melanchthon’s lifetime to two: rhetoric and dialectic.¹⁰ In numerous places in his textbooks, Melanchthon attributed much to the mental act of dividing, and ranked “from division” among the first topics of invention. He would seem to be a thinker comfortable with boundaries and borders, even as he negotiated them: a dual citizen across many frontiers. It was Melanchthon’s colossal and, so far as I know, unique refusal to recognize a seemingly obvious division that set me about this study, and that was his lifelong characterization of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems no longer even universally recognized by scholars as being by the same author, as a single “poem.” Contrary to conventional usage, and sometimes flatly contradicting well-known authorities on Homer, Melanchthon only ever referred to the two poems as one, naming it for its author. His idiosyncratic usage is exemplified in a 1538 declamation on Homer, in which he states, “The theme of the Homeric poem is twofold; one is entitled the Iliad, the other the Odyssey.”¹¹ That statement seems just the kind of benign, sleep-inducing thing that professors say when introducing a poem, and that students dutifully, if distractedly, copy down in their notebooks. In fact, it is a partisan and novel statement, an overthrow of a typical procedure of interpretation, common to medieval and Renaissance literary practices alike. Typically, an instructor might take a single poem and make it two. For that is the goal of allegorical reading: to take one poem and discover two interpretations or meanings, the ⁷ The actual landscape of scholasticism was more complex. See for instance Heiko Oberman, Masters of the Reformation: The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 57–63. ⁸ Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 3–34. ⁹ Robert Kolb, Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and Its Scripture-Centered Proclamation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 98–131. ¹⁰ The next generation, following the example of Peter Ramus, would attempt a tidy division of these complementary arts of discourse, each subdivided into two parts. ¹¹ “Duplex est poëmatis Homerici argumentum: Alterum Ilias, alterum Odyssea inscribitur.” CR 11.404. Except where otherwise noted, translations are my own. A translation of the oration on Homer is found in Philip Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and Education, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa, trans. Christine F. Salazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 38–53.

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literal and figurative, or apparent and hidden. What Melanchthon asserts appears to turn the allegorical approach on its head: to take what appear to be two poems and discover that they are in fact one. Anyone might read plural meanings in a single poem. But to render from two poems with different casts of characters, different plots, and different styles a single, synoptic work—that was a kind of legerdemain that I wanted to witness. And I believe it was a similar wonder that drew reportedly large numbers of students to Melanchthon’s lectures, whether he was teaching Scripture or the ancient poets. By rejecting the basic procedures of allegorical interpretation, and introducing a new way of seeing literary text, Melanchthon was challenging what is called in contemporary educational research a “threshold concept.” As formulated by Jan Meyer and Ray Land, a threshold concept describes learning that serves as a gateway to further progress within a discipline.¹² “It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress.”¹³ Meyer and Land describe five qualities of threshold concepts. Threshold concepts are transformative, differing from other types of learning in that they alter the way students perceive material. They are irreversible, in that they convey perspectives not easily discarded, forgotten, or unlearned. Thirdly and centrally, they are integrative, revealing connections and relations among material that might not have been perceived. Threshold concepts may be bounded, exhibiting limits of conceptual application and defining the boundaries of a curriculum. Finally, they are potentially troublesome, introducing students to “troublesome knowledge,” that is, conceptually difficult, strange, or counterintuitive knowledge. Researchers sometimes describe threshold learning as “foundational,” drawing on a more common metaphor for education. Allegory may thus be considered a threshold concept in literary education from the late antique period through the Renaissance. For what was allegory but a way of transforming perspective, like an anamorphosis or painting that presents two different images depending on one’s perspective—two poems of one text, or two images of one painting? Allegory inculcated habits that are hard to break, such that even folksy texts like Aesop’s fables, presumably immune to subtle scrutiny, were eventually subjected to allegorical ¹² Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines, Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project, Occasional Report 4 (Edinburgh, Coventry, and Durham: ETL Project, n.d.). http://www. ed.ac.uk/etl. ¹³ Meyer and Land, Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge, 1.

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interpretation in the Middle Ages. As for its integrative quality, allegory was instrumentalized in much of European history to reconcile pagan and Christian wisdom. But like a threshold concept allegory reveals limits. The boundedness of allegorical interpretation was made clear by its excesses, such as certain fanciful interpretations of Scripture by Origen and Nicolas of Lyra that drew ire or ridicule from the more commonsensical.¹⁴ Finally, by definition allegory is counterintuitive, marking ruptures in commonsense, everyday, or familiar landscapes. The comparison between allegory and threshold concepts is attractive because these are often described in their interpretive function; they make sense of one’s learning. With his novel reading of Homer, Melanchthon, the man in the middle, the man between, was stepping into this liminal space of literary education and charting out a different transformation and path for learners. He was attempting to teach something on the order of a threshold concept. There is no agreed-upon name for his method, which had a strong legacy in the reading and preaching of Scripture in Lutheran territories, and an even more expansive though harder to define legacy in practices of reading secular literature.¹⁵ It has been called “rhetorical reading” and “logical reading,” even “dialecticalrhetorical reading,” terms that reflect the perspective of historians working within particular disciplines.¹⁶ The most influential account of it remains the ¹⁴ Especially helpful here is Aleida Assmann’s account of unruly semiotics (Wilde Semiose). Defined against the normal socially sanctioned interpretation of images and signs, “Unruly semiotics is the broad field that stretches between the pathological and the creative.” Im Dickicht der Zeichen (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2015), 18. ¹⁵ Melanchthon’s reading practices were propagated directly by his students, who went on to teach in schools and universities, and indirectly by hundreds of editions of the classics that included his annotations in print. His synthetic, creative use of ancient and contemporary sources, and the adaptations that others would make of his work, make his legacy in humanist reading practices hard to define or quantify. But a more accurate and complete characterization of his reading practice, it is hoped, will help define his legacy. ¹⁶ Peter Mack sorts Melanchthon’s commentaries on Latin authors into five groups, including grammatical-rhetorical commentary and dialectical-rhetorical commentary. “Melanchthon’s Commentaries on Latin Literature,” in Melanchthon und Europa, II: Westeuropa, ed. Günter Frank (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002), 29–52. For Melanchthon and ethical-rhetorical reading, see Mack, “Rhetoric, Ethics, and Reading in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Studies 19 (2005): 1–21. With a focus on Melanchthon’s earliest writings on rhetoric and dialectic, and his debt to Rudolf Agricola, Kees Meerhoff describes Melanchthon’s “exegetical method” or simply “method,” drawing on an analogy with the reforms of Peter Ramus, Entre logique et littérature. Craig Kallendorf has described Melanchthon’s notes on Virgil as representative of the “rhetoricized” Virgil, “read through an epideictic filter that made them into the praise of virtue and condemnation of vice.” Printing Virgil: The Transformation of the Classics in the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 123. See also Heinz Hofmann, “Melanchthon als Interpret antiker Dichtung,” Neulatinisches Jahrbuch 1 (1999): 99–128. John R. Schneider characterized the method as “rhetorical.” Philip Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Construal of Biblical Authority: Oratio Sacra (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). In scholarship on Melanchthon’s biblical criticism, Timothy J. Wengert sees dialectic more pronounced than rhetoric. Philipp Melanchthon’s Annotationes in Johannem in Relation to its Predecessors and Contemporaries (Geneva: Droz, 1987). Scholars of literature who have written on Melanchthon’s biblical commentaries

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harshly critical take by Walter Ong, who sees reading in Wittenberg as a slippery slope towards Ramist “method,” and an exchange of temporal for spatial concepts of literary discourse.¹⁷ Literary historian Francis Goyet compared it to the sublime, a theory of literary discourse articulated in the ancient world and revisited in the Renaissance.¹⁸ Erasmus’s doctrine of abundance of discourse, copia, which was so influential as to be rendered “copie” by English educators, offers another point of comparison, and one much nearer in my view to Wittenberg methods.¹⁹ What copia represents is that transcending ideal that encompasses and organizes for Erasmus the various instruments of the liberal arts grammar, logic, and rhetoric. It is an ideal that describes social and ethical as well as verbal commitments or dispositions, not natural or wholly artificial but cultivated in a classroom modeled in part on ancient texts and procedures. Erasmus’s writings had a profound impact on Melanchthon, who drew on Erasmus (and other contemporary writers) and the ancients in equal measure. “Eloquence” is probably the closest Melanchthon came to naming the threshold concept he was teaching in Wittenberg. The hypothesis of this book is that Melanchthon’s teaching of the unity of the Homeric poem will illustrate in a new and significant way his belief in the study of eloquence as a means to effect unity and integrity.²⁰ Melanchthon might have perceived among the disadvantages of allegory this: that it had the potential to divide readers into those who get it and those who don’t.²¹ Indeed,

include Meerhoff, “Logic and Eloquence: A Ramusian Revolution?” Argumentation 5 (1991): 357–74, esp. 362, and William P. Weaver, “A More Excellent Way: Philip Melanchthon’s Corinthians Lectures of 1521–22,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 37 (2014): 31–63. ¹⁷ Humanist logical methods of reading were savaged (as Peter Ramus’s “method”) by Ong in Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 263–7. For a more favorable view, see Wilbur Samuel Howell, Poetics, Rhetoric, and Logic: Studies in the Basic Disciplines of Criticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 85–86. ¹⁸ Le sublime du “lieu commun”: L’invention rhétorique dans l’Antiquité et à la Renaissance (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996), 58–75, 504–9. Goyet makes many brilliant observations in the course of his study, which includes some of the most extensive accounts of Melanchthon’s reading of poetry. He does not persuade me that the locus communis or “commonplace” is the cornerstone of Melanchthon’s literary theory, but I do think he is right to seek an account that transcends the academic disciplines. ¹⁹ Here again, Cave is indispensable. The Cornucopian Text, 78–124. ²⁰ There were historical limitations to Melanchthon’s perspective. His vision of social and political unity took in a Christian literate society within an aristocratically ruled Europe. As we will see, characteristically of his era he understood and described learning primarily with reference to men and Latin literacy, though his later German versions of his theological textbook had women readers in view. He was an apologist for the aristocracy, and the ancient Roman imperium crops up in his writings as a model society. With other Europeans of his era he viewed the Ottoman threat as an existential threat to a Christian Europe, and he reviled the Ottomans in fervent writings. Within the limited scope of his vision of society, he believed in the power of eloquence to effect change and reconcile differences. ²¹ Frank Kermode draws large inferences about literature from this aspect of allegorical reading in The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

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among some allegorists and apologists of allegory, it was an express aim of allegory to protect mysteries of learning from the unlearned. In this view the literal meaning of a text was either a sop or scandal to the unlearned, who might rest in the literal meaning or reject it, but who would never in any case approach the mysteries of the text. The learned, on the other hand, the initiate—they supposedly would not rest content with the literal meaning, but would peer through the veil to a deeper meaning (the veil was one of the metaphors for allegorical reading). Jesus is reported to have explained his use of parables (a literary genre related to allegory) in terms of including some and excluding others.²² And Paul, writing about true and false interpretations of Scripture, seems to exclude a whole race of readers when he accuses the Jews of reading according to the letter and being blind to the spirit.²³ Allegory, whether we understand this as an occasional figure of speech or as a principle of composing an entire text, similarly implies at least two readings if not two readers. Consequently allegory was of limited service towards Melanchthon’s goal, which was to promote unity and common understandings, especially in theological matters. He didn’t make much even of his own teacherly status, sharing his home not to mention many of his writings with his students, who recited his speeches and used his teaching notes in their own classrooms. “Preceptor” was an honor bestowed on him, not one he claimed or touted. His signature brand of theological instruction he named in fact for shared lore, titling his famous and influential theological textbook the “commonplaces” of theology.²⁴ Even theology, then, queen of the sciences, was not to be the preserve of a select few, whether they be scholars or clerics or part of the religious orders. The commonplaces of theology were common to all Scripture and not just one part; they were also common to all literate folk.²⁵ Melanchthon, author of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, both of

²² Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy, 23–47. ²³ 2 Corinthians 3:6–18. Melanchthon taught and commended Augustine’s exegesis of this passage, De spiritu et litera. Robert Kolb, “The Pastoral Dimension of Melanchthon’s Pedagogical Activities for the Education of Pastors,” in Philip Melanchthon: Theologian in Classroom, Confession, and Controversy, ed. Irene Dingel et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 33. ²⁴ From 1521 to 1541 Melanchthon’s summaries of biblical doctrine were titled Loci Communes (the “Commonplaces”). After 1542 Melanchthon published the Loci under the title Loci Praecipui (the “Chief Places” or “Chief Topics”). See Quirinus Breen, “The Terms ‘Loci Communes’ and ‘Loci’ in Melanchthon,” in Christianity and Humanism: Studies in the Histories of Ideas, ed. N. P. Ross (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), 93–105. ²⁵ Volumes have been written on Melanchthon’s commonplace theology. For illustrations of its practice and spread in Germany, see Robert Kolb, “Teaching the Text: The Commonplace Method in Sixteenth Century Lutheran Biblical Commentary,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 49 (1987): 571–85.

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which were included among the Lutheran Articles of Concord in 1571, never took the degree of doctor of theology.²⁶ Speech, and centrally a “speech rhetoric,” is what I have discovered to be the instrument by which Melanchthon discovers and argues a unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Where others might approach poetry first in its signifying function, and accordingly divide a poem into sign and thing, Melanchthon approached it primarily in its speaking function, and that allowed him to argue a single poem of what he viewed effectively as two speeches or utterances. The Iliad from this view is like a speech composed of speeches, and so is the Odyssey.²⁷ Much of this book will be in pursuit of the units of speech that Melanchthon used to segment, classify, and compare parts of the twofold Homeric “theme” (the Iliad and the Odyssey). Furthermore, in a way that transcends normal speech, the Homeric poem is a poem. As I will develop throughout this book, speech has a variety of functions, among them representation. But a poem in Melanchthon’s view is a special kind of representation, configuring speeches (among its primary elements) in a unique and transformative way. Not that you cannot perceive poetic quality of speech at the local level—but the poetic quality of the local speech implies and reflects the integrity of a poem in its entirety. Counterintuitively, the unity of the Homeric poem in Wittenberg is not coterminous with the combined texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The unity of the poem is not a literary or formal unity, that is, but what we might call for now a prudential unity, realized in acts of reading that include comparison, recollection, translation, paraphrase, and ultimately imitation. Furthermore, the unity of the Homeric poem may be perceived outside as well as inside the texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey, supremely through the looking glass of a literary imitation like Virgil’s Aeneid. Characteristic of a threshold concept, Melanchthon’s doctrine of eloquence leads the student into problematic knowledge. A speech rhetoric and a speech poetics—these were the disciplines that give one perspective on otherwise unperceived unities and integrities. And perception of these unities and integrities is important to several disciplines, including the classical tradition, especially traditions of classical rhetoric; classical reception, especially the tradition of ancient Homer scholarship in the Renaissance; and historical theology, especially biblical interpretation in the ²⁶ Scheible attributes Melanchthon’s non-pursuit of a degree beyond the baccalaureus biblicus to his aversion to scholastic theology. Melanchthon, 41–2. ²⁷ Compare Goyet’s argument of the unifying framework of the “text.” Le sublime du “lieu commun”, 542.

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Reformation era. These are my main scholarly audiences in this book, but the book also addresses a broader academic audience with a case for the distinctive quality of the “speech arts” and their relation to literature and society.

Speech Rhetoric Material for the study of Homer in Wittenberg is diverse and rich, and it includes extensive manuscript evidence that has not been put in conversation with the print record to better understand Melanchthon’s doctrine of eloquence. Homer in Wittenberg brings together manuscript and printed evidence to attempt a synoptic though not comprehensive view of the question. Manuscript sources include Melanchthon’s teaching copy of the Iliad, annotated in his own hand with notes probably stemming from his earliest years in Wittenberg (these are the subject of Chapter 2); a student’s copy of books from the Iliad and the Odyssey annotated with notes recording Melanchthon’s lectures in 1523 and 1524 (the subject of Chapter 3); and what I call the “Wittenberg scholia,” a comprehensive, relatively uniform set of notes on printed copies of the Iliad and the Odyssey that can be dated to the 1550s in Wittenberg, and probably to the lectures of Vitus Winshemius, who formally took up the professorship of Greek in Wittenberg in 1541 (the subject of Chapter 5). The print record also is not inconsiderable. Melanchthon’s Greek grammar (the subject of Chapter 1) stems from his student years in Tübingen, and it reflects the foundational place of Homer in Melanchthon’s own studies, as well as his program for the revitalization of learning that he brought with him to Wittenberg. A well-known declamation of 1538 provides the basis of much existing scholarship, though Melanchthon’s idiosyncratic label “the Homeric poem” has passed without comment. In Chapter 4 I argue that this label reflects vital relationships between Wittenberg and ancient traditions of scholarship, and between Homeric and biblical interpretation. Chapter 6 brings the manuscript and printed records together in a comparison of diverse marginal notes on the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, the mock-epic poem attributed to Homer by many in the Renaissance (including Melanchthon). Other printed materials for the study of Homer in Wittenberg that I draw on throughout the study include Melanchthon’s declamations and correspondence, his epigrams and poems, and his textbooks on rhetoric and dialectic. These last are particularly important for understanding the manuscript and printed record of the marginalia, which label among other things genres of speaking, figures of

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speech, and topics of invention. But as I have found, the same textbooks, if taken as a master paradigm for interpreting the marginalia, can obscure the work they are doing. I began this project asking the question, how does Melanchthon’s theory of rhetoric inform his reading and teaching of Homer? And I gave the project the working title “Melanchthon’s Homer,” but at an embarrassingly advanced stage of the project I wondered if it might not more accurately be called “Melanchthon’s Quintilian.” Conceptual rhetoric, the kind of instruction found in handbooks, offers certainly a robust system for analyzing passages of Homer, and it seemed to be at work in this way in Melanchthon’s notes. But how was rhetorical analysis of Homer, the kind I was supposing to be at work in Wittenberg, any different from a rhetorical analysis of tragedy, oratory, or any other literary genre? How were Melanchthon’s Homer notes any different from his Virgil notes? One would expect that they would bear more than a family resemblance, but one would hope that they would also be differentiated in a way reflecting Melanchthon’s engagement with this poet. Having launched out in quest of rhetoric, I found—rhetoric. And so I returned to the poems, and to Melanchthon’s many pronouncements on the distinctive place of Homer in literary education. I looked also to his many engagements with Homer in verse, verses written as translations, imitations, or commentaries on the Homeric poem. This return transformed my view of the project. The real question was, how do Melanchthon’s reading and teaching of Homer inform his theory of rhetoric? How does an art of rhetoric as taught through Homeric speech relate to an art of rhetoric as taught through a textbook? And how does it contribute to that Renaissance ideal of eloquence? What I discovered significantly changed my view of the practice of rhetoric in the Renaissance, especially what has been called “literary rhetoric” or “rhetorical poetics.”²⁸ Literary rhetoric is typically conceived of as a poetics that borrows extensively on rhetorical teachings originally formulated for oratory. It is the adaptation of genres of speaking and schemes of embellishment for written contexts, and is illustrated by medieval arts of letter writing (ars dictaminis) and poetry, like the Poetria Nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, and by Renaissance manuals of style. Erasmus’s De Conscribendis Epistolis (On Letter Writing) is a literary rhetoric for prose writing in the Renaissance era, and George Puttenham’s The Art of English Poesy (1589) is a good example of

²⁸ Notable accounts include Richard A. Lanham, Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), and Heinrich Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004).

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literary rhetoric for verse.²⁹ The sources and traditions of literary rhetoric are manifold, but they are often compared to an ideal of classical rhetoric and ancient oratory. Textbooks like the Rhetorica ad Herennium, long attributed to Cicero, or the Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian provide a comprehensive model of the art of oratory, and a verse treatise like Horace’s Art of Poetry illustrates a type of literary rhetoric in the ancient world itself. Within literary rhetoric, poetry and oratory are assumed to share the same ends, resources, and techniques. So strong was rhetoric in Renaissance education and poetics that some have gone so far as to characterize the culture itself as rhetorical.³⁰ On the face of it, Melanchthon’s philosophy and practice of literature look much like literary rhetoric as generally understood. He illustrates his rhetorical textbooks with examples from verse and prose literature, both sacred and secular. With some important differences and innovations, he uses basically the same terms and lore, even going so far as to downplay his own unique contribution. And many of his notes on Homer and Virgil may safely be characterized as rhetorical. The formal oration is paradigmatic in his exposition of some Homeric speech and even parts of the Homeric poem. What distinguishes Melanchthon’s rhetorical reading, and his view of rhetoric in general, from “literary rhetoric” as commonly understood, is that he takes speech or utterance to be the basic unit of discourse. In his analysis, literary text breaks down into these fundamental units: kinds of speaking and occasions of speech. This speech-orientation is consistent with his major Renaissance sources: Lorenzo Valla, Rudolf Agricola, and Erasmus, who rewrote grammar, logic, and rhetoric as arts of classifying, collecting, and organizing utterances. For all three, literature and poetry in particular supplied examples of utterance, which were the basic object of study for young persons. Valla in the Elegantiae, Agricola in the De Inventione Dialectica, and Erasmus in the first book of the De Copia (to a lesser extent in the second book, and occasionally in De Conscribendis Epistolis) all made the utterance (sermo, oratio) the object of study. They turned the liberal arts grammar, logic, and rhetoric into the speech arts.³¹ Where ancient rhetoric had tended to make

²⁹ See Judith Rice Henderson, “The Composition of Erasmus’ Opus de conscribendis epistolis: Evidence for the Growth of a Mind,” in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991), 147–54. George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy: A Critical Edition, ed. Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), esp. 34–5. ³⁰ Lanham, Motives of Eloquence, 1–35. ³¹ Book-length studies of the humanist transformation of the liberal arts with reference to Philip Melanchthon include Peter Mack, Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic (Leiden: Brill, 1993); Volkhard Wels, Triviale Künste: Die humanistische Reform

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arguments and words (inventio and elocutio, res and verba) the object of study and imitation, speech rhetoric as practiced by Melanchthon and other humanists focused on utterance and its relation to other utterance. In Wittenberg, and by extension the literary culture of the Reformation, rhetoric was underwritten by doctrines of speech. Arguments, configurations of argument, embellishments, performances—I began to see that all the classifications of rhetoric were taught as if speech were the master paradigm. Contrary to a semiotic comparison of philosophy and rhetoric as arts of things and words, or realities and representations, a speech rhetoric considered speech (spoken or written) to be the shared basic instrument of philosophy and rhetoric alike. Eloquence was a practice of philosophy no less than a practice of literature. The centrality of speech in the Renaissance bears emphasizing, since it might be obscured by Augustine’s enormous influence over the teaching of literacy, especially his doctrine of signs in On Christian Teaching.³² Melanchthon never wrote a De doctrina Christiana, but if he had, I believe he would have rebutted Augustine’s description of learning in terms of things and signs. Not things and signs (res et signa or res et verba as often written) but things and utterances (res et sermones), or better occasions and speeches (occasiones et orationes), would have been the theme of a Philippist De doctrina Christiana. The difference is vast and is illustrated (just to take a couple of signal examples) by Luther’s teaching of the sacraments as promises (bearing with them signs), or Melanchthon’s influential reorganization of Erasmus’s Twofold commentary on the twofold abundance of discourse, of words and things (De copia) into three types of abundant discourse collected under types of utterance.³³ Once again we find Melanchthon reconfiguring divisions and binaries—Melanchthon in the middle, master negotiator who sees other possibilities, where others see two. “To the extent that Melanchthon distinguishes between knowledge of speech and reality,” writes Maurer, “he makes speech and likewise grammar the basis of all understanding.”³⁴ Where speech is paradigmatic, the conventional metaphor of rhetoric as clothing starts to break down. Division of der grammatischen, dialektischen und rhetorischen Ausbildung an der Wende zum 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Weidler, 2000); Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2003. ³² “All doctrine concerns either things or signs, but things are learned by signs.” De doctrina Christiana 1.2, in Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), 8. ³³ William P. Weaver, “Triplex est Copia: Philip Melanchthon’s Invention of the Rhetorical Figures,” Rhetorica 29 (2011): 367–402. ³⁴ Der junge Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation, 1.55, translation taken from Weaver, “A More Excellent Way,” 45n47.

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discourse into content and expression, or arguments and words (res et verba), becomes less convincing and at times untenable. Most importantly, the practice of reading looks differently. Reading the speech rhetoric of a poem places emphasis on the poem’s utterances and construes not only its dramatic and reported speeches but also its articulations, digressions, narratives, embellishments, and even its actions and gestures, as speech. As speech, the poem means but it also does, acting and performing in ways that model certain kinds of ethos for the reader attuned to its manner of speaking, what Melanchthon called its “composition and scheme,” a description he applied to Holy Scripture no less than to the Homeric poem.³⁵ His interest in the Homeric poem, and his every annotation, concerned Homeric utterance. In this he anticipated some modern commentators. Recent scholarship has recognized “Homeric speech” or heroic speech more generally as a distinctive kind of eloquence, central to the poet’s imagination of the heroic world.³⁶ There is no agreement on the scholarly terms that should be used to describe Homeric speech, but several studies are unanimous on the importance of studying utterance in the epic poems.³⁷ Direct speech is a central means of characterization, and several characters or classes of characters have verbal identifiers related to the oral-formulaic composition of the poems. Speech is portrayed in Homer as an instrumental and creative force. And it is bound up with knowing and action. Together the Iliad and the

³⁵ Weaver, “A More Excellent Way,” 39–47. See MSA vol. 4, p. 91. Melanchthon uses a similar phrase, “his composition and method for the kind of speech itself” (eius phrasis generisque dicendi ipsius ratio), to describe Homer’s characteristic utterance. See Chapter 3, section “Agamemnon’s Princely Oratory.” In an oration “On the Order of Learning” (1531), he writes, “Then as for the usefulness of these studies, it is manifest. For they [students of the liberal arts] are, as the Greeks say, further along the way [πρὸ ὁδοῦ, Iliad 4.382] in the higher arts, which to be sure require a studied knowledge of speech. For which student would anyone promote [to a degree], if he couldn’t make a judgment about the classification of a speech (sermonis genus)? (Iam utilitas maxime percipitur ex his studiis; sunt enim, ut Graeci dicunt, πρὸ ὁδοῦ in superioribus artibus, quae certe dicendi scientiam requirunt. Quid enim promoverit aliquis, si sermonis genus non queat iudicare?)” CR 11.214. A translation of the speech is found in Melanchthon, Orations, 3–8. ³⁶ The phrase is from Rachel Ahern Knudsen, Homeric Speech and the Origins of Rhetoric (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). For numerous stylistic distinctives of direct speech and narration in the poems, see Jasper Griffin, “Homeric Words and Speakers,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 106 (1986): 36–57. ³⁷ In an influential study, Richard P. Martin draws attention to the poet’s distribution of epos and muthos between different occasions, showing that Homeric speech is at least twofold, including an everyday, familiar kind of speech (epos), and a formal, commanding kind of speech (muthos). The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1989). Looking at the prominence of speech in ancient poetics (with a focus on Hesiod in the archaic period), Jeffrey Walker argues that disciplinary boundaries, when applied to the heroic world of speaking, are artificial and anachronistic. In the heroic world of Hesiod and Homer, poetic enunciations are divine, prophetic, and royal. Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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Odyssey contain the elements of a study of speech, including some critical language about speech. Recent scholarly attention to Homeric speech invites comparison with ancient Homeric criticism, heavily influenced as it was by the art of rhetoric.³⁸ Rachel Knudsen argues a natural development from Homeric speech to the later art of rhetoric, going so far as to argue Homer as a father of rhetoric, but the title of her book implies that she recognizes all the same a difference between speech and rhetoric.³⁹ That is an important distinction, and I will argue that for all his writing and influence on the art of rhetoric, Melanchthon’s primary interest as a reader of Homer and as an educator in Germany was in Homeric speech. The humanistic terms of his educational theory and practice mandated that he take what we call “primary sources” and what he called “the writings of the learned” as paradigmatic. These, not the technical writings, were authoritative. It was literature, including poetry, history, and oratory, that supplied rhetoric and dialectic with their examples, and the concrete example had an authority that could not be found in rules of the arts. Humanist rhetoric and dialectic might best be viewed as convenient systems of collecting and organizing utterance. They were like early modern databases of literary speech. By attending to what is “Homeric” and not just rhetorical in Wittenberg readings of Homer, I wish to illustrate the exemplarity of classical texts in Wittenberg and draw new inferences about textual authority in the Renaissance and Reformation. Homer had an authority in Wittenberg no less than he had in the ancient world, and his authority lay in his utterance, which became paradigmatic for the rhetorical genres. Thus Homeric grammar, Homeric eloquence, and Homeric prudence—roughly equivalent to the three verbal arts of the “trivium,” grammar, rhetoric, and logic—are the subjects of Chapters 1 through 3. Rhetoric was, then, one of the speech arts through which Melanchthon made utterance the basic unit of his study, even going so far as to construe all literary text as speech. Far from merely applying technical rules of an art drawn mostly from Roman sources like Cicero and Quintilian, and discovering them in his reading of Homer, Melanchthon drew on these sources (and others) in order to attend to one of the basic units of composition in the ³⁸ See René Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 6, 10, and passim; Roos Meijering, Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia (Groningen: E. Forsten, 1987); N. J. Richardson, “Literary Criticism in the Exegetical Scholia to the Iliad: A Sketch,” The Classical Quarterly 30 (1980): 265–72. ³⁹ Homeric Speech and the Origins of Rhetoric.

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Homeric poem. Just as modern scholars recognize speech as constitutive of Homer’s heroes, heroic society, and even his poem, Melanchthon recognized in speech a generative or poetic quality.

Ancient Scholarship in Wittenberg In recounting the manuscript and printed primary sources for this study above, I listed only sources originating in Wittenberg. But these point to and participate in an ancient tradition, rich with its own material (including of course Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria) that is also vital for our understanding of Homer in Wittenberg. Focused though it is on one poet, or as Melanchthon might argue one poem, Homer in Wittenberg is a study of the classical tradition in Wittenberg during the Reformation.⁴⁰ Ultimately it tells the story of a revival of ancient Homer scholarship, and argues the significance of that revival for the University of Wittenberg. A major discovery in my research is that Melanchthon and his students were attempting to read Homer as his ancient readers were reading him.⁴¹ These ancient readers include several known persons, including the poet Virgil; two scholars of the first century , Quintilian and Strabo; and one scholar of the late antique period, Macrobius. But they also include myriad anonymous “scholiasts” or annotators of classical literature who left behind extensive notes of great interest for literary historians. In one form or subset, called “exegetical scholia,” these notes supplied much of the rhetorical terminology through which Melanchthon and his students theorized and annotated the Homeric poem.

⁴⁰ Studies of Greek learning in Reformation Wittenberg include Stefan Rhein, “Melanchthon and Greek Literature,” in Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary, ed. Timothy J. Wengert and M. Patrick Graham (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); Asaph Ben-Tov, Lutheran Humanists and Greek Antiquity: Melanchthonian Scholarship between Universal History and Pedagogy (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Christina Meckelnborg and Bernd Schneider, Der Wittenberger Homer: Johann Stigel und seine lateinische Übersetzung des elften Odyssee-Buches (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015); and Micha Lazarus, “Tragedy at Wittenberg: Sophocles in Reformation Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 73 (2020): 33–77. ⁴¹ Introductions to scholarship in the ancient world include L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 1–43; Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1–17. See also Robert Lamberton and John J. Keaney, eds., Homer’s Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). This collection includes an essay by Anthony Grafton on the tradition of ancient scholarship in the Renaissance: “Renaissance Readers of Homer’s Ancient Readers,” in Homer’s Ancient Readers, 149–72. For further scholarship see Chapters 4 and 5.

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Homer in Wittenberg thus tells a chapter in the traditions of ancient rhetoric and scholarship, as well as in the reception of Homer. My study participates also in a revival of interest in marginal notes or annotated books of the Renaissance.⁴² Libraries and annotated books of famous writers (“author-readers”) have occupied scholars and enthusiasts in every age, and they remain coveted objects of collection and preservation, not least for the publicity that they generate. A development in late twentiethcentury scholarship changed the fate of many other annotated books, when historians turned their attention to scholarly readers, named or anonymous readers whose notes reflect contemporary conditions of learning, from the elementary to the erudite.⁴³ These studies argue a thesis of the growing field of the history of reading: reading is a cultural practice and can be studied like other cultural phenomena.⁴⁴ They shift the focus somewhat from interpretation to the labor, materials, and ethics of reading. Annotated books are especially important for the history of scholarship and education in the Renaissance, when reading practices reflected disciplines learned in the grammar school and university. Among other things, the practices reflected in annotated books promise to illustrate the humanist ambition to shape moral character through reading. A study of Melanchthon’s annotations on Homer occupies a unique place in this field of scholarship. On the one hand, Melanchthon’s literary remains are unquestionably venerable and were once thought to be so marketable as to be the object of a large-scale fraud: the sale in 1835 of “Melanchthon’s library” by the auctioneer Samuel Leigh Sotheby.⁴⁵ Sotheby attributed to Melanchthon

⁴² A 2010 issue of Bulletin du bibliophile, edited by Olivier Millet, was devoted to annotated books of the Renaissance. “Annotations manuscrites dans les livres de la Renaissance,” Bulletin du bibliophile 2 (2010): 225–94. A special issue of Intellectual History Review in 2010, guest edited by Ann Blair and Richard Yeo, had a similar focus: “Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe,” Intellectual History Review 20.3 (2010). In the meantime, digital tools have made early modern notes more accessible. Annotated Books Online, a project at the University of Utrecht directed by Arnoud Visser, extends possibilities of research by adding a layer of digital annotation. ⁴³ Prominent examples include Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, “Studied for Action: How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy,” Past and Present 129 (1990): 30–78; Lisa Jardine and William Sherman, “Pragmatic Readers: Knowledge Transactions and Scholarly Services in Late Elizabethan England,” in Religion, Culture, and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson, ed. A. Fletcher and P. Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 102–24; Ann Blair, “Note Taking as an Art of Transmission,” Critical Inquiry 31 (2004): 85–107; William Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). ⁴⁴ Blair, “Note Taking as an Art of Transmission.” ⁴⁵ Catalogue of the Library of Dr. Kloss, of Franckfort a.M., Professor; Including Many Original and Unpublished Manuscripts, and Printed Books with Ms. Annotations, by Philip Melanchthon (London, 1835). For volumes from the Kloss sale in American libraries, see George McCracken, “Marginalia Attributed to Melanchthon,” Classical Philology 28 (1933): 53–5.

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marginalia in dozens of early printed books in a private collection, but his attributions were repudiated immediately by the owner of the collection and soon by other experts. Nevertheless, his sale catalog led to numerous false attributions which remain uncorrected in some American library catalogs. Other, more sober efforts have been made to locate annotations by Melanchthon.⁴⁶ On the other hand, Melanchthon’s notes are equally valuable as historical evidence of scholarly reading, especially if we consider the significant impact his notes had on scholars. Take his notes on Virgil, frequently printed with the poetry as marginal notes in the sixteenth century and recently examined by Craig Kallendorf.⁴⁷ These notes, which first appeared in 1530, “were often printed anonymously, augmented by scholia from other sources, and absorbed into larger commentaries.”⁴⁸ In a recent census of printed Virgil commentaries up to the year 1600, Kallendorf counts 116 editions of Melanchthon’s commentary, “printed twice as often as any of its competitors during this period.”⁴⁹ He gives a persuasive explanation of their popularity. Responsive to (and at times critical of) a popular method of reading the classics to cull out moral wisdom in the form of commonplaces, Melanchthon directed this type of reading to a more sophisticated engagement with the places of rhetoric and dialectic: the topics of invention, especially the topics of praise and blame. His notes offer “a better understanding of the rhetoricized filter through which literature was analyzed and written during this period.”⁵⁰ Melanchthon’s commentaries are important, then, not because they were idiosyncratic or exotic. They were not even entirely novel, though there are new directions Melanchthon takes the various traditions in his classroom. They are important as illustrations of practice, illustrating among other things rhetorical analysis in the Renaissance at its best. Melanchthon thus presents a distinctive and important case in the history of note-taking. In my study of Melanchthon’s Homer notes, and those of his students, I have become persuaded that they reflect directly or indirectly his thought and interpretation, his circumstances and prejudices. They are uniquely related to his theory and practice of biblical interpretation, a matter I address in the following section. But I have been equally convinced that they are representative of Renaissance reading practices, which they aimed to

⁴⁶ For example, see Carl Georg Brandis, “Luther und Melanchthon als Benutzer der Wittenberger Bibliothek,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 90 (1917): 206–21. ⁴⁷ “Uncommon Commonplaces: Melanchthon’s Vergil Commentary and the Paradox of Popularity,” Vergilius 65 (2019): 99–125. ⁴⁸ “Uncommon Commonplaces,” 118. ⁴⁹ Printing Vergil, 30. ⁵⁰ “Uncommon Commonplaces,” 110.

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shape. Melanchthon had a keen perception of the strengths and weaknesses of the literary culture of his day, and he saw the classroom as a workshop for refining literacy and shaping a generation of leaders, not just readers. Prudence as well as eloquence (mirror images of one another for Melanchthon) are the outcomes of reading the classics as speech. To refine reading practices of his day, Melanchthon looked to ancient scholarship. This aspect of his exegesis has yet to be examined and deserves attention. For although there has been much interest in Renaissance marginalia, only occasionally is note taking discussed in relation to ancient scholarship, which was circulating among humanists in northern Europe. In two important studies, Anthony Grafton has demonstrated that Renaissance readers of Homer were availing themselves of the ancient scholia, and that the ancient scholia such as found in the famous Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad shaped Renaissance text-critical practices.⁵¹ What I show in this book is that ancient scholia shaped literary-critical as well as text-critical practices in Wittenberg.⁵² Ancient “exegetical-type” scholia supplied a technical vocabulary, a set of critical standards, and a scholarly posture or ethos that Melanchthon and his successors in the professorship of Greek, including Vitus Winshemius, adapted to their uses and applied in their classrooms. As I will show, the revival of the ancient tradition in Wittenberg reflects practical as well as verbal imitation. Wittenberg readers were adopting the rhetorical and ethical framework they found in ancient scholarship and applying it to their reading of the Homeric poem. This ancient tradition and its revival in Wittenberg is the focus of Chapters 4 and 5.

Homer and the Bible in Wittenberg As argued eloquently by Brian Cummings, reading Scripture was one of the organizing and propelling forces of literary activities in the Reformation era, focalizing the era’s “literary culture,” including the production of vernacular poetry.⁵³ Above all, the “Scripture principle” (Schriftprinzip) of the reformers, ⁵¹ “How Guillaume Budé Read his Homer,” in Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 135–83; “Martin Crusius Reads his Homer,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 64 (2002/3): 63–86. ⁵² Melanchthon shows little interest in textual scholarship, and evidence of textual scholarship, such as emendations of the text or recording of textual variants, is scarce in Wittenberg notes. For other ancient forms of scholarship, see Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 11–14, 18–23. ⁵³ The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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sometimes articulated in the phrase sola scriptura, described an attempt to relocate authority in the written word of the Bible, not in church councils or traditions.⁵⁴ Such a shift necessitated a reevaluation of interpretive practices. In the words of Erasmus in his public quarrel with Luther over freedom of choice, “But the authority of the Scripture is not here in dispute. The same Scriptures are acknowledged and venerated by either side. Our battle is about the meaning of Scripture.”⁵⁵ Given the energy directed to biblical interpretation, and the controversy over biblical authority in the era, it is hard to imagine that reading the Bible in Wittenberg didn’t impact reading the classics. Vice versa, given the prominence of poetry and classical literature in the humanists’ reorganization of the liberal arts, it is hard to imagine that reading Homer in Wittenberg didn’t impact biblical hermeneutics. Partly owing to disciplinary boundaries in the modern university, our understanding of the relationship between reading the classics and reading Scripture in Wittenberg remains impressionistic.⁵⁶ There are fine studies of Melanchthon’s use of the liberal arts, especially rhetoric and logic, to read and interpret Scripture.⁵⁷ These make occasional comparisons with Melanchthon’s reading of the classics, but they proceed as if the liberal arts were a common fund out of which Melanchthon sourced his analysis of Scripture and the classics alike, applying the liberal arts indifferently to both. The stream from rhetorical theory to exegetical practice is assumed to be one way and direct. The classics and Scripture are cordoned off in their own streams of transmission, though both streams are influenced by humanist rhetoric.⁵⁸ That there ⁵⁴ For the Reformers’ view of Scripture’s authority in historical and contemporary perspective see Iain Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017), 325–37. ⁵⁵ Erasmus, De Libero Arbitrio, trans. E. Gordon Rupp, in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, ed. E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1969), 43. The hermeneutic dimension of the debate is given extensive treatment in Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation, 144–83. ⁵⁶ But see essays in the forthcoming collections by James A. Kellerman, R. Alden Smith, and Carl P. E. Springer, eds., Athens and Wittenberg: Poetry, Philosophy, and Luther’s Legacy (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming), and Micha Lazarus and Lucy Nicholas, eds. Classical Reformations (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming). ⁵⁷ Timothy J. Wengert brings a wealth of rhetorical and theological reading to bear on Melanchthon’s commentaries. Representative studies include Philip Melanchthon’s Annotationes in Johannem, and “Philip Melanchthon’s 1522 Annotations on Romans and the Lutheran Origins of Rhetorical Criticism,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: Essays Presented to David C. Steinmetz in Honor of his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 118–40. See also the essays collected in Timothy J. Wengert and M. Patrick Graham, eds., Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). ⁵⁸ Writing about Melanchthon’s commentary on Colossians, Nicole Kuropka offers a more expansive perspective than described here, arguing the political-theological dimension of commentary. Philipp Melanchthon: Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft.

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was any direct or indirect influence of secular exegesis on scriptural exegesis, or vice versa, is not assumed. I do not wish to undervalue the contribution of rhetorical scholarship to our understanding of biblical authority in the Reformation. Indeed, rhetorical scholarship continues to be an inspiration not just for the history of biblical interpretation, but also for biblical interpretation today.⁵⁹ At least one scholar sees more than a passing resemblance between Melanchthon’s rhetorical commentary and recent scholarly and exegetical approaches.⁶⁰ Obviously rhetoric remains a robust vehicle for analysis and interpretation no less than production of discourse. But an unfortunate consequence of scholars’ focus on rhetoric, to the exclusion of Melanchthon’s reading of the classics, is a portrait of the Preceptor imposing preconceived verbal or even spatialized structures on a living, breathing word, reducing complex writings in the Bible to genres of oratory or worse, syllogisms of dialectic.⁶¹ Even Melanchthon’s sympathetic readers cannot help but apologize at times for the limitations of his method when viewed primarily through the lens of rhetoric. Homer in Wittenberg is an attempt to reclaim the vitality and even the poetry of Melanchthon’s hermeneutic. It is premised on the interrelation of reading Scripture and the classics in the Reformation. Melanchthon, I argue, made a Homeric no less than rhetorical construal of biblical authority.⁶² The classics commanded a significant amount of respect in a civilization committed to imitation, and were endowed by humanist scholars with an authority analogous to the authority reformers attributed to Scripture. In polemical writings by the humanists, including several by Melanchthon, poetry and history, or the “humane writings” (literae humaniores), were argued to be the proper basis for learning and philosophy.⁶³ In an essay on Melanchthon’s early lectures on the letters to the Corinthians, I have attempted to show that the philosophical grounds of biblical authority and interpretation in ⁵⁹ Rhetorical criticism, sometimes referred to as “sociorhetorical criticism,” grew in the 1980s and 1990s and is now an established field of Bible scholarship. ⁶⁰ Carl Joachim Classen, “Neue Elemente in einer alten Disziplin,” in Antike Rhetorik im Zeitalter des Humanismus (Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2003), 254–309. ⁶¹ Drawing partly on Walter Ong’s critique of spatialized reasoning, Peter M. Candler Jr. contrasts Melanchthon’s “grammar of representation” with a “grammar of participation.” Theology, Rhetoric, Manuduction, or Reading Scripture Together on the Path to God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 21–40. ⁶² I’m referring to the title of John Schneider’s book Philip Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Construal of Biblical Authority. Schneider considers Melanchthon’s development primarily in intellectual contexts, such as late medieval scholasticism. But he does describe on pp. 77–8 the exemplarity of history writings. It was through his teaching and understanding of rhetoric, Schneider argues, that Melanchthon developed a doctrine of sola scriptura. ⁶³ See the perceptive essay by Joachim Knape, “Melanchthon und die Historien,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 91 (2000): 111–26.

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Wittenberg exceeded the norms of classical rhetoric and implied a larger perspective on literary discourse illuminated by the speech arts.⁶⁴ In Homer in Wittenberg I wish to develop more fully the same perspective on literary discourse in Wittenberg by examining the Homeric poem, which for Melanchthon, as for many others, was the poem of poems. A study of Homer’s authority in Wittenberg it is hoped will give a fuller picture of the humanistic grounds of biblical authority and exegesis in the Reformation. Although biblical commentary is not the subject of this book, I will attempt to keep the issue of biblical authority in view and illustrate where relevant the importance of the literae humaniores for reading Scripture in Wittenberg. In Chapter 6, I bring the theological dimension of Melanchthon’s engagement with the pagan poets to the fore. Drawing on his later writings concerning prayer, including a preface to his new dialectic textbook, Erotemata Dialectices (“Questions of Dialectic,” 1547), I describe the practical theology that reading Homer occasioned and illustrate this exercise with Wittenberg readings of the pseudo-Homeric short epic Βατραχομυομαχία (Battle of the Frogs and Mice). In reading Homer—even in reading the playfully serious mock epic—students were engaged in theology of a practical or spiritual sort, discerning within a single, coherent text multiple voices, and preparing not so much to do scriptural interpretation as spiritual warfare. Right reading of the poets and Scripture alike was conceived of as a right sacrificial carving of the text, a practice that was essential for discerning the competing voices of law and gospel, whether in Scripture or on the threshold of prayer. Melanchthon’s mature theology of prayer thus clarifies the theological significance of reading Homer through the lens of the speech arts. A contest or disputation takes place, according to Melanchthon, in the prologue to every Christian prayer. Chapter 6 describes the discernment or judgment needed to arbitrate in that contest, and that is where this book formally ends. But the final act of reading Homer in Wittenberg was not an act of understanding or even judgment, but an act of eloquence. To recognize that practical end, I turn in an epilogue to the suggestive evidence that Homer’s prayers supplied a model for public, “common prayers” in the Wittenberg declamations in the 1540s and 1550s. In terms of Melanchthon’s doctrine of the Homeric poem as a divine gift, these prayers might be seen as a fitting return of praise and gratitude.

⁶⁴ Weaver, “A More Excellent Way.”

1 Homeric Grammar Philip’s Institutiones Graecae Grammaticae (1518)

After taking the Master of Arts in Tübingen in 1514, Philip Melanchthon had a hand in the promotion of nascent Greek literacy in Germany. He was giving private tuition in Greek to students in Tübingen (those to whom he dedicated a Greek grammar in 1518), and he was preparing another’s elementary Greek grammar for the press. Sometime between Fall 1514 and July 1516, when he was working as a corrector in the printing shop of Thomas Anshelm, Master Philip worked on an edition of the first book of a Greek grammar by Theodore Gaza (1400–c.1476), the translator of Aristotle who migrated from Constantinople to Italy around 1440 and gave Greek lessons in Mantua, Ferrara, and Rome. Gaza’s grammar was in four books of increasing difficulty, and book 1, on the parts of speech and inflections, represented an elementary stage of instruction.¹ Philip’s contribution to this book has only recently come to light.² It includes an elegiac couplet, addressed to his student Paul Gereander and printed on the title page: Philip to Gereander. The Muses bestowed these godly gifts on lovers of Greek. You shall not be their pupil, my friend, if you are of a lazy mind.³

The warning is a curious and probably unnecessary one. There was small chance that anyone given to laziness would be tempted to take up Greek. The classic textbook on the subject, Manuel Chrysoloras’s Erotemata (“Questions”), covered ten noun declensions and thirteen verb conjugations. And that ¹ For a fuller description of this grammar and its significance, see Paul Botley, Learning Greek in Western Europe, 1396–1529: Grammars, Lexica, and Classroom Texts (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2010), 14–25. ² Theodori Gazae Liber Primus de Rudimentis Graecarum Literarum (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, [c.1515]). The dating is taken from MBW 6a. ³ Φίλιππος τῷ Γεράνδρῷ. Ταῦτα φιλέλλησιν μοῦσαι θεοδώρικ᾽ ἔθηκαν. / Οὐδέ τϊ μουσώσῃ νοῦν φίλ᾽ ἄεργον ἔχων. CR 20.74 has the reading οὐδ᾽ ἔτι.

Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer. William P. Weaver, Oxford University Press. © William P. Weaver 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.003.0002

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represented a major simplification of the fifty-six noun declensions that were the diet of ancient and Byzantine texts.⁴ Slackers need not apply. That is like hanging a sign over Times Square in New York that reads agoraphobes not welcome. But Philip might have more in mind than the sheer difficulty of learning Greek. His warning is rather like a warning at the entrance of a shrine, protecting a mystery and keeping away the profane. The inscription ἀγεωμέτρητος οὐδεὶς εἰσίτω (“let none unlearned in geometry enter”) is supposed to have hung over Plato’s Academy.⁵ In his Adages, Erasmus rejects allegorical and political glosses on the inscription and argues that it refers to overachievers who would go rashly and unprepared to the study of philosophy. Using cultic language he writes that only those “initiated” into geometry and music might enter the school, and that the door was “solemnly” inscribed.⁶ Similarly Philip wants the student to appreciate the mysterious quality of Greek grammar, which he saw as an act of worship or gratitude. To describe the making of the Greek grammar he uses a verb, τίθημι, which here could mean “to make” but also covers a range of meanings including “to present” or “to place.” A compound form, ἀνατίθημι, was used regularly in the ancient world to solemnize the “placing” of votive offerings in sacred spaces.⁷ And τίθημι could likewise mean to dedicate something at a temple. Gaza’s grammar is a gift as to a shrine or a god, a gift ultimately “of God,” next of the Muses, and only proximately of Theodore Gaza. The teacher, like a priest to the temple, is to show an appropriate reverence in approaching the subject.⁸ As I have described it this bit of signage might sound a trifle sanctimonious, but acoustically Philip’s verse is playfully serious. It is modeled on the didactic admonitions of the corpus of elegiac poetry now called the Theognidea, which includes the frequent address to φίλε, “my dear,” and compiles didactic verse with symposium verse, or the teaching kind with the drinking kind. In the first line, Philip plays on the first name of the author of the grammar, Theodore Gaza, praising his work as “godly gifts” or perhaps “divine bounty.” In the second line, he echoes the name of the Muses, using a verb derived from their

⁴ Gaza’s grammar, which Philip here presents, further simplified the noun declensions to five, and compressed the thirteen verb conjugations to five, but that implied a lot of compression. In his own grammar, Melanchthon would mostly follow Chrysoloras’s numbering. ⁵ Erasmus, Adag. 3.3.60. ⁶ ASD series II volume 5, pp. 219–20 (II-5.219–20). ⁷ For dedicatory inscriptions from the mid-sixth to the third century , see Mary Depew, “Reading Greek Prayers,” Classical Antiquity 16 (1997): 238–40. ⁸ For Melanchthon’s later description of the teacher of dialectic as priest, see Chapter 6. In a 1517 declamation on the liberal arts, Philip invokes an epithet of Hermes: “gatekeeper” (στροφαῖος). CR 11.13.

 ’     (  ) 23 name—mousoô, he explains elsewhere, means to give instruction in music or in the art of the Muses.⁹ The verses subtly evoke the name “philosophy” by a threefold use of the phoneme phil—in the inscription (Philip), in the first line (philhellenes), and in the second line (phile). The wordplay in these verses, doubling, defining, and echoing, makes tangible some concrete, audible properties of words that would be instrumental in the study of Greek, synonymous for Philip with the search for truth. In other words, such verbal play (in a figure of repetition called paranomasia) is not decorative but goes to the heart of Philip’s Greek instruction. In this chapter, I wish to show first, that as a student Melanchthon conceived of Greek language study primarily in a philosophical framework, and second, to characterize his humanist philosophy, its scope and its aims, as illustrated in his Greek grammar, the Institutiones Graecae Grammaticae (1518). Further materials for the study of Philip’s idea of Greek instruction in 1518 include his correspondence of the Tübingen period (1512–18); a Tübingen oration on the liberal arts (1517); and the inaugural declamation at Wittenberg (August 29, 1518). This early period, largely reflecting the context of Tübingen and southwestern Germany, has drawn much attention from Melanchthon scholars, who attempt to describe, via his teachers, influences, and sodalities, a pre-Wittenberg Melanchthon—sometimes to take the measure of his humanism (and scholasticism) before the influence of Lutheran theology.¹⁰ The Greek grammar has not been at the center of these discussions but it contributes importantly to a portrait of the young Melanchthon. It gives critical evidence for Philip’s practice and doctrine of poetry, which was central to humanist polemics and perhaps to his own identification with the rebirth of scholarship. And it illustrates the shaping influence of some rarely recognized ancient sources on his philosophical outlook. These include two Greekspeaking scholar-teachers of the Roman era, Strabo and Plutarch, and the Roman teacher of rhetoric Quintilian. Not Plato or Aristotle alone, not Aquinas or Occam or Gregor of Rimini alone, but some ancient teachers shaped his view of Homer.

⁹ “Now whoever wishes to amass a fine hoard of speech, let them observe the words that spring copiously from this word μοῦσα. Take for instance μουσῶσθαι, ‘to be instructed specifically by the Muses.’ I used the verb once in an elegiac” (Iam qui volet sibi divitem parare linguae supellectilem, adnotet, quae ex hac voce μοῦσα ceu e fonte nascuntur: verbum μουσῶσθαι, erudiri proprie a Musis, quo ego sum usus modo in elegiaco) CR 20.74. He refers to the verses under consideration. ¹⁰ A review of the scholarship is found in John R. Schneider, Philip Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Construal of Biblical Authority: Oratio Sacra (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990).

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As I will show, Philip’s Greek grammar is effectively a Homeric grammar, introducing Greek language study through the archaic dialects of Homer and Hesiod. His elementary grammar, which has been praised for its practicality and design, is in this respect considerably more difficult than some contemporary grammars, which do not open with the dialects. (There is evidence in the text of the grammar, considered below, that Philip tempered his enthusiasm for dialects in response to complaints by his pupils.) This unusual approach to elementary Greek learning importantly illustrates Melanchthon’s philosophy of language, and his broader agenda and vision for the rebirth of learning, as outlined in the 1518 inaugural declamation at Wittenberg. Furthermore, from the Greek grammar we can infer much about his early view of Homer. Shaped by the ancient teachers listed above, Philip’s early Homerbild was of a divinely inspired poet who spoke primarily as a teacher. As will be explored further in Chapter 2, this view of Homer as a teacher may have even suggested to Philip the designation of the “teaching kind” as a genre of rhetoric. The mainspring of Philip’s enthusiasm for Greek learning was of a mystical sort, based in a view of poetry as divinely inspired eloquence, a “divine gift.” And that conviction he would retain his whole life, even as he refined a Christian expression of the pagan doctrine. While recognizing the distinctive qualities of Melanchthon’s formation in Tübingen, particularly some Platonic and Pythagorean influences on his thought, I find no grounds to make a sharp division between Melanchthon the humanist and Melanchthon the reformer, Melanchthon the philosopher and Melanchthon the theologian, Melanchthon in Tübingen and Melanchthon in Wittenberg. In fact, I think the evidence impresses more by its continuity than by any supposed rupture, even as there are clear developments, some responding to religious and political circumstances. As will become clear, in this early period Quintilian’s influence on his teaching of Greek grammar is every bit as strong as Plato’s. And the Greek grammar, reflecting a biblical humanism of the era, is illustrated by Septuagint and New Testament quotations as well as by Homer and other poets. Rather than imposing an ideological break on the material (humanist and reformer), I will recognize his development in academic terms. I refer in this and the following chapter to the teachings of “Philip” or “Master Philip,” reflecting his student status and the formative years of his Homer instruction. Beginning in Chapter 3, when I consider Philip Melanchthon’s teaching of Homer in 1523, the year he served as university rector, I will refer to him in the conventional way, as “Melanchthon.” By referring to the MA “Philip” and the Bachelor of Bible

 ’     (  ) 25 “Melanchthon” I do not wish to imply any break or conflict. The changes of emphasis that we can observe in his teaching of Homer reflect development rather than rupture.¹¹

How Poets Talk In the Greek grammar of 1518, in addition to citing numerous testimonies from Greek literature, Philip included three excerpts from archaic poetry, and these selections reflect certain priorities of his instruction. In this section I wish to address the first, a selective excerpt from a passage on the Muses from Hesiod’s Theogony. Immediately after running through the ten noun declensions, Philip excerpts twenty-three lines from the Theogony and titles them “On the Muses” (De Musis).¹² The selection begins, “Now let us start from the Muses” (a significant utterance, standing as it does near the beginning of Philip’s grammar) and proceeds to an encomium of the nine Muses, praising their residence on Olympus, narrating their birth, describing the effect of their song, and finally reciting their names.¹³ Philip supplies a Latin prose line-by-line translation and some scholia on the grammatical forms in the text. Only then does he return, so to speak, to the matter of Greek grammar and continue with the second part of speech, the verb. The passage on the Muses thus interrupts the presentation of Greek accidence (the name given to the inflections of nouns and verbs) and gives the teacher further opportunity to illustrate the declensions in usage, which is the primary point of the scholia. But the passage on the Muses from the Theogony is working also as an apology for poetry, and the scholia open combatively. Philip addresses his opening remarks to the skeptics, including those over-ambitious students eager to move past what they see as childish material. The defense of the liberal arts was a common theme of declamations he later composed in

¹¹ In September 1519, Philip earned the degree of Bachelor of Bible (baccalaureus biblicus) and began teaching Scripture in Latin—that is, in the theology faculty—in the context of a global dispute over religious authority. That necessarily impacted his reading of the pagan poets, including Homer. ¹² The lines excerpted are vv. 36–44, 52–5, 60, 61, 64–7, 76–9 in Glenn W. Most’s edition and translation. Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia, rev. ed. (2006; repr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). ¹³ The Homeric Hymn “To the Muses and Apollo” begins in similar fashion. Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer, ed. and trans. Martin L. West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 206–7. Homeric hymns to other deities share a similar form of beginning.

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Wittenberg; here the defense is addressed specifically to those who disdain poetry and its fictions:¹⁴ Plutarch wrote in his book De audiendis poetis (“How to Study Poetry”) “that what is fabulous in the poets is not unphilosophical.”¹⁵ This you can see above all in this passage on the Muses, not to mention many other places. And I wanted boys to be aware of this from the outset, lest in an unfeeling approach to reading they should think poems insubstantial trifles, which is exactly what the Sophists, those centaurs, heedlessly believe. But it is true what the Greeks say, that centaurs have no intelligence.¹⁶

In this brief prologue to his translation and scholia, Philip refers to Plutarch’s essay entitled How the Young Man Should Study Poetry (hereafter How to Study Poetry), which gives guidance for interpreting literary texts and would shape in important ways his own pedagogy. Homer is the most frequently cited poet in Plutarch’s essay, which indeed reads like a defense of Homer (an important subgenre of the defense of poetry in the ancient world). It is no coincidence that Philip cites it in this place, since after the Muses, Homer looms largest in his own understanding of Greek studies. Because Plutarch’s essay is foundational to citations of Homer in the Greek grammar and because it anticipates in important ways some exegetical principles discussed more fully in later chapters, it is worth pausing to consider its basic outline and arguments here. How to Study Poetry is an essay found near the beginning of Plutarch’s corpus of essays called the Moralia.¹⁷ In scholarship on Homer in the Renaissance, it is somewhat overshadowed by the better-known Life of Homer by ps.-Plutarch, which was included in the first edition of Homer in 1488 and in several influential Aldine editions thereafter. In an oration of 1485 also printed in the era, Angelo Poliziano translated the ideas and arguments of ¹⁴ An audience targeted also in several declamations, including In Praise of Eloquence (1523), On the Order of Learning (1531), and On the Study of Languages (1533). See Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and Education, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa, trans. Christine F. Salazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 5, 31, 62–3. ¹⁵ τὸ τῶν ποιητῶν μυθῶδες οὐκ ἀφιλόσοφον εἶναι. This appears to be a paraphrase of How to Study Poetry 15F, or indeed of the whole discourse. Plutarch, Moralia, 14 vols., vol. 1, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927). ¹⁶ “Plutarchus in libro de audiendis poëtis inquit, τὸ τῶν ποιητῶν μυθῶδες οὐκ ἀφιλόσοφον εἶναι. Id cum aliis pluribus, tum eo maxime commento, est cernere, quo Musae adumbrantur. Cuius et hoc volebam loco pueros admonitos, ne frigide lecturi poëmata nugas modo leviculas agi putent: id quod Sophistae quidam, οἱ κένταυροι, temere persuasum habent. Sed verum est, quod Graecus ait, οὐ νοῦς ἐνὶ κενταύροισιν.” CR 20.72. Erasmus, Adag. 2.10.8. ¹⁷ The Greek text of the Moralia was first printed in Venice in 1509. A Paris edition of How to Study Poetry and two other essays from the Moralia followed in the same year, and this was followed by a stand-alone edition of How to Study Poetry in 1512. Botley, Learning Greek, 98–9.

 ’     (  ) 27 the Life of Homer without explicit attribution. Though Melanchthon knew both essays (and recognized Poliziano’s theft), his teaching shows far more indebtedness to the essay on teaching poetry. As its title suggests, it is not properly a theory of poetry or even a defense of poetry per se but rather a guide to how to teach poetry in the context of literary education.¹⁸ Addressed to a father for the literary education of his son, it concerns the teaching of poetry in a household belonging to the elite GrecoRoman culture of the first century .¹⁹ Plutarch’s major concern is to place poetry within a philosophically oriented education, and moral philosophy appears to govern many of the literary-critical principles. From a modern perspective, this defense of poetry within the confines of literary education might seem severely limited, but we must recall that by school and education Plutarch understands not a set of lessons or battery of exercises, but a human story about becoming a mature member of society, free from attachment to goods of a lesser or deceptive sort.²⁰ In a pleasant rhetorical flourish, Plutarch uses the metaphor of navigation to describe the drama of learning, its aims and hazards.²¹ Furthermore, as Kathy Eden has shown, Plutarch’s criticism of poetry is not moralistic only but draws on critical frameworks well established in literary education and shared by other philosophical traditions.²² In the following, I will limit my remarks to those aspects most relevant to Philip’s grammar. There are three principles of reading poetic fiction that Philip takes from Plutarch’s essay and makes his own: 1) reading poetry gives pleasure, 2) poetry speaks truly and falsely in a way that can be subjected to epistemic judgment, and 3) the truth of poetry resides in its concrete utterances. The first principle is easy to overlook, since it is not something that Plutarch seeks to demonstrate in the essay. He simply assumes that the attraction of poetry is that it is delightful. He lists a number of ways in which poets create ¹⁸ D. M. Schenkeveld demonstrates its practical quality and design in “The Structure of Plutarch’s How to Study Poetry,” in Oxford Readings in Ancient Literary Criticism, ed. Andrew Laird (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 313–24. ¹⁹ See Ewen Bowie, “Poetry and Education,” in A Companion to Plutarch, ed. Mark Beck (Oxford: Blackwell, 2014), 177–90. ²⁰ See the first essay of the Moralia, “The Education of Children” (De liberis educandis), attributed to Plutarch. Although this is no longer thought to be by Plutarch, it was influential in the Italian Renaissance, being translated by Guarino Veronese and printed in Guarino’s translation many times in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. See William Harrison Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (1897; repr. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1963), 25. For the Renaissance reception of this essay and the Moralia, see Botley, Learning Greek, 98–9. Melanchthon lectured on the essay in 1519. ²¹ See the peroration in How to Study Poetry 37B; cf. the image of the Sirens drawn from the Odyssey at 15D. ²² Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and its Humanist Reception (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 31–40.

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pleasure, supreme among them “a clever interweaving of fabulous narrative.”²³ More subtly he illustrates the pleasure of poetry by comparing methods of teaching poetry with images of abundance and sweetness drawn from the world of agriculture. From the luxuriant foliage and bursting grapes of the vine, to the bee sucking honeyed nectar from myriad flowers, comparisons with the natural world assume the reading of poetry to be intoxicating stuff. It doesn’t seem to occur to Plutarch that poetry might be written or read without the aim of pleasure. Poetry’s primary aim is to please. So much is noncontroversial. No more than Plutarch would Philip in his teaching years bother to argue the pleasure of reading poetry, which he may have taken as self-evident. We should not understand his seeming focus on the didactic intent of poetry, here in the Hesiod comment or elsewhere in his Homer notes, as exclusive. Indeed, given his interest in rhetoric he would take a more generous view of some of the verbal mechanics that Plutarch relegates to secondary importance in poetry—things like meter, poetic diction, and figures of speech. Along with history, poetry “conveys the spirits of young men out of the squalor of commonplace studies and transports them to a lofty place, where they might breathe air worthy of men.”²⁴ So writes Philip in his Tübingen oration On the Liberal Arts. The second principle is that truth is a criterion of judging poetry. Indeed, it is the main criterion. The argument of Plutarch’s essay is that those who intend to study philosophy should use poetry as an introductory exercise, since it is better suited to young, “soft” minds unready for philosophy. By “philosophy” Plutarch means moral philosophy, and it is a limited sphere of epistemology that is his concern. Compared with philosophy, poetry occasions an exercise in rightly discerning the useful parts of poetry from the harmful, for poetry contains much that is “disturbing and misleading, unless in the hearing of it [someone] have proper oversight.”²⁵ Plutarch’s illustrations of what is “disturbing and misleading” are all expressions of beliefs or character. “Many lies the poets tell.”²⁶ That’s not a promising place to begin demonstrating the epistemic worth of poetic utterance, but it is the first maxim that Plutarch’s young, impressionable pupil must learn to stammer. And it underscores a vital, more general premise of Plutarch’s essay, one that would leave a ²³ How to Study Poetry 16B. Moralia, trans. Babbitt, 1.83. ²⁴ “Adulescentes animos e vulgarium studiorum sorde evellunt, locoque referunt excelso, iam viris digna spirantes.” CR 11.12–13. ²⁵ How to Study Poetry 15C. Moralia, trans. Babbitt, 1.79. ²⁶ How to Study Poetry 16A. Moralia, trans. Babbitt, 1.83.

 ’     (  ) 29 lasting impression on Philip (who took a more generous view of the poets’ bona fides), and that is that one can study poetry in an epistemological framework. Poetry, despite its fictions, is useful in the training of the philosopher, specifically in training the philosopher to discern the truth. “Many lies the poets tell.” Thinking as he probably was in terms of Plato’s criticism of poetry in the Republic, Plutarch may mean at least three things by this. He may mean that poets imitate reality or a copy of reality, and consequently they lie or misrepresent the truth (the epistemological objection). Or he may mean that the poets speak objective falsehoods, such as in their representation of the gods (the moral objection). Finally, he may mean that the poets deceive their audience by speaking to their passions rather than their reason (the psychological objection). Of the three, Plutarch has many answers or remedies to the moral and psychological objections, and little to say in response to the epistemological objection.²⁷ As quoted above, it is what is “disturbing and misleading” in poems that occupies his attention (the third and second objections, respectively). The objections raised against poetry in the Republic offer a convenient way of comparing Philip’s defenses of poetry. Like Plutarch, he will be invested deeply in reading poetry with philosophical aims. Whatever he has to say about the morality of a poem, it will be in a judgment of the poem’s truth, and a poem’s utility is not distinct from its veracity. Furthermore, like Plutarch, Philip will focus on the moral truth of a poem: its representation of characters in thought, word, and deed. He will not be concerned to answer epistemological objections about imitation and representation. Unlike Plutarch, however, on the matter of the psychological effect of poetry, Philip shifts the conversation from Hellenistic remedies against “disturbance” to a more constructive account of the psychological value of poetry. Poetry transports the soul in a way that prose or philosophical discourse cannot, and the Muses are the divine agents of this special work. Returning to the Greek grammar, we can recognize Philip’s comparison of poetry and philosophy as being much indebted to Plutarch’s essay. Glossing the first line of the Theogony passage and translation, Philip elaborates a conventional etymology of the name mousa (“Muse”). Citing the authority of Plato, he says that the name is derived from the verb môsai, to investigate or trace (vestigare):

²⁷ As Schenkeveld points out, Plutarch limits his comments on poetry’s imitation of reality to what is needful to account for poetic fictions. “The Structure of Plutarch’s How to Study Poetry,” 321.

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   For what the poets call by reason of myth “the Muses” is the power of mind by which we are led into the knowledge of the truth. This is the power by which we wonder and with which we investigate the hidden things of nature.²⁸

“By reason of myth” (muthologikôs) the Muses personify a cognitive faculty, not a coldly rationalistic one but one that wonders and searches into mysteries. They are the students’ first acquaintances in Greek learning, and they appear to have a twin function, in the dictation of verse and in its proper interpretation. In his etymological comment on their name, Philip ascribes to poetry more power and more authority than Plutarch did. Poetry is not just an exercise in advance of philosophy, carefully monitored lest the soul become disordered, it is itself a kind of philosophy, an initiation into the knowledge of the truth. Plutarch’s repeated warning that “the art of poetry is not greatly concerned with the truth” clearly did not make a lasting impression on Philip.²⁹ Tellingly, Philip cites not just Plato but also Homer to support his claim for the scientific use of poetry. Homer calls men ἀλφηστής, an epithet that Philip glosses as indagator, literally a hunter of prey or tracer of springs, and by extension an “investigator.”³⁰ The scope of poetic investigation is not limited (as it is, for instance, in Plutarch’s essay) to ethics, although it is true that moral philosophy will be foremost in Philip’s reading of Homer. The poetic faculty, the gift of the Muses, is the same as drives what we might call a scientific faculty, the search for causes, springs, or traces. It is not analytic but synthetic, a quest for unity and concord, as illustrated by the Muses’ voice “skillfully joined” (concinne), and their effect on the gods.³¹ “Then at last will the liberal arts rightly be taught, when they are all joined, one to another.”³² Poetry and eloquence, statecraft, religion, and philosophy are not competing enterprises, and Jeffrey Walker, arguing in part from this same passage from Hesiod’s Theogony, has

²⁸ “Nam quas poëtae musas vocant μυθολογικῶς, animi vis est, qua in veri cognitionem ferimur: hac miramur, hac inquirimus abdita naturae.” CR 20.73–4. ²⁹ How to Study Poetry 17E. Moralia, trans. Babbitt, 1.91. ³⁰ A Homeric epithet like ἀλφηστής carried a lot of authority with Philip, and in Chapter 2 I will elucidate the importance of epithets in the context of Philip’s teaching of rhetoric. Cunliffe cites instances of the epithet at Od. 1.349, 6.8, and 13.261. Richard John Cunliffe, A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect (1924; repr. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), s.v. ἀλφηστής. I’ve taken English glosses of indagator from Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary. ³¹ Wesley Trimpi argues the harmonious relationship between poetry and philosophy in Muses of One Mind: The Literary Analysis of Experience and its Continuity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). The title of Trimpi’s book translates Hesiod’s description of the Muses in line 60. ³² “Tum demum recte artes tractantur, cum aliae aliis iunguntur.” CR 20.80.

 ’     (  ) 31 persuasively made the case for a single discursive field of poetry and eloquence in the archaic period.³³ This brings us to the third principle, from a certain perspective the critical one. In the pleasurable search for truth, the truth is found in the poetic utterance, or how poets talk, and in the “customary usage of words.”³⁴ This principle Plutarch develops as he advises, in good Hellenistic fashion, certain remedies or corrections of the poets’ lies. Significant for Philip’s own method of reading, he advises against allegorical interpretation, though he describes limited occasions on which poets use the names of the gods as personifications.³⁵ So in his effort to correct objectionable passages in Homer and other poets, Plutarch does not avail himself of allegory, the earliest and possibly the most widespread method applied in that endeavor.³⁶ He seems aware but dismissive of works attributed to Cornutus or Heraclides Ponticus. Like Plato, who similarly scoffs at ingenious interpretations of myth in the Phaedrus, he scorns what we might describe as an overspecialized reading of poems.³⁷ Certainly there are more intuitive ways of resolving distasteful passages. This commonsense approach resonated strongly with Philip, who on many occasions ridiculed the subtleties of pagan and Christian doctors alike, and indeed this passage from How to Study Poetry may be the source of his ridicule of allegoresis in a 1523 declamation.³⁸ What, then, if not allegory? Remarkably, Plutarch’s methods operate on the literal level, or more accurately, on the level of the poetic utterance and its context. How to Study Poetry is first and last a study of how poets speak. In the first place (it bears oft repeating), the poets tell many lies. They speak falsely. In the rest of the essay, Plutarch will describe numerous other ways that the poets speak. They praise, blame, contradict, affirm, approve, disapprove, censure, hint, introduce, applaud, suggest, comment, announce, and discredit. (Homer, Plutarch says, does these speech acts silently, as the careful reader will observe,

³³ Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Strabo, the ancient geographer considered at length below, stated that poetry was the original oratory. Geography 1.2.6. ³⁴ ἡ τῶν ὀνομάτων συνήθεια. See How to Study Poetry 22C, 22F. ³⁵ For allegorical readings of Homer in the context of Reformation controversies over scriptural interpretation, see Philip Ford, De Troie à Ithaque: Réception des épopées homériques à la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 11–12. ³⁶ Early Homer exegetes had defended his portrayal of the gods as allegories or personifications, and some books of Stoic inspiration in the first century continued that tradition. In Philip’s day, Erasmus applied allegory enthusiastically to the reading of Homer. See Maria Cytowska, “Homer bei Erasmus,” Philologus 118 (1974): 145–57, esp. 148–51. ³⁷ Plutarch applies Stoic principles, but he does not share this one with the philosophers of the porch. ³⁸ CR 11.56. There is an interesting coincidence of example in the two passages, which cite the meteorological interpretations of “Hera” as air and “Zeus” as ether.

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implying the reading of even narrated action as speech. To make audible Homer’s “silent” commentary on his own poem is perhaps among the greatest incentives to exegesis such as found in the ancient scholia.) Drawing in part on exegetical scholia, as well as on principles of criticism articulated by teachers of grammar, Plutarch compares numerous utterances with other utterances in order to discover the poet’s approval or disapproval. By this method one discovers, for instance, that the poet often praises or censures words and deeds in his own voice, correcting what might otherwise seem an immoral passage. Sometimes this happens in the immediate context, where the poet rejects in advance a word or deed, or rejects it in a summary statement. When the immediate context fails to provide a solution, one can engage in a kind of cross-referencing, in which the teacher combats a falsehood with a true statement found elsewhere in the poem. As Eden has noted, these methods imply close attention to the text of the poem and its composition as an utterance of integrity: “Subordinating the individual parts of the discourse to the overall plan of the whole . . . presupposes the whole in the disposition of the parts.”³⁹ Plutarch’s criterion of truth is therefore resonant with his criterion of aesthetic value quoted above (one of the few aesthetic principles set down in the work): nothing is so pleasurable as “a clever interweaving of fabulous narrative.” Judging the poets’ utterances (including their lies) thus requires comparison with other utterances and implies the whole work as a context of utterance. Judgment is furthermore of normal or usual language. To illustrate what I mean, I want to look more closely at chapter 6 of How to Study Poetry (22C– 25B), where Plutarch advises the teacher to direct the student to the normal usage of words. Here he explains that attention to ambiguities of words and names, revealed in their usage, can resolve seemingly immoral statements into morally correct statements. While some words have one sense only, many words have different meanings and usages, and poets employ this diversity on different occasions to produce a pleasing and fitting effect. The names of the gods are ambiguous terms of this sort, referring sometimes simply to the gods, and at other times by analogy to “certain faculties of which the gods are the givers and authors.”⁴⁰ Plutarch gives several examples. The same principle is apparent in Philip’s comment on the name of the Muses. Buttressed with etymology and by comparison with other words derived from the term mousa, Philip interprets the name to mean a divinely ³⁹ Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition, 30. ⁴⁰ How to Study Poetry 23A. Moralia, trans. Babbitt, 1.121.

 ’     (  ) 33 given faculty. The Muses are the “divine science by which we are conveyed to the gods and made like the gods.”⁴¹ In light of Plutarch’s statements, we are not to interpret this to mean that for Philip the name Muse always refers to a human faculty. Only that a name can be of several meanings, and that philology—including attention to a word’s history, usage, and morphology— is essential to making right distinctions and discriminations in one’s reading. Almost as if paraphrasing Plutarch, and engaging in a little wordplay of his own, Philip writes, “Among the Greeks there are diverse accounts of the origins of words, and they are accustomed to play around with etymologies. Sometimes the etymologies play them.”⁴² Etymology is a staple of the Hesiod scholia in the Greek grammar. It is basic to grammar study. “Etymology,” Philip explains, is simply the reason of the etymum (etumon) or “the proper sense of a word” (proprietas dictionis).⁴³ He illustrates the proper sense in many glosses. Thus the verb homêrô (“sing in unison”) derives from homôs (“like, together”) and erô (“speak, tell”). Akamaton (“tireless”) is formed from the alpha privative and the verb kamnô (“labor”). The name for god theos is derived from either theaô (“I contemplate”) or theein (“to rush”).⁴⁴ “And those of an even earlier time called the sky by this word, which later they called ouranos, from horaô, ‘I behold.’”⁴⁵ In the scholia to Hesiod on the Muses, the teacher of Greek gets not just noun declensions (in spades) but also occasional lessons in mythology, botany, and philosophy. Jupiter is called ἐρίγδουπος because he is the author of thunder. The adjective λειριόεις (“flourishing”) stems from a Greek word that was used as the proper name for the narcissus. And the Pythagoreans teach that music pacifies the soul, liberating it from passion.⁴⁶ Words are illustrated, in other words, by their history, usage, and sound, including their occurrence in canonical literature. To illustrate the meaning of a word, Philip quotes Homer, Theocritus, and even the Septuagint. He has a generous scope of learning in view. Plutarch’s How to Study Poetry contributed much to Philip’s early approach to poetry instruction. Though Philip would not begin from the same starting point, Plato’s objection to the poets’ lies, he would enlist the study of poetry in the study of philosophy. Furthermore, like Plutarch, he would describe and ⁴¹ “Musis, hoc est, veri scientia ad deos transferimur, Diis similes reddimur.” CR 20.75. ⁴² “Originarum vocum multa ratio Graecis est, solentque et ipsi ludere, ac ludi etymologiis.” CR 20.73. ⁴³ “Ἐτυμολογία etymi ratio est. Etymum proprietas est dictionis.” CR 20.28. ⁴⁴ These examples are taken from CR 20.76, 77, 79. ⁴⁵ “Nam eo vetustissimi nomine coelum dixere, quod postea οὐρανός ab ὁράω tueor.” CR 20.79. ⁴⁶ These examples are taken from CR 20.77, 78, 80.

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teach poetry primarily at the level of speech, beginning with moral (and immoral) statements, and radiating out from these to other speech kinds, including narrated action, that guide the student in affirming or rejecting the truth of moral statements. A work in its integrity would provide a key reference point. Normal or customary language, not allegory, would be the best guide for resolving difficult passages. Philip would apply these principles with an enthusiasm altogether alien to Plutarch’s more sober perusal of the poets. Indeed, in this earlier period, it is not so much the poets as the Muses that one learns to read. Tuition with the Muses is a God-given gift that responds to our innate desire to search, investigate, and understand. And poetry uniquely orients our investigation toward the etymon, the proper sense of names, illustrated in poetic usage as well as history and natural philosophy. The whole enterprise, crucially, is a drama unfolding in a numinous world. “By the Muses, that is to say by the true science, we are conveyed to the gods, and made like them.”

Quintilian’s Homer From an early date Philip characterized the study of Greek also in more terrestrial terms. Take his work on the Gaza edition described above. In addition to the elegiac verse on the title page, he contributed a prefatory letter to the grammar, in which he outlined the state of Greek language instruction in Germany. In the letter, addressed also to his student Gereander, Philip celebrates his employer’s accomplishment, which was to be the first to bring elegant Greek typography to Germany.⁴⁷ Until Anshelm brought out a Greek work (in 1512) in a most elegant Greek font, he writes, efforts at Greek instruction and Greek printing had foundered or remained primitive.⁴⁸ Now the Germans have something they can truly boast about; Anshelm singlehandedly has redeemed the name of printer from ignominy. Indeed, Philip has more to say about the Greek font in which Gaza is presented than about Gaza himself. Gaza’s grammar is useful, presenting everything “briefly, exactly, and ⁴⁷ Theodori Gazae Liber Primus de Rudimentis Graecarum Literarum, sig. a1v (reverse of title page). The letter has been indexed in Melanchthons Briefwechsel. See MBW 6a. ⁴⁸ The first Greek texts to be printed in Germany were printed in Erfurt from 1501. See Botley, Learning Greek, 73. In Tübingen, Anshelm published a Latin grammar in March 1512 that included some elementary works of Greek, including some notes by Melanchthon’s teacher of Greek, Georg Simler. See Botley, Learning Greek, 40–2 and Appendix 1 no. 41. A primer with elementary texts by Aldus Manutius, the so-called “Aldine Appendix,” followed in July 1512. Botley, Learning Greek, 74 and Appendix 1 no. 44.

 ’     (  ) 35 elegantly.” With that word of commendation, Philip returns to his theme, his undiminished hopes for Greek learning in Germany: “God willing, in time to come both the poems of Homer and the like will be published, if the minds of the youth, having been cultivated by their teachers with diligence, should love these studies somewhat more devotedly.”⁴⁹ Whether Anshelm had any plans to print the works of Homer or not (the entire texts of the Iliad and Odyssey would not be printed in Greek in Germany until 1525, in Strasbourg), Philip was in no doubt as to what poet students of the Muses should read first. It would be Homer (along with Paul’s Epistle to Titus) that Philip would teach first in 1518, in his inaugural lectures as professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg. It would be Homer (along with Hesiod) to supply the first specimens of Greek eloquence in Philip’s 1518 Greek grammar.⁵⁰ And it would be Homer (books 1–4 of the Odyssey) to be among the earliest Greek poems to be printed in Wittenberg, in a school edition of 1520 by Melchior Lotter the Younger, recently arrived from Leipzig. From the fourteenth-century Greek study of Petrarch and Boccaccio to the Florentine Studio, Homer was a central figure in the humanist revival of Greek learning.⁵¹ Partly based on the authority of Quintilian, who recommended beginning Greek instruction with Homer, scholars and poets were attempting to learn Greek by reading the poet described by ps.-Plutarch as the fountain of eloquence. This general enthusiasm for reading Homer was certainly not unknown to Philip, and he had a direct example in his relative Johannes Reuchlin (often described imprecisely as his grand-uncle), who had made a prose translation of the pseudo-Homeric Battle of the Frogs and Mice between 1486 and 1495.⁵² But Philip deliberately put Homer forward as the beginning of Greek learning, not just in a pedagogical or curricular sense but also in a broader philosophy of learning. Homer he thought was the key to a recovery of philosophy in Germany. Philip’s ambitions for Greek learning and Homer in particular were due in no small part to the era’s enthusiasm for Quintilian’s The Orator’s Education (Institutio oratoria) in twelve books. It had been rediscovered in 1416, in the monastery of St. Gallen in Switzerland, by the manuscript-hunter Poggio Bracciolini. Poggio considered it a discovery of the first order and broadcast

⁴⁹ “Edentur olim favore deum & Homerica & id genus alia, si diligentia praeceptorum animi iuvenum exculti, paulo haec amarint studia sanctius.” Theodori Gazae Liber Primus de Rudimentis Graecarum Literarum, sig. a1v. ⁵⁰ Il. 2.212–20, with scholia reproduced in CR 20.144–7. Hymn to Hermes 29–55. See CR 20.147. ⁵¹ The major points of the well-known story are summed up in Botley, Learning Greek, 80–4. ⁵² Botley, Learning Greek, 85.

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it with uncontainable enthusiasm.⁵³ It is not hard to understand the work’s significance for scholars wishing to revive the eloquence of the ancient world in their own writings. Because of its comprehensive scope, outlining an education of the orator from the cradle to retirement, The Orator’s Education could be seen (however optimistically) as a formula for the renaissance, the rebirth of the ancient world. Here grammar instruction, which included the art of reading literature as well as right usage, and rhetorical instruction, in all its offices and with the sciences necessary to learn, were presented in the context of the life of a complete orator—a fully formed man of virtue, science, and eloquence. Quintilian explicitly frames the work as a work of utility, fashioning “the man who can really play his part as a citizen, who is fit for the management of public and private business.”⁵⁴ And yet leisure— otium—is not beyond his purview. Of grammar (particularly reading literature) he writes, “It is a necessity for children, and a pleasure to the old, the delightful companion of our privacy and perhaps the only branch of study that has more substance than show.”⁵⁵ He concurs with Cicero that the study of rhetoric and philosophy are one and the same, and he envisions the study of the orator to be nothing less than the ideal enkyklios paedeia, the entire orbit of learning and culture.⁵⁶ These aims and ideals are all set forth in book 1, where Quintilian treats grammar instruction, not exhaustively, to be sure, but insofar as a foundation for eloquence.⁵⁷ Here he recommends that students (whose native tongue is of course Latin) study Greek first. Latin should follow not too far behind, given the strong impression Greek idioms make.⁵⁸ Later parts of book 1 illustrate why Quintilian prescribes the foundational learning of Greek. Voicing a common opinion, he states that Latin is derived from Greek.⁵⁹ Knowledge of Greek is therefore helpful not only for the many loan words but also for the investigation of the meanings of names:

⁵³ For the story of Poggio’s discovery of the manuscript, in a cache which included the only known manuscript of Lucretius’s De rerum natura, see the splendid retelling by Stephen Greenblatt in The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York, NY: Norton, 2012). ⁵⁴ Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, trans. Donald A. Russell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), book 1, prooemium, paragraph 10 (1.0.10). Quotations from The Orator’s Education are taken from this translation. ⁵⁵ The Orator’s Education, trans. Russell, 1.4.5. ⁵⁶ The Orator’s Education, trans. Russell, 1.10.1. ⁵⁷ Following a conventional division of grammar into right speaking and the reading of literature, he collects much of his instructions for right speaking under the rhetorical canon of style correctness, postponing discussions of the remaining canons, clarity and ornament, for later books, on rhetorical instruction. ⁵⁸ The Orator’s Education, trans. Russell, 1.1.12–14. ⁵⁹ The Orator’s Education, trans. Russell, 1.5.58.

 ’     (  ) 37 Etymology therefore has a place in definitions. . . . It involves much erudition, whether we have to deal with words coming from the Greek, which are very numerous and are chiefly derived from Aeolic (this is the dialect which our language most closely resembles), or to investigate the names of persons, places, nations or cities from our knowledge of old histories: why were Brutus, Publicola, or Pythicus so called?⁶⁰

We have seen Philip’s frequent use of etymology in the Greek grammar, not to mention his poetic use of etymology in the elegiac verses of 1515. Etymology remains to the present day a key reason why many students, especially those with ambitions to study medicine, enroll in Greek and Latin courses. To the student who knows some etymology, there remain clear advantages in facility of understanding terms, as well as perhaps some dividends in the mental acrobatics of morphology, not to mention the subtle pleasures of recognition. Such goods would certainly be on Philip’s mind when he noted (repeatedly through his career) the necessity of Greek learning for Latin literacy. This passage on etymology also clarifies the significance of Homer for Quintilian. When he comes to the reading of literature, he recommends Homer as the first author for reading Greek. Homer is fitting material because heroic verse is appropriate for young, tender minds, exalting their spirits with the greatness of the theme.⁶¹ But he likely recommended himself to Quintilian also for his frequent use of Aeolic forms among other Greek dialects. Much of Quintilian’s discussion of phonetics, orthography, and correct speech in book 1 is comparative, illustrating Latin usage with Greek forms. To sum up, Quintilian’s recommendation of Homer was part of a comprehensive, comparative study of Latin and Greek grammar for the formation of an eloquent, learned, and virtuous man. He emphasizes the variety of dialects in the Greek language and places Latin in a historical relation to the Aeolic dialect. Understanding comes partly through investigation of the history and morphology of words, and this investigation shapes the student’s approach not only to language but to the world. This is the philosopher’s as well as the orator’s education. There are three main points of comparison between Philip’s Greek instruction and Quintilian’s advice: Philip teaches elementary learners the Greek dialects, he makes a comparative study of Greek and Latin grammar, and he regularly employs etymology in the definition of terms. It is therefore not just ⁶⁰ The Orator’s Education, trans. Russell, 1.6.31. ⁶¹ The Orator’s Education, trans. Russell, 1.8.5.

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Quintilian’s recommendation of beginning Greek reading with Homer, then, that Philip adopts. His choice to begin with Homer complements a more pervasive vision of learning that he drew from The Orator’s Education. In the following, I will illustrate these three practices from the Greek grammar. From the beginning of Greek language instruction, Philip taught the Greek dialects. In fact, he opens the grammar with a brief section on dialects.⁶² Citing Quintilian, he glosses the Greek word dialektos as meaning the usage special to place (loquendi proprietas).⁶³ He then enumerates the Greek dialects and locates them geographically and in literature.⁶⁴ Attic is the “most elegant.” Ionic is nearest to Attic and is the most frequent dialect in Homer. Aeolic is neighbor to Ionic. Doric is the dialect of the Sicilians, and being closest to Italy, has lent some usage to the Latins. The comparison with Latin does not match Quintilian’s derivation of Latin from Aeolic Greek, but the general view is the same: studied as a dynamic set of dialects, Greek is important for Latin language instruction, illustrating from the get-go the contextual quality of utterance.⁶⁵ Philip closes the section by comparing the diversity of Greek dialects with the diversity of German dialects. This comparison too gives students a sense of Greek as a real language and not an abstract set of rules or conventions. Nor does Philip wait long to illustrate dialect variants. Even in the next section, on pronunciation, he records a diversity of rules in different dialects, illustrating differences among Attic, Doric, and Ionic Greek.⁶⁶ This appears to follow his conviction that knowing the dialects is necessary for critical judgment. Someone with a fine judgment, he writes, should be able to locate a text geographically based on its sounds: inflections, syllables, accents, and even the composition of speech, or filum orationis. Some of those things that Plutarch viewed as a distraction, or at best an embellishment, are here feeding the learner’s cognitive faculties, and so morphology is a staple of the Greek grammar. Philip doesn’t just present the regular paradigm of the first declension, he comments on all the cases, noting vowel shifts, transpositions, elisions, and insertions characteristic of the dialects.

⁶² In a revision of 1542, Joachim Camerarius moved the section on dialects to just before the noun declensions. This is how it is presented in CR. See CR 20.37n82. ⁶³ CR 20.36. Melanchthon uses the terms “loquendi ratio” and “loquendi proprietas” where Quintilian actually writes of a “loquendi genus” (kind or variety of speech). Inst. orat. 1.5.29. ⁶⁴ CR 20.36–7. ⁶⁵ Quintilian is explicit about the relative standard of correctness in the Greek language: “what is wrong in one [variety of speech] is sometimes correct in another.” The Orator’s Education, trans. Russell, 1.5.29. ⁶⁶ CR 20.25–7.

 ’     (  ) 39 This is clearly the work of a rookie—a very gifted rookie, but a rookie all the same. One wonders if any student with less than Master Philip’s genius could but look on the Babel confusion and despair. And there is evidence that he lowered his standards, converting even in the course of his first essay his stereophonic reading of Greek to the monaural capacities of his students. When he comes to the verb and its conjugations, he emphatically postpones his instruction on dialect variants to the scholia on passages from Homer, presenting the paradigms in the Attic form only.⁶⁷ Was this from experience teaching the noun? Did his pupils revolt? Whatever the case, he mostly keeps his word, allowing himself one Doric digression in a comment on some verses by Theocritus illustrating the aorist middle.⁶⁸ The subject of the verses’ praise, the Muses, is a reminder of the patronesses of the whole enterprise.⁶⁹ Secondly, Philip illustrates Greek usage by comparison with Latin usage derived from the Greek. In a 1560 funeral oration for his beloved preceptor, former student Jacob Heerbrand describes Melanchthon’s initial grammar instruction at Wittenberg as comparative grammar.⁷⁰ As soon as he arrived at Wittenberg, Heerbrand writes, Philip began teaching the rudiments of both languages. Furthermore, so that his pupils would not be fatigued and turned away by an abundance of rules, he compiled and published a compendium of the precepts of each. Before long these books were “in the hands of every boy.”⁷¹ Melanchthon did not publish, to be sure, a “comparative grammar” in the modern sense, but both his Greek and Latin grammars make comparative remarks. He assumed students would learn both languages and approached the subject of grammar accordingly. Latin and Greek, it appears, were no less separable in Melanchthon’s curriculum than dialectic and rhetoric.⁷² The 1518 Greek grammar corroborates Heerbrand’s memory. Philip’s first noun paradigms decline the names Aeneas and Chryses, and the morphology of Aeneas is the leitmotif of this presentation of the first declension, which closes with a table of poetic inflections of the name. Philip similarly illustrates the fourth (Attic) declension with the name Androgeos because students can reference Virgil’s declension of the name in the Aeneid. By illustrating Greek declensions with names familiar from a standard Latin text of the school curriculum, the teacher accommodates the students’ experience and makes

⁶⁷ See his comment at the head of CR 20.89. ⁶⁸ CR 20.116. ⁶⁹ Theocritus, Id. 9.31–6. ⁷⁰ CR 10.293–313. ⁷¹ “Since that time his books are studied in all the schools, and in the hands of every boy” (Nam ab illo tempore in omnibus scholis, et omnium puerorum manibus libelli versantur). CR 10.299. ⁷² In the same oration, immediately following the section on grammar, Heerbrand also treats Melanchthon’s instruction and writing on rhetoric and dialectic as one. CR 10.299.

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Greek appear more familiar. The Aeneid supplies a number of quotations in the grammar, prompting the teacher to present Greek in a comparative fashion, and giving the student some points of reference: for recognition, recall, and perhaps critical judgment. The student of Greek grammar is simultaneously studying Latin grammar. This comparative approach is not unique to Quintilian or Philip, as Philip himself avers. Indeed, he notes that the influential grammarian of the sixth century Priscian compares formations of the Latin second declension with Greek forms, even if he is “everywhere erroneous.”⁷³ Elsewhere he quotes Priscian’s comparisons at length and approvingly.⁷⁴ It might be seen as natural in the context of a Latin grammar to draw comparison with Greek examples, as in a historical study. But Latin poets (including Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan) supply the bulk of Philip’s illustrations, and this selective harvest implies a specific pedagogical aim. Philip shared with Quintilian a motive for teaching Greek: Latin eloquence. It would not be a mute science that he was initiating students into, and since Latin was the academic and diplomatic language of the day, Greek learning must serve this end too. It wouldn’t be enough for a student to be an investigator (indagator), and Greek philosophy, although necessary in the pursuit of eloquence, was not of itself sufficient. The Muses might speak to the student in Greek, but the student must learn to speak in Latin. And so, on Quintilian’s authority, and with Quintilian’s example, Philip employed a comparative approach to teaching Greek grammar in both its aspects (correct speaking and interpretation of literature). Homer, with his abundant and various use of Greek dialects, and Virgil, with his poem modeled on Homer, brought the comparative study of Greek and Latin very close. The convenience of these poets for grammar study was even greater, in that they wrote in the heroic mode. As Quintilian believed, Homer exalts the spirits of the young with the greatness of his theme.⁷⁵ It is telling that when he forecasts Greek printing in Germany (in the preface to Gaza’s grammar discussed above), Philip names Homer first. Thirdly and finally, like Quintilian, Philip adopts etymology as a strategy for teaching elementary Greek, not only with respect to proper names, though names (like the name of the Muses) do receive special attention. I’ve already addressed the use of etymology in the Hesiod scholia. Here I wish to characterize briefly Philip’s occasional etymologies of names. In general he proceeds with caution, citing the Greek grammarian Herodianus, who rejects most ⁷³ CR 20.68.

⁷⁴ CR 20.83–4.

⁷⁵ The Orator’s Education, trans. Russell, 1.8.5.

 ’     (  ) 41 etymologies of names, except by the poets, who freely invent.⁷⁶ But even in poetry Philip is circumspect. Having explained the proper sense of the general name “Muse,” he resists comment on the particular names of the Muses, sending the teacher instead to Plutarch and Cornutus for explanations. We might attribute this reticence to a sense of utility. When he gets to Thersites, by comparison, Philip evidently sees value in etymology. “Thersites,” he writes, is said to come from tharsos, “confidence or arrogance.” This squares with the portrayal of Thersites in the Iliad, and he takes the opportunity to further moralize. Presumption is the root of all vices and “especially fit for agitating the tongue.” Etymology of names in poetry, then, is useful insofar as it advances understanding. The significance of Quintilian for Melanchthon’s teaching of Homer is great. The Orator’s Education uniquely outlines a Latin philosophical rhetoric that begins with instruction in Greek, namely the polymorphic, archaic Greek of Homer in which lie the presumed historical roots of Latin. An unusually literate fellow of Philip’s talents might have found in many places the ideals to animate his pedagogy, and surely his approach was integrated from more than one source, but alone in The Orator’s Education do we find what must have been the primitive impulses of his academic ambitions. His ambitions for a rebirth of learning in Germany, in the service of the German nobility, especially the princes and other magistrates, found its ancient counterpart in Quintilian’s orator. When Philip anticipates the printing of Homer in Germany, he anticipates nothing less than a rebirth of philosophy. That is a pretty big burden for any poet to bear, even Homer, who was credited by ps.-Plutarch in a not obscure essay with the invention of philosophy, psychology, and theology, plus hysteron proteron and other flowers of eloquence. But it might not be Homer the father of philosophy on whom Philip places his hopes. He trots out the commonplace in at least one place, calling Homer the “fountain of every discipline.”⁷⁷ If by this he is simply alluding to the pseudo-Plutarchan praise of Homer as the poet who anticipated all the schools and branches of philosophy, then the epithet is pretty meaningless. But much of Melanchthon’s pedagogy in this period is devoted to a right naming and definition of things (and some persons), with attention to the concrete, protean utterance as the evasive but real locus of truth. Before closing this chapter, and to complete the ⁷⁶ CR 20.144. ⁷⁷ In the inaugural declamation, considered more at length below, Philip writes, “For the Greeks Homer was the fountainhead of all disciplines, like Virgil and Horace were for the Latins” (Homerus Graecis fons omnium disciplinarum, Vergilius ac Horatius Latinis). CR 11.22.

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sketch of philosophical grammar I have been attempting, I will consider one more ancient scholar who greatly informed Philip’s teaching of the Homeric poem. Between the ps.-Plutarchan portrait of Homer as the source of all philosophy and the Plutarchan portrait of Homer as a warmup to moral philosophy stands a portrait of Homer as a philosopher to the people, a teacher dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and its use in society.

Homer didaskalos: Strabo on Homer The Geography by Strabo of Amasia (c.63 –c.24 ), a Greek scholar active in Augustan Rome, was among the most sought-after Greek texts of the Italian Renaissance.⁷⁸ Five known copies were brought to Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century. Pope Nicholas V (1447–55) commissioned a Latin translation by Guarino Veronese and Gregorio da Città di Castello. Numerous manuscript copies of Guarino’s translation (completed in 1458 when Guarino was eighty-four years old), including some fine presentation copies, were made, and in 1469, his translation of books 1–10 (on Europe) was printed in Rome with a revision of Gregorio’s translation of books 11–17 (on Africa and Asia).⁷⁹ Aldus Manutius desired to publish the Greek text of Strabo as part of his effort to preserve Greek scholarship in the medium of print, but the first edition, though it appeared in his printing house in Venice, did not appear until shortly after his death in 1516.⁸⁰ Renaissance humanists recognized in the Geography a virtual thesaurus of ancient lore. Strabo was extremely well read and cites numerous ancient scholars in his work, so that many texts from the ancient world are preserved here in fragmentary form. In its comprehensive coverage of the map and in its impressive range of scholarship, the Geography was a useful book of the first order. As the Greek work most frequently cited in the Homer notes considered in subsequent chapters, and the only Greek criticism of Homer cited with any frequency, the Geography has an important place in Melanchthon’s scholarship, supplying a defense of Homer as teacher (didaskalos), a model of reading Homer in a philosophical ⁷⁸ See Aubrey Diller and Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Strabo,” in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum 2:225–33 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1971). For the text see Strabo, The Geography of Strabo, trans. Duane W. Roller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). ⁷⁹ Five more editions followed before 1500. ⁸⁰ In a 1513 edition of commentaries on Aristotle’s Topica, Aldus mentions popular demand for Strabo, Athenaeus, and Pausanias. N. G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 152.

 ’     (  ) 43 context, and a model of scholarship for the ruling elite. Like other scholars we will encounter in this study, Strabo must be understood as a model scholar as well as a source of information. Strabo took up the defense of Homer in a particular field of knowledge, geography, in a time when much of the map had come under the consolidated rule of one prince. Where others would defend Homer in relation to the enkyklios paideia, that is, the compass of learning, Strabo would defend him in relation to this terrestrial orb, or at least the earth as far as the Roman imperium extended in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. This represented a true test of the philosophical value of Homer: could the poem contribute to useful, scientific knowledge in a time of peace? Or could the poem speak to an alien civilization? Could it speak in a foreign tongue? Recent historical scholarship has argued Strabo’s significance in the accommodation of Hellenistic culture within new imperial conditions in Rome.⁸¹ Homer was too important, too famous, and too authoritative in Hellenistic culture to be relegated to the status of amusement. He was a fixture of Greek education, and in the Geography Strabo attempted to reassert his relevance.⁸² Strabo was educated in rhetoric, grammar, and Homeric criticism in Nysa at “one of the great Homeric schools of his era.”⁸³ His travels were extensive, he saw many of the places he describes in the Geography, and he spent some time in Alexandria. From the margins of empire he found his way to the center, and at Rome he enjoyed the patronage of the ruling elite. The Geography in seventeen books, which might have been written after a return to Amasia in 21, addresses itself to the ruling elite and general public of the Roman imperium. It is not, Strabo says, a work for scholars but models how the science of geography can be put in the service of a ruling elite. Therein lies a good deal of its significance for Philip Melanchthon, who would reference it frequently in his notes and lectures.⁸⁴ Philip’s cultural ideal, a virtuous nobility and learning in the service of the nobility, dates from his childhood in Bretten—his father was an armorer for Philip the Upright (1448–1508), ⁸¹ François Lasserre, “Strabon devant l’Empire romain,” ANRW (Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt) II.30.1.867–96; Anna Maria Biraschi, “Strabo and Homer: A Chapter in Cultural History,” in Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia, ed. Daniela Dueck, Hugh Lindsay, and Sarah Pothecary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 73–85. ⁸² “Strabo bases the necessity and, one might say, obligation to go back to Homer on two grounds: the poet’s fame and his central role in primary Greek education.” Biraschi, “Strabo and Homer,” 80. ⁸³ The Geography of Strabo, 5, 18. Strabo’s teacher Aristodemos of Nysa had been a student of Aristarchus of Samothrace, the greatest Homer scholar of the ancient world. ⁸⁴ Four references to Strabo’s Geography in the Cambridge Iliad notes suggest that Melanchthon knew the work from before his move to Wittenberg. He cites it numerous times in the 1523 lectures, and Strabo is among the ancient scholars cited in the later Columbia notes.

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Elector Palatine—and survives his move to Wittenberg and his turn to theological instruction and controversy in the 1520s.⁸⁵ Indeed, revisions to his textbook on dialectic between 1526 and 1528 suggest that social and religious disturbances of the period only cemented his ideal.⁸⁶ Eloquence joined with science and virtue must be in the service of order, including the social order. Strabo devotes a significant portion of his introduction to a defense of Homer as a teacher of geography, and a defense of the Homeric poems as useful for the science of geography.⁸⁷ The defense of Homer occurs in Strabo’s critical review of his predecessors, one of whom, Eratosthenes, had rejected Homer’s poems as worthless for geographical learning. So far as we can tell from Strabo’s account, Eratosthenes had leveled two accusations against Homer: first, that his aim as a poet was to entertain, not instruct, and second, that he was ignorant of the places that he describes in his poetry. Because Homer held great authority generally in a Greek cultural context, and because of such attacks, he holds a prominent place in the introduction to the Geography.⁸⁸ “[T]he most learned authorities on poetry clearly state that poetry is a basic kind of philosophy.”⁸⁹ Strabo’s primary objective seems to be to rescue Homer from the charge of irrelevance to scientific inquiry. Poetry, claims Eratosthenes, aims to amuse, not to teach. But Homer, replies Strabo, is clearly a teacher, since he never includes a superfluous or gratuitous description of a place: Homer “never threw out a useless qualification.”⁹⁰ Even Eratosthenes had recognized the accuracy of some of Homer’s descriptions. But it is not so much the frequency of Homer’s accuracy that matters here (the vindication of Homer’s descriptions will be Strabo’s concern throughout the Geography) as it is the general ethos of his poem, and the general tenor of his geographic descriptions, which are presented in earnest though with poetic license. This appears to be the main gist of Strabo’s defense, to demonstrate that Homer was a teacher and the original geographer. In arguing this, Strabo characterizes Homer as someone who mirrors the virtues of his hero Odysseus, who has traveled widely and “known the cities of

⁸⁵ Heinz Scheible, Melanchthon: Vermittler der Reformation (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2016), 13, 113–14. ⁸⁶ Nicole Kuropka, Philipp Melanchthon: Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Ein Gelehrter im Dienst der Kirche (1526–1532) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002). ⁸⁷ See D. M. Schenkeveld, “Strabo on Homer,” Mnemosyne 29 (1976): 52–64. ⁸⁸ On the significance of Homer in the broader Greek cultural context, see Biraschi, “Strabo and Homer.” ⁸⁹ The Geography of Strabo, trans. Roller, 1.1.10. ⁹⁰ The Geography of Strabo, trans. Roller, 1.2.3.

 ’     (  ) 45 men and their minds” (Od. 1.2). His knowledge is not indeed comprehensive but reliable, and his enthusiasm for travel is attested to in the ancient biographies.⁹¹ His descriptions, furthermore, are not in every point accurate, but they all contain, in poetic form, the “vestiges of peoples and events.”⁹² Behind the myth lies history, and behind each mythical description lies a historical place. To put it in this way makes Strabo’s defense sound like euhemerism, a type of allegorical reading. Notably, that is not Strabo’s way of squaring Homer’s myth with the known data.⁹³ Rather, he lays down a rule of interpretation. Where there is no agreement between Homer and the science of geography, one of the following is the reason: the world’s geography has changed since Homer’s time, geographic science is yet incomplete and ignorant of some things, or Homer takes poetic license in his descriptions. Poetic license, furthermore, is not the same as the fancies of an idle brain: “to fabricate everything is neither plausible nor Homeric.”⁹⁴ Myth was but one component of license, and it too was purposeful: “directed toward the social and political character of life as well as the history of facts.”⁹⁵ Homer transfers certain historical data to the fictions of myth on a number of grounds, including linguistic usage and topography. The Black Sea, for instance, used to be called simply πόντος, “the sea,” and so Homer transfers some peoples historically from that region to the Ocean (πόντος). The Kimmerian Bosporus was a dark region toward the north, so Homer transfers the Kimmerians “to a certain gloomy place down around Hades.” These are not substitutions or mistakes, but transfers and “overlays.” Strabo uses the Homeric image of overlaying silver with gold to describe this relation between myth and history. Poetry is an “embellished truth.”⁹⁶ Like Odysseus, furthermore, Homer exhibits judgment or “the qualities and attitude that the ideal geographer ought to possess.”⁹⁷ He must have been a good man, Strabo argues, because he was able to imitate life, including excellent virtue and wise speech, through speech.⁹⁸ The corollary is that reading Homer is a means of becoming wise, including in a Roman context, and in the Roman tongue. Efforts to derive Latin from the Aeolic dialect were

⁹¹ The Geography of Strabo, trans. Roller, 1.2.29. ⁹² The Geography of Strabo, trans. Roller, 1.2.14. ⁹³ For Strabo’s defense of myth in Homer’s geography, see Lawrence Kim, Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 60–7. ⁹⁴ The Geography of Strabo, trans. Roller, 1.2.17. ⁹⁵ The Geography of Strabo, trans. Roller, 1.2.8. ⁹⁶ The Geography of Strabo, trans. Roller, 1.2.14. ⁹⁷ Kim, Homer between History and Fiction, 52. ⁹⁸ The Geography of Strabo, trans. Roller, 1.2.5.

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part of a cultural effort to naturalize Homer into a Roman context, and one of Strabo’s teachers contributed in a spirited way to that effort.⁹⁹ Strabo defines scholarship and poetry in a way that harmonizes with Philip’s aims. What makes him special, in addition to the wealth of information he provided, is that he supplied a model of doing Homer scholarship. Strabo’s own aims, to broaden the cultural horizons of the Roman elite, and to infuse Roman civilization with Greek culture, would have resonated with Philip’s ambitions for Greek learning in Germany. I do not mean that he understood historically that to be Strabo’s aim with respect to Augustan Rome. Rather, he recognized in Strabo’s defense of Homer an ambitious scope for reading poetry: moral, cultural, historical, and scientific inquiry that trains the moral and literary judgment through close attention to words and their histories. That is the ideal described in Philip’s 1518 inaugural declamation at Wittenberg, printed four times in the same year with the title “On Correcting the Studies of Youth” (hereafter De corrigendis studiis). Like Strabo’s defense of Homer’s utility, De corrigendis studiis begins as a defense of the usefulness of the liberal arts (among which Philip counted poetry). Here the liberal arts are not accused of being pleasurable and therefore useless; rather (to paraphrase Chesterton), they have been found difficult and therefore useless. Greek grammar is hard, and so it must be irrelevant. On the contrary, pleads Philip, restoring Greek learning is an integral part of the rebirth of learning and the return of the Muses. Recollecting the entreaties of a Tübingen mentor (Franciscus Stadianus, 1470–1530) to join him in a correction of Aristotle’s texts, he makes the case “that studies of the first order [i.e., the higher faculties] cannot be rescued from the gutter unless the rudimentary studies of the youth are purified. And what they might do at an advanced level would reflect what they had practiced from the beginning.”¹⁰⁰ Throughout the declamation he paints a picture of the old scholarship and compares it with the new (scholastic) scholarship, arguing the utility of the old and the vanity, even the harm, of the new. The portrait of the old learning that Philip paints in De corrigendis studiis looks much like the kind of scholarship illustrated by Plutarch, Quintilian, and Strabo in this chapter. It is in the first place a Roman learning that came to an end with the barbarian invasions of Italy and Rome, despite the heroic efforts

⁹⁹ Biraschi, “Strabo and Homer,” 84. ¹⁰⁰ “Primi nominis studia, a sordibus recipi non posse, nisi purgatis adulescentiae rudimentis. Id fere quenque in summis posse, quod in infimis assueverit.” CR 11.20.

 ’     (  ) 47 of Gregory the Great to defend the city, not with staff or sword but by teaching and writing. “Roman literature fell with the fall of the Roman empire,” says Philip, illustrating the imperial quality of his ideal.¹⁰¹ Not that the Romans themselves produced learning, but they were model stewards of Greek learning. And as long as they were learned in Greek and Latin, scholars in the West thrived and preserved right learning. Secondly, the old learning was Greek or at least literate in the Greek language. However difficult it is to attain, Greek learning is needful because it is the source of true knowledge in philosophy and the higher disciplines, including theology. Philip defends linguistic study because meaning stems from proper meanings of words as illustrated by usage. “Indeed since theology is partly in Hebrew, partly in Greek, and we Latins drink from these sources, the foreign tongues must be learned, lest we go about dumbfounded with the theologians. It is there [in the original texts] that the splendor and propriety of terms appears, and the authentic meaning of the literal sense blazes forth like the noonday sun. As soon as we have a firm grasp on the literal sense, then we may pursue demonstrations of things.”¹⁰² Latin learning can only get one so far, and in the absence of Greek learning, there is the additional danger that scholars will attempt to supply their own glosses and terms, obscuring the original sense of words and of the text. Several times in the declamation Philip mentions Latin and Greek together as twin conditions of learning. Greek is not merely supplemental to Latin learning, it is foundational. Furthermore, knowledge of words is foundational in the science of things. That is one of the subtler arguments of the De corrigendis studiis, with great significance for teaching Homer. The truth of Homer’s text cannot be abstracted from his speech and its “propriety.”¹⁰³ Behind that conviction lies ancient grammar and its focus, illustrated in Plutarch’s How to Study Poetry, on meanings of words in literary usage and context. The inaugural declamation is not focused on Homer or even on poetry, but it illustrates Philip’s enthusiasm for an ancient model of learning, in which the liberal arts grammar, logic, and rhetoric were foundational for the study of ¹⁰¹ “[S]imul cum Romano imperio Romanae literae sunt intermortuae.” CR 11.16. Learning flourishes in conditions of peace, which is secured by a strong and just prince. Philip’s model of a renewal of learning is what is now called the Carolingian Renaissance. As he puts it, “When he [Charles] had secured the borders of the Roman empire, he turned his mind to the restoration of learning” ([C]um fines Romani imperii pacasset, ad instaurandas literas animum adiecit). CR 11.17. ¹⁰² “Itaque cum Theologia partim Hebraica, partim Graeca sit, nam Latini rivos illorum bibimus, linguae externae discendae sunt, ne veluti κωφὰ πρόσωπα, cum Theologis agamus. Ibi se splendor verborum ac proprietas aperiet, et patescet velut intra meridiana cubilia verus ille ac genuinus literae sensus. Proxime cum literam percepimus, sequemur elenchum rerum.” CR 11.23. ¹⁰³ CR 11.25.

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philosophy. Among the duties of the teacher of grammar was correcting texts, and correcting texts was among the skills the grammar student practiced. In the declamation, titled in some printed editions “On Correcting the Studies of Youth,” Philip takes that basic motive of the grammarian, to produce a corrected text, and applies it to the whole program of formal learning. The grammarian’s judgment, honed in the practice of removing errors from written texts, is here applied to the texts and speeches (in today’s terms “discourses”) of the learned, weeding out the false accretions and substitutions, and restoring right terms and practices. Homer, that is Homer the teacher, Homer who prepares the student for philosophy in the exercise of right judgment, and Homer who never lets a false word drop and uses words in the propriety of everyday usage—this Homer will be a crucial guide in the restoration of learning.

2 Homeric Eloquence Philip’s 1518 Lectures on the Epistle to Titus and the Iliad

As Wittenberg’s newly appointed professor of Greek, Philip began his teaching with Homer. So much was anticipated in his Greek grammar, published in the same year (see Chapter 1). He dramatically announced his Homer lectures at the end of his inaugural declamation, delivered to a large audience on August 28, 1518: “We shall interpret Homer, and likewise Paul’s letter to Titus. In these you may see to what extent the proper sense of a speech (sermonis proprietas) contributes to understanding the mysteries of sacred things, and also what difference there is between learned and unlearned interpreters of Greek.”¹ This announcement occurs at the culmination of a combative speech about “barbarian” methods of teaching, and no sooner does he make the announcement than Philip reiterates the main argument of the speech, which is that an older way of reading Scripture, based in knowledge of the Greek language and of the original text, is superior to the novel, monoglot reading of the scholastics. Tellingly he uses an idiom, habemus in manibus (roughly “we shall interpret”), that reflects patristic and later usage and refers to interpretation of Scripture in an academic context. But the conventional usage belies the revolutionary approach to Scripture that would animate Philip’s inaugural lectures. The spirit of these lectures is preserved in Philip’s teaching copy of the Iliad, now held in the Cambridge University Library.² An Aldine edition of 1504 (volume 1 of Aldus Manutius’s first edition of Homer), the book is inscribed in Philip’s Latin handwriting on the title page. The inscription reads, “I, Philip ¹ “Homerum habemus in manibus, habemus et Pauli Epistolam ad Titum. Hic spectare vobis licebit, quantum sermonis proprietas, ad intelligenda sacrorum mysteria, conferat: quid item intersit inter interpretes Graece doctos, et indoctos.” CR 11.25. In his survey of Homer in German literature, Thomas Bleicher does not read this passage as an unambiguous announcement of regular instruction on Homer. He expresses skepticism about the choice of Homer for elementary instruction, but he disregards Philip’s mention of the Epistle to Titus in the same breath. In conjunction with the Epistle to Titus, Philip’s display of Homer can only mean he intends to give Greek instruction on the epic poem. Homer in der deutschen Literatur (1450–1740): Zur Rezeption der Antike und zur Poetologie der Neuzeit (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1972), 72. ² C Adv.d.13.4: Ομηρου Ιλιας. Homeri Ilias ([Venice], [1504]).

Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer. William P. Weaver, Oxford University Press. © William P. Weaver 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.003.0003

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Melanchthon, began to teach in the Greek language at Wittenberg in September 1518, when at this very place Martin Luther, the Augustinian, was teaching theology.”³ At the end of the Greek text of the Iliad, there is a Greek inscription, a motto: “Be crucified in Christ. Philip.”⁴ The inscriptions are not dated, but the inscription on the title page reflects hindsight. It was written not by a twenty-one-year-old Master of Arts freshly arrived from Tübingen but by an initiated, perhaps wizened, teacher. Perhaps, as Sachiko Kusukawa suggests, Philip inscribed this copy of the Iliad to distinguish, with self-awareness, his own calling as a philosopher from that of Luther the theologian.⁵ Perhaps he inscribed the copy as early as 1521, looking back with mordant wit on recent history when teaching assignments were distributed more equitably. From April 1521 to March 1522, Luther was away from Wittenberg in safe keeping in the Wartburg, and for a while Philip taught both theology and philosophy. Whatever the case, the inscription clearly looks back to the inaugural Homer lectures, suggesting that Philip commemorates the very book with which he began his career as professor of Greek (only the second in a German university). There is nothing in the marginal notes in the volume, many in Philip’s clearly identifiable hand, to suggest otherwise. Indeed, the notes look more like a student’s copy than a professor’s. But there is more to the notes than meets the eye. As I argue in this chapter, they represent the foundation of what Philip conceived of as the “order of learning” and so uniquely illuminate his conception of learning in all the disciplines. From a certain perspective, the marginal notes are of the most pedestrian sort and show little promise of advancing the ideals stated in the inaugural declamation. There is nothing here to set scholastic theologians—those obscurantists called out by the young professor—atremble for their future in the halls of academe. Most of the markings, indeed, consist of underlined passages and pointing hands. The underlining, done without a ruler and carried over into the gutters and margins in many places, may have been done in haste, perhaps during a last-minute course prep. The pointing hands, drawn in various magnitudes, may reflect various levels of emphasis and serve as a guide to the passages Philip taught; occasionally executed in elaborate ³ “Ego Philippus Mel(anchthon) graece profiteri coepi Vuittembergae Mense Settembri anno M.D. XVIII [1518], quom istheic Martinus Luther Augusti mense Theologica doceret.” Translated by Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 54. ⁴ “σταυρώθητι ἐν χριστῶ· φιλ.” Paraphrase of Gal. 2:20, “Χριστῷ συνεσταύρομαι,” or Basil, Epist. 43.1.7, “σταυρώθητι τῷ θεῷ.” ⁵ Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy, 54–6.

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detail, however, they may equally reflect boredom (Homer nods). As for the verbal notes, they are almost entirely “catchphrases,” single words or short phrases culled from the text and copied in the margins—sometimes in Greek, sometimes translated into Latin. This too seems a generic form of annotation; catchphrases served the purpose of signposting and navigating a text in an age before line numbers—and even page numbers—were commonly printed. On the whole, the notes in this copy bear little resemblance to the erudite scribblings of a Guillaume Budé or Martin Crusius, whose roughly contemporary copies of Homer were assiduously annotated and have received illuminating comment by Anthony Grafton.⁶ In comparison with the brilliant trail of scholarship left in these copies, pointing hands and catchphrases look like mere crumbs. One would expect more of the “Preceptor of Germany,” and if this is Philip’s first teaching copy, it stands as a reminder to all teachers to destroy their first teaching copies, or at least not to inscribe them with the care with which Philip inscribed this one. Considered within Philip’s vision for a liberal arts education, however, the notes reveal a studied approach and have something important to tell us about how he taught Homer in his inaugural lectures. At the time of his inaugural lectures, Philip was revising for publication a textbook on rhetoric. De Rhetorica Libri Tres (“Three Books on Rhetoric”), the first of three works on rhetoric that he would publish, each significant and influential, reflects his Tübingen-era instruction, though he revised and expanded the work in Wittenberg, drawing on his experience teaching there. De Rhetorica is indispensable for interpreting the notes in the Cambridge Iliad, where most notes point to lines of the Iliad but do not (as notes in later volumes do) make explicit the artifice or technique they are pointing out. They are “unlabeled” notes, bearing an implied description or classification of the marked lines. So we must look to Philip’s contemporary writings on the liberal arts to supply some labels, and indeed the 1519 rhetoric helps identify most of the marked passages as belonging to a genre of oratory, which Philip called in this early period the “teaching kind” (genus didaktikon). Conversely, the Homer notes supply crucial context for reading De Rhetorica, especially its section on the teaching kind. As shown in Chapter 1, Philip drew from ancient Homer scholars including Strabo a portrait of Homer the teacher. Homer speaks like a teacher, modeling the speech

⁶ “How Guillaume Budé Read His Homer,” in Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 135–83; “Martin Crusius Reads His Homer,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 64 (2002–3): 63–86.

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appropriate in didactic contexts like the classroom. It’s likely that this Homer portrait informed his designation of the teaching kind as a new kind of oratory (supplementing the classical three kinds: epideictic, deliberative, and forensic). The rhetoric is important context for the notes, and the notes are important context for the rhetoric. In order to let the notes speak for themselves as much as possible, bearing witness to Philip’s early teaching practice, I begin with a heuristic approach and consider the Epistle to Titus, asking, why did Philip select this biblical text for his first lectures? I argue that it is the letter’s numerous character descriptions that recommended it to Philip for an elementary reader, and I support my argument with the evidence of his contemporary Greek grammar, the Institutiones Grammaticae Graecae (1518). Moving to the Cambridge Iliad notes, I home in on the most conspicuous specimens in the volume, the ubiquitous pointing hands. These were a common form of annotation in the Renaissance, and interesting as a general practice; my aim is to understand the particular work they are doing in Philip’s classroom.⁷ There is a significant correlation between these curiously drawn hands and character description in the Iliad. This evidence is consistent with the evidence of Titus and the Greek grammar, where character description is also in focus, but the Homer lines themselves give a more varied and fuller picture of what counted as character description for Philip. Having surveyed this evidence, I then turn to De Rhetorica for a fuller intellectual context of the Homer lectures. In this work, Philip ambitiously outlines the significance of character description and the larger rhetorical genre (demonstrative) of which it is part. Within the demonstrative or epideictic genre of rhetoric, namely, he tried to fashion a rudimentary training in dialectic on the basis of literary examples. His fusion of rhetoric and dialectic in the demonstrative genre (more specifically a subtype he called in 1519 the genus didaktikon) is well known to historians of the liberal arts.⁸ But the extent to which this fusion, this early modern mash-up of the disciplines, depended on what Philip calls the “proper sense of a speech” (sermonis proprietas) bears further investigation. It is ultimately the properties of actual literary utterance ⁷ See William Sherman, “Towards a History of the Manicule,” chapter 2 of Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 25–52. ⁸ On the intellectual context of the genus didaktikon (retooled as the genus dialecticum in 1521 and the genus didaskalikon in 1531), see Kees Meerhoff, Entre logique et littérature: Autour de Philippe Philip (Orléans: Paradigme, 2001), 15–17, 25–38, and passim; Volkhard Wels, Triviale Künste: Die humanistische Reform der grammatischen, dialektischen und rhetorischen Ausbildung an der Wende zum 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Weidler, 2000), 193n10, 196–7; John R. Schneider, Philip Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Construal of Biblical Authority: Oratio Sacra (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 71.

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to which the Homer notes are directing our attention. The Homer lectures were a crucial part of the program by which Philip would transform learning in all the disciplines. De Rhetorica allows us to classify two further kinds of notes in the Cambridge volume: catchphrases and commonplaces. Contrary to modern expectations, such notes do not indicate topics or themes, but genres. And as I hope to make clear in a review of the Homer notes, it is imperative to think of rhetorical genre (in Philip’s terms) not as an abstract or exemplary form of oratory, but rather as an operational genre or unit of discourse.⁹ The early Homer notes, despite their primitive and unsophisticated appearance, are invaluable for understanding Philip’s enthusiasm for Greek learning, and even for understanding the more sophisticated, “labeled” notes from later Homer lectures. Pointing hands, catchphrases, and underlining in the Cambridge Iliad anticipate and lay the groundwork for a highly original (and influential) reading of the Homeric text.

Why the Epistle to Titus? When we think of the biblical sources of the Protestant Reformation, we think inevitably of the letter to the Romans and next of the letter to the Galatians. The brief pastoral letter to Titus does not exactly leap to mind, and it has largely escaped the attention of scholars. And yet this modest letter has a modest claim on Renaissance and Reformation history. It was the object of the first Greek lectures in Wittenberg, being Philip Melanchthon’s boldly announced choice for this purpose. Given the polemical nature of the inaugural declamation, and the young Greek professor’s call for a “correction of studies,” we should ask, what made the letter to Titus equal to the task? After Luther had lectured on Romans, of what moment was this seemingly inconsequential letter? And why did it make a good pairing with Homer? As we saw above, Philip describes his teaching of Homer and Paul as integral, but the diminutive letter seems out of all proportion to the heroic epic. ⁹ Philip’s theory of rhetorical reading offers numerous points of comparison with Bakhtin’s theory of speech genres (as well as his theory of the text). Bakhtin describes single continuous utterances as “speech genres,” though he recognizes that a single utterance may contain or combine numerous speech genres. One difference stands out: Philip’s units of discourse are not strictly defined by utterances (by changes of speaker). Although the enunciative function of rhetoric is not lost on Philip, the logical function is more prominent in his critical method. See M. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson, Michael Holquist, and Vern W. McGee (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986).

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From the scarce material evidence, the choice of Titus was apparently dictated by practical and educational, not theological circumstances. Titus was short, and its convenience for introductory Greek is illustrated by a 1519 Erfurt edition.¹⁰ In this edition, the Epistle to Titus appears as an elementary, even rudimentary Greek reader. It includes a facing word-forword, and even syllable-for-syllable, translation—line breaks falling in the middle of Greek words have been rigorously duplicated in their facing Latin equivalents. The state of the printing arts in Wittenberg may also have made Titus a prudent choice. Luther and Philip both complained about Johannes Grünenberg’s careless work and welcomed the arrival of Melchior and Michael Lotter, sons of the Leipzig printer Melchior Lotter the Elder, in 1519.¹¹ An edition of anything more demanding might have stretched Grünenberg’s capabilities—or Philip’s patience. The material presentation of Titus in the Erfurt edition points to certain pedagogical necessities, but these beg the question, what (apart from its brevity) made Titus a good pick for a first reader in Greek? The letter’s form is instructive, and it is relatively uniform. Written to urge Titus to carry out and complete the organization of the church in Crete, the letter begins with a description of the church’s leaders. First, chapter 1 contains a character description of the πρεσβύτερος (elder) or ἐπίσκοπος (bishop) and a contrasting portrait of the ματαιολόγοι, the “empty babblers” or the false apostles.¹² The description of the elder is a catalogue of virtues: [Let him be] beyond reproach, the husband of one wife, having obedient children blameless of prodigality and not unruly. For the bishop must be beyond reproach as a steward of God: not willful, not easily angered, not a heavy drinker, not a brawler, not covetous, but hospitable, a lover of the good, prudent, just, holy, disciplined.¹³

¹⁰ Epistola Pauli ad Titum: Qu[a]e compendio vere christiani hominis vitam ac mores format (Erfurt: Matthes Maler, 1519). Under the same title, Johannes Grünenberg had published a Greek edition of Titus in 1518. ¹¹ Richard G. Cole, “Reformation Printers: Unsung Heroes,” Sixteenth Century Journal 15 (1984): 328, 333–4. In a letter to Wolfgang Capito, Philip refers to his rhetoric (the three-book De Rhetorica) as having been incredibly mutilated by his printer. MBW 57; MBW.T 1.130. The De Rhetorica was forthwith published in Basel by Froben. See Meerhoff, Entre logique et littérature, 28. Despite its provincial status in 1519, Wittenberg soon became the center of book production in the German Empire. See Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 91–106. ¹² The adversarial party is described in the letter as “those of the circumcision” (Tit. 1:10). In his argumentum, Erasmus describes them as pseudapostoli. In his paraphrase, he elaborates: “those who have made only a partial conversion to Christ from Judaism.” CWE 44:59. ¹³ Tit. 1:6–8. Translations of the New Testament are my own.

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The character description enumerates the bishop’s moral qualities, which are the basis of his authority in teaching and admonishing.¹⁴ The brief passage contains no fewer than twelve adjectives, including seven praiseworthy and five blameworthy attributes. The first of these attributes, ἀνέγκλητος (beyond reproach), is the subject of a brief elaboration by Paul. The rest are piled on like moral epithets. Erasmus, in his paraphrase of Titus, begins the description of the elder by underscoring the verbal form of his instruction: “To help you make your selection with greater assurance, I shall sketch this person for you in a few strokes.”¹⁵ Erasmus’s paraphrase was not published at the time of the 1518 lectures, so I don’t cite this as a source but rather as a point of comparison. Erasmus too understood the letter to Titus in rhetorical terms, glossing the portrait as a persuasive strategy. Contrary to the character of the bishop is the portrait of the “empty babblers” (ματαιολόγοι): For there are many who are yet incorrigible, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision. They must be silenced, those who lay waste whole households teaching things one must not for the sake of shameful gain. In the words of one of their own, a very prophet of theirs, “Cretans are ever liars, wicked beasts, idle bellies.”¹⁶

Unlike the elders, whose gracious speech is inferred from their moral probity, the empty prattlers are known primarily by their speech, and their moral failures are inferred from their talk.¹⁷ The prodigality of their talk is a sign not of wisdom but of voracious and destructive greed. Interestingly, by means of the quotation from Epimenides, a Cretan philosopher of the sixth and fifth centuries , Paul condemns the Cretans out of their own mouth, with a denunciation by “their very own prophet.” The remainder of the letter is similarly moral in scope, and Paul continues to include portraits in his instructions. In chapter 2, he portrays and admonishes in turn elder men, elder women, young men (where Titus himself serves as τύπον, “type”), and servants. Most of the letter is, indeed, a gallery of characters described in moral terms. The moral instruction contained in these portraits lends truth to the advertisement on the title page of the 1519 ¹⁴ Tit. 1:9. ¹⁵ CWE 44:58. ¹⁶ Tit. 1:10–12. ¹⁷ In a preface to the physician Peter Burckhard’s Parva Hippocratis tabula (Wittenberg, 1519), Philip applies the same epithet to contemporary theologians: “And so it has come about, that today instead of theologians we have but ‘empty talkers and deceivers,’ enemies of Christ” (Ita fit, ut pro theologis hodie fere “ματαιολόγους καὶ φρεναπάτας” ἀντιχρίστους habeamus). MBW 37; MBW.T 1.

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Erfurt edition, where the letter is described as “truly and accessibly shaping the life and manners of a Christian man.”¹⁸ In a letter to Georg Spalatin dated October 12, 1518, Philip praised the letter to Titus as being “elegant and appropriate for the purification of manners.”¹⁹ Like Erasmus, he closely associated speech and behavior, both of which were to be governed by aptness or suitability to character. Paul’s admonition “You however speak what is becoming of sound doctrine” (2:1) would have had a particular meaning to Philip, who wanted to restore learning to classical models.²⁰ Paul’s charge to Titus to “correct what remains” resonates with the reforming agenda laid out in the inaugural declamation, which was printed with the title “On Correcting the Studies of Youth” (De corrigendis adolescentibus studiis).²¹ Clearly the letter gave Philip ample opportunity to expound upon a favorite humanist theme: the hand-in-hand amendment of speech and morals.²² Moral in content, the character descriptions of Titus are also exemplary forms in Philip’s language pedagogy. They may be compared with the exemplary passages quoted and annotated in the Institutiones Graecae Grammaticae (1518), Philip’s Greek grammar that reflects his teaching of Greek as an MA in Tübingen (see Chapter 1). It was common in the period to add to elementary Greek grammars an appendix of exemplary texts, especially given that most instruction in elementary Greek was of an experimental sort, usually involving translation.²³ But where others used maxims (sententiae), including the Golden Verses of Pseudo-Pythagoras and the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, Philip chooses a description of character. After running through the noun declensions, he supplies the Greek text of Hesiod’s encomium of the Muses from the Theogony, along with his Latin translation and scholia. After covering the other parts of speech, he includes,

¹⁸ See note 10. ¹⁹ “Iam excuditur ἡ ἐπιστολὴ πρὸς Τίτον. Scis, quam elegans et moribus apta purgandis.” MBW 29; MBW.T 1.83. ²⁰ In the inaugural declamation Philip cites Titus 2:7, Paul’s requirement that Titus exhibit purity (ἀδιαφθορίαν, integritatem) and solemnity (σεμνότης) in his learning, not confusing sacred and profane letters. CR 11.24. ²¹ In his translation of the New Testament (1516), Erasmus had rendered the Greek word ἐπιδιορθώσῃ as “corrigere” (correct). ²² See Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 43. ²³ Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (London: Duckworth, 1986), 16, 120–1; Federica Ciccolella, “The Greek Donatus and the Study of Greek in the Renaissance,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 12 (2005): 1–24, esp. 9–10. W. Keith Percival notes, “Much use was made of bilingual texts in an effort to impart the new language inductively.” “Renaissance Grammar,” in Renaissance Humanism: Forms, Foundations, and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), vol. 3, p. 77.

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again with translation and commentary, Homer’s blistering portrait of Thersites from Iliad 2: But Thersites alone, the boundless talker, railed at them, and in his head were all manner of indecent words, to no other purpose or style but to provoke the lords, or whatever he thought might make the Achaeans laugh. Yes, this most disgraceful man came to Ilium. He was bandy-legged and lame in one foot. His shoulders were hunched, collapsing in on his chest. Above, his head was pointed and sprouted coarse hair.²⁴

Allowing for differences of form and context, the passage shares a lot in common with Paul’s character descriptions in the Epistle to Titus. Of course, Homer the poet is taxed with the physical description of his villain in a way that Paul the apostle is not. But Thersites’s physical deformity is easily assimilated into a moral and social perversity that both poet and apostle are at pains to represent. On a stylistic level, strings of epithets and a paratactic enumeration of qualities are common features. In both cases, a character or character type is a suitable place for collecting not only vocabulary but some choice bits of Greek elegance. The mental image of a person, embellished by words describing their appearance or behavior, has a psychological convenience that might make learning and memory more durable if not any easier. Evil speech is thematic in both texts. In separating the true from the false elder, Paul describes their contrary manner of speaking and teaching. In the passages quoted earlier, the false elders are “empty talkers and deceivers,” proverbial for their lies. Like Thersites “they must be silenced.” Contrariwise, the true elder, “able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it,” is equally known by his speech. Paul instructs Titus at different times in the letter to “teach,” “bid,” “urge,” “rebuke,” “declare,” “exhort,” “reprove,” “remind,” and “insist.” A veritable inventory of speech genres, the pastoral letter describes a wide-ranging facility with a variety of audiences on a variety of occasions. Not that Titus be all things to all people; Paul writes, “But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels over the law, for they are unprofitable and futile” (3:9). The formal and thematic similarities between the Epistle to Titus and the Thersites passage—to say nothing of Hesiod’s praise of the Muses “rejoicing in their lovely voice”—suggest that Philip’s choice of Titus was intentional and of ²⁴ Il. 2.212–19. Homer, Iliad, trans. A. T. Murray, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Translations of the Iliad are my own.

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a piece with his idea of where to begin.²⁵ And for the teacher, that is not the least concern. Recalling the emphasis that Philip placed on beginnings in the inaugural declamation, and the new foundations on which he wished to place theology, I would say that Titus was greatly important in the “order of learning.”

Special Marks and Pointing Hands In De Rhetorica (1519), his contemporary textbook on rhetoric, Philip considers character description, along with character impersonation, as a key part of the demonstrative kind (genus demonstrativum).²⁶ He gives a widely ranging list of examples, including personifications such as Erasmus’s loquacious Folly, comic characters like Terence’s Micio and Demea, and heroic and historical figures: Aeneas and Turnus, Scipio and Hannibal. Fact and fiction alike have the same value in presenting the native qualities (ingenia) of persons: For these [native qualities] are as it were special marks (peculiares notae) of individual persons, cities, and households. If they are carefully attended to, they instruct most beautifully one’s sensibility in civil affairs, not to mention literary studies, for they are everywhere on display: in every practice of human life, in every business (public or private), as well as in every genre of writing. Are we to continue to study with those who have taught the youth so corruptly, that stories remain the least developed of subjects?²⁷

No one unpracticed in stories, he continues, will accomplish anything of value, as stories are necessary for effective speech, theology, and law. The study of character in stories (fact and fiction) is far from a private concern only:

²⁵ Theog. 68, my translation. ²⁶ “But in first and last place in the demonstrative or encomiastic kind fall impersonations and character descriptions” (Sed in genus demonstrativum seu laudatorium primi ac ultimi generis cadunt proposopeiae, item prosopographiae). Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 103. For “character description” Philip uses a term (prosopographia) more usually reserved in technical rhetoric for descriptions of imagined characters and personifications. ²⁷ “Sunt enim peculiares fere notae singulorum hominum, singularum civitatum, singularum familiarum. Quae omnia, si curae fuerint, pulcherrime civilium rerum sensum, nedum studia literaria erudiunt; vulgantur enim haec passim in omnem vitae humanae usum, in omnia negocia cum publica tum privata, in omne item genus literarum. Quo minus sunt audiendi, qui iuventutem adeo impure instituunt, ut nullius rei minor ratio quam historiae habeatur.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 104.

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“there will be no rebirth of studies unless we return to stories.”²⁸ After this peroration, Philip refers the teacher to Erasmus’s chapter on character description in the second book of the De Copia, “whence you will understand by what judgment the poets and historians must be read.” The section thus begins and ends with homage to the Dutch humanist, who had treated descriptions and impersonations as types of the fifth method of abundant argument in the second book of De Copia.²⁹ Erasmus’s account of character description in De Copia underlies Philip’s indifference with regard to history and fiction in finding models of delineated character. Both are equally useful for attaining eloquence. (Montaigne would draw a similar conclusion about the relative merits of fact and fiction in forming one’s judgment.³⁰) Erasmus is the direct source for Philip’s discussion of special characteristics of cities. Running through the topics by means of which one can delineate character, Erasmus writes, “Each city has its special marks too.”³¹ He also mentions Homer’s description of Thersites as a rare example of physical delineation, an exception to the more frequent moral description of characters found in poets, historians, and orators. Erasmus compiles many genres and examples under the heading of “description of persons,” and the common measure of all seems to be the rule of decorum: the appropriate attribution of characteristics and speeches to groups, types, and individuals. Decorum does not stop at the stereotype but extends to the unique personality: “What could be more dissimilar than Demea and Micio in Terence? Micio is mild even when he is trying to reprimand his son severely, Demea is cross-patched even when he is doing his best to be pleasant.”³² For Erasmus, such examples are useful models for the aspiring poet, orator, or historian, supplying as they do resources of invention and amplification. For Philip, they would function similarly, but with emphasis on the ends of interpretation and judgment. His very description of this chapter from De Copia as a guide to reading historians and poets betrays this different aim, for the chapter is very plainly a guide to writing. Other parts of the De Copia address methods of interpretation, but the focus here is on imitation ²⁸ “Non posse reflorescere studia, nisi ad historias quoque redeamus.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 104. ²⁹ In 1759, in his edition of Homer, Samuel Clark describes a copy of the 1504 Aldine Homer inscribed by Philip to Erasmus with the following epigram: “Receive a good and beloved offering, dearest Erasmus, father of all virtue and wisdom” (Τήνδε δόσιν ἀγαθήν τε φίλην τ᾽ ἔχε, φίλτατ᾽ Ἔρασμε, Πάσης τῆς ἀρετῆς καὶ σοφίας πατέρα). Homeri Opera Omnia, ed. Samuel Clark (Leipzig, 1759), x. ³⁰ Essays 1.21 (“Of the Power of the Imagination”), in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 75–7. ³¹ CWE 24:583. “Sunt et singularum civitatum peculiares notae.” ASD I-6, 208. ³² CWE 24:584.

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(with reading and observation as necessary components). In Wittenberg, character description would be a critical means of knowing and acting in the world, and not ultimately a means of writing. The marked passages in the Cambridge Iliad seem to reflect these objectives and priorities, illustrating such “special marks” as teacher and student should observe. This is especially true of the most conspicuous and routine mark in these notes: the pointing hand. Philip drew seventeen pointing hands in book 1 of the Iliad alone, and of these, seven point to lines that primarily describe a person. Thus a significant number (about two in five) seem to participate in the kind of attention described in the De Rhetorica. Here, for the sake of illustration, are the seven examples: who knew whatever there was, whatever would be, and whatever had been (Il. 1.70) [he was] enraged, his darkened thoughts were filled with anger, and his eyes flashed like fire (Il. 1.103–4) [PM’s marginal note: “image” (εἴδω[λον])] ever is strife dear to you, and wars, and battles. (Il. 1.177) [PM’s marginal note: “the quarrelsome in assemblies” (contentiosi in consiliis)] you the chief of the Danaans for counsel as well as fighting (Il. 1.258) surely that one rushes headlong in his destructive passions, and he does not know to look both ahead and behind (Il. 1.342–3) But now my heart fears dreadfully (Il. 1.555a) for the Olympian is horrible to oppose. (Il. 1.589) Some general observations may be made about this sampling. The marked lines are hardly full-blown portraits—rather snapshots of character caught in one or two lines. The “special marks” or notae under observation here, and patiently indexed by pointing hands, are impressionistic, occasional insights into character in the heat of the moment: the synchronic gaze of the seer Calchas when he rises to speak in the Achaean assembly, the inner stewing of Agamemnon and its outward manifestation, and the self-described worry of Hera in her complaint to Zeus. Other lines are spoken in praise, reproof, and awe, and capture character under the unique dispensation of these genres. It is a subtle and exacting kind of inventory, one that looks beyond plainly moral evaluations of character and seeks to observe character in many dimensions, in glimpses, and in motion—not in a static representation such as the rhetorical effictio popular in medieval poetics, or indeed the above-considered description of Thersites (Il. 2.212–20). Such a lengthy, thorough portrait as the nineline description is rare in the Homeric epics, and while it serves as a paradigm

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of the character descriptions that Philip considered a prominent subtype of the demonstrative genre, and thus (with the Epistle to Titus) as a perfectly good elementary passage for the beginner in Greek, it does not exhaust the exercise of judgment that was being modeled in Philip’s classroom. I have focused so far on the seven marked passages that clearly (if partially, impressionistically) delineate character. The remainder of the seventeen passages marked with a pointing hand seem trained on actions or courses of action. These may reflect the larger arena envisioned by Philip when he wrote of fictions that they “instruct most beautifully one’s sensibility in civil affairs.” As with the above-inventoried snapshots of character, indexed lines describing actions and courses of actions are variable in length, scope, and genre, but they tend to be situational and economical: to reverence the priest by receiving the glorious ransom (Il. 1.23) Then the blameless seer took heart and spoke (Il. 1.92) [PM’s note: “Then he began” (tum coepit)] And washing the pollution away from themselves and casting the filth into the tide, they sacrificed to Apollo perfect hecatombs of bulls and goats along the sea’s barren shore (Il. 1.314–160 [PM’s note: “Purification rite” (Λῦμα)] And the gods rose from their seats as one before their father. None dared to wait for his arrival, but all stood to meet him. (Il. 1.533–5) [PM’s note: “The gods rise for Jove” (Iovi dii assurgu(n)t)] Some of the examples are ethnographic, describing the customs and native qualities not of individuals but of peoples (and gods). Others are specific to individuals and given circumstances. The above-quoted examples are drawn from the narrated parts of the Iliad. About as many of the remaining examples occur in direct speech and describe actions through a variety of utterance, including command (Il. 1.210, 302), wish (410), fear (555), or threat (562–3). As with the descriptive lines, these lines capture action in a variable but nonetheless knowable world. And the literary utterance contains the special marks that one must attend to if he or she is to know the world in all its complexity. There is a redundancy at work here that is basic to Philip’s pedagogy. To the extent that they mark native qualities of persons, places, times, and things, such annotations are doing little more than drawing attention to special marks or notes (peculiares notae) already in the text. Marking passages replicates the kind of observation that Homer has made and isolates in each case a literary

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utterance that is itself a peculiaris nota, a special mark. The pointing hand in particular seems reserved for what might otherwise pass unnoticed in the flow of the narration—character descriptions in a word or two. While underlining or rubricating might mark lines of conspicuous importance, the pointing hand, which takes more time to draw, and is the only non-verbal symbol in these notes, marks lines that need additional advertisement. As Luther would observe of Philip’s important early annotations of Romans and Corinthians, which followed shortly after in 1520–2, these simple Homer notes form not a commentary but an index: Scripture, you say, must be read by itself, without commentary. This is well spoken regarding Jerome, Origen, Thomas and their ilk. For they wrote commentaries, in which they imparted more of their own [doctrine] than Pauline or Christian [doctrine]. No one would call your annotations a commentary but instead an index for reading Scripture and recognizing Christ, something which no commentary has yet accomplished.³³

In Luther’s view, the index points not primarily to doctrines but to a person, with the aim of “recognizing Christ.” If we compare this aim with Philip’s rhetorical understanding of the text, then we can say that reading Scripture, like reading Homer at an elementary stage, has a basically personal orientation. Homer speaks the special marks of characters, and Scripture speaks Christ. Maybe this personal orientation of reading Scripture, which may be observed elsewhere, for instance in Erasmus and his “philosophy of Christ,” directed Philip’s focus to description of character in the Iliad. What strikes me as most surprising about these lines, given Philip’s commitment to the formation of moral judgment, is that they do not have an obvious moral application. Compare several sententious lines in book 1 of the Iliad that contain more explicit moral wisdom: For a king is the better man when he is enraged at someone worse. (Il. 1.80) The gods hear the prayers of the obedient. (Il. 1.218) If indeed you are the stronger, surely you owe it to a god. (Il. 1.178) But you too must stay, for it is better to obey. (Il. 1.274) ³³ WA 10.310. In the same letter, Luther confesses his “theft” of the annotations, hastening them to print without the consent of his colleague. Timothy J. Wengert compares Melanchthon’s lectures on the Gospel of John with an “index” or “scaffold.” Philip Melanchthon’s Annotationes in Johannem in Relation to its Predecessors and Contemporaries (Geneva: Droz, 1987), 167–212. Cf. Wels, Triviale Künste, 182.

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Such lines are praised in the pseudo-Plutarchan Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer. The first and second are marked with printed inverted commas in the Aldine edition of 1504. In a later declamation, written for Vitus Winshemius (Veit Oertel), Philip focused his praise of Homer on his maxims. And indeed, such lapidary passages do not go unmarked in the Cambridge copy, but they do not seem to be the quarry of the pointing hand. The pointing hand signposts a more roundabout road to wisdom than the aphorism. It is for the patient traveler who can observe, note, and recall many discontinuous verbal marks of persons and peoples. How exactly these marks would be brought together in an interpretation of Homer, much less a moral vision or practice, is not obvious. But De Rhetorica, quoted above for Philip’s estimation of character description, offers more guidance. It is to this work that we now turn.

The Teaching Kind and the Order of Learning “So strange has rhetoric become in our schools, that there was nothing to do but write out the rudiments.”³⁴ So Philip describes the objective of De Rhetorica, the first of his three principal writings on rhetoric.³⁵ The disclaimer captures the spirit of the work, which is modest in subject matter but precocious in its aims. As he boasted in the inaugural declamation, Philip saw himself as initiating his students into a new order of learning, and participating in a new order of erudition in Germany. In this introductory textbook we find the elements of a program that underlies this ambitious, seemingly grandiose vision. Philip published De Rhetorica several months after his arrival in Wittenberg. Much of it was written in Tübingen, where he taught as an MA from 1514–18. Although it treats a conventional subject, this textbook has some specific qualities that bear directly on our use of it to contextualize the Homer notes. First, Philip did not view it as a comprehensive treatment of rhetoric. Rather, he presents it as a primer, a provisional work for the student who has just completed the study of grammar. Second, he presents it as a corrective work, an attempt to restore the ancient tradition of proceeding directly from the study of grammar to the study of rhetoric, not to the study of ³⁴ “Sic est enim rhetorica aliena a scholis, ut non liceat nisi rudia praescribere.” Opera Philosophica, vol. 2/2, p. 85. ³⁵ For the relationship between the three principal writings, see my introduction to Opera Philosophica, vol. 2/2, pp. xxxv–xlv.

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logic as common in the medieval arts course. Third, he devotes much of it to genres of writing and speaking appropriate for the classroom itself. These genres he collects under a classification called the genus didaktikon, or the “teaching kind,” a species of demonstrative oratory.³⁶ Despite its generic title, De Rhetorica has a special design and intention. De Rhetorica is not properly a “rhetoric,” that is, a formal and authoritative treatment of the art of rhetoric, but a proto-rhetoric. Fully half of it is devoted to themes that Philip calls “first exercises” (prima praeludia), written compositions that were used since antiquity to shepherd students from the study of poetry to the study of oratory.³⁷ These are known more generally by their Greek name progymnasmata or “preliminary exercises,” and a canonical work on the subject by the fourth-century Greek sophist Aphthonius became very influential in Europe in the later sixteenth century.³⁸ But when Philip published De Rhetorica, editions of Aphthonius’s Progymnasmata, whether in Greek or in Latin translation, were scarce, and editions of a similar textbook attributed to Hermogenes were fragmentary. Although Philip does not cite them by name, he seems to allude to these standard works. Indeed, he is critical of some of their instructions and pays his debts throughout De Rhetorica to the less structured, more exuberant types of exercise enjoined by Quintilian and Erasmus. The first or preliminary exercises are a fascinating subject in their own right, and they exerted for generations an outsize influence on literary prose.³⁹ Combining formal analysis of themes into pint-size parcels, logical discovery of arguments, and imitation of exemplary models, the preliminary exercises comprised a proto-rhetoric, a special rhetoric at the threshold of the discipline. This proto-rhetoric has a theory and practice derivative of, but distinct from, the theory and practice of rhetoric proper. It is this fluidity of theory and practice that made the first exercises so amenable to Philip’s objective in ³⁶ In later writings, Melanchthon spoke of a genus dialecticum and a genus didaskalikon (not of a genus didaktikon), reflecting the plasticity of his thought and practice in this experimental and important area. A sober summary of the “technique of teaching” or “method of teaching” may be found in Peter Mack, A History of Renaissance Rhetoric, 1380–1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 108–9, 114. Similarly focusing on Melanchthon’s indebtedness to a novel work on dialectic by Rudolf Agricola, Meerhoff gives a fuller picture of the teaching kind in several essays in Entre logique et littérature. For the genus didaskalikon of the Elementa Rhetorices (1531), see Wels, Triviale Künste, 193–7. ³⁷ Opera Philosophica, vol. 2/2, p. 65. ³⁸ See Manfred Kraus, “Progymnasmata. Gymnasmata,” in HWR 7:159–91. For reception of the progymnasmata in Renaissance England, see William P. Weaver, Untutored Lines: The Making of the English Epyllion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012). ³⁹ Peter Mack offers a rich synopsis of grammar school rhetorical exercises and the skills they developed in Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 24–47.

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De Rhetorica: to fashion exercises that would facilitate a direct transition from grammar to rhetoric and supply in the process a modicum of dialectical training. As has been observed often, Philip was very interested in the boundaries and the shared terrain of the disciplines. He attempted several times to articulate the boundaries of rhetoric and dialectic.⁴⁰ To the extent that they reflect the doctrine of De Rhetorica, the Homer notes reflect a threshold kind of rhetoric. This matters because Philip will continually make what seem to be hyperbolic claims about the paths from reading Homer to mastering, say, civil law or theology. In De Rhetorica he will ask us to take very seriously the utility of attending to epithets like “white-armed” Hera, “earth-embracing” Neptune, and “turncoat” Mars. He will illustrate one of the premier topics of invention, one that greatly embellishes oratory and touches on the very nature of things, with Homer’s personification of the Hours, goddesses who open and shut the doors on night and day. And he will still be occupied with Thersites, now imagining what one would say if he had to defend the scoundrel. The Cambridge notes demonstrate that he was in earnest about these things. Our greatest challenge will be to make what is for most of us an imaginative leap from fiction to reality, or from the character in heroic epic to the subject in history. A proto-rhetoric like the De Rhetorica describes a disciplinary threshold, a provisional space where fiction and fact are relative, and where the study of poetry paves the way for study of the higher disciplines law, theology, and medicine. The teaching kind is Philip’s name for his own version of the first exercises, and it stands at the threshold of the “order of learning,” the artificial arrangement of philosophy that would transform culture in Philip’s ambitious program. He does not mince (though he does compile) words in stating its importance: Some call this “methodical,” others “demonstrative,” others “didactic,” and others “epistemic.” It is none other than what Aristotle made, as it were, the chief and head of dialectic. For just as the teachers of rhetoric cover parts [of an oration] that occur in civil cases, so the teacher of dialectic’s entire study takes hold of demonstration or apodeixis, that is, a clear method of teaching. Everyone ought to learn this before aspiring to civil cases. For although you might correctly interpret literature without having studied civil cases, you ⁴⁰ Wels, Triviale Künste, 187–94; Karl Bullemer, Quellenkritische Untersuchungen zum I. Buche der Rhetorik Melanchthons (Würzburg: C. J. Becker, 1902), 25–34.

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   cannot do either well without having studied the demonstrative kind. All the disciplines are directed to demonstrative as if to a rule. Indeed this is the warp and woof of dialectic: a method of demonstration, that is, an order of teaching. Whoever does not understand it (namely the common run of professors) knows neither the strength of dialectic, nor any use of demonstration.⁴¹

With the didactic genre as a subtype, demonstrative rhetoric occupies more space in book 1 of De Rhetorica (on invention) than the remaining two genres combined; it occupies fully half of the entire De Rhetorica. In relation to the classical tradition of rhetoric, the genus didaktikon appears to be little more than an adaptation of the epideictic or demonstrative genre of oratory for use in the classroom. (Philip treats it here, in fact, as a species of the demonstrative genre; by 1521 he will elevate it to a genre of oratory.) In relation to the medieval tradition of dialectic (logic), the genus didaktikon appears to be grand larceny. As noted above, Philip was attempting a curriculum change in De Rhetorica, a direct route from grammar to rhetoric and thus a return to a classical model. Rhetoric, he believed, could supply enough logical instruction on its own turf. Indeed, he described Erasmus’s work on abundant discourse, De Copia, a work primarily on grammar and rhetoric, as providing a training ground in logic.⁴² The teaching kind was thus Philip’s effort to teach dialectic under the auspices of rhetoric, and the simple and complex theme, the basic units of the teaching kind, represent a rhetorical means of introducing some basic units of dialectic: definition (of terms) and demonstration (of propositions). Despite appearances, Philip was not seeking in this rhetoric to supplant logical instruction, but to demonstrate the coherence and interdependence of the twin arts. He published an elementary dialectic in the following year and eventually published companion works on dialectic (1528) and rhetoric (1531). These companion works represent his mature thought on the two arts and their relationship. The polemical and corrective qualities of ⁴¹ “Hoc alii μεθοδικόν, alii ἀποδεικτικόν, alii διδακτικόν, ἐπιστημονικόν alii vocant. Atque illud ipsum est, quod Aristoteles dialecticae veluti κορυφαῖον et caput fecit: ut sicut rhetorum partes in πραγματικοῖς sunt, ita universum dialectici studium demonstrationem seu apodeixin, hoc est evidentem quandam docendi rationem complectitur, quam oportet ante didicisse quam causae civiles affectantur. Atque ut citra studium civilium causarum literas etiam recte tractare licet, ita citra genus demonstrativum tractari rite non possunt; omnes enim disciplinae ad demonstrativum ceu amussim exiguntur. Porro haec est dialecticae tota fabrica: ratio apodeixeos, hoc est ordo dicendi. Quod qui non intelligit, ut est vulgus quoddam professorum, nec vim dialecticae nec usum demonstrationis aliquem agnoscit.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, pp. 50–1. ⁴² Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 43.

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De Rhetorica suggest that he had not yet arrived at a satisfactory articulation. In this work, rhetoric and (importantly) ancient literature attempt to teach dialectic better than the dialecticians. The teaching kind has as its object the verbal description of a thing (or word) and has nine questions or topics at its disposal.⁴³ In such questions a student would find not only ample resources to fill out a theme but also a method for organizing thought: “whoever wishes therefore to trace any given subject matter to its very sources, let him follow the thread of these questions as if following a road surveyor.”⁴⁴ The questions of the didactic genre, drawn from the logical categories and topics of invention, supply a guide, a thread (like the thread of Theseus), for navigating uncharted terrain. What exactly is the thread, and what is its logic? Philip asks at this stage for simple observation of logical progression from one place to another, postponing consideration of syllogistic reasoning until a later time. “For now,” he writes, reiterating a favorite metaphor, “let the studious reader observe the thread of dialectic.”⁴⁵ It will be well to keep this admonition in mind when looking at the early Homer notes, which resemble at times frayed strands more nearly than a tapestry. The best examples of the teaching kind are found in ancient literature, which is brought into the classroom for the kind of observation discussed above. “Diligently admonish children whither this study tends; cultivate them with examples; place before them definitions drawn from orators, poets, and theologians; and let them make judgments about these, especially in cases of the commonplaces (loci communes). In this way they will develop judgment in civil matters and sensibility in common arguments.”⁴⁶ It is one thing to replicate or complete a theme outlined by the instructor in ten sections, such as Philip does for a simple theme on justice. It is quite another to observe the “thread of dialectic” while reading literature, which rarely follows a strictly logical order or formal outline. Cicero’s De Officiis and Plato’s dialogues are

⁴³ Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 52. As listed initially, these are whether the thing is, what it is, what caused it, whether it is one or many, what are its parts, how are its parts related, what are its duties or functions, to what things does it have an affinity, and to what things is it contrary? Philip later summarizes them in three questions: what is a thing, what are its kinds, and how are the kinds related? (63). His outline for a simple theme on justice follows a slightly modified order (64). ⁴⁴ “Qui volet igitur ex ipsis derivare fontibus rem aliquam, filum harum quaestionum veluti ὁδοποιόν sequatur.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 52. ⁴⁵ “Modo hic studiosus lector observet dialecticae filum.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 63. ⁴⁶ “Diligenter item sunt admonendi pueri, quorsum haec res pertineat, exemplis erudiendi, offerendae ex oratoribus, poëtis, theologis definitiones, de quibus iudicent, maxime locorum communium; ita civili iudicio et rerum communium sensu imbuentur.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, pp. 56–7.

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the prime models of developing a simple theme on a given topic, but Philip also illustrates the simple theme with some lines from Homer’s Iliad: of their own accord the gates of heaven rasped open. They were in the keeping of the Hours, to whom also were entrusted great heaven and Olympus. (Il. 5.749–50)⁴⁷

He quotes these lines to illustrate the topic of “duties,” one of the nine questions in his outline. Although most of the section on the simple theme addresses description of concrete or abstract things, this quotation proves that the simple theme also included description of persons (and personification). Like Cicero on the useful and the honorable, like Plato on moral goodness or justice, Homer’s description of the Hours is a place of discovery. Partial, occasional, inconclusive—yes, on all scores Homer’s lines fall short of a dialectical argument. But no matter, they more than suffice as building blocks for dialectical elaboration. As noted above, it does not matter for Philip’s purposes that the Hours are fictions rather than persons. As personifications, they are amenable to the same type of definition, division, and description as historical characters and abstract concepts. In the Cambridge Iliad, these lines are underscored, marked with a pointing hand, and labeled simply “Hours.”⁴⁸ If we were to label Il. 5.749–50 in light of Philip’s citation in De Rhetorica, we might include the terms “teaching kind,” “character description,” and “from duties.” It is my suspicion that the unlabeled notes (pointing hand, underlining, and the catchphrase) are implicitly doing the work of the technical labels. Later annotations from Philip’s classroom would use such technical labels ad libitum. But the use of technical terms is the exception rather than the rule in the Cambridge Iliad annotations. Dialectic is implicitly or “silently” marked in this volume with pointing hands, underlining, rubrics, and catchphrases. Take the character description of Thersites that was excerpted in the Greek grammar. In the Cambridge copy it is simply rubricated and labeled “Thersites.”⁴⁹ We look at the note and the rubric and take them to mean “these lines are about Thersites.” That is, we are conditioned by modern technologies of reading (indexes, section headings, and other finding aids) to see the note as indicating subject matter alone. In Philip’s hand, the notes likely indicate both ⁴⁷ The lines are quoted in Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 60. ⁴⁸ “Horae.” C Adv.d.13.4, p. 116. Page numbers in this copy were handwritten by an unknown reader at the top of the page. ⁴⁹ C Adv.d.13.4, p. 30.

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subject matter and genre. They probably mean something like “these lines are a character description of Thersites” or “these lines are a simple theme on the person Thersites.” So with other places where Philip simply copies a name in the margin, with or without other marks (underlining, pointing hands, rubrics, etc.): the wrath of Apollo the far-shooting king (Il. 1.75, marked “Apol[lo],” C Adv.d.13.4, p. 3) and in their midst was lordly Agamemnon, looking like thunderbolt-armed Zeus for his eyes and head, like Ares for his waist, and like Poseidon for his breast (Il. 2.477–9, rubricated and marked “Agamemnon,” p. 39) [That one is the son of Laertes, Odysseus of many devices,] nurtured in the land of Ithaca, rugged as it is, and he knows all devices and close counsels (Il. 3.[200], 201–2, underscored and marked “Ulysses,” p. 60) And she was awestruck when she recognized the exceedingly beautiful neck of the goddess, her ravishing bosom and her flashing eyes, and she spoke this word, addressing her by name (Il. 3.396–8, rubricated and marked “Venus,” p. 67) and Dread and Panic and Strife, who always craves some action, the sister and comrade-in-arms of man-killing Ares. She rouses herself little by little at first, but then bearing her head aloft in the heavens she treads underneath the earth (Il. 4.440–3, underscored and rubricated and marked ερις (Strife), p. 85) and Ares the destroyer of men, and Strife, who always craves some action (Il. 5.518, marked Ἔρϊς (Strife), p. 108) But come, at Ares first drive your horses of uncleft hoof. Strike him in close combat, and do not reverence the impetuous Ares, this madman, this complete canker, this turncoat (Il. 5.829–31, underscored and marked “Mars,” p. 118) None of the descriptions is as elaborate as the description of Thersites, but all do similar work in giving specific verbal form to character. In the last example, the description of Mars, the third line is a list of three adjectives introduced by a demonstrative pronoun.⁵⁰ The line is comparable to Paul’s enumeration of ⁵⁰ Philip quotes Iliad 5.831 in De Corrigendis Studiis, and his use of the text here illustrates the rhetorical use of the genus didaktikon. Following the prologue, he begins his history of the revival of studies, which begins with the sack of Rome. Describing the decline of learning in this period, he writes, “For you know that it [war] is incompatible with the study of wisdom, and even [the study] of civil affairs is incompatible with the cult of Mars, whom our Homer portrays struggling with Athena in

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the qualities of the elder in Titus 1.8: hospitable, a lover of the good, prudent, just, etc. In some examples, character description is limited to a single epithet. No matter—in the De Rhetorica, Philip seems to treat the epithet, typically treated as a figure of speech, as a species of the didactic kind. “Why does Homer call Neptune γαιήοχον [“earth embracer,” Il. 23.584], if not because the land is surrounded by the sea? Why does he call Mars ἀλλοπρόσαλλον [“turncoat,” Il. 5.831]? Why Juno λευκώλενον [“white-armed,” Il. 23.112]?”⁵¹ Like allegories and fables, he explains, these epithets reveal the natures and powers of things. In this intellectual and pedagogical context, the marginal notes in the Cambridge copy of Homer do more than simply locate a passage. The notes isolate units of discourse and classify them according to the order of learning. The questions of the didactic kind—what is a thing, what are its parts and kinds, and what relationship is found among these kinds—lie behind many of Philip’s annotations. But the text is not a mere occasion of logical instruction. It itself is the training ground, and the dialectical organon is (as its name implies) merely the instrument. As Philip writes of the categories in De Rhetorica, “it matters little what labels you use, as long as you understand that they are classifications of things and measures for distinguishing particulars.”⁵² Something similar might be said of the topics of invention, which like the categories supply both “source” and “thread” of argument in the didactic kind. The topics are to the mind what the pointing hand is to the eye: a mental “ahem!” to arrest the reader and register the verbal marks of reality in literary text. The Cambridge Iliad notes demonstrably illustrate Philip’s concept of rhetorical pedagogy in De Rhetorica. Given the rhetorical framework of his reading, perhaps it is surprising that the notes, with one exception, do not contain anything like a formal analysis of a speech. The work of these notes is different. Postponing formal concerns, the notes attend to the primordial elements of speech. The concern is to identify and simply mark, mentally hateful conflict: in his words, raving, thoroughly evil . . .” (Scitis enim quam non conveniat cum sapientiae studiis, atque adeo civilium rerum cultu Marti, quem fingit Homerus noster cum Pallade acerbis odiis conflictantem, μαινόμενον, ut ipse ait, τυκτὸν κακόν) CR 11.16. Philip incorporates this brief character description into his declamation not merely as an ornament, but as a means of naming truthfully the thing that stands in comparison with learning. It illustrates the kind of rhetorical use he wished his students to make of Homer and the genus didaktikon. ⁵¹ “Cur Homerus Neptunum ‘γαιήοχον’ nuncupet, nempe, quod ambiatur mari terra; cur Martem ‘ἀλλοπρόσαλλον’, cur Iunonem ‘λευκώλενον’ . . . ?” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 73. He also treats epithets in his discussion of the loci communes, covered elsewhere in the section on the genus demonstrativum (108). ⁵² “Sed non refert, quibus utaris nominibus, modo scias capita rerum esse et modos internoscendi singula.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 55.

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and graphically, units of discourse that illustrate the “seats of argument” or the “special marks” of things. The notes do not represent a comprehensive or integral but a copious reading of the Iliad.

Commonplaces and the Order of the Text Before he is done with the demonstrative genre in De Rhetorica, Philip will have covered most of the elementary composition exercises treated in ancient manuals like Aphthonius’s Progymnasmata, many of the forms of amplification in Erasmus’s De Copia, many topics of invention after the manner of Agricola’s De Inventione Dialectica, and even several kinds of letter writing that were a central part of humanist composition pedagogy.⁵³ The demonstrative genre, retrofitted to supply a modicum of logic training, is brim full of rhetorical, logical, and emotional occasions. Where is this farrago of literary forms tending? In a section on paraphrase (one of many kinds appended to demonstrative oratory in De Rhetorica) Philip recollects his teaching of the Epistle to Titus: Accordingly, when I lectured on that sacred epistle to Titus, I exhorted the class that, if there were any diligent students, they should practice themselves in this kind of exposition. For this letter is among the best suited for this genre, because it contains many commonplaces (locos communes), and because what Paul says so briefly, they could develop with explanations, arguments, confirmations, examples, and comparisons.⁵⁴ ⁵³ To the simple and complex themes of the teaching kind, and the stories of praise and blame in the epideictic kind, Philip appends several sections on exercises related to the demonstrative genre. These include sections on paraphrase, commentary, circumstances, commonplaces (loci communes), and emotions. The teaching kind, which Philip would keep simple, is extensively supplemented by exercises that fill out a rhetorical training ground. There is first the “explanatory kind” (genus enarratorium or ἐξήγησιν), which includes paraphrase and commentary. The explanatory kind, he admits, is not really a kind but “wantonly occurs in all genres” (in omnia promiscue cadit), adopting the form of the speech it explains. Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 66. He discusses paraphrase of similes, examples, evaluative comparisons, portraits, maxims, circumstances, and all the figures of amplification. Paraphrase involves reasonings, arguments, confirmations, examples, and likenesses, expositions, and other forms of elaboration. This is just a sampling of the speech genres discussed in book 1 of De Rhetorica. Of the three classical genres, the demonstrative genre has the most affinity with sermo, the familiar discourse of the letter and conversation. See John F. Tinkler, “Renaissance Humanism and the genera eloquentiae,” Rhetorica 5 (1987): 283–6. ⁵⁴ “In hunc modum, cum sacram illam Ad Titum epistolam praelegissem, hortabar scholam, ut si qui studiosi essent hoc genere exponendi se exercerent: eam epistolam in id genus cum primis aptam esse, quod et locos communes multos contineret, et, quae brevissime complexus est Paulus, possent subiectis rationibus, argumentis, confirmationibus, exemplis et similibus enarrare.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 66.

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He proceeds to supply, as he does elsewhere in De Rhetorica, a brief example of such an elaboration, running Paul’s terse statement “The bishop ought to be beyond reproach” through the types of elaboration. As we have seen, Titus exemplifies elegant character description, a premier type of the demonstrative genre. It therefore makes an ideal elementary reader. But for the overachievers in Philip’s class, the letter contains further splendors: commonplaces (loci communes), the chief topics found in every discipline of study and “drawn out from the deepest seats of nature.”⁵⁵ Our study of the Cambridge Iliad notes is incomplete without a study of his contemporary understanding of the commonplaces. Philip devotes a section of De Rhetorica to the commonplaces as a means of organizing knowledge and experience. He writes, “Whoever wants to judge rightly of human affairs, let him take whatever (subject matter) occurs by chance and conduct it to these (commonplaces) as if to the patterns of things. Likewise, whoever has in mind to judge rightly of the disciplines, he should have such commonplaces in ready money.”⁵⁶ The commonplaces are observed patterns in human experience. Life, death, and appearance are commonplaces of nature. Riches, splendor, and honor are commonplaces of fortune. The virtues and vices are commonplaces of human behavior. And so on. Similar patterns are found in the academic disciplines, and each discipline determines (that is, discovers) its own commonplaces.⁵⁷ Theology has commonplaces such as faith, ceremony, and sin. Civil law has equity, serfdom, crime, and punishment. Philip gives all these as illustrations; he does not supply an authoritative list. He implies that the commonplaces are well known, especially in the case of ethics, where the commonplaces include the virtues and vices, and that students must discover them in the course of learning and, to some degree, determine them for themselves. As described in De Rhetorica, the commonplaces facilitate memory and are a useful way of organizing literary examples, including all the forms that a student might use for paraphrase: examples, comparisons, narratives, fables, aphorisms, and so on. It must be noted that Philip uses the term commonplace to name both the headings used to collect and organize such materials and the collected materials themselves. So, for instance, Paul’s statement “The bishop ought to be ⁵⁵ “ex intimis naturae sedibus eruti.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 109. ⁵⁶ “Qui volet igitur de rebus humanis recte iudicare, illum oportet, quicquid inciderit forte fortuna, ad has ceu formas rerum exigere; pariter cui cordi est recte de studiis iudicare, illum oportet tales locos in numerato habere.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 106. ⁵⁷ Cf. similar remarks about commonplaces in Melanchthon’s “Preface to Homer,” in CR 11.403; Philip Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and Education, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa, trans. Christine F. Salazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 43–4.

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beyond reproach” is a commonplace, and so is the heading “bishop” or “integrity” or whatever heading is found to collect this commonplace. This is an unfortunate ambiguity, especially since later practices of compiling commonplaces in books would tend to emphasize the secondary sense of the term locus communis, as a convenient label, heading, or title used to organize quotations. Just as Paul’s warning about the bishop becomes a point of reference in the letter to Titus, a place about which to collect and organize utterances, many commonplaces in the Iliad are marked. Probably many of the items in the index of catchphrases are working as commonplace headings, marking the text as belonging to a commonplace: of moral philosophy (greed, courage), religion (lustration, sacrifice), or law (justice, perjuries), to cite a few examples. But I have in mind notes that give articulation to commonplaces in the other sense—that is, literary utterances, notes such as “the worse prevail” (peiora vincunt, on Il. 1.586–93), “it is not right that the prince of ills should lord it over the Achaeans” (a translation of Il. 2.233b–234), and “glory tarries but lasts forever” (sera sed immortalis gloria, on Il. 2.325).⁵⁸ In most cases these notes paraphrase Homer; in some cases they are pretty faithful translations. These notes stand out from the rest of the marginalia not only because of their aphoristic form but also because of their position on the page—most are written in the lower margin. Here are further examples, all drawn from the lower margins of book 9: “moderation is better” (moderatio melior, on Il. 9.255b–258), “nothing is to be compared with life” (Nihil cum vita conferendum, on Il. 9.401–2), and “comrades of friends are friends” (Amicorum comes amici, on Il. 9.615–16).⁵⁹ This is not the exclusive use of the lower margin, and sometimes such notes appear in the lateral margins.⁶⁰ But there is a high correlation between notation of commonplaces and their location in the lower margins. This use of the lower (and in some cases upper) margins seems purposeful and significant for understanding the work that these notes are doing. By moving a catchphrase or paraphrase from the lateral spaces adjacent to the text to those above and below, in the header and footer, an annotator represents the exceptional quality of the note, implying a larger context or framework of understanding. The note might mark an organizing principle, a point ⁵⁸ These annotations are found in C Adv.d.13.4, pp. 20, 30, and 34–5. ⁵⁹ C Adv.d.13.4, pp. 188, 192, 199. ⁶⁰ Another interesting use of the lower margin is for the citation of lines from the Aeneid, which occurs three times in this volume and would be a frequent use of the lower margin in the Columbia Iliad. See Chapter 5.

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of reference in the larger narrative or argument, or it might mark a commonplace to be collected mentally or graphically in a commonplace book. A commonplace note of this sort participates in both the order of learning and (critically) in the order of the text, giving a point of reference for organizing and remembering episodes and speeches. As with the catchphrases and pointing hands, such notes are unlabeled. But their frequency and location on the page allow us to recognize in them commonplaces, the places where students’ eloquence and judgment could be exercised. Within the text, they serve to orient several enunciations of the text, giving the student a focal point for observation and judgment. Outside the text, for instance in a student theme, a disputation, or a sermon, they serve as springboards for further enunciations marshaled for the sake of abundance and clarity. The process remains fluid, occasional, and oriented around speeches. While the loci communes are of special importance in these notes, we must not think that they represent a terminus. I believe that their function in Philip’s notes is organizational and directional. No commonplace substitutes for the text, the literary enunciation of Homer, prince of poets. In the De Rhetorica, Philip warns against a method of dialectic divorced from the examples of the “best and loveliest.” With a mirthful wink he writes, “Another word to the wise. Take care not to enfeeble speech to such an extent, that you think you have at last acquired a technique at the very moment you have lost refinement of style. I know some teachers of logic who are of this opinion. For study must be exerted always toward the best and loveliest, and native talents must be exercised in this (study of literature), so that luxuriance of style might straightway flourish.”⁶¹ Like the categories and the topics of invention, other necessary means in the development of judgment, the commonplaces are helps and signposts on the road to eloquence. To sum up, the genus didaktikon governed several of Philip’s pedagogical choices in this early period. First, it is in light of the teaching kind that we can appreciate Philip’s decision to include the Homeric description of Thersites, from the second book of the Iliad, in an appendix to his 1518 Greek grammar. It is in light of the didactic kind, and Philip’s emphasis on character description, that we can appreciate his selection of Titus for his inaugural lectures. More generally, the teaching kind as presented in 1519 contains Philip’s ⁶¹ “Iam hoc quoque prudenter cavendum est, ne sic enerves orationem, ut putes tum demum artificii habitam rationem, cum desit elocutionis cultus; id quod video persuasum dialecticis quibusdam. Semper enim ad optima et pulcherrima enitendum est et in hoc exercenda ingenia, ut efferat se statim foecunditas.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 65.

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extensive reflections on the act of teaching, especially the teaching of books through exegesis and commentary. The teaching kind is very clearly located in the classroom and its practices.⁶² As shown above, parts of the De Rhetorica were written in Wittenberg and reflect Philip’s lectures on the Epistle to Titus. Perhaps they were written after he had begun his lectures on the Iliad. In any case, what De Rhetorica reveals is that Philip’s rhetorical doctrines were not a priori doctrines that he brought to the classroom or a text and simply applied. Rather, the evidence suggests that the unconventional parts of De Rhetorica— that is, those parts that supplement the classical three genres—stem directly from Philip’s experience as a lecturer in Wittenberg. The Iliad annotations are not mere instantiations of a theory already outlined in a textbook of rhetoric. More probably they represent a workshop in which Philip was testing out ideas and models he had drawn from a number of sources and examples, synthesizing them in a unique kind of rhetorical instruction.

⁶² Wengert notes the formal importance of the teaching kind in the structure of the lectures themselves: “Classroom lectures form a special category of rhetoric in which dialectical principles determine the structure and rules of speech. The Annotationes in Johannem, which derive exclusively from Philip’s lectures on John, provide a fascinating sample of such oratory.” Philip Melanchthon’s Annotationes in Johannem, 169.

3 Homeric Prudence Melanchthon’s 1523 Homer Lectures

In 1523 Philip Melanchthon became rector of the University of Wittenberg and instituted reforms in order to realize some ideals argued in his speeches and textbooks of the previous five years. The major outlines of his reforms as rector are anticipated in a speech on eloquence delivered in the spring of 1523 and published just as Melanchthon (as I will refer to him from here on) assumed his duties. Nearly five years after starting at Wittenberg, and even with the religious and cultural upheaval of those five years, he doubles down on his case for Greek learning in a declamation entitled the Praise of Eloquence, and he still sees Homer to be of the first importance for establishing, and now defending, the new order of learning.¹ Just as he inaugurates a new order of learning in 1518 with his announcement of Homer lectures, so in 1523 he re-ratifies Homer’s place in Wittenberg. In the Praise of Eloquence it is Homer’s prudence or practical wisdom that is in focus, and the declamation supplies vital context for understanding Melanchthon’s contemporary lectures on the Iliad. Homeric prudence is of a piece with Homeric eloquence, and it is exhibit A in Melanchthon’s defense of literary learning. According to Melanchthon, Homer’s prudence manifests itself above all in his presentation of rulers who combine prudence and eloquence, who exhibit the necessary bond between the two skills. Addressing the young men of the university, Melanchthon guarantees that their study of Homer and other good writers will shape not only their mouth and tongue but also their “spirit” or “understanding” (pectus), a term Melanchthon uses here like the Homeric word φρήν, seat of personhood, passion, and prudence (φρόνησις). “Prudence,” Melanchthon writes, “follows

¹ CR 11.50–66. Orations on Philosophy and Education, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa, trans. Christine F. Salazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 60–78.

Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer. William P. Weaver, Oxford University Press. © William P. Weaver 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.003.0004

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eloquence no less nearly than a shadow follows a body.”² He could hardly declare more explicitly his allegiance to the humanist movement in the liberal arts. With his argument of the marriage of eloquence and wisdom, and the pursuit of this union through studious reading, Melanchthon joined a movement that began in the Italian Renaissance and had a legacy evident in the writings of authors like Montaigne and Shakespeare.³ But how exactly did Melanchthon expect students to become prudent reading Homer, and what kind of prudence was it that one developed in literary training? Peter Mack, who argues Melanchthon’s place within a tradition of ethical-rhetorical reading in the Renaissance, describes the Preceptor’s approach in practical terms: “A thorough and thoughtful reading of a complex text militates against reading off simplistic moral lessons; asks instead for an act of discernment and judgement from the reader.”⁴ Reading in this tradition was a practice, and a practice of rhetoric.⁵ Such a practical, ethical dimension is amply illustrated in notes recorded from Melanchthon’s lectures on Homer. At the time of the Praise of Eloquence and throughout his tenure as university rector, Melanchthon was lecturing on the Iliad, and we are fortunate to have extensive notes copied down from these lectures, recorded by a student and now preserved in a manuscript in the Vatican Library.⁶ The notes, covering Iliad books 4 and 6, parts of book 7, and a passage from book 18 (Achilles’s shield), illustrate Melanchthon’s argument and his attempt to impress Homeric prudence upon his students. They offer an unparalleled view of his methods and aims in teaching Homer, especially his use of rhetoric and dialectic, and his ambition to reform theological education. Compared with the notes in the Cambridge Iliad, the 1523 notes reflect Melanchthon’s still more conscious attempt to illustrate the epistemic and moral fruit of reading Homer. From the rudimentary work of collecting commonplaces and exemplary definitions and descriptions of things and persons, the 1523 lectures begin to demonstrate how these fragmentary, occasional observations relate to one another, and how they might contribute to a practice of eloquence and judgment. ² “(N)eque propius umbra corpus adsectatur, quam eloquentiam comitatur prudentia.” CR 11.55. Compare Salazar’s translation, which appears to correct this unconventional statement by transposing verb and object: “the shadow does not follow the body more closely than eloquence accompanies sagacity.” Orations, 65. ³ Hanna H. Gray, “Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence,” Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 497–514; Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1985); Peter Mack, “Rhetoric, Ethics, and Reading in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Studies 19 (2005): 1–21. ⁴ “Rhetoric, Ethics, and Reading in the Renaissance,” 6. ⁵ “Rhetoric, Ethics, and Reading in the Renaissance,” 4. ⁶ BAV Stamp. Pal. IV.801.3 [BAV 1].

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In the first part of this chapter, I examine the Praise of Eloquence to illustrate the intellectual and social context of the Homer lectures. The declamation clearly articulates Melanchthon’s more broadly conceived argument for the study of Homer, which he describes as a training ground for young men destined for the magistracy as well as the ministry. That is, Melanchthon conceived of Homer instruction as preparation for life outside as well as inside the university, and he conceived of eloquence and its complement prudence as the main qualities of the good ruler. The aim of reading Homer in Wittenberg was not to develop an academic discourse, much less an esoteric philosophical discourse (such as might develop from allegorical interpretation). The aim was verbal competency in the world of affairs, and the ability to discriminate when controversies or conflicts arise. After looking at the aims and ambitions outlined in the Praise of Eloquence, I turn to the contemporary witness of Melanchthon’s lectures on Homer, recorded in 1523 by Achilles Pirmin Gasser. Gasser, who became a physician to the elite, including members of the Fugger family in Augsburg, was in many senses a model student, one who would take his Greek literacy and a Homeric prudence into the world of affairs. His Homer notes are an important window onto Melanchthon’s teaching method and especially onto the practical side of scholarship in Wittenberg. They reveal above all the scholarship that Melanchthon drew upon, and the scholarly traditions that informed his approach to the Homeric poem. Melanchthon was deeply indebted to some significant Homer critics, even as he developed some distinctive practices in his own brand of rhetorical reading. Since the notes, like many lecture notes, are of an occasional and cursory sort, their purpose and meaning are greatly illuminated by comparison with the sources and traditions of Melanchthon’s teaching methods. Citations in Gasser’s notes make clear who were Melanchthon’s major scholarly sources. Not the allegorical commentaries of Eustathius and the Neoplatonists on the one hand, nor the textual scholarship of the Alexandrians on the other, but the Adages of Erasmus and the Saturnalia of Macrobius, along with some other miscellaneous works of Latin scholarship—these represent the heart of Melanchthon’s Homer scholarship, at least as brought to bear on teaching Homer in 1523–4. Melanchthon found in the Adages and the Saturnalia guides to reading Homer with prudence, that is, with attention to what is notable in the poem, namely speech, and Homer’s supposed use of the topics of invention in his fashioning of speeches.⁷ Together the Adages and

⁷ For the use of Erasmus’s Adages in grammar school instruction, see Anthony Grafton, “The Humanist as Reader,” in A History of Reading in the West, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 199–202.

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Saturnalia modeled a humanistic kind of Homer scholarship, complete with rhetorical and dialectical terms, that could replace scholastic forms of learning, which tended (from the humanists’ point of view) to deal with abstract concepts and relations far removed from ordinary speech. For Melanchthon, interested in training an eloquent administrative elite and pastoral clergy, it was vital that prudence be grounded in real speech, and even though Homeric Greek was far from the demotic of Electoral Saxony, yet he believed that the study of Homeric speech was sufficient to shape the tongue and heart for present-day needs. Melanchthon does not slavishly or pedantically use either the Adages or the Saturnalia but draws on both in a focused way that highlights some of their latent qualities. Erasmus’s compilation is well known and has received lots of scholarly attention, but Macrobius’s learned dialogue is not widely known or discussed. Considering them together in a tradition of Homer scholarship, we can discover new aspects of both. Melanchthon’s citation of the Adages will further reveal this work’s already recognized brilliance and utility, and his citation of the Saturnalia will hopefully demonstrate for an audience of Renaissance scholars its relevance for the classical tradition. Turning from his sources to his own scholarship, I show in the final section how Melanchthon’s lectures on book 4 of the Iliad illustrate his teaching of Homeric prudence. Drawing on aspects of the Adages and Saturnalia, Melanchthon construed the poem as speech, and he used speech to segment, translate, and ultimately make judgments about the text or discern its truth. He attempted to show speech to be the basic unit of prudential reasoning and perceiving. Speech was no mere reflection or clothing of an already existing wisdom. On the contrary, practical wisdom or prudence was if anything a consequence of speech studied and practiced. Prudence was (in Melanchthon’s bold reordering of Platonic ontologies) eloquence’s shadow. And so when Melanchthon wishes to illustrate prudence in the 1523–4 lectures, he examines speeches by Agamemnon and other princes. Agamemnon’s eloquence, suited to the occasion, exhibits his judgment about what is appropriate and effective in the execution of his office as ruler. Crucially, such prudence impersonated in the characters of the poem is also manifested in the poem itself. The Homeric text, in its arrangement of these speeches by the Achaean prince, reflects a prudential mind. The study of Homeric speech thus pushes us paradoxically and inevitably to the study of the Homeric text and its literary qualities. That will be the focus of later chapters, but already the 1523–4 Iliad lectures suggest the literary consequences of Melanchthon’s construal of the poem as speech.

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The Necessity of the Study of Eloquence Melanchthon described his Praise of Eloquence as a defense of the liberal arts at a crucial time.⁸ The earliest notice of the oration is in a letter from Melanchthon to the poet Eobanus Hessus dated March 29, 1523.⁹ In this letter, Melanchthon praises a poem that Hessus sent him. The poem, he writes, is a defense of humane learning condemned by bad theology just when it was beginning to blossom. In a recent declamation he himself has been engaged in the same battle. The urgency of this battle is underscored in his dedicatory epistle in the first edition of the Praise of Eloquence. Dedicating the edition to his former schoolmate Simon Grynaeus, Melanchthon elaborates the occasion of the speech: “It is the idiocy of the crass to despise nothing more than literary refinement (elegantiorem literaturam). When I saw that this refinement was despised above all in the present time, I praised it in a short declamation.”¹⁰ As Melanchthon explains to Grynaeus, he had wanted to expand the short declamation into a fuller oration, as the theme deserved, but he has gone ahead and published what he had. The urgency to get young men back on track (revocare in viam) was greater than making the full case for letters.¹¹ Thus the Praise of Eloquence, while sharing some themes of the inaugural declamation, has a more specific historical occasion, responding to contemporary circumstances. In place of the grand narrative of the rebirth of learning and its seeming inevitability announced in the earlier declamation, the Praise of Eloquence declares a state of emergency. In 1523 the liberal arts are in triage. This latest threat to the liberal arts comes not from scholastic theology but from radical evangelicals caught up in or taking advantage of the heady early days of the Reformation. It was perhaps inevitable that Luther’s challenge to Aristotelian instruction in the university would expand into a more general attack on philosophy, or the liberal arts synonymous with “philosophy” in the era. Melanchthon himself had organized a burning of a papal bull and canon law on December 10, 1520, an uncharacteristically impetuous decision that he

⁸ See Bernard Effe, “Der Bildungswert der antiken Literatur: Melanchthons humanistisches Plädoyer,” Fragmenta Melanchthoniana 4 (2009): 113–34, esp. 118–19. ⁹ MBW 273. ¹⁰ “At ea est vulgi amentia, ut non aliud perinde contemnat atque elegantiorem literaturam. Eamque cum viderem hoc potissimum tempore nostris sordere, brevi declamatione laudavi.” MBW 277; MBW. T 2.68. ¹¹ Cf. CR 11.51.

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might have later regretted.¹² In 1521, during the so-called “Wittenberg Movement,” a group of preachers claiming direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit descended upon Wittenberg and challenged both the social order and the university. The Zwickau Prophets were chased out of Wittenberg, but other radicals like Andreas Karlstadt remained and openly challenged the need for philosophy instruction at the university. Conditions in Wittenberg were especially unstable while Luther was in safe keeping in the Wartburg, and Melanchthon was directly involved in attempts to moderate reform and maintain order. Although Wittenberg proved to be a magnet for students and entrepreneurial printers in these years, other German universities suffered steep declines in enrollment. Luther and Melanchthon’s attack on conservative forms of learning, centrally Aristotle and Peter Lombard, had worked only too well, contributing to a crisis in higher learning. These circumstances clarify the new urgency and tone of Melanchthon’s apologetics for learning in the Praise of Eloquence.¹³ No wonder prudence is thematic in the speech. I quoted earlier what I take to be the central and most ambitious claim of the Praise of Eloquence: “Prudence follows eloquence no less nearly than a shadow follows a body.”¹⁴ By making such a comparison Melanchthon boldly aligned himself with humanist reforms of dialectic pioneered by Lorenzo Valla and Rudolph Agricola.¹⁵ He also turned on its head a conventional comparison between philosophy and eloquence going back to Plato, who held philosophy to be the substance of things known and eloquence merely the verbal clothing.¹⁶ In the declamation, Melanchthon develops the language philosophy of Valla and the language instruction of Erasmus to assert a new priority:

¹² Heinz Scheible, Melanchthon: Vermittler der Reformation (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2016), 74. Melanchthon may have seen no inconsistency in his assault on one kind of learning and his defense of another. It is unlikely that all who participated in the act of vandalism were similarly attuned to the distinction. ¹³ Melanchthon’s anticipation of counterarguments by religious enthusiasts makes clear that he is now shaping his defense of learning in an evangelical context as well as a humanist-scholastic debate. For instance, responding to a potential objection, he confirms that without the Holy Spirit’s instruction, nobody can perceive Christ. Nonetheless, the divine mysteries are hidden in words as if in a shrine, and “about speech no one can rightly judge who has not thoroughly learned the correct way of speaking” (At de sermone iudicare nemo recte poterit, nisi qui recte dicendi rationem perdidicerit) CR 11.64 discendi; MSA 3.60 dicendi. ¹⁴ See above, note 2. ¹⁵ Peter Mack documents some of Melanchthon’s sources in a study of foundational importance for understanding humanist dialectic and reading practices. See Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic (Leiden: Brill, 1993). See also Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Moss attends to the impact of these reforms on religious instruction and controversy. ¹⁶ For the conventional metaphor of language as clothing and the coexistence of this metaphor with novel philosophies of language in the era, see Lodi Nauta, “Philology as Philosophy: Giovanni Pontano on Language, Meaning, and Grammar,” Journal of the History of Ideas 72 (2011): 481–502. Nauta

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eloquence is the substance of philosophical prudence, which follows logically and practically from eloquence.¹⁷ It is an aggressive stand in defense of the study of eloquence—for that is what the Praise of Eloquence in fact is. It is more about the study of eloquence than eloquence itself.¹⁸ Writing for a university context, where he is attempting to implement reforms, and responding perhaps to recent cultural pressures on university enrollment, Melanchthon argues the necessity of learning and practicing eloquence. He ultimately argues exercitationes, that is, declamations or similar public speaking events, as a key means of training judgment; consequently, the declamation is supposed to perform its own argument. It illustrates and argues the “art of speaking” and its consequence: prudence.¹⁹ Melanchthon places Homer on the front lines of this expanded defense of the liberal arts. To appreciate the prominence of Homer in the declamation, it is helpful to outline its argument. In the following outline, or what Melanchthon might have called a dispositio, I’ve used terms similar to those that Melanchthon himself used in outlining books of the Bible or classical orations. Prologue and thesis: The study of eloquence is necessary for human affairs (50).²⁰ Argument 1: Human society, government, and commerce depend on a common form of speech (ratio loquendi) (51–5). Argument 2: Exercise in letters sharpens judgment or prudence (55–62).

clarifies the significance of humanist currents of thought in relation to ancient and modern philosophies. See also Nauta, In Defense of Common Sense: Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Mack, Renaissance Argument, 55–8. ¹⁷ Melanchthon takes the well-known Ciceronian defense of eloquence, that it has a civilizing power, and rewrites it in university terms as a narrative of instruction. See Cicero, De inventione 1.1. On the Ciceronian tradition of the marriage of eloquence and wisdom in the Renaissance, see Heinrich Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 73–80. Perhaps the most important intermediate source for Melanchthon’s version of the theme is the famous epistolary exchange on eloquence and philosophy between Ermolao Barbaro (1453/4–93) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94). Melanchthon references the debate in the Praise of Eloquence. In 1534, his student Franz Burchard penned a “New Reply” of Barbaro to Pico, answering the scholastic case for philosophy with a humanist case for eloquence. Melanchthon in turn wrote rhetorical outlines or dispositiones of the Pico and Burchard letters. The letters and Melanchthon’s dispositiones were included in editions of Melanchthon’s own Elementa Rhetorices, beginning with a revised edition in 1539. See Volkhard Wels, Triviale Künste: Die humanistische Reform der grammatischen, dialektischen und rhetorischen Ausbildung an der Wende zum 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Weidler, 2000), 15–27. ¹⁸ The full title, as translated by Salazar, is “Philip Melanchthon’s oration on the topic that the arts of speaking are necessary for every kind of studies (or, praise of eloquence).” Orations, 60. ¹⁹ Compare Erika Rummel’s study of a declamation by Erasmus, “Structure and Argumentation in Erasmus’ De Pueris Instituendis,” Renaissance and Reformation 5 (1981): 127–40. ²⁰ Parenthetical references in the text indicate column numbers in the Corpus Reformatorum edition: CR 11.50–66.

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Reason 1: Readers, especially those involved in the greatest affairs, “contract” prudence from the example of these writers (55–9). Example 1: Poets, esp. Homer (55–8) Example 2: Historians (58) Example 3: Orators (58–9) Reason 2: Exercise of style makes the soul of those who imitate or engage in controversies more vigorous (59–62). Peroration: All of the arts are corrupted, but above all theology and the reading of Scripture are stricken as if by a plague by the lack of learning and the repugnance, introduced by an earlier age, to the study of literature (62–6). As the outline makes clear, Homer has a central place in Melanchthon’s defense of eloquence in 1523. Homer is not the only classical author mentioned in the declamation, but he is the only one to receive extended commentary. For most of his argument about prudence, Melanchthon dwells on Homer and places Homer (as representative of the poets) first. A praise of Homer thus occupies no small part of the praise of eloquence. He begins his praise by scoffing at allegorical interpretations of Homer. “I often laugh at the crowd of Greek grammarians, who reduce all of Homer’s poem to natural science . . . How much more to the point would it have been to point out those things, which he in fact intended for the reader’s admiration?”²¹ Above all Melanchthon names the poem’s literary qualities: its decorum, copia, and variety. The poem displays a marvelous arrangement (οἰκονομία) of different counsels and events, and Homer gives to each event an appropriate occasion. He also introduces variety where he wants to keep the reader’s attention. Melanchthon enumerates several episodes that illustrate the moral and political examples that are of special interest. “Not that I intend to touch on many Homeric examples here. I have only indicated enough to persuade studious young men that not just their speech and tongue but also their spirit (pectus) will be shaped by their knowledge of good writers.”²² It is speeches that are exemplary in Homer, and these are exemplary of speech,

²¹ “Saepe ridere soleo Graecorum Grammaticorum vulgus, qui ad Physiologiam totum Homeri carmen referunt . . . Quanto satius fuerat ea ostendi, quae ille lectoribus proprie admirationi esse voluit?” CR 11.56. ²² “Neque enim plures Homeri locos hic attingere visum est. Tantum hos indicavi, ut studiosis adulescentibus fidem facerem, bonorum scriptorum cognitione non os tantum ac linguam, sed pectus etiam formari.” CR 11.57.

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action, and knowledge. Speech is the building block of character, and it is most effective when heard. Melanchthon closes his praise of Homer with the example of political rulers who instituted Homeric recitations. Solon and Pisistratus wisely legislated the orderly textual arrangement of Homer’s poem, and it was soon established that the poem be performed publicly by rhapsodes, “so that the ears of the young men would resound with the divine poem, and that there might be always ready at hand a rule for speaking and judging” (58). This political history of the Homeric poem is especially apropos in the expanded political terms of Melanchthon’s case for literature in the Praise of Eloquence. “For in that golden age princes still perceived that it was their business, to see to it that no useful writing should perish. Today there is nothing kingly if not stupid (ἄμουσον)” (58). Although addressed primarily to students, the declamation makes an implicit appeal here and throughout to princes and magistrates. Notably in the same year, while rector, Melanchthon introduced regular declamations as part of his university reforms. The appeal to the magistracy becomes explicit in the peroration, where Melanchthon wishes for the violent suppression, even the torture, of the opponents of learning—an illiberal wish on behalf of the liberal arts! There are some, he says, that because they cannot gain the approval of the noble by their learning or manners, curry the favor of the common people “with their impious interpretation of Scripture.” They despise literature, and to them all is as naught: every good and noble thing, piety and public manners, even Christ himself. If we had a stable commonwealth, it would be the magistrate who punished them with force, and not we with our eloquence. For what torture do they not deserve, who entice the youth from literature by their example, even assuming they had no other crime?²³

The pathos of this appeal, and Melanchthon’s call for the punishment of the opponents of learning, reflect his view of the urgency of teaching Homer in 1523. He might have understood his own lectures on the Iliad, in progress when he wrote the oration, in political terms, as public recitations on the model of the ancient rhapsodes.

²³ “In quos, si bene constitutam haberemus Rempublicam, non nos oratione, sed vi Magistratus animadverteret. Quam enim crucem non merentur hi, qui ut praeterea nihil peccent, exemplo suo iuventutem a literaris avocant?” CR 11.63.

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Achilles Pirmin Gasser, a Model Student “First Solon and then Pisistratus thus ordered the rhapsodies in Homer’s poem. Aristarchus then still further distributed them into books.”²⁴ So began Melanchthon’s lectures on Iliad 4, as recorded by a student in 1523. “The rhapsodes,” the lecture notes continue, “were those who recited the Homeric songs for public sacrifice or other public gatherings, like our men and jesters today rehearse their rhymes.”²⁵ Melanchthon repeated this history of the transmission of the Homeric song at the beginning of his lectures on Iliad 6, and the student dutifully though imperfectly copied it down again.²⁶ Melanchthon evidently wished to impress upon his students the public utility of Homer. In a comparison that reflects his disdain for present-day civic life and literacy, he invited the students to imagine the civic and political dimension of their literary study. These lecture notes were taken by Achilles Pirmin Gasser (1505–77), who matriculated at the University of Wittenberg in 1522.²⁷ He was born in the prosperous free imperial city of Lindau, as he proudly noted when writing his initials. His father and grandfather were surgeons in that city, and his father served as surgeon to Maximilian I from 1512 to his death in 1517. After his study of Latin in the grammar school in Lindau, Gasser continued his humanist education in the liberal arts, including the quadrivium, in Selestat from 1520 to 1522. He then studied physics for three months with Urbanus Rhegius, who had been forced to leave Augsburg after he embraced Lutheran theology. Through Rhegius’s influence, the sixteen-year-old Gasser also embraced Luther’s theology, which he would hold onto rather militantly through the rest of his life. Rhegius undoubtedly was instrumental in Gasser’s decision to go to Wittenberg, where he studied literature, medicine, and mathematics

²⁴ “Solon primo deinde Pisistratus sic ordinarunt rapsodias in Homeri carmen, atque adeo libros sic digessit Aristarchus . . .” BAV 1, fol. 1b. Aristarchus of Samothrace (c.216–c.145 ) was the famous Alexandrian scholar and sixth librarian at Alexandria. Numerous scholia of the A type record his textual scholarship. See Martin L. West, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2001), 37, 46–85, esp. 61–7. ²⁵ “ραψώδοι erant qui in publico sacrificio vel publicis aliis conventibus Homerica recitabant carmina ut hodie nostri homines et scurrae suos recensent rithmos.” BAV 1, fol. 1b. ²⁶ “Solon drew up rules for arranging the rhapsodies of Homer. Pisistratus later brought the rule to completion with the present arrangement of books.” (Solon leges tulit de ordinandis rapsodiis Homeri. Pisistratus autem illam legem postquam ea perfecit sic in libros ordinans.) BAV 1, fol. 16b. Melanchthon may have mistakenly assimilated Aristarchus and his school of criticism to the era of Pisistratus, following an error of chronology refuted in Tzetzes’s commentary on Dionysius Thrax and repeated in Eustathius’s commentary on Homer. ²⁷ Karl Heinz Burmeister, Achilles Pirmin Gasser 1505–1577: Arzt und Naturforscher, Historiker und Humanist, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden: Guido Pressler Verlag, 1970–5), vol. 1, pp. 1–23.

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from 1522 to 1525. After further studies in cosmopolitan centers of learning, Gasser went on to a distinguished career as a physician. Among his many professional distinctions and literary accomplishments, Gasser amassed one of the most significant humanist libraries in Germany.²⁸ Karl Burmeister has estimated that the complete collection approached three thousand volumes in Gasser’s lifetime, with an estimated third of the titles representing medicine, one fifth representing history and geography, and another fifth representing theology. Astronomy and poetry, especially contemporary Neo-Latin poetry, are the other most prominent subjects represented. Many of these books were gifts of authors and printers, reflecting Gasser’s social and cultural status as a learned humanist engaged in civic life and wellconnected to the elite, including the Fugger family of Augsburg, where he was a physician from 1546 until his death in 1577. In the words of his biographer, “Gasser was a progressively minded man, active in the life of his times, and wholly engaged in his profession, religion, and politics. He cultivated an array of connections with emperors and princes, magistrates and theologians, doctors and intellectuals.”²⁹ Surely this was the type of student Melanchthon had in mind when he made a plea for prudence in his 1523 declamation. In 1576, more than fifty years after he had ended his studies at the University of Wittenberg, Gasser had his student copies of Homer bound into a single volume. The binding, in boards partially covered in alum-tawed pigskin, stamped with emblems of the three theological virtues and fastened with brass clasps, makes for quite an embellishment of the schoolbooks—a handsome monument to Gasser’s labors as a university student and to the “very words” (ipsissima verba) of his Greek instructor, Philip Melanchthon, which he had copied in the margins of the books. Today, when rental and buyback programs make even the long-term ownership of textbooks a rarity, such costly preservation seems extravagant. But the volume represents more than just the disposable income of a prosperous alumnus or his reverence for his teacher; it represents the foundational importance of Greek learning in Gasser’s intellectual and professional life. Part of Melanchthon’s vision for a new order of erudition was being fulfilled, as well-marked Greek works were taking their place in the libraries of prominent burghers and professionals.³⁰

²⁸ Karl Heinz Burmeister, “Die Bibliothek des Arztes und Humanisten Achilles Pirmin Gasser (1505–1577) mit besonderer Berücksichtung der Libri Poetici,” Bibliothek und Wissenschaft 20 (1986): 49–72. ²⁹ Burmeister, “Bibliothek,” 50. ³⁰ For the evidence that Greek literature was of lifelong and more than dilettantish interest for Gasser, see Burmeister, “Bibliothek,” 58–9.

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Listed below are the contents of the volume, as numbered in the Bibliotheca Palatina (Stampata) in the Vatican Library (BAV Stamp. Pal. IV.801): 1. Commentary, text, and Latin verse translation of Iliad book 1 by the classical scholar Joachim Camerarius.³¹ 2. Commentary, text, and Latin verse translation of Iliad book 2 by the same.³² 3. Iliad 4, 6, 7.1–338, in Gasser’s own manuscript copy with Latin interlinear glosses and marginal notes (Wittenberg, 1523–4). [BAV 1] 4. Iliad 18.468–617, in Gasser’s own manuscript copy with Latin interlinear glosses and marginal notes (Wittenberg, undated). 5. Greek text of Odyssey 1 and 2, with Angelo Poliziano’s Preface to Homer.³³ [BAV 2] The volume collects three of Gasser’s student Homer texts (nos. 3, 4, and 5), heavily annotated, with two Homer texts given to him later in life, in 1538 and 1540, when he was a practicing physician. These latter (nos. 1 and 2) are nearly pristine, Gasser’s only marks being an inscription in which he records the gift of the two editions to him by the Strasbourg printer Crato Mylius. The manuscript copy of portions of the Iliad itself reflects some important aspects of Melanchthon’s Greek instruction. Gasser evidently copied the text from a manuscript or printed text.³⁴ Numerous errors and corrections in the transcription of the Greek text stem from visual not aural mistakes, making it clear that Gasser prepared his text before Melanchthon’s lectures. Attractive as an auditory copying of the text would be, especially given Melanchthon’s emphasis on the ancient performance of the poem by rhapsodes, the text gives no evidence that such a performance was part of the lectures. Gasser copies also a common format for school textbooks of the classics in the ³¹ Joachim Camerarius, Commentarius explicationis primi libri Iliados Homeri (Strasbourg: Crato Mylius, 1538). Gasser has inscribed the title page of this and the next item with notes recording the gift of the volumes to him from the printer. ³² Joachim Camerarius, Commentarii explicationum secundi libri Homericae Iliados (Strasbourg: Crato Mylius, 1540). ³³ Homer, Homeri Ulysseae Lib. I. & II. (Basel: Andreas Cratander, 1520). ³⁴ There are several telltale signs that Gasser copied from a text, not from dictation. In several places he miscopies a word or two from a neighboring line—a frequent occurrence in copying verse from a written example. In many cases, he catches the error, crossing out a vagabond word or two before proceeding with his copy. In two cases, he skips a line of verse entirely, later copying it into the lower margin and linking it to the text by a cross (+). In one case, he has transposed the second half of two consecutive lines, amending and rejoining the half-lines by drawing a chi (X) in the center and numbering the corresponding half lines (using the numbers 1 and 2). The copy was made, then, in advance of the lectures, where some of the errors were corrected and lacunae filled. At some point Gasser made a wholesale capitalization of proper names, which were not capitalized at first in his copy and were not typically capitalized in early modern editions.

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period.³⁵ A “student edition” in the early sixteenth century was something other than a well-glossed text with a facing prose translation, explanatory footnotes for learned and historical references, indexes, glossaries, and a brief guide to Homeric Greek. A student edition as Gasser encountered or reproduced it in 1523 was a spare thing—apart from making the text more legible by including spaces between words, diacritical marks (a Hellenistic innovation that caught on in the early Middle Ages), and punctuation, the text offered no helps for the student. Instead it was formatted in such a way as to allow the student to copy such helps as came viva voce, from an instructor. The 1520 Basel edition of Odyssey 1 and 2, which Gasser also annotated with what appear to be lecture notes, is such a student edition. It has no explanatory apparatus, only a generous amount of white space in between lines and in the margins, to allow students to copy down Latin equivalents (“glosses”) above each line, and to copy down the master’s scholia (occasional notes) and commentary (lengthier notes) in the margins. In their unannotated, printed form, the pages appear an exercise in calligraphic minimalism. Gasser’s manuscript copy of lines from Iliad 4, 6, 7, and 18 follows a similar form and may have followed the appearance of a printed or manuscript copy. He routinely copied nineteen lines per page, with generous interlinear and marginal space for glosses and notes, respectively. He reproduced some paratextual elements, including arguments at the head of the three books (these derive ultimately from the D-scholia) as well as monostich epigraphs. This copy was Gasser’s foundational exercise for reading Greek with Philip Melanchthon. It anticipates the practical side of reading Homer in Wittenberg. From beginning to end, reading would imply practice in writing, in speech, and in judgment.

The Adages of Erasmus as a Field of Scholarship Having copied down some books or “rhapsodies” of the poem, and having perhaps gotten the mistaken impression that the poem was exclusively a literary artefact, and studying it a textual matter, Gasser would soon rediscover the poem as speech, or as a configuration of speeches. I am not alluding to the ³⁵ See Jürgen Leonhardt, “Drucke antiker Texte in Deutschland vor der Reformation und Luthers frühe Vorlesungen,” in Die Musen im Reformationszeitalter, ed. Walther Ludwig (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001), 97–129; “Classics as Textbooks: A Study of the Humanist Lectures on Cicero at the University of Leipzig, ca. 1515,” in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe, ed. Emidio Campi (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 89–112.

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acoustic or aural experience of the poem in the lecture room, or I am not referring to that only. Rather I mean that in his instruction and comment on the poem, Melanchthon would take speech units as the basic unit of his commentary. Beginning with proverbial expressions, he would alert students to remarkable speeches in the poem, and then he would ask students to consider the relationship of these speeches to each other, and to the narrative as a whole. It appears that the proverbial expression, though it could be taken out of context and copied for instance in a commonplace book, could also have a cohesive, integrating role in forming literary judgment. The proverbial expression, which might appear to be brought into a literary text from outside, for instance from popular discourse, might also contain information about the logic and arrangement of a poem. Recent scholarship has returned to some elements in the liberal arts, including figures of speech and topics of invention, to demonstrate their influence on writing practices of the early modern period.³⁶ The same elements have proven powerful instruments of interpretation, as scholars have produced new, persuasive readings of individual poems by focusing on one or more figures of speech.³⁷ We might put it this way: the myriad Renaissance speech kinds that Rosalie Colie investigated nearly fifty years ago have been expanded to include figures of speech and even topics of invention, which may be considered speech kinds in their own right.³⁸ In some ways that anticipate this scholarship, Melanchthon’s Homer notes illustrate the significance of proverbs as a means of literary analysis and interpretation. Proverbs were the first means by which Melanchthon showed a literary text to be composed of speech units. Proverbs or adages (following Erasmus I use the terms more or less synonymously) are a special kind of speaking. They are generally considered as both a genre of writing and a figure of speech. That is, scholars recognize proverbs as a kind of literature, and rhetoricians recognize proverbs as an embellishment of style. Proverbs moreover are not limited to literature but are passed on in oral traditions and vernaculars. They have been recognized as ³⁶ See the essays collected in Sylvia Adamson, Gavin Alexander, and Katrin Ettenhuber, eds., Renaissance Figures of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Lorna Hutson has made a persuasive case for the significance of topical invention in Shakespeare’s artistry. Circumstantial Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). ³⁷ Jenny C. Mann, Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2012). Colleen Ruth Rosenfeld argues an epistemology peculiar to some figures of rhetoric in Indecorous Thinking: Figures of Speech in Early Modern Poetics (New York, NY: Fordham, 2018). ³⁸ The Resources of Kind: Genre Theory in the Renaissance (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1973).

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important to ethnography, since they supposedly capture the speech and thought life of a people. Proverbs have an irreducible, untranslatable quality that makes them at once the common property of a people and the particular object of a scholar. Proverbs were the subject of one of the most popular works of scholarship of the Renaissance era (and perhaps of all time): the Adages of Erasmus, which introduced a new resource for the teacher of Greek. Originating in a 1500 collection of 828 Latin and Greek proverbs, by 1515 the Adages had grown to a massive compilation of 3,400 proverbs explained in Erasmus’s elegant, learned, and witty prose.³⁹ In the expansions of 1508 and 1515, Erasmus greatly increased the citations of Greek verse, even devoting some of the centuries of adages almost exclusively to Homer’s poems.⁴⁰ All of these citations he translated into Latin verse, which greatly increased the value of his compilation. Daunting in its volume, the Adages was a masterstroke of popularization, an astonishingly successful attempt to bring the fruits of scholarship to a broad literate audience.⁴¹ It found a champion in Philip Melanchthon, who used the Adages like artillery in his fight against illiteracy and scholastic philosophy. The importance of the Adages for Greek instruction in the early modern period is not to be underestimated.⁴² And that may be true in particular for Homer instruction. Jessica Wolfe has noted frequent references to the Adages in Renaissance annotations of Homer, including Gasser’s annotations in focus here.⁴³ Not that the significance of the Adages is limited to Greek instruction or literacy in Homer. As Wolfe persuasively argues, for humanists of northern Europe, Homer served a means of accommodating pagan wisdom within a Christian philosophy, and in the Adages, Erasmus made a selective reading of the Homeric poems in order to promote his irenic position in a period of religious strife.⁴⁴ The cultural scope of the Adages was thus large, and encompassed ambitions great as well as modest. The Adages is far and away the most cited work in Gasser’s Homer notes. In the notes on fewer than five books of the poems, Gasser cites the Adages by ³⁹ See Margaret Mann Phillips, The “Adages” of Erasmus: A Study with Translations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964); Kathy Eden, Friends Hold All Things in Common: Tradition, Intellectual Property, and the Adages of Erasmus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). ⁴⁰ Adages 2701–975; Phillips, The “Adages” of Erasmus, 93. For Erasmus’s high estimation of Homer, expressed in numerous works, see Maria Cytowska, “Homer bei Erasmus,” Philologus 118 (1974): 145–57. ⁴¹ Phillips, The “Adages” of Erasmus, 75. ⁴² Phillips, The “Adages” of Erasmus, 48, 60–1. ⁴³ Homer and the Question of Strife from Erasmus to Hobbes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 60–1. ⁴⁴ Homer and the Question of Strife, 99.

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name twenty-six times. But there are other probable allusions to the Adages. In addition to the twelve citations of the Adages in the notes on Odyssey 1 and 2, Gasser marks ten passages as “proverbial” or “a proverb.” Some of these proverbial lines may be linked to the Adages of Erasmus, though they may refer to other proverb collections or simply note a proverbial kind of expression.⁴⁵ At the beginning of his notes on Iliad book 4, Gasser furthermore designates the asterisk as a symbol for proverbs, and he uses the asterisk four more times in the subsequent notes.⁴⁶ As with the lines marked “a proverb” or “proverbial” in the Odyssey notes, the starred lines in these notes may draw from the Adages or another proverb collection. Thus the proverbial statement, concentrated in Erasmus’s epochal collection, takes center stage in Gasser’s notes. Being a widely recognized literary kind, the proverb represents a key approach to the poem’s form. And being published in Erasmus’s Adages, it suggests a field of scholarship on which Melanchthon was drawing. It is our first guide to the Homer lectures of 1523–4. The practice of noting proverbs in ancient verse was not novel. Proverbs were noted in Alexandrian scholia on Homer and Aeschylus.⁴⁷ In his commentary on the comedies of Terence, widely read in the Renaissance, Donatus remarks on proverbial expressions, typically using the word proverbium or proverbiale.⁴⁸ During his years working as a press corrector for Thomas Anshelm in Tübingen, Melanchthon wrote a prefatory letter for a 1516 edition of Terence.⁴⁹ This edition followed earlier editions in marking proverbial expressions with capital letters (see Figure 3.1). Other editions of the comedies ⁴⁵ Possible sources for proverb knowledge include those used by Erasmus. See Phillips, The “Adages” of Erasmus, 89–93. ⁴⁶ BAV 1, fol. 2b, on Il. 4.29. The other starred lines are the following: Il. 4.56, 4.152, 6.61, 6.261. After he so designates the asterisk, Gasser retires the word “proverb,” which he had used so many times in the Odyssey notes. ⁴⁷ Aristophanes of Byzantium (c.257–180 ), who edited Homer and a collection of proverbs, and Aristarchus of Samothrace (c.216–144 ), the famous librarian at Alexandria, used the asterisk to mark outstanding lines. The Latin grammarian Probus and the Alexandrian Bible scholar Origen used the asterisk on the same model. See A. Reifferscheid, “Mittheilungen aus Handschriften,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, new series 23 (1868): 127–46, esp. 129. ⁴⁸ See, for example, comments on Andria line 161, paragraph 1 (161, 1); 190, 5; 214, 1; and 248, 3, in Aelius Donatus, Commentum Terenti, ed. Paul Wessner, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1962–3), vol. 1. The Donatus commentary also frequently uses the term “maxim” (sententia), which it characterizes with various subclasses. ⁴⁹ For Melanchthon’s contribution to this edition, see Richard Wetzel, “Melanchthons Verdienste um Terenz unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ‘seiner’ Ausgaben des Dichters,” in Philipp Melanchthon in Südwestdeutschland: Bildungsstationen eines Reformators, ed. Stefan Rhein, Armin Schlechter, and Udo Wennemuth (Karlsruhe: Badische Landesbibliothek, 1997), 101–26. For the cultural significance of the edition, see Jürgen Leonhardt, “Reformation und Komödie: Die Tübingen Terenzausgabe von 1516 und Melanchthon,” in Philipp Melanchthon: Seine Bedeutung für Kirche und Theologie, Bildung und Wissenschaft, ed. Friedrich Schweitzer, Sönke Lorenz, and Ernst Seidl (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft, 2010), 113–29.

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Figure 3.1 Adages marked in capitals in 1516 edition of Terence by Thomas Anshelm. Credit: Terence. Comoediae P. Terentii metro numerisque restitutae. Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1516. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Res/4 A.lat.a. 609, fol. 2v. Used by permission.

contained an index of adages.⁵⁰ Nor was Erasmus doing anything new in harvesting proverbs from Homer’s epics. In Saturnalia, a miscellany in dialogue form written in the fifth century , Macrobius wrote, “Homer stuffed all his verse so full of epigrams that his individual sayings have the status of proverbs and are on everyone’s lips.”⁵¹ Erasmus paraphrases this testimony at the beginning of the eighth century of the third chiliad of adages, which along with most of the remainder of the third chiliad (Adages nos. 2701–975) was devoted to a selection of the manifold proverbs that stem from Homer.⁵² Melanchthon similarly quoted Macrobius at the beginning of his Odyssey lectures.⁵³ His citation mirrors Erasmus’s citation in the introduction to the ⁵⁰ For the use of capital letters to indicate proverbs, see Wetzel, “Melanchthons Verdienste um Terenz,” 107. See the “Directorium Adagionum” (sic) in Terentius cum quinque commentis ([Venice: Lazzaro de’ Soardi, 1504]), sigs. A4r–A4v. ⁵¹ Sat. 5.16.6. Macrobius, Saturnalia, ed. and trans. Robert A. Kaster, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), vol. 2, p. 399. Erasmus echoes this tradition in the introduction to the Adages. CWE 31.6. ⁵² CWE 34.281; ASD II-6, 481–2. ⁵³ Gasser copies the quotation at the end of Poliziano’s Oratio. BAV 2, sig. D5v. Melanchthon makes several references to the Saturnalia in these lectures (to be examined below).

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Homeric proverbs within the Adages, anticipating the centrality of the proverb to these notes. But what is the use of the proverb in Melanchthon’s notes and instruction?⁵⁴ For elementary instruction in Greek, the references to Erasmus’s Adages have an obvious utility. As advertised by Aldus, the 1508 Adagiorum Chiliades, greatly expanded from the original collection of 1500 and printed while Erasmus was in residence in Venice, doubled as a virtual anthology of Greek verse and (more to the point) contained “faithful, learned translations in a uniform meter” of some ten thousand lines of Greek verse.⁵⁵ By 1523, teachers and students alike must have prized these translations, scarce as such translations were, and penned no less by the illustrious scholar from Rotterdam, now famous for his Adages and Folly and notorious for his edition of the Greek New Testament.⁵⁶ As might be expected of one who penned thousands of lines of Latin verse, Erasmus’s translations are ingenious. They capture most of the meaning of the original within graceful Latin hexameters that track the Greek lines closely. A mimetic, playful spirit is clear in aural imitations of a few places. For instance, in one of the most moralizing of adages, 2.3.48 (Homo bulla “Man is a bubble”), Erasmus ventures an acoustic imitation of the Homeric locus classicus, which closes with the phrase ἔαρος δ᾽ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη (Il. 6.148: “and the season of spring appears”). He translates this “simul veris iam afflaverit aura” (“and now blew the breath of spring”)—a clever echo, substituting a homophone “aura” and perhaps advertising his “aural” intelligence.⁵⁷ Literary aims are clear also in some figures of speech that he introduces, such as an apostrophe in his translation of Od. 1.8–9 and an antithesis in his translation of Od. 2.16.⁵⁸ In a few places he could not repress his pedagogical instincts, as in his expansion of Homer’s terse line Χρύσεα χαλκείων, ἑκατόμβοι ἐννεαβοίων (Il. 6.236: “golden for bronze, one hundred oxen for nine,” Il. 6.236) into three explanatory verses, or as in his moralizing glosses on Homer’s plain ἀρείους (Od. 2.277: “superior”) as “superior in discernment” (superant probitate) and ὅν θυμὸν κατέδων (Il. 6.202: “eating his heart out”) as “eating his heart out with ⁵⁴ Cf. the “Preface to Homer,” in CR 11.397–413, esp. 402–3; Orations, 43. ⁵⁵ “Adde, quod circiter decem millia versuum ex Homero, Euripide, et caeteris Graecis eodem metro in hoc opere fideliter, et docte tralata habentur, praeter plurima ex Platone, Demosthene, et id genus aliis.” Antoine Augustin Renouard, Annales de l’imprimerie des Alde, vol. 1 (Paris: A. A. Renouarde, 1835), 125. ⁵⁶ In advice that reflects the conditions of learning Greek in the quattrocento, Battista Guarino recommends students learn Greek on their own, by comparing the text with a reliable Latin translation. Craig W. Kallendorf, ed./trans., Humanist Educational Treatises (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 296–7. ⁵⁷ ASD II-3, 258. ⁵⁸ Adag. 3.9.40, ASD II-6, 531; Adag. 1.3.8, ASD II-1, 321.

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worry” (cor adedens curis).⁵⁹ Overall, precision and literary quality, even virtuosity, characterize the translations, which obey here and there an explanatory or moralizing directive. Erasmus’s translations were thus models of prosody and style as well as cribs to the Greek text.⁶⁰ No teacher need blush to send students to the Adages for such help.⁶¹ If by referencing the Adages Melanchthon was directing students to Erasmus’s translations, Gasser does not appear to have done his homework. He left no trace of consulting the adages in these notes. Had he done so, it would be reasonable to expect him to at least copy out Erasmus’s translation. But locating reliable translations was evidently not the sole purpose of referencing the Adages. As we have seen, there are numerous other notes that identify a proverbial expression without referencing the Adages. Perhaps marking lines as proverbs is a step towards copying them in a commonplace book.⁶² In the second book of De Copia, Erasmus included proverbs among the literary “examples” (paradeigmata) that one ought to gather: “We include under ‘examples’ stories, fables, proverbs, opinions, parallels or comparisons, similitudes, analogies, and anything else of the sort.”⁶³ In the prefatory letter to De Rhetorica, Melanchthon rehearsed a similar list of “commonplaces,” but in his fuller instructions for commonplaces, he was more restrictive: “Under single headings belong definitions, descriptions, maxims (sententiae), and examples from both history and fiction.”⁶⁴ In his Program of Teaching and Learning (“De ordine docendi et studendi”), Battista Guarino had addressed his instructions for annotating texts to the ambitious, and he tellingly focuses on the sententia, that conspicuous mark of learning.⁶⁵ The commonplaces noted in the Cambridge Iliad (see Chapter 2) fall squarely within this class of literary types. But with some exceptions, the “proverbs” noted in the 1523–4 notes are not aphoristic.⁶⁶ ⁵⁹ Adag. 1.2.1, ASD I-1, 214; Adag. 1.6.32, ASD I-2, 60; Adag. 1.1.2.vii, ASD I-1, 96. ⁶⁰ Erasmus’s Latin translations of Homer in the series 2701–975 were printed, without the corresponding Greek lines, in Antwerp in 1529. Proverbia quaedam Homerica D. Erasmi Roterodami labor exquisitissimo e Graeco in linguam Latinam versa, ingenii ac eruditionis plenissima. ⁶¹ Translations of Homer by Melanchthon are brief and scarce. See CR 18.121–32. Near the end of the volume containing his manuscript copy of Iliad 4, 6, and 7, following several blank pages presumably intended for the rest of Iliad 7, Gasser has copied Melanchthon’s verse translation of Il.6.476–81, a translation preserved in other places. See CR 18.128. ⁶² In good humanist fashion, Gasser sprinkled his letters with Greek citations. Burmeister, 1.97. ⁶³ CWE 24.607. ⁶⁴ Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 107. Compare p. 43. ⁶⁵ In Kallendorf, Humanist Educational Treatises, 294–5. ⁶⁶ In an introduction added to the 1508 edition to the Adages and appearing in all subsequent revisions, Erasmus emphatically distinguishes the proverb from the maxim (sententia). Proverbs might be sententious, and maxims might contain proverbs, but the two are distinct types of utterance. As Erasmus defines it, “A proverb is a saying in popular use, remarkable for some shrewd and novel turn.” CWE 31.4. Evidently it is the novelty, sometimes verging on the enigmatic, that distinguishes the

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not even if he were held by iron shackles (Od. 1.204, annotated “proverbiale”) But go to your chamber, and tend to your own tasks (Od. 1.356, annotated “proverbiale”) I do not prophesy from inexperience but know exactly what I’m doing (Od. 2.170, annotated “proverbiale”) These are not the stuff of commonplace books—one would have a hard time distributing them under the headings of the virtues and vices. Erasmus’s introduction to the Adages illuminates the significance of proverbs for Melanchthon.⁶⁷ Erasmus describes proverbs as a unique witness to the properties of peoples, things, animals, and legends. Explaining the origins of proverbs, he says, “In a word, the behaviour, the natural qualities of any race or individual, or even of an animal, or lastly any power belonging even to a thing, if remarkable and commonly known—all these have given occasion for an adage.”⁶⁸ This is close to the language that Melanchthon used to defend the study of stories in schools. Just as histories bear “special marks” of things, proverbs bear “natural qualities”—they are different in form but do similar work. (Even formally they are related; as Erasmus notes, some proverbs spring from fables, histories, or myths.) So the marking of proverbs in the 1523–4 notes is to some degree a continuation or extension of the marking in the earlier notes (see Chapter 2). The proverb may represent a species of the didactic genre, or at least it gives occasion to the didactic genre, requiring a teacher or translator to explain it. Erasmus proceeds to say that proverbs are small gems that, if you inspect them carefully, contain the whole of philosophy.⁶⁹ In this regard they are like Homer’s poems, which as widely praised were supposed to contain the seeds of all philosophy. In fact, if we compile Macrobius’s praise here—that Homer, in his apothegmatic language was the source of many proverbs—we find a kind of genealogy: Homer > apothegms > proverbs > philosophy. To demonstrate his point about proverbs, Erasmus quotes several lines, much in the way that ps.-Plutarch illustrates the sources of philosophy with choice examples from Homer. Proverbs are an “ocean of philosophy, or rather of theology.”⁷⁰ That last hyperbole, crediting proverbs with theology, raises what is perhaps the crucial point about Erasmus’s project in the Adages. The proverb, and proverb from its more prosaic cousins, maxims and apothegms. Given Melanchthon’s understanding of the commonplaces as supplying the scholarly disciplines with their first principles (axioms), it makes sense that he would employ the proverbs elsewhere in his order of learning. ⁶⁷ CWE 31.3–28. ⁶⁸ CWE 31.5–6. ⁶⁹ CWE 31.13–14. ⁷⁰ CWE 31.15.

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Erasmus’s idiosyncratic manner of elaborating the proverb, presents the learned reader with an alternative to medieval logic: an alternative method of scholarship and teaching. The Adages presents this alternative in two ways: first, by direct criticism of late medieval logic, and second, by modeling a different kind of reasoning based on the literary example. First, throughout the Adages, especially from the 1515 edition, Erasmus does not miss a chance to satirize scholastic methods of analysis and disputation. From amused rebukes to scathing ridicule, he repeatedly invokes the specter of a rival form of inquiry.⁷¹ Even in the introduction, when he defines the term “adage,” he playfully mimics the logicians’ use of categories, bowing to the expectations of an imagined learned audience.⁷² Second, in many reflexive statements about the Adages, Erasmus portrays himself as a faithful compiler of ancient testimonies and a disinterested scholar, but this is a pretense. Although he ostensibly locates authority in these testimonies, he equally constructs his own authority through his ease of reference and leisure of discussion, interrupting his argument with frequent and meandering digressions. These, too, are a crucial means by which he constructs his authorial persona. The writer of the Adages presents a witty, learned, and somewhat aloof contrast with the subtle, tedious, and narrow logicians. The Adages thus presents itself as a new kind of scholarship, and a new model of learned discourse. Melanchthon was eager to enlist it in his campaign to reestablish the liberal arts on a solider footing. In the preface to De Rhetorica, addressed to his former pupil Bernardus Maurus, he situates the Adages in a “training ground” of scholarship: Meanwhile do not let the De Copia or the Chiliads of Adages out of your hands. There is no telling what a great service these will confer upon you. Whoever exercises his youth in this so-to-speak training ground of studies will bear many powers of the mind to the summit. It will provide him with a logical organon, so that no matter what subject matter comes up, he will have eloquence in plenty and a method, by which he can rightly arrange his arguments.⁷³

⁷¹ Phillips, The “Adages” of Erasmus, 32–3. ⁷² CWE 31.4. ⁷³ “Interim e manibus tuis ut excidant Erasmi De copia, Chiliades adagiorum, ne committe. Dici non potest, quam iis operam sis locaturus utilem. In hoc studiorum veluti campo, qui iuventam exercuerit, virium sane multum ad sublimia feret. Organon dialectica ministrabit, ut si qua inciderint forte, habeat ceu sylvam orationis et artificium, quo argumenta recte dispenset.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, pp. 43–4. MBW 50.

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Combined with the instructions for abundance of discourse in De Copia, the Adages fosters the growth of eloquence, nourished by the observation, collection, and reuse of memorable utterance. More is at stake than being able to summon, at a moment’s notice in the heat of argument or the give and take of a social situation, le mot juste. That kind of wit was of course one of the things that made the Adages so popular, but Melanchthon is describing something more pervasive (and less glamorous): an acquired sense of how prudent reasoning and persuading grows from the modest circumstances and utterances of everyday speech. Melanchthon’s hyperbolic praise of the Adages places emphasis on arrangement of arguments (dispositio among the rhetorical duties), suggesting that the marking of proverbs in the Homer notes is for more than excerpting or commonplacing. One of his citations of the Adages is particularly instructive. In his prefatory remarks to his Iliad lectures, recorded in notes Gasser makes surrounding the prose hypothesis of book 4, Melanchthon refers to Adages 1.5.57 (Stellis signare, obelo notare—“To mark with stars. To brand with an obelus”).⁷⁴ In the adage, Erasmus opens with a discussion of navigation by the stars, drawing on Eustathius’s comment on Od. 5.270–5. From the original nautical meaning of the phrase grew a metaphorical use: Thus those people seem to ‘tell the way by the stars’ who use signs and conjectures skilfully worked out to inquire into or follow up a subject which would otherwise be difficult to investigate; or who by means of certain signs reckon up far in advance what is going to happen. Later on the meaning changed, so that people were said to ‘note down the stars’ when they pointed out something particularly worthy of notice.⁷⁵

It cannot be coincidence that very soon after this citation, at Iliad 4.29, Gasser designates the asterisk to mark proverbs, which as we have seen occasion many of his notes. The asterisk is to his notes in 1523 what the pointing hand was to Melanchthon’s notes in his copy of the Iliad. It is a “certain sign” that Gasser leaves to trace his investigation into the Homeric text.⁷⁶ The passages ⁷⁴ Melanchthon wrote to John Hess in 1520 that he was compiling a volume of obelisks on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. John R. Schneider, Philip Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Construal of Biblical Authority: Oratio Sacra (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 206. ⁷⁵ CWE 31.43. ⁷⁶ Gasser was enamored of astrology from his student days and later wrote several treatises on astrology, including four prognostications, one of which was translated into English and printed in London in 1546 by Richard Grafton. Comets, including Haley’s comet, which he observed in 1531, were a particular fascination. Burmeister, Achilles Pirmin Gasser, 1.62–72.

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are comparable to the passages Melanchthon marked in his early teaching copy, but with a difference—as suggested by Adage 1.5.57, taken together the asterisks describe an itinerary. Reflecting its origins as a technology of navigation, marking with stars implies a path, a relation and disposition with respect to the text. In Melanchthon’s terminology, marking with stars participates not just in the order of learning (the genus didaktikon) but also in the order of the text. The asterisk indicates structure and arrangement, not an isolated enunciation.⁷⁷ In another indication of the contextual significance of proverbs, Erasmus traces the etymology of the Greek word for proverb to οἶμος or “road,” loosely associating the literary form with the idea of a path.⁷⁸ In a more direct and persuasive manner, he describes the proverb as integral to a text’s organization. Cautioning against the temptation to compile many proverbs in one discourse, he draws on a number of comparisons to urge the decorous, or welltimed and well-placed, use of proverbs. Proverbs are like condiments to food, like jewels in an appropriate setting, and like figures that an artist places in a picture. Proverbs have a disruptive effect that demands special attention to their placement: “For every proverb stands by itself, and for that reason must anyway be followed by a new beginning.”⁷⁹ The proverb appears therefore as a principle of literary composition, a signpost in a text, somewhat like the figure of speech “acclaim” (ἐπιφώνημα), a kind of verbal punctuation of a speech by means of a forceful or striking utterance.⁸⁰ The five lines from the Iliad marked with a star in Gasser’s notes reflect this quality of the proverb. All describe an articulation in the text: “Go ahead, but we other gods do not at all approve of it” (Il. 4.29) “I shall not succeed in my opposition, since you are by far the stronger” (Il. 4.56, underscored) his spirit retreated back again into his breast (Il. 4.152) Saying these things, the hero persuaded his brother’s mind (Il. 6.61) “Wine greatly restores the fighting spirit of a man spent with toil” (Il. 6.261, underscored and marked “Epiφώνημα” (acclaim))

⁷⁷ In an interesting coincidence, the asterisk was used to differentiate notes by Melanchthon in a 1530 Cologne edition of Terence. Wetzel, “Melanchthons Verdienste um Terenz,” 117. ⁷⁸ CWE 31.4. ⁷⁹ CWE 31.19. ⁸⁰ See Kathy Eden, “Cicero’s Portion of Montaigne’s Acclaim,” in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Cicero, ed. W. H. Altman (Leiden, 2015), 39–55.

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The first starred line concludes Hera’s harangue of Zeus. Similarly the fifth example closes Hecuba’s admonitory greeting of her son Hector. In addition to being starred, Gasser labels this last example ἐπιφώνημα, again suggesting the use of some proverbs to signpost or punctuate speech.⁸¹ The second example, also spoken by Hera to Zeus, closes the prologue of her speech and is followed by a transition (ἀλλὰ χρὴ καὶ . . . “but even so it must . . .” Il. 4.57), while the third and fourth examples occur at transitions between narrative and speech, concluding a narrative and spoken passage, respectively. Of course the lines (and the asterisks) are doing other work in addition to marking transitions in the text; they are not merely segmenting a text. But this is part of what they are doing. Given a strong correlation between proverbial expressions and articulations of a text, the proverb appears as a principle not of invention (wit) or style only but also of arrangement or dispositio, the second duty of the orator. Erasmus harvested the Iliad and the Odyssey for proverbial expressions, compiling them (with myriad others) in one of the most influential works of literary scholarship of the Renaissance era. In doing so, he modeled a construal of literary text as speech, and Melanchthon adopted that perspective in his lectures on the Iliad. Through the lens of the Adages, the Iliad appears as a literary text composed of utterances that could be marked and classified: ranked according to kinds of speech. And some of those kinds, like proverbs, were signposts of larger units of speech. It remains to be seen how this contributes to prudence, but it is important to pause to recall the argument of the Praise of Eloquence—that eloquence or the study of speech is the cause of prudence. Whatever prudence will develop from the reading of Homer, it will reflect studious attention to Homeric speech.

Macrobius’s Saturnalia and the “Diligent Reader” Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius was a learned foreigner who moved in literate and distinguished circles in late fourth- and early fifth-century Italy. In addition to his famous philosophical commentary on the Somnium Scipionis and a fragmentary comparative Greek and Latin grammar, he wrote for his son’s education a dialogue in seven books, the Saturnalia, named for the festival occasion of the learned dialogue. The Saturnalia, long slighted as a mere compilation, has been the subject of a reappraisal in recent

⁸¹ For Melanchthon’s definition of ἐπιφώνημα, see Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 253.

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literary studies.⁸² Taking the symposium for its fictional occasion and setting, it is at once a work of literary imitation, eclectic compilation, and scholarly banter—it is not difficult to imagine its appeal for humanists, some of whom also found the symposium a fit vehicle for exercising their scholarship and wit.⁸³ Like Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae and Aulus Gellius’s Attic Nights, it stood for an appealing kind of learning and scholarship: miscellaneous, digressive (though Macrobius is expressly more organized than Gellius, one of his major sources), and colloquial. Like Erasmus’s Adages, the Saturnalia suggested an alternative to scholastic modes of learning, against which humanists were ever inveighing. And this seems to have been its major importance for Melanchthon. In his lectures on fewer than three books of the Iliad (4, 6, and sections of 7 and 18) and two books of the Odyssey (1 and 2), Melanchthon cited Macrobius’s Saturnalia no fewer than eighteen times, nearly as many times as he cites the Adages. Three of these notes are not tied to any particular passage but occur at the head of a book, probably stemming from prefatory remarks and lending Macrobius an authoritative standing in the classroom. For instance, in the lectures on Odyssey 1 and 2, Melanchthon cites three times a place from book 5 of the Saturnalia, once in his prefatory remarks, and again as a gloss on two proverbial lines. I have already quoted the place where Macrobius describes Homer’s impact on proverb lore: “Homer stuffed all his verse so full of epigrams that his individual sayings have the status of proverbs and are on everyone’s lips.”⁸⁴ As we have seen, the passage was quoted also by Erasmus. It reflects an important didactic approach to Homer and announces one of the major uses of Homer: as a source of notable speeches. To this degree, the Saturnalia and Adages are unanimous. But the Saturnalia presents clearer methods of organizing proverbial expressions and a more focused, didactic use of them and other notable speeches. Like the Adages, the Saturnalia modeled a scholarly practice that could replace scholastic philosophy. It was especially important for Melanchthon because it illustrated the use of speech rhetoric for interpretation and criticism.

⁸² In addition to Kaster’s 2011 edition and translation (LCL 510–12), which is the text and translation I cite throughout, see also Benjamin Goldlust, Rhétorique et poétique de Macrobe dans les Saturnales (Belgium: Turnhout, 2010); Matthias Gerth, Bildungsvorstellungen im 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr.: Macrobius, Martianus Capella und Sidonius Apollinaris (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 8–113. ⁸³ See “The Learned Feast” and others in Erasmus’s Colloquies. Stephani Negri compiled a massive sympotic work on the model of Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae, from which much of it is translated. ⁸⁴ Sat. 5.16.6. Macrobius, Saturnalia, trans. Robert A. Kaster, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), vol. 2, p. 399.

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All of Melanchthon’s citations of the Saturnalia come from book 5, a critical inventory and comparison of Homeric passages that Virgil imitated. But the entire section on Virgil in books 3 to 6 is important context for understanding Melanchthon’s use of the Saturnalia. For this central section on Virgil illustrates a model scholarly manner.⁸⁵ Dramatically as well as materially, the Saturnalia represents the kind of learned reading that Melanchthon repeatedly enjoined in his lectures, commentaries, and, most critically, in his landmark Loci Communes of 1521. To understand Macrobius on Homer, and the significance of the Saturnalia for Melanchthon’s classroom, we have to first take a brief overview of Macrobius on Virgil.⁸⁶ As outlined near the end of book 1 (1.24.16–20), a major portion of the Saturnalia is devoted to celebrating Virgil and revealing the profundity of his work, which might be mistaken for a school text merely (1.24.5). Significant parts of the discussion are lost in lacunas in books 3 and 4, but the surviving sections prosecute the following themes: • Virgil was nothing less than a supreme pontiff, learned in all priestly lore (3.1–12) • Virgil was a master of eloquence (4.1–22; the surviving sections of Eusebius’s speech attend to Virgil’s production of pathos) • Virgil was a subtle transmitter of Greek learning (5.2–22) • Virgil cultivated an antique style in meter (6.1–3) and diction (6.4–5) • Virgil made innovative and fitting use of the figures of speech (6.6–9) Eloquence and learning, those twin themes of ancient pedagogy, are clearly in focus in this agenda.⁸⁷ Rhetorical terms abound in the analysis of the Aeneid (Macrobius supplies a complete rhetorical analysis of Juno’s speech in Aen. 7.293ff. at Sat. 4.2.1–10), and Melanchthon probably drew on these books in his own rhetorical reading of Virgil.⁸⁸ Above all, a portrait of Virgil as a poet ⁸⁵ See Gerth, Bildungsvorstellungen, 54–7. ⁸⁶ Goldhill, Rhétorique et poétique de Macrobe, 262–87, describes the considerable significance of Virgil for Macrobius’s Saturnalia, which exhibits an essentially conservative idea of antiquity, tradition, and instruction. Gerth, Bildungsvorstellungen, 43–57, describes Virgil’s significance more narrowly, in terms of Macrobius’s didactic purpose and method of composition. ⁸⁷ Each speaker takes up a theme, which he elaborates or demonstrates with numerous examples drawn primarily from Virgil’s Aeneid. In these speeches, Macrobius seems to exemplify the teaching kind that Melanchthon had considered in De Rhetorica (1519) under the heading “commentary.” Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, pp. 67–76. ⁸⁸ Melanchthon cites the Saturnalia once in Institutiones Rhetoricae (1521), in his definition of pathopoeia (παθοποιία): “A variety of passions. They are sought from [the topics] circumstance, sex, time, place, person, and age of life. Macrobius commented on their forms. The attentive student will observe differences of this kind for himself, by reading fine authors” (Adfectuum varietas. Petuntur

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who combined learning and eloquence emerges from these speeches, which appropriately begin with a biographical argument—as it survives, book 3 opens in the middle of Praetextatus’s demonstration that Virgil was a priest. No less importantly, a portrait emerges of a group of learned discussants, each contributing his own expertise to a general defense of Virgil’s learning and eloquence. The discussants face off with Euangelus, a combative and snarky banqueter who, among his other outrages, voices disdain for Virgil (and thus sets himself apart from an otherwise unanimous though diversely learned group).⁸⁹ But it is not really against Euangelus that the ethos of the group, that is to say its authority, is defined. Rather, through repeated references to unlearned, irresponsible, or sleepy teachers of grammar, the discussants establish their authority in contradistinction to the failings of a professional cadre. That is not to say that the banqueters hold the office of the grammarian in low regard. On the contrary, books 3–6 are in part a defense of the grammarian’s art. Careful study in etymology, ritual, history, ethnography, and usage—in short, the full panoply of the ancient grammarian’s art—is enlisted in the service of defending Virgil. Indeed, Macrobius includes Servius among the guests, and the illustrious grammarian is not without his honor. The banqueters, it would seem, model the true grammaticus. They frequently distinguish themselves from the majority of readers (legentium plebs), who allow so much learning to go unnoticed (3.7.1). Indeed, the final word on Virgil’s theological acumen seems to exclude the majority of readers: “Have I convinced you that the depths of Maro’s poetry cannot be appreciated without a knowledge of divine and human law?”⁹⁰ Book 4 of the Saturnalia, a fragment lacking opening and closing sections, consists of a study of the means by which Virgil generates pathos. Central among these means, and of no little significance for Melanchthon’s purposes, are the topics of invention. Citing examples from the Aeneid, Macrobius attributes the heightened emotion of these lines to Virgil’s masterful use of sententiae (4.2.3) and figures of speech (4.2.3–11), but above all to such topics as from appearance (ex habitu, which includes several sub-topics drawn from epideictic oratory: 4.3.1–8), from place (a loco, 4.3.9–16), from cause (a causa, 4.14.1–11), from manner and from means (a modo et a materia, 4.4.12–19), autem a circumstantiis, sexu, temporibus, locis, personis, aetatibus. Adnotavit eorum formas Macrobius. Observabit huiusmodi discrimina per sese studiosus in bonis auctoribus). Opera Philosophica vol. 2/2, p. 253. ⁸⁹ Macrobius’s banqueters routinely draw attention to their various areas of expertise, represented in the themes they take up in their praise of Virgil. Compare the diversity of professions in Plato’s Symposium. ⁹⁰ Sat. 3.9.16; Saturnalia, vol. 2, p. 73.

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and then from various combinations of these (4.4.20–16). The inventory continues with topics extraneous to the thing (circa rem), such as simile, example, and image (4.5.1–12), arguments from the lesser and greater (a minore, a maiore, 4.6.1–5), arguments beyond hope (praeter spem, 4.6.6–9), and finally more figures of speech, with special attention to various figures of enunciation (4.6.10–24). Significantly, the topics of invention operate here as means of scholarly organization as well as discovery—with some minor modifications, book 4 of the Saturnalia could function as a Virgilian commonplace book organized by the topics of invention and figures of speech. In his use of literary examples to illustrate logical and rhetorical lore, Macrobius thus anticipates some of the methods attempted in a more systematic way by Valla and Agricola in their reforms of dialectical instruction. Just as book 3 of the Saturnalia illustrates the grammarian’s art fully outfitted with historical, cultural, and religious knowledge, book 4 evaluates rhetorical knowledge, including several technical terms, in broader, more humane terms of psychology. There is no great distinction in this review of Virgil’s artistry between figures, arguments, and topics of invention. All are considered means to produce or represent pathos—an office particular to the orator. In other words, in his use of the topics, Virgil is master of an art of rhetoric that has the human emotions as its object. The conclusion of book 4 does not survive, but book 5 opens with a summary statement of the argument of book 4: After these remarks, when Eusebius had had a brief respite, all declared, with no murmur of dissent, that Virgil had to be considered no less an orator than a poet, seeing that he was shown to be so skilled in the ways of oratory and so keen a student of rhetoric.⁹¹

What is expressly stated here is implied throughout Macrobius’s chapters on Virgil: Virgil mastered the orator’s craft not haphazardly or by dint of his natural talent, but through study of an art. (Recall the argument of Melanchthon’s Praise of Eloquence, that eloquence—and prudence—can be learned.) This learned gathering of banqueters would see Virgil as a fellow traveler, one who has proceeded in study further than they or anyone else aspiring to eloquence, but who has nevertheless reached his station by ordinary means, namely by observation and observance of the rules. And therein lies

⁹¹ Sat. 5.1.1; Saturnalia, vol. 2, p. 215.

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the value of such an inventory: Virgil has left traces in the Aeneid of his learning. A key word in this section, and in the Virgil speeches more generally, is diligentia. Diligence is repeatedly praised as one of Virgil’s great virtues, and it is manifested in his observance (observatio) of custom, occasion, and human psychology. He is shown to be a priest by his observance of religious rites, traditions, and regulations; an orator by his observance of decorum and the art of rhetoric; and (in books 5 and 6) a poet by virtue of his observance or use of the literary tradition. Above all, and in each of these particular cases, Virgil observes the proper sense of words. “Now, this poet of ours knows precise and proper usage so intimately that attentiveness in such matters ceases to be a cause for praise in his case.”⁹² Of course, Virgil occasionally fell short of the ideal—propriety will be the standard by which some of his imitations of Homer will be criticized in book 5. Book 5 examines Virgil’s use of Greek learning, and centrally his imitation of Homer. In fact, for much of his speech, the banqueter Eustathius simply compiles passages from the Aeneid that Virgil drew from Homer. Bidding a servant to fetch a copy of the Aeneid from the library, he first falls on a passage by chance (a kind of scholarly sortes) and then quotes a parallel passage from Homer. He then proceeds sequentially through the books of the Aeneid, reading passages and then quoting parallel passages from Homer—an amazing feat of memory (5.4–10). Simply declaring these passages to be of equal force, he produces this compilation without comment; in a remark that betrays the textual quality of this part of the dialogue, he leaves comparison of these passages to the judgment of readers (5.11.1). After this initial review, he proceeds through a number of places (in no apparent order) where Virgil surpassed (5.11), equaled (5.12), and fell short of his model in force (5.13). It is these latter, critical comparisons of Virgilian and Homeric passages that again illustrate the critical use of the liberal arts, and especially the topics of invention. For it is by the topics primarily that Eustathius reckons some imitations of Virgil to be superior. Critical evaluations in this section hinge on the following topics: duty, outcome, example and hope, difficulty, birth, education and nurture, nature, and finally custom and final outcome (5.11.4–25).⁹³ Macrobius’s use of the topics in a literary-critical context reveals that these terms, which might otherwise appear to be focused on argument

⁹² Sat. 3.2.1; Saturnalia, vol. 2, p. 7. ⁹³ That is, officium (4), eventu (7), exemplo . . . et spe (8), difficultas (9), partio, educatio, and nutricatio (15), natura (21), finally usu and omnia quae in hac re eveniunt (25).

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exclusively, advance the cultivation of a style—in this case the forceful style. As Eustathius said at the beginning of his discourse, Virgil surpasses all orators because he mastered all four styles of oratory and blended them into his poetry (5.1.5).⁹⁴ Book 5 is thus framed in an evaluative context, where style is in focus, and where invention serves style, and where the topics of invention illustrate one means of stylistic embellishment and judgment.⁹⁵ If they serve as means of invention and scholarly arrangement in book 4, here the topics serve as a means of critical judgment or iudicium. Macrobius thus moves us closer to the link Melanchthon argued between eloquence and prudence. Where judgment or discernment (the second of two offices of dialectic) is exercised not on the basis of logical categories but on the basis of literary utterance segmented and classified by the topics of invention and kinds of speech, we have an evaluative standard that rests on speech, and a faculty of judgment reflective of one’s familiarity with speech. Critical judgment is the flipside of elegance and appropriateness of speech. Prudence is eloquence’s shadow. (In the Praise of Eloquence, Melanchthon uses iudicium and prudentia synonymously.) “I should leave it to the readers’ judgment (iudicio legentium) to decide what they should make of the comparison between the two.”⁹⁶ As noted above, these words betray the literary, even textual quality of the exercise in book 5. As marking a transition from Eustathius’s mere compilation of places to his critical evaluation of other places, they also underscore a crucial moment in the dialogue, an intellectual center of book 5. As if turning from a fictional audience of banqueters, Macrobius (through Eustathius) addresses a group of readers and calls on them to exercise their judgment. The earlier appeals to observation and diligence might be seen as preparatory for this central summons, and observation and diligence as prerequisites for a mature exercise of judgment. Embedded in the Virgilian discourses of the Saturnalia is a narrative of progress in literacy, from the textual learning and observation of grammar (book 3), to the rules and resources of rhetoric (book 4), to a mature use of these resources in critical comparison (book 5). Viewed from this narrative perspective, book 6 extends the critical work of book 5 and closes with a resolution of particularly thorny passages (by the consummate grammarian Servius). Building on the basic construal of literary text as speech, the Saturnalia exemplifies the kind of reading, compilation, and discussion that Melanchthon was hoping to foster. It enjoins and illustrates observation, diligence, and ⁹⁴ Cicero is master of one style (tenor orationis): the abundant, rapid, or copious style. Virgil, however, has mastered all four styles: the copious, brief, arid, and florid styles (5.1.8–17). ⁹⁵ Genres and figures also contribute to stylistic evaluation and comparison. ⁹⁶ Sat. 5.11.1; Saturnalia, vol. 2, p. 319.

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exercise of critical judgment, some of the very activities in the fore of Melanchthon’s own didactic works, and it applies these skills to not just the canonical authors but also to a number of ancient scholarly testimonies. The Saturnalia is a highly articulate guide to a training in logical judgment such as humanists like Agricola, Erasmus, and Melanchthon were trying to set up (more systematically) in their reforms of the liberal arts. It seems a short step from the literary-logical iudicium exercised in Macrobius’s comparisons of Homer and Virgil, to the prudence that Melanchthon argues in the Praise of Eloquence. In fact many humanists in the era understood critical judgment and moral prudence in analogous terms.⁹⁷ But Melanchthon implies more than an analogous relationship. For him, exercise of critical judgment is a cause of moral prudence, at least as it is reflected in speech, as we will see when we come to his comments on Agamemnon in Iliad book 4. The citations of the Saturnalia in the 1523–4 lectures are best understood in this context of training the critical faculties. In half of these citations, Melanchthon cites a passage in the Saturnalia where Macrobius quotes the same Homer lines and collates them with Virgil’s imitation. Three of the quotations are without comment. The others receive some commentary, showing where and how Virgil falls short of or matches his model.⁹⁸ Commenting on Virgil’s imitation of a sea storm simile, for instance, Macrobius finds Virgil less inventive: Homer describes the surf on the shore along with the motion of the seas, but your poet is in too much of a hurry. Furthermore, Maro uses “little by little the sea rises” to express what Homer conveys by saying “the first crests arise on the deep.” Homer says that as they grow the hollow swells rise high up, then break on the shore and spew a filthy spray—no painting could have shown more clearly—whereas your poet causes the sea to rise all the way up to heaven from its depths.⁹⁹

The lengthiest and most critical comment falls on Virgil’s use of a Homeric hyperbole to describe rumor (5.13.31–2).¹⁰⁰ Melanchthon cites this censure,

⁹⁷ See Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance. ⁹⁸ The first two citations from the notes on Iliad 4 reflect an interest in copia. In one, Virgil and Homer use different styles to express the same thing, Virgil using a periodic structure and Homer a concise form; in the other, they use the same forceful, compact style to treat different subject matter. Sat. 5.3.2 (ad Il. 4.123), 5.12.4 (ad Il. 4.141). ⁹⁹ Sat. 5.13.21; Saturnalia vol. 2, p. 359. ¹⁰⁰ Homer had described strife as reaching to the heavens. Macrobius argues from the definition of “rumor” that the hyperbole is unmeet: “Who would call it ‘rumor’ when some fact is known from the earth all the way up to heaven?”

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but he also cites an earlier passage from the Saturnalia in which Macrobius quotes the same place as an illustration of close (ad verbum) translation. Here as elsewhere there appears to be no single rationale for the Macrobius citations. And Melanchthon does not cite all, but just under half, of the quotations that Macrobius makes of these books of Homer. Furthermore, he cites four passages of the Saturnalia that do not quote the corresponding Homer lines but instead quote a comparable passage from elsewhere in the Iliad or Odyssey—a different treatment of a simile (5.13.13, 5.11.9) or a different complaint on the same theme (5.10.6). Such citations further extend the cross-referencing of the Homer notes and are consistent with the utility of the Saturnalia as a means (and example) of compiling commonplaces: exemplary speech that trains one in fitness of speech and judgment. So it is not a systematic or wholesale but rather an exemplary use of the Saturnalia that we find in the Gasser Homer notes. Melanchthon’s selective citation of Saturnalia book 5 reflects his interest in the same didactic intentions declared by Macrobius in the preface and illustrated throughout the Virgil discourses in books 3 through 6. In the Saturnalia he found the ancient liberal arts, especially the comprehensive study of grammar (history, etymology, custom, etc.) and rhetoric (invention, disposition, and elocution), put to use in literary analysis and criticism. Furthermore, in it he found illustrated the virtue of prudence that he believed was the fruit of literary training. Like the Adages of Erasmus, the Saturnalia stood for a kind of scholarship that could rival scholastic modes of inquiry and teaching. Even more so than the Adages, in part because of its express design as a didactic work, in part because of its formal construction as a dialogue, it supported Melanchthon’s hunch that Homeric prudence was something that could be learned and practiced.

Agamemnon’s Princely Oratory: Rhetorical Action in Book 4 of the Iliad So far we have considered Melanchthon’s most important scholarly sources, and I have argued that the Adages and Saturnalia are models as well as sources. As important as the lore they contained, they illustrated scholarly methods and manners that Melanchthon found conducive to his own project in Wittenberg. In turning to his lectures on the Iliad, we must recall that it was not scholars (or not only scholars) that he wanted to train. He wanted in the first place to train speakers, namely preachers of the word and servant rulers of

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the state. Neither the Adages nor the Saturnalia, neither the republic of letters nor the learned banquet, was the end of studying Greek in Wittenberg. Rather the commonwealth, its defense and peace, and the right reading of Scripture, were the ends of eloquence and prudence. And both commonwealth and scriptural interpretation had a verbal basis. Hence the singular appeal of Homeric speech, which encompassed formal and informal, public and private, popular and princely occasions. The Iliad in particular taught how princes talk: when they talk, to whom they talk, and about what they talk. When he lectured on the Iliad in the fall of 1523, Melanchthon began with book 4. His selective teaching of the Homeric epics is explicit in a note at the end of his lectures on book 4, where he explains, “I intentionally omit the next book because it contains nothing but the battle described, and the subject matter is not exactly pleasant. Why don’t we hasten then to the sixth book, which includes beautiful and pleasant histories such as the conflict of Glaucus and Diomedes.”¹⁰¹ At the beginning of book 4, he explains the significance of this book in terms of its eloquence: “Homer,” he begins, “is distinguished in eloquence on account of these numerous deliberations [that are] especially to be considered in this fourth book.”¹⁰² Indeed, book 4 of the Iliad is full of consultations. It opens with the council of the gods, where Zeus responds to the complaints of Athena and Hera and summarily plots Troy’s destruction to appease them. The book quickly proceeds to Athena’s incitement of the archer Pandarus to break the truce and shoot an arrow at Menelaus. The episode is a tour de force in storytelling, an example of Homer’s famed descriptive power. As Melanchthon observes, “This entire passage is pleasing and beyond delightful. It is like a continuous narrative, agreeing in every kind of embellishment.”¹⁰³ After the wounding of Menelaus, or the breaking of the truce, the fighting recommences, but the focus of the book is on the rallying speeches of Agamemnon and the replies of Nestor, Ajax, and other warriors. In Gasser’s marginal notes, Agamemnon emerges as an exemplary prince. At first he is described in the margins as an “example of the courage of princes” when he rushes into battle, and such moral interpretations are fairly frequent in the margins.¹⁰⁴ But for the most part he is an exemplary speaker. ¹⁰¹ “Consulto sequentem omitto librum quia nihil praeter pugnam continet descriptam, est que non admodum iucunda materia. Quin iam ad sextum properamus qui pulchras et amenas continet historias sicut Glauci et Diomedis conflictationem.” BAV 1, fol. 16a. ¹⁰² “Homerus eloquentiae praecipuus propter crebras has consultationes praesertim in hoc 4 libro maxime considerandas.” BAV 1, fol. 1b. ¹⁰³ “Totus hic locus amoenus et praeterquam iucundus, perpetua quaedam narratio est constans omni ornamentorum genere.” BAV 1, fol. 4a. ¹⁰⁴ “Exemplum fortitudinis principum.” Note on Il. 4.223; BAV 1, fol. 7b.

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Agamemnon first exhorts those eager to fight. Six lines are marked as Agamemnon’s “exhortation of the eager.”¹⁰⁵ And the notes proceed to identify four subunits of discourse within these six lines. In quick succession, there is a “proposition,” followed by a “reason” that takes the form of a “gnome” (maxim or sententia), followed by an “amplification.” The genre exhortation consists itself of a number of genres (utterances), some of them with their own integrity (like the gnomic line, “for father Zeus will not come to the aid of liars,” Il. 4.235). There is an arrangement here, but it is not the arrangement of a formal oration. Rather, arguments and topics give the speech structure, which derives its integrity from a certain arrangement of these arguments, genres, and topics. In a speech that immediately follows and complements this one, Agamemnon castigates those who are reluctant to fight. Lines 242–9 are marked “[His] rebuke of the halting.”¹⁰⁶ This takes an entirely different form: a series of three rhetorical questions meant to shame those who draw back from the fight. The longer speech has a less elaborate logic. As the notes indicate, Agamemnon argues here by example and “from necessity,” one of the logical topics of invention.¹⁰⁷ It is a quick one-two punch: the Achaeans stand around like fawns exhausted from running, while the ships stand in danger of being burned by the Trojans. Therein lies the prudence of Agamemnon, the suiting of his speech to his audience. As Melanchthon notes, “Those leaders who are halting he drives on with a more severe speech, while those who are of themselves more eager he gently admonishes.”¹⁰⁸ This note appears at the head of a third speech, now to Idomeneus, leader of the Cretans, who are eagerly dressing themselves for battle. We have seen Agamemnon address the valiant as a whole, but this speech is to a leader of the valiant. It takes a suitable form. Agamemnon spends most of the speech praising Idomeneus and concludes with a brief exhortation to battle. These first brief speeches exemplify the kind of eloquence that Melanchthon wanted students to learn. My explication of the notes, parsing even these short speeches, does not do justice to the kind of eloquence that is in view. It is not a laborious but a ready eloquence, responsive to the time and occasion and audience, an eloquence ready with an argument or an example (even under ¹⁰⁵ “Adhortatio alacriorium.” Note on Il. 4.233, BAV 1, fol. 8a. ¹⁰⁶ “Obiurgatio cessatorum.” Note on Il. 4.242–9, BAV 1, fol. 8a. ¹⁰⁷ “A necessitate.” Note on Il. 4.247, BAV 1, fol. 8b. ¹⁰⁸ “Duces cessantes paulo acriore oratione impellit; per se alacriores leniter admonet.” Note on Il. 4.256, BAV 1, fol. 8b.

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conditions of battle). It is an eloquence that orders several speeches (reasons, maxims, amplifications, and examples) in an apparently spontaneous way, an eloquence that may reflect the kind of laborious annotation we see here, but that ultimately redistributes these patches of eloquence in a disposition of mind, and a settled disposition of character. The notes thus illustrate the type of reading that Melanchthon emphasizes in his prefatory note. To complete the quotation I began earlier, Homer is distinguished in eloquence on account of these numerous deliberations [that are] especially to be considered in this fourth book. Therefore his composition and method for the kind of speech itself must be considered with the greatest effort. Moreover, in this book he depicts the souls of princes.¹⁰⁹

This attention to composition or arrangement of speech is consistent with Melanchthon’s injunctions for reading Scripture in the Loci Communes of 1521.¹¹⁰ In that work, which was developed from lectures on Romans, he had ridiculed theologians who were ignorant of the style of Scripture. Furthermore, he attributed all kinds of theological error and confusion to this ignorance, which has its roots in their moral vices, namely their vanity and pride. As we have already seen with Paul’s juxtaposition of the true elder or bishop with the “empty prattlers” in Titus, moral and verbal probity were closely bound. Paul’s letters reflect his character; similarly, Agamemnon’s speeches reveal his soul or, in the language of the Praise of Eloquence, his spirit (pectus). In the action that Homer represents, the speeches respond to circumstances of battle, speaker, audience, and subject matter—that is, it is a rhetorical context that gives them meaning and by which we can judge their fitness. In the text, however, the speeches are responsive to other speeches. Melanchthon’s summary comparison (quoted above) is very revealing: “Those leaders who are halting he drives on with a more severe speech, while those who are of themselves more eager he gently admonishes.” In the classroom, it is a single audience that benefits from the two speeches, and the true benefit is seeing the speeches in this order, in this economy— complementary speeches that demonstrate a kind of prudence that is attained precisely by means of such comparison. In the classroom, furthermore, the ¹⁰⁹ “Homerus eloquentiae praecipuus propter crebras has consultationes praesertim in hoc 4 libro maxime considerandas, quare summopere habenda est eius phrasis generisque dicendi ipsius ratio. Preterea principum animos depingit hic.” BAV 1, fol. 1b. ¹¹⁰ See Weaver, “A More Excellent Way.”

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speeches stand not only in relation to each other but in relation to all the other speeches, and all the other voices, of book 4. The reading of epic verse as an arrangement of speeches is suggested by a woodcut illustrating book 4 of the Aeneid in a 1561 Zurich edition of Virgil’s Opera (see Figure 3.2). At the center of the woodcut is a knightly Ascanius hunting the stag. This chivalric and heroic image stems from a memorable part of book 4, the royal hunt interrupted by a thunderstorm. The hunt and thunderstorm, of course, are the occasion of the central drama, Aeneas and Dido’s ritual marriage in the cave, the decisive moment in the unfolding tragedy. That episode in the cave, along with the other episodes that constitute the plot, have been arranged around the periphery of the equestrian Ascanius. Strikingly, the artist has portrayed all of these episodes as scenes of speaking in various genres: greeting, leave taking, deliberating, warning, praying, etc. We know because everybody is gesturing: Aeneas waves goodbye, Dido throws her hands up in reply; Venus and Juno use their hands to seek some compromise; Dido folds her hands in prayer; even the amorous episode in the cave has been rendered, improbably enough, as a scene of speaking, with Aeneas gesturing in a magisterial way and Dido taking notes or keeping time with her hands. With the exception of the central image, Ascanius giving chase to the stag, all of book 4 is portrayed as a series of speeches and colloquies. Based on Gasser’s annotations, we might imagine a similar portrayal of book 4 of the Iliad. At the center of the image is a striking, elaborate picture of Pandarus dressing his arrow for flight, ready to break the truce with the Achaeans. At the left foreground, Athena in disguise seduces Pandarus to break the truce. At the top right corner, the Greeks are momentarily put to confusion by the treachery and onslaught of the Trojans. At the top left corner, Zeus plots the conspiracy with Athena and Hera. Then all around, in the remaining space of the picture, we see Agamemnon “going on foot and reviewing the ranks of the warriors” (Il. 4.231), here speaking in rebuke, there speaking in encouragement. Here he addresses Nestor, there he argues with Odysseus. Here he praises Idomeneus, there he blames Diomedes. The engraving of book 4 of the Aeneid is a near-perfect model for Melanchthon’s interpretation of book 4 of the Iliad. The marginal notes, in my understanding, are there to help students see speeches in relation to other speeches, and the ultimate goal of the reading is to convert the order of the text into an order of learning: a kind of mnemonic device, a new disposition of these speeches governed by their relations to each other. In a way comparable to the Adages of Erasmus or the Saturnalia of Macrobius, the marginal notes

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Figure 3.2 A visual rendering of Aeneid, book 4, as a composition of speeches. Credit: Virgil. P. Vergilii Maronis Poemata quae extant omnia. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer (I), 1561. Zentralbibliothek Zürich, 7.322, fol. 212. Public domain.

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supply an artificial arrangement or classification of texts. The virtue of this method is that it preserves to a great degree the order of the text, or rather it embeds the order of learning in the order of the text, wedding index to text. If you can hold together as in a single picture an arrangement all of the speeches of book 4 of the Iliad, then “rhetorical reading” has done its work. You have, so to speak, hit the mark.

4 The Homeric Poem In a declamation entitled “Preface to the Homer of Vitus Winshemius,” written for a colleague’s Homer lectures around the year 1538, Melanchthon gives a twist to an oft-rehearsed theme: Homer’s poem is supreme for its eloquence and wisdom, excepting Holy Scripture. Apart from Scripture nothing has ever been written “in any language or nation, or by any human invention” that rivals Homer’s poem for learning, eloquence, or pleasure.¹ Homer’s rivals were typically considered to be Hesiod or Virgil.² As former professor of Greek (after 1525 his position was no longer tied to a subject or faculty), Melanchthon throws in for Homer against these mortals. But as a teacher of Scripture, he reserves the palm for the Holy Spirit, whom he believed inspired the writing of Scripture and whose presence was necessary for its correct interpretation. In Wittenberg, Scripture was considered to be in a class of its own, but we might say the same thing of the Homeric poem.³ No other poem merited the implicit comparison with Scripture that Melanchthon makes here.⁴ The comparison is not casual. Throughout the declamation, references to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as a single poem extend the likeness: both Scripture and Homer’s poem are unities comprised of heterogeneous parts. Just as Scripture is comprised of the Old and New Testaments (to go no further

¹ “Ac primum quidem sic statuo, nullum unquam scriptum, inde usque a primum condito orbe, ulla in lingua aut natione, ab ullo humano ingenio editum esse, sacra ubique excipio, in quo vel doctrinae tantum sit, vel elegantiae et suavitatis.” CR 11.401. Translations are my own. A complete English translation is available in Philip Melanchthon, Orations on Philosophy and Education, ed. Sachiko Kusukawa, trans. Christine F. Salazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 38–53. ² For the Homer-Hesiod rivalry, see Barbara Graziosi, Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 168–80. For an early expression of the Homer-Virgil rivalry, see Macrobius, Saturnalia, book 5, and above, Chapter 3. Shortly after Melanchthon’s death Julius Caesar Scaliger would reignite the Homer vs. Virgil debate with the publication of Poetices Libri Septem ([Geneva]: Jacques Crespin, 1561). ³ For his view of sacred Scripture being in a class of its own, see CR 11.401: “sacra ubique excipio.” ⁴ For Melanchthon’s view of the historical path of divine wisdom running to Homer via the biblical patriarchs, see Asaph Ben-Tov, Lutheran Humanists and Greek Antiquity: Melanchthonian Scholarship between Universal History and Pedagogy (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 55–60.

Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer. William P. Weaver, Oxford University Press. © William P. Weaver 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.003.0005

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than this division), the Iliad and the Odyssey are texts that may be regarded as parts of another integral unit. Others had described the integrity, consistency, or even a kind of unity of these poems, but Melanchthon appears to have been exceptional in his exclusive usage of the name “the Homeric poem.” His idiosyncratic label raises a number of questions about his reading practices. What constituted the unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey? What discipline— rhetoric? ethics? logic?—gave Melanchthon perspective on this unity? How, finally, was this unity illustrated in the classroom? These questions are of capital importance also to the history of Melanchthon’s practice of reading Scripture. The interpretation of the Iliad and the Odyssey as a single poem directly reflects the Preceptor’s labors to reform theological education and scriptural interpretation. Already at the time of his arrival in Wittenberg in 1518, Melanchthon had developed an antipathy to contemporary theological education, which was based on a collection of excerpts from Scripture and the Church fathers. His critique of the Sentences of Peter Lombard and theological education was only strengthened after he adhered to Luther’s theology.⁵ With Luther he affirmed Scripture as the sole authority in spiritual matters, a position eventually described as sola scriptura, and in his lectures on Scripture he attempted to demonstrate the integrity and perspicuity of Scripture.⁶ The doctrine of sola scriptura clearly sets Scripture apart from human writings, as reflected in Melanchthon’s qualified praise of Homer. At the same time, however, Melanchthon’s view of Scripture as an integral utterance of the Holy Spirit (as well as a compilation of writings from various times and places) inevitably shaped his view of the pagan writings, which formed the basis of language instruction and philosophy. Because philosophy was supposed to be a foundation for the higher disciplines, centrally theology, it followed that the reading of the poets in the schools should reflect and model, at least in a formal way, the reading of Scripture. For a complex work that nonetheless reflected an integrity like that of Scripture, it seems that Melanchthon settled on Homer’s poem, which had the convenience ⁵ For the early development of his critique of theological education, see G. L. Plitt, Die Loci Communes Philipp Melanchthons in ihrer Urgestalt nach G. L. Plitt, 4th ed., ed. Theodoor Kolde (Leipzig: Deichert, 1925), 19–29. For the curriculum he put in place, see Robert Kolb, Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and its Scripture-Centered Proclamation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 239–44. ⁶ Kees Meerhoff elaborates on this hermeneutic principle, so foundational in Melanchthon’s method of textual analysis, in Entre logique et littérature: Autour de Philippe Melanchthon (Orléans: Paradigme, 2001), 83–6. Like Luther, Melanchthon requires reading Scripture “according to the grain and texture of the discourse (‘e filo ductuque orationis’).” The phrase is quoted and translated in Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 155, where Moss discusses the Leipzig Disputation. Melanchthon makes similar descriptions/prescriptions in the 1521 Loci Communes.

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of being written in Greek, albeit in different dialects than the Greek of the New Testament. I argue in this chapter that Melanchthon’s most important legacy to Homer scholarship in Wittenberg was his argument of a single Homeric poem comprised of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I first examine Melanchthon’s characteristic use of the word poema to describe, in flat denial of convention and common sense, what appear to be two poems, with two themes and (conveniently) two titles. His usage is idiosyncratic, but for his notion of a single poem he drew on ancient critical approaches, and some of these implied a unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey separately or even taken together. In the second section, I consider ancient testimonies to the unity of the Homeric poems, discussing chronologically the principal sources for Melanchthon’s concept of Homeric unity: Aristotle, ancient commentary, and Virgil. This intellectual background further clarifies what Melanchthon does and doesn’t mean by the term “Homeric poem,” and it gives vital context for understanding the broader liberal arts tradition that informed his biblical hermeneutic. Most critically, the ancient tradition allows us to differentiate Melanchthon’s idea of the poem from modern concepts of unity, especially unities of theme and form.⁷ (The Homeric poem and likewise the Aeneid have express diversities of theme, and we have already seen Melanchthon play fast and loose with several formal qualities of the Iliad.) As they were for Aristotle, the primary standards of literary or poetic unity in Wittenberg were completeness and order. Provisionally we might say that by the term “Homeric poem” Melanchthon describes an arrangement of utterance that satisfies a standard of completeness. For Aristotle and the scholiasts, it was plot or a completed action that supplied the main standard of completeness. But by including the Iliad and the Odyssey in one poem, Melanchthon obviously dispenses with plot as the gold standard of literary completeness, and so departs in an important way from his sources. This is where his experience of reading and preaching Scripture comes in, and it is here that we can perceive the cross-pollination of his humanist and theological endeavors. Melanchthon was applying a universal standard of literary unity that could be applied to Scripture and Homer alike. To illustrate this, I turn in the last part of the chapter to the oration on Homer. The 1538 oration is truly an oration on the Homeric poem, and its argument of a unity composed of two themes transforms an ancient tradition

⁷ For my reading of the ancient tradition, especially my articulation of its difference with respect to modern concepts of unity, I am indebted to Malcolm Heath, Unity in Greek Poetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

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of literary criticism and its distinctive concept of poetic unity. Interestingly Melanchthon supplements this concept of poetic unity, drawn from ancient sources, with a biblical, gospel image of the teacher as a “householder” (οἰκοδεσπότης). None to my knowledge has commented on the scriptural image of the householder to describe a kind of instruction common to sacred and profane texts like the Homeric poem. As I will argue, the image of the householder is a reflection of Melanchthon’s mature idea of the Homeric poem and a key image for understanding the unity he claimed for the Iliad and the Odyssey. If Master Philip following Strabo and others had heard Homer speaking primarily as a teacher (διδάσκαλος), the mature Melanchthon portrays Homer as a divine oracle (see also Epilogue). More than merely indicating the didactic utterances of the poet, the teacher here takes a more active role, and looks more like an interpreter keeping house, an image of significance within later Protestant traditions of reading Scripture.⁸

Melanchthon’s Poem From an early time, perhaps before he came to Wittenberg in August 1518, Melanchthon conceived of a “Homeric poem.” In his first textbook on rhetoric, written in Tübingen and completed in Wittenberg, he recommends as models of heroic encomium the “heroic poem of Virgil or Homer.”⁹ The Virgilian poem is clear—Melanchthon refers to the Aeneid. But the “heroic poem” of Homer? In context, it may refer to the Iliad. But Melanchthon later used the term “Homer’s poem” or “the Homeric poem” to refer to both the Iliad and the Odyssey. In a 1523 declamation on the necessity of liberal learning, The Praise of Eloquence, he refers to “the whole poem of Homer” (totum Homeri carmen).¹⁰ In the 1538 declamation on Homer, he clarifies what he means by the Homeric poem, writing, “The theme of the Homeric poem is twofold; one is entitled the Iliad, the other the Odyssey.”¹¹ This flatly contradicts the report of the pseudo-Plutarchan Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer, which Melanchthon knew well: “There are two poems by Homer, the ⁸ See David Lyle Jeffrey, Houses of the Interpreter: Reading Scripture, Reading Culture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2003), 3–14. ⁹ Opera Philosophica 2/2, p. 92. ¹⁰ CR 11.56; MSA, III,51. Salazar translates this as “Homer’s entire song” in Orations, 67. Melanchthon later refers to “the Homeric poem” (Homericum poema) CR 11.58; MSA III,52; Orations, 68. ¹¹ “Duplex est poëmatis Homerici argumentum: Alterum Ilias, alterum Odyssea inscribitur.” CR 11.404.

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Iliad and the Odyssey, each divided into as many books as there are letters in the alphabet, not by the poet himself but by the scholars of the school of Aristarchus.”¹² The Praeceptor Germaniae evidently has a peculiar idea of what makes a poem (poema, carmen) a poem. Melanchthon’s reference to “the Homeric poem” is substantially and not just numerically out of step with tradition. For this, we have to compare two Greek words, ποίημα and ποίησις. Pseudo-Plutarch, quoted above, describes two ποιήσεις of Homer, and this was a frequent way of referring to the Iliad and Odyssey. According to one tradition, reflected in a popular school text on writing themes, a ποίησις is an entire work of poetry, and a ποίημα is a part of a work of poetry.¹³ Melanchthon certainly knew the definitions and examples in the Greek original or in a contemporary Latin translation, where we find the Greek terms transliterated: “A narration is the exposition of something that has in fact happened, or of something as if it happened. But a narration differs from exposition just as a poem (poema) differs from a work of poetry (poesis). A work of poetry (poesis) is the whole Iliad, while the description of Achilles’ armor is a poem (poema).”¹⁴ That is, a poema (I’ll use hereafter the Latin terms) may be considered a well-defined section having some autonomy found within a larger unit called a poesis. Incomplete from the perspective of the work of poetry, the poema nonetheless has an integrity and perhaps even a completeness within its bounds, as illustrated by the shield of Achilles, which portrays a microcosm of human society within its compass.¹⁵ By referring consistently to the Homeric poema and not the Homeric poesis, Melanchthon declares an unorthodox view. He is not referring to a corpus of poetry or to a “work of poetry” as conventionally understood (i.e., either the Iliad or the Odyssey in twenty-four books). Rather, he is referring to a single, ¹² De Homero 4, in [Plutarch], Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer, ed. and trans. John J. Keaney and Robert Lamberton (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996). This definition may be taken as representative of ancient usage. Ancient and Renaissance references to the Iliad or the Odyssey as works of poetry usually employ the words poeseis, poemata, or carmina. Aristotle refers to them as poemata. ¹³ Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, trans. George Kennedy (Atlanta, GA: Society for Biblical Literature, 1996), 96. ¹⁴ “Narratio est expositio rei factae, vel tanquam factae. Differt autem narratio ab expositione, sicut a poesi poema. Poesis enim est tota Ilias, Poema autem Achillis armorum descriptio.” Veterum aliquot de arte rhetorica traditiones (Basel: Johann Froben, 1521), 192. Cf. Eustathius’s similar comparison: “The rhapsodes themselves called the parts ‘poems.’ For the ‘poesy’ is the entire book, while a ‘poem’ they take to be a rhapsody that they designate with a letter: alpha, beta, and so on.” Eustathii Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem Pertinentes, ed. Marchinus van der Valk, 4 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1971–87), vol. 1, p. 10. ¹⁵ The integrity illustrated by the shield of Achilles, and other circles, appears to have been a central concern of Crates of Mallus. See James I. Porter, “Hermeneutic Lines and Circles: Aristarchus and Crates on the Exegesis of Homer,” in Homer’s Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes, ed. John J. Keaney and Robert Lamberton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 67–114.

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complete, individual poema. Most perplexingly, this poema includes what most referred to as two works of poetry (poeseis). In his 1523 lectures on the Iliad, Melanchthon defined the term poema. The definition bears little resemblance to modern definitions of a “poem.” It ignores authorship and all formal considerations, such as prosody, rhyme, or length, and focuses on what a poem does or accomplishes: A poem is a manifest likeness and image [simulachrum et effigies] of human affairs and, as it were, a certain representation [adumbratio] of all noble affairs in which the most judicious of men, the poets, describe what should be done and performed. This they set forth in the form of other persons.¹⁶

A poem by this definition is an imitative object, centrally a portrayal of noble persons or characters. Aristotle’s famous theory of poetry as a kind of imitation lies behind this definition, as does Aristotle’s focus on dramatic mimesis in the Poetics.¹⁷ Most striking in the definition, and the clearest evidence of Aristotle’s influence, is the lack of any reference to what might be seen today as the sine qua non of poetry: words.¹⁸ A poem by this definition is exemplary and in its depiction of the noble life seems scarcely distinguishable from encomiastic rhetoric. Indeed, with its language of image and likeness, the definition may reflect the influence, direct or indirect, of Aristotelian psychology and rhetoric. As Kathy Eden shows in Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition, Aristotle’s influence on subsequent theory of poetic fiction was not limited to his Poetics but extended to his Rhetoric and De anima.¹⁹ In these works is found a more thorough rejoinder to Plato’s epistemological critique of the image as a copy of the visible world, as well as an implicit argument of analogous procedures in the poet’s, orator’s, and ethicist’s crafts. For Aristotle, the image is a fitting means ¹⁶ “Poema est plane simulachrum et effigies rerum humanorum adeoque omnium rerum honestarum tamque adumbratio quaedam in qua viri prudentissimi poetae quid agendus et faciendus sit describunt subque alienis personis praecipiunt.” BAV 1, fol. 16b. ¹⁷ Aristotle, Poetics, ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). ¹⁸ This too resembles Aristotle’s definition of poetry as a type of mimesis in the Poetics. There mimesis is considered as “the defining characteristic of a particular group of arts, but with special reference to poetry.” Stephen Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 123. In Aristotle’s expanded definition in chapter 6, he lists diction as a component of tragic poetry, but the fourth of sixth components, and of relatively minor importance. In chapter 19 (56b8–18), he describes attention to diction as belonging to other disciplines. Compare his similar remark on the proper disciplines of thought in chapters 6 (50b4–6) and 19 (55a33–5). ¹⁹ Kathy Eden, Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 62–84.

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of persuasion in the realm of variable human affairs, including ethics and criminal law. Analogous to the poetic fiction, a mental or verbal image is not limited to representation of particulars, such as this or that person, but has the capacity to faithfully represent universals, including types of persons, namely the noblest and best—in Melanchthon’s words illustrating “what should be done and performed.” Eden’s account of a robust tradition of Aristotle’s psychology of the image by teachers of rhetoric, and rhetoric’s subsequent impact on poetic theory, supplies important context for reading Melanchthon’s definition of the poema.²⁰ The definition bears clearly the stamp of Aristotle’s theory of poetry and psychology, especially as filtered through the rhetorical tradition.²¹ Brief though it is, it gives us a reason to begin an investigation into Melanchthon’s concept of poetic unity with Aristotle’s Poetics, among the most original and influential accounts in the ancient world. Plato had investigated literary and rhetorical unity in the Phaedrus, arguing completeness and appropriate arrangement of parts as criteria of texts distributed by genre.²² But Aristotle’s account of the cognitive grounds of unity in the poema lies far closer to Melanchthon’s account of unity in the Homeric poem. What were the precedents and means for perceiving unity in the Iliad and the Odyssey? Melanchthon’s label “the Homeric poem” might have been unprecedented, but his idea of unity reflects a clear indebtedness to prior accounts. My aim in the following is not to trace a genealogy of his view, but to compare it with similar accounts of unity in order to more clearly see its outlines. If Melanchthon had left more extensive writings on the subject, these might warrant a closer examination of these sources of his thought, but given the occasional quality of his writing on the Homeric poem, it suffices to draw general conclusions about his sources.

²⁰ Eden, Poetic and Legal Fiction, 85–96. ²¹ Melanchthon’s ambitious study of Aristotle began in Tübingen. His commentary on the Ethics appeared in 1529. Günter Frank, “Philipp Melanchthon und die europäische Kulturgeschichte,” in Gedenken und Rezeption: 100 Jahre Melanchthonhaus, ed. Günter Frank and Sebastian Lalla (Heidelberg: Ubstadt-Weiher, 2003), 143–4. See also Lawrence D. Green, “Melanchthon, Rhetoric, and the Soul,” in Melanchthon und Europa, II: Westeuropa, ed. Günter Frank, Martin Treu, and Kees Meerhoff (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2002), 11–27. ²² Heath, Unity in Greek Poetics, 12–27. Heath’s rejection of thematic unity as a standard of unity in Greek poetics supplies a helpful framework for understanding Melanchthon’s description of one Homeric poem containing two themes. Particularly interesting is his description of the Phaedrus: “Thus the dialogue as a whole has (at least) two distinct themes; the sole—and sufficient—reason for their being brought together, I shall argue, lies in the person of Phaedrus himself” (14).

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Ancient Perspectives on the Unity of Homer’s Poems Aristotle Many accounts of formal unity in literature may be traced to Aristotle, and Aristotle’s discussion of epic poetry in the Poetics seems to have been a major source for Melanchthon’s theory of the poema.²³ For Aristotle, Homer’s epics are exemplary in the genre because like tragedy they narrate a single action. Unlike historians, who run through all events in order, and unlike less skilled poets, Homer isolates a single action (for example, Achilles’ wrath in the Iliad) and builds the epic poem around this, giving the poem a unity like the synoptic unity of tragedy.²⁴ Aristotle underscores the relative unity of epic. He praises the inimitable integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey as epics, but he recognizes their limits in comparison with tragedy. Because they are πολύμυθος (composed of multiple narratives), the Iliad and the Odyssey cannot be viewed synoptically like a tragedy. Aristotle refers to each as a poema or together as poemata (I continue to use the Latin transliterations as adopted by Melanchthon). His attention is to the work as an imitation of an act, thing, or concept, and thus poema, the made or imitative object, is an appropriate label. Although he does not distinguish between poema and poesis, his use of poema is consistent with the comparison between the terms that emerged in late antiquity and may reflect his prejudice for things complete. A poema describes a unit that can be viewed synoptically, and Aristotle applies it liberally to the epic poems. In relation to Aristotle’s discussion of epic in the Poetics, Melanchthon will adopt Aristotle’s label “poema” and view of the integrity of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but he will ignore Aristotle’s comparison between tragedy and epic. He will ignore the relative unity of an epic constructed of many fictions (polumuthos), and he will pursue a synopsis of epic comparable to the one Aristotle reserves for tragedy. Tragic concepts including catastrophe and deus ex machina, whether taken directly from Aristotle or indirectly from ancient commentaries on Sophocles, will appear in Wittenberg scholia on Homer,

²³ For Aristotle’s account of unity in poetry, see Heath, Unity in Greek Poetics, 38–55; Halliwell, Aristotle’s Poetics, 96–108. ²⁴ Poetics 51a22–9.

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providing further evidence in Wittenberg for an Aristotelian view of epic poetry as approximating the unity of tragedy.²⁵ In chapter 25 of the Poetics, Aristotle engaged a particular form of Homer scholarship called “Homeric Problems,” criticisms of Homer’s poems questioning the accuracy of his knowledge, the consistency of his statements, the morality of his heroes, and the piety of his portrayal of the gods. In addition to the chapter in the Poetics, the tradition includes a lost book of Homeric Problems by Aristotle. Homeric Problems influenced other fields of scholarship, as illustrated by Strabo’s Geography, where Strabo defends the integrity and accuracy of Homer’s geographical knowledge against his critics.²⁶ The significance of this tradition for Melanchthon’s reading of Homer is twofold. First, in the debate the Iliad and the Odyssey were posited as an authorial corpus and the standard by which problems were to be resolved. Second, the Homeric problems drew painstaking attention to utterances. Homer’s vocabulary, syntax, and usage (as well as history, culture, religion) were the evidence for both sides of the debate. Like Alexandrian criticism, which will be considered next, Homeric Problems thus set up protocols for comparing the particular utterance against the testimony of the whole corpus of Homer’s poetry. Melanchthon did not engage Homeric Problems directly, but the tradition did establish a precedent for comparing the Iliad and the Odyssey and positing a certain unity of the two.

Alexandrian Scholarship and Scholia Vetera Aristarchus of Samothrace was the most influential of Homer’s ancient critics. In the later part of the second century , he was librarian at the famous library in Alexandria, and many of his textual criticisms and comments on the Iliad and Odyssey have been preserved in ancient scholia.²⁷ He furthermore

²⁵ Sophoclis tragoediae septem cum interpretationibus vetustis et valde utilibus ([Frankfurt: Peter Braubach], 1544). See Chapter 5. ²⁶ See Chapter 1. The praise of Homer as the source of all knowledge in the ps.-Plutarchan Life and Poetry of Homer may also reflect the legacy of the Homeric Problems. ²⁷ The famous Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad contains the most complete record of Alexandrian scholarship, which is also represented in bT or “exegetical” scholia, as well as in D scholia to a lesser degree. For an introduction to ancient Homeric scholarship, see Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from Their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). See Martin L. West, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2001), 46–85.

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developed a set of six critical symbols for annotating these texts.²⁸ These include the obelos (dagger), a horizontal line next to a verse deemed spurious, and the asteros (star), used to mark lines that were falsely repeated. Aristarchus’s textual criticism was known and circulated in manuscript form in the Renaissance.²⁹ Ancient Homeric scholarship more generally, including the exegetical and didactic scholia, contributed to eclectic readings of Homer in the same era. As Anthony Grafton has observed, “the classical heritage offered its Renaissance readers a rich palette of interpretive colors, which they applied to Homer with freedom and abandon. No single formula can do justice to their experience of ancient reactions to the Iliad and the Odyssey.”³⁰ That characterizes Melanchthon’s interaction with Homeric scholarship. From ps.-Plutarch Melanchthon knew that Aristarchus had numbered the books of the Iliad and Odyssey, though in his 1523 lectures he downplayed this contribution, placing more emphasis on the princely interventions of the benevolent Athenian rulers Solon and Pisistratus.³¹ But the most significant account of the tradition Melanchthon found in his favorite source of ancient lore, the Adages of Erasmus. In the adage “Stellis signare, obelo notare” (To mark with stars and brand with a dagger), Erasmus gave a simplified and popularized account of Aristarchus’s scholarship: [The phrase obelo notare] is taken from Aristarchus, who gathered together the poems of Homer and arranged them in books, rejecting by means of ‘obelisci’ or small dagger-signs prefixed to them the spurious lines, that is to say the counterfeit and substituted lines which do not seem to have the true feeling of the Homeric vein. Those, on the other hand, which seemed outstanding and genuine he marked with asterisks, little stars. Both Origen and St. Jerome followed this method in Holy Scripture.³²

²⁸ See L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 10–14. ²⁹ As Anthony Grafton has demonstrated, the French jurist and scholar Guillaume Budé knew Aristarchus’s work directly and developed his own symbolic annotations, which survive in a copy of Homer in Princeton University Library. “How Guillaume Budé Read His Homer,” in Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 135–83. ³⁰ “Renaissance Readers of Homer’s Ancient Readers,” in Homer’s Ancient Readers, 149–72, quotation from p. 164. ³¹ See Chapter 3. ³² Adages I.v.57, in CWE 434. I’ve substituted obelisci for obeli, which may be more historically accurate but does not accurately transcribe Erasmus’s ὀβελίσκοις. ASD II-1, p. 533.

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Erasmus thus describes a method common to Homeric and biblical scholarship. In both cases, parts of a text are judged spurious or authentic based on their relationship to an entire text or canon. In the case of Homer, lines are authenticated by his characteristic, inimitable verse. This is Erasmus’s version of the critical principle “elucidate Homer from Homer” (Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν), that is, resolve apparent difficulties by comparison of the line in question with other lines in the Homeric text.³³ As noted above in Chapter 3, Melanchthon cited the adage “Stellis signare, obelo notare” in his 1523 lectures, and his student Achilles Pirmin Gasser, perhaps following Melanchthon’s instructions or suggestions, marked notable passages, especially proverbial passages, with asterisks. No other critical signs appear in the notes, a circumstance that reflects Melanchthon’s primarily didactic and exegetical, not critical aim. Variant readings and corrections are sometimes noted, occasionally being attributed to Didymus (wrongly credited at the time with the glosses now called “D-scholia”), but textual criticism is not the purpose of the annotations. “Exegetical” type scholia, discussed below and in Chapter 5, left a more distinct mark on Melanchthon’s annotations. Yet the Aristarchean perspective on the text of the Iliad and the Odyssey was significant for Melanchthon’s understanding of a Homeric “poem.” Although he did not use the singular poema to refer to Homer’s epics, Aristarchus did argue an integrity of both poems.³⁴ Developing Aristotle’s theory of the plot coherence of tragedy, Aristarchus and other ancient critics used many terms to praise the οἰκονομία or arrangement of the plot of the Iliad and Odyssey, noting some passages as evidence of Homer’s mastery of plot construction.³⁵ These terms included πρόληψις and ἀνάληψις, terms used to designate passages where Homer anticipates later scenes or refers back to earlier scenes, respectively.³⁶ “Apparently, the critics are keen on bringing out Homer’s qualities as a mastermind who designs his plots well and with

³³ The directive, attributed to Aristarchus, appears in the D scholia at Il. 5.385. The version quoted here appears in Porphyrii Quaestionum Homericarum Liber I, ed. A. R. Sodano (Naples: Giannini, 1970), sec. 56. ³⁴ Porter, “Hermeneutic Lines and Circles,” 79; René Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 33–34, 241. ³⁵ Several scholars have noted this attention to οἰκονομία as a central concern of the ancient scholia, especially the “exegetical” scholia. See Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work, 23–33; Roos Meijering, Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia (Groningen: E. Forsten, 1987), 181–209; N. J. Richardson, “Literary Criticism in the Exegetical Scholia to the Iliad: A Sketch,” The Classical Quarterly 30 (1980): 265–72, esp. 267–72. ³⁶ Although the term prolepsis is more common in the exegetical scholia, the principle of analepsis is observed (though rarely with the technical term) just as much. Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work, 45.

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foresight.”³⁷ For Aristarchus, these plot anticipations and retrospections traverse the Iliad and the Odyssey, implying a single narrative encompassing both poems. For ancient criticism more generally, strongly influenced by Aristotle’s theory of tragic unity in the Poetics, the unity of the Iliad and Odyssey resided in Homer’s construction of plot. This ancient tradition of scholarship resonates in Melanchthon’s praise of the Odyssey in the 1538 Preface to Homer, which will be considered more fully below. There Melanchthon describes the Odyssey as a spiritual portrait or mental likeness of Odysseus (Ulysses), whose virtues and actions are an inexhaustible source of instruction.³⁸ The orderliness of Ulysses’s life and affairs is reflected in the arrangement of the poem.³⁹ Countless are the places in Homer that seem to have been conceived and invented by a divine providence. Not without reason did Horace call them marvelous. They are all of them composed throughout with such elegance and sweetness; given variety through various emotions—in particular the milder emotions (ἤθεσι)—and many wonderful and pleasing events; and reduced to such an order and meaningful arrangement (οἰκονομίᾳ), that I would reckon him lacking in all human feeling, truly a brute and not a man, who is not charmed by the reading of Homer.⁴⁰

The poem reflects an ordering, disposing mind not unlike divine providence, and it does so precisely in its composition of “countless” passages. It is no coincidence that precisely here, where Melanchthon compares Homer and providence (and implicitly compares the Homeric poem and the Bible), that his attention is turned to the integrity of the poem composed of myriad parts. The arrangement of Homer is a major source of the poet’s forcefulness and charm, and it is made more astounding because of the myriad and diverse parts brought together. The unity of the Homeric poem does not suffer but is enhanced by the plurality of its parts.

³⁷ Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work, 31. ³⁸ Cf. Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 90–4. ³⁹ Eustathius contrasts the simplicity of the Odyssey with the complexity of the Iliad. Eustathii Commentarii, vol. 1, p. 7. ⁴⁰ “Innumerabilia enim sunt in Homero velut divinitus meditata atque inventa, quae non temere ab Horatio miranda sunt dicta, eaque ubique omnia incredibili elegantia et suavitate condita, variis affectibus, ἤθεσι tamen praecipue, multis mirabilibus et iucundis casibus variata, tali vero rerum ordine atque οἰκονομίᾳ digesta, ut omni humanitatis sensu carere eum, pecudem esse, non hominem existimem, qui non Homeri lectione permulceatur.” CR 11.406–7.

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Virgil Perhaps more decisively than any theorist, critic, or exegete, it was a poet that influenced Melanchthon’s conception of a single Homeric poem. By imitating both the Iliad and the Odyssey in a single Latin epic celebrating the Roman imperium, Virgil may have inspired Melanchthon’s view of a single Homeric poem.⁴¹ It is a commonplace of criticism that Virgil’s Aeneid imitates both Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, an observation made sometimes with reference to the first words of the poem, the famous arma virumque (Aen. 1.1). Macrobius, whom Melanchthon often cited in his 1523 lectures on the Iliad, describes Virgil’s imitation in a way that may have been decisive. As discussed above in Chapter 3, Macrobius devotes the entire fifth book of the Saturnalia to a critical comparison of Homeric passages and imitations of these passages by Virgil. But it is not just in these local places that Virgil imitated Homer. Rather, he took the idea and shape of the Aeneid from Homer’s work, changing only the order: Does not the Aeneid itself take over from Homer himself, first the wandering from the Odyssey, and then the battles from the Iliad? For the order of events [i.e., as they happened] changed by necessity the order of the work. In Homer the Trojan war is fought first, and then Ulysses is beset by wandering on his return from Troy. In Virgil the voyage of Aeneas precedes the wars which were fought later in Italy . . . What [shall we say], but that the whole Virgilian work was fashioned from a certain reflection of the Homeric work?⁴²

Considered in terms of its order, the Aeneid is a transposition of the Iliad and Odyssey, and just as a concave mirror inverts an image, the Aeneid inverts Homeric order, drawing attention to a relationship between the Iliad and Odyssey. At the head of his scholia on the Aeneid, Melanchthon similarly described its argument, though without reference to Homer: “The argument of the Aeneid is twofold: the wars of Aeneas and his navigation. By the navigation Virgil displays an example of the public and private life. In the wars he sketches the life of heroes.”⁴³

⁴¹ Melanchthon considered Virgil’s Aeneid as successfully rivaling Homer, even matching Homer for diction and gravity of expression. See Orations, 69; CR 11.58. Cf. his further praise and description of Virgil’s technique in a section on imitation in Elementa Rhetorices. Opera Philosophica 2/2, p. 367. ⁴² Macrobius, Saturnalia 5.2.6, 5.2.13 (my translation). ⁴³ “Duplex est Aeneidos argumentum: bella Aeneae et navigatio. Per navigationem civilis vitae et privatae exemplum exhibet. Bellis adumbrat Heroum vitam.” CR 19.435.

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Macrobius’s attention in his comparison to order also jibes with Melanchthon’s praise of the Homeric poem, quoted above. Homer’s poem is divine because of its composition, and Virgil’s poem is as a looking glass to perceive freshly the arrangement of its parts, especially its two major parts, the Iliad and Odyssey.⁴⁴ In a section on literary imitation near the end of Elementa Rhetorices, entitled “De imitatione,” Melanchthon twice praises Virgil’s imitation of Homer as obedient to decorum and οἰκονομία, rules that govern relationships among parts in a whole composition.⁴⁵ The section is primarily about imitation of Cicero, and responds in part to the controversy about imitation recently reignited by Erasmus, but Virgil’s poetic imitation remains exemplary and provides important points of comparison: The writer of epic poetry will fare better by following Virgil in his propriety and oeconomia in arranging and bringing to completion each part, than by imitating Lucan or Statius, who are indecorous, bombastic, and obscure.⁴⁶

Virgil is also exemplary for his omission of whatever in Homer does not jibe with Roman mores, “though he entirely fashioned himself after the image of Homer.”⁴⁷ The importance of Latin imitation in Melanchthon’s teaching of Greek poetry is made clear in a 1533 oration on Hesiod, written for Franz Burchard (1504–60), Melanchthon’s student who took up the Greek professorship in 1526.⁴⁸ The oration, an invitation to students to attend lectures yet again on Hesiod’s Works and Days, apparently a text frequently taught, is a defense of reading deeply rather than broadly. The student who attends carefully to one book and returns to it again and again, Melanchthon argues, will comprehend things richer by far than by reading in haste an entire library. And comparing imitations by the best Latin poets is one of the best ways to

⁴⁴ J. C. Scaliger also compared the Aeneid with the Iliad and Odyssey, but to illustrate the unity of the former, and what he saw as the patchwork quality of the latter. See Jacques Chomarat, “L’idée de compositio dans la Poétique de Scaliger,” in Présences du Latin, de Catulle à Montesquieu (Geneva: Droz, 1991), 190–203. Scaliger like Melanchthon was hostile to allegorical interpretation and considered the unity of a poem to be found in its composition (p. 196). ⁴⁵ See Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and its Humanist Reception (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 82–3. ⁴⁶ “. . . et heroicus scribet felicius, si sequetur Virgilii proprietatem, et in ordinandis atque absolvendis membris oeconomiam, quam si Lucanum aut Statium, qui sunt improprii, inflati, et obscuri, imitetur.” Opera Philosophica 2/2, p. 373. ⁴⁷ “. . . etsi ad imaginem Homeri se totum composuit.” Opera Philosophica 2/2, p. 367. In his printed notes on the Aeneid, Melanchthon does indicate where Virgil brought in one “foreign” place, i.e., one not fitting the Roman epic. See Chapter 6. ⁴⁸ The Praefatio in Hesiodum is found in CR 11.239–51.

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become familiar with a poem like Hesiod’s. For Latin and Greek share the same structural principles: “For although the languages are different, even so the Latin writers willingly resemble the Greeks in arranging, amplifying, and embellishing speech.”⁴⁹ Melanchthon doesn’t illustrate this but rather defers examples to the lectures themselves: I cannot say enough about this topic without explicating the text, comparing Latin examples with the Greeks, and pointing out by hand all the figures of speech. Therefore I will not dwell on this now, but in the lectures I will point out, on the spot so to speak, those places whence the Latin writers made their selections, and what we ourselves ought to imitate, and what to select.⁵⁰

Study of Latin imitation thus appears to have been central to the lectures on Hesiod. The Latin poets demonstrate how to imitate, not only in their selection of what passages to imitate but also in their demonstration of what rhetorical virtues are to be imitated: “discretion in inventing; propriety, perspicuity, and abundance in embellishing; and diligence in arranging every speech.”⁵¹ Just as he did in the earlier essay “De imitatione,” Melanchthon distributes virtues of imitation under the headings of the offices of the orator—a significant and apparently original contribution to contemporary debates.⁵² And with that distribution, he makes arrangement of speeches an object of intertextual comparison. For the student, great Latin poems in imitation of the Greeks serve as a kind of filter, drawing attention to the skeletal and nervous systems of their Greek sources, since that is where the Latin poets concentrated their powers, highlighting their sources’ narrative articulations, placement and occasions of speeches, negotiations of speech and narration, not to mention their fit use of literary devices like characterization, vivid sketch, and strong emotion.⁵³

⁴⁹ “Nam et si lingua diversa sit, tamen voluntate Graecis Latini, in disponenda, amplificanda atque illustranda oratione similes sunt.” CR 11.245. ⁵⁰ “Sed de hac parte quia satis dici, nisi inter enarrandum conferantur Latina cum Graecis, et omnes figurae digito ostendantur, non potest, nolo in praesentia longior esse, sed in interpretatione velut in re praesenti indicabimus, quos locos hinc sumpserint scriptores Latini et quid imitari, quidque excerpere ipsi debeamus.” CR 11.245. ⁵¹ “. . . in omni sermone inveniendo prudentia, in explicando proprietas, perspicuitas, et copia, in disponendo diligentia.” CR 11.245. ⁵² Compare Opera Philosophica 2/2, pp. 362–3. ⁵³ Johann Stigel’s free rendering of book 11 of the Odyssey into Latin hexameters, published in 1545 but probably composed as early as 1540, is a fascinating product of this comparative approach. In 1531 the gifted student enrolled at the University of Wittenberg, where he studied Greek with Burchard and later poetry with Melanchthon. In their edition of his Odyssey book 11 translation, Christina Meckelnborg and Bernd Schneider document his imitation and citation of Latin poets, centrally

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A similar inference guided important Virgil scholarship of the twentieth century. In a seminal 1964 study of Virgil’s imitation of Homer (an unrevised second edition was published in 1979), Georg Knauer argued the structural principle or artistic coherence of the Aeneid by comparing passages in the Aeneid with their models in the Odyssey and Iliad. The unity of the Aeneid, in this approach, is premised on the unity of the Odyssey and Iliad, and even a global unity of these two sources. To see the structural principle of the Aeneid, Knauer argues, depends on a comprehensive view of the unities of the Iliad and Odyssey: “The analysis of Homer can contribute to the interpretation of Virgil only insofar as our view of the Homeric structure is refined through modern Homer scholarship.”⁵⁴ That is a modest statement, since Knauer’s study of Virgil’s imitation (Virgil’s Homeranalyse) very clearly reveals the implicit structures and relationships among episodes in the Greek epics as well. The study of imitation illuminates the structures of both imitation and source: “Attention to this ‘Virgilian Homer analysis’ might even suggest some understanding of Homer’s own method of composition.”⁵⁵ A similar inference motivated Melanchthon’s comparative approach to teaching Greek poetry. As Knauer documents in a history of scholarship on Virgil’s Homeric imitation, the Renaissance era produced some foundational collections of Homeric passages imitated by Virgil.⁵⁶ The notation of Virgil’s Homeric sources goes back to his late antique commentators Servius and Macrobius, and a thousand years later it was taken up again as Greek learning expanded in the Western world, and as printed editions of the Greek classics made such comparisons more accessible. The humanist poet Helius Eobanus Hessus (1488–1540) published notes on Virgil’s Georgics and Eclogues in 1529, making many citations of Theocritus and Hesiod in his annotationes. Collation of the Aeneid with the Odyssey and Iliad lagged not far behind. Annotationes by the Hellenist Johannes Hartung (1505–79) published in 1551 represent “the first major attempt to go beyond interpretations received from antiquity and interpret Virgil anew,” and they supply many of the Homer citations that would become standard in subsequent editions, including the landmark collation of Fulvius Ursinus published by Christopher Plantin in Antwerp in Virgil and Ovid, in his free translation (Nachdichtung) of Homer. Der Wittenberger Homer: Johann Stigel und seine lateinische Übersetzung des elften Odyssee-Buches (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015), 29–36. Stigel attempted to render Homer into the “speech of Roman epic poetry” (p. 32). ⁵⁴ Georg Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer: Studien zur poetischen Technik Vergils mit Listen der Homerzitate in der Aeneis, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 54. Translations of Knauer are my own. ⁵⁵ Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer, 344. ⁵⁶ Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer, 62–106.

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1568.⁵⁷ Given that literary imitation was viewed by many humanists as a necessary means to eloquence, it is not surprising that study of Virgil in this period should turn to his sources. Although most comparison seems to have been directed to the elucidation of Virgil, there was at least one scholar who enlisted Virgil’s poem to elucidate Homer.⁵⁸ Knauer traces this practice back to Hartung’s Prolegomena in tres priores Odysseas Homeri Rapsodias (1539), and notes that it was not a widely adopted practice.⁵⁹ Hartung may have been “first to print” with his Virgilian elucidation of the Odyssey, but as I have shown, Melanchthon left traces of the practice in the Cambridge copy of the Iliad, his early teaching copy (see Chapter 2). Citations of Macrobius’s Saturnalia in the 1523 notes leave no doubt: Melanchthon had been comparing Virgil and Homer in his Homer lectures from early in his career. In Macrobius’s comparisons, the point seems to be critical observation of pathos and grandeur and other qualities of style. And that may have been the point of Melanchthon’s comparisons in 1523. But by 1533, and probably by 1531, he was studying imitation at a more macroscopic level, comparing Virgil and Homer at the level of invention and disposition as well as elocution. Knauer’s study, written in part as a corrective to previous studies of Virgil’s imitation of Homer, which tended to focus on individual verbal or scenic imitation of passages without attention to their context or relationship to the whole narrative, seeks out the reason of citation in larger, primarily narrative patterns. Comparison of episodes and their arrangement reveals Virgil’s awareness of the whole design of both his source and his poem. Virgil’s imitation reflects compression, expansion, rearrangement, reduplication, and conflation of scenes, substitutions of characters, motifs, and speeches. Seeing the differences throws into relief the principles of design, not to mention the mind of the poet. A particular Vergilbild informs this research. In Knauer’s summary, “It could not have sufficed Virgil to take famous passages like the funeral games, the divine council, the catalog of ships or (as here) the Nekyia, and use them simply as ‘epic stuff,’ taking them away from their original coherence and making of them easily recognized ‘citations’ of lines or scenes. Quite the contrary, it is far more likely that Virgil first realized the relations of

⁵⁷ Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer, 70. ⁵⁸ Melanchthon undertook both kinds of study. In his Virgil scholia (CR 19.435–68), he references several Homeric sources. ⁵⁹ Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer, 70.

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particular scenes within the whole of the Nekyia, in order to set them more meaningfully in the structure of his own design.”⁶⁰ Several have extended Knauer’s study and demonstrated ingenious patterns and connections in Virgil’s eclectic imitation of Homer. Prominent among them in anglophone scholarship is Francis Cairns, who has argued the “conceptual dominance of the Odyssey” in Virgil’s writing of the Aeneid.⁶¹ Cairns argues a work of complex and subtle imitation. Virgil’s portrait of Homer was of a poet who imitated his own Iliad in the Odyssey, improving it in ethical and formal ways alike. Virgil follows suit, imitating Homer’s own self-imitation or emulation.⁶² Cairns attributes the unity and intertextuality of the Aeneid, with multiple Homeric passages informing a single passage of the Aeneid, to this circumstance.⁶³ Others have persuasively argued Virgil’s dependence on ancient Homer scholarship for his conception and imitation of Homer.⁶⁴ The Virgil portrait that has emerged from this work is of a scholar who attended to ancient Homeric criticism and who shaped his portrait of Aeneas partly in response to this criticism. Accordingly, the Aeneid is shaped in part by some of the same critical issues that Melanchthon found in the ancient scholia, including οἰκονομία, ἦθος, and πάθος (pathos).⁶⁵ ἦθος, the portrayal of a person in speech and gesture, and τὸ πρέπον, the suitability of actions and words attributed to persons, may lie behind Virgil’s rearrangement of material in his imitation of Homer.⁶⁶ Virgil also rearranges material to achieve greater pathos, a concern of ancient scholarship and a point of comparison pursued by ⁶⁰ “Es kann nämlich Vergil nicht genügt haben, berühmte homerische Partien wie etwa die Leichenspiele, die Götterversammlungen, den Schiffskatalog oder wie hier die Nekyia lediglich als ‘episches Mittel’ zu benutzen und sie gar, von ihrem ursprünglichen Zusammenhang abgelöst, in erkennbare ‘Zitate’ einzelner Verse oder Szenen aufzulösen. Vergil scheint sich vielmehr grade umgekehrt die Beziehungen einzelner Szenen zum Ganzen der Nekyia vergegenwärtigt zu haben, um sie seinem eigenen Plane nur umso sinnvoller zugrunde legen zu können.” Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer, 145. ⁶¹ Francis Cairns, Virgil’s Augustan Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 179. ⁶² Cf. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer, 333–4. ⁶³ “This makes the Aeneid, not a bipartite work divided by subject matter (i.e., voyages or battles), but a unitary Odyssey with significant Iliadic episodes.” Virgil’s Augustan Epic, 178. ⁶⁴ See Tilman Schmit-Neuerburg, Vergils Aeneis und die antike Homerexegese: Untersuchungen zum Einfluss ethischer und kritischer Homerrezeption auf imitatio und aemulatio Vergils (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999); Robin. R. Schlunk, The Homeric Scholia and the Aeneid: A Study of the Influence of Ancient Homeric Literary Criticism in Vergil (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1984). ⁶⁵ Melanchthon used literary-critical terms throughout his Aeneid scholia, collected in CR 19.435–72. See, for example, parasceue (ad 5.737, 11.213); decorum or prepon (ad 1.561, 2.564, etc.); pathos (passim). Notes on the poet’s transitions (e.g. “he progresses with Aeneas’ story,” ad 1.297, and “he returns to the narration,” ad 2.435) also reflect the exegetical tradition of the scholia. We might include here too frequent notes on the poet’s use of irony. ⁶⁶ “In this way, the illusion of traditional epic would be maintained, while a new and deeper concept of heroism was unfolding.” Schlunk, The Homeric Scholia and the Aeneid, 48.

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Macrobius.⁶⁷ Ancient Homer scholarship, in sum, placed character study and fitness of speeches and gestures in focus for Virgil, who leveraged these criticisms to improve upon Homer. Tilman Schmit-Neuerburg describes Virgil’s view of Homer in language strikingly like Melanchthon’s moral definition of a poem: “in both epics [Homer has] displayed in an exemplary fashion the most important basic types of human behavior and nature, and especially the interpersonal relationships among them.”⁶⁸ Given his view of poetry as an ideal likeness of life, displaying all types of action and character, Melanchthon was also in a position to appreciate the ethical framework in which Virgil read and imitated Homer. Melanchthon thus shared with modern Virgil (and Homer) scholars a desire to peer into the structural, organizational, and artistic principles of the great epic poems, and he shared with them the hypothesis that this effort could be facilitated by comparison of parallel passages.⁶⁹ He had access to the same set of critical terms by which modern Virgil scholars engage Virgil’s emulation of Homer (and which Virgil may or may not have had in mind). Whereas modern scholars make these comparisons primarily with a view to understanding the Aeneid, Melanchthon seems also to have gone about the reverse with equal conviction: he read the Aeneid to understand the Iliad and the Odyssey. As an ingenious imitation and fusion of Homer’s two epic poems, or a simulachrum of them, Virgil’s Aeneid gave access to a synoptic view of the Iliad and the Odyssey, deemed impossible by Aristotle but coveted by Melanchthon.

The Faithful Householder and the Homeric Poem Melanchthon’s declamation entitled the Preface to Homer, which formally announced lectures on the Odyssey by Vitus Winshemius (Veit Oertel) circa 1538, is properly a preface to the Homeric poem, that is, the integral object of study and admiration found in the Iliad and Odyssey. “My theme will not be ⁶⁷ Schlunk, The Homeric Scholia and the Aeneid, 14, 20. ⁶⁸ Vergils Aeneis und die antike Homerexegese, 39. My translation. ⁶⁹ Knauer describes finally an “eschatological” quality of the Aeneid, describing the historical fulfillment of promises implied in the legendary Iliad and Odyssey. He goes further and argues an analogy with Scripture. In its typological relationship to Homeric epic, Virgil’s Aeneid is to the Iliad and Odyssey what the New Testament (in Christian exegesis) is to the Old Testament. Die Aeneis und Homer, 353–4. It is tempting to speculate about whether Melanchthon perceived a similar analogy. I am not aware of anywhere that Melanchthon draws similar comparisons. Probably ethical not typological (anagogical) reading was the decisive issue for Melanchthon, who continued to read not only pagan literature but also Scripture for moral examples, for the shaping of mind and character alike.

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Homer’s birth, his fatherland, or his life, for these have been treated amply and accurately by others. Whoever desires may learn from them. My theme, which I shall set out briefly and in the narrow scope of time allowed to me, is the poem itself, and the benefit which the studious may derive from it.”⁷⁰ Melanchthon leaves the subject of Homer to the biographies attributed to Herodotus and Plutarch, which from the editio princeps of 1488 and following were routinely printed with the Greek text of Homer’s poems. One aspect of Homer’s life, his material poverty as reported in his biographies, does play into the Preface to Homer, echoing a central theme of the declamation: treasures genuine and spurious. That aspect comes in towards the end. In the meantime the subject of this oration will be instead the poem and a proper method of reading the poem. To read Homer is in the first place to read the whole poem, by which we must understand the Iliad and the Odyssey. “Now, then, so that we can understand that those princely titles are rightly ascribed to Homer, let us inspect his poem. Let us place before us its whole body, so that we are not forced to make conjectures from mutilated parts and limbs, as if we were dealing with a fragmentary statue. The theme of the Homeric poem is twofold; one is entitled the Iliad, the other the Odyssey.”⁷¹ Presumably to read one or the other epic on its own would be a kind of sacrilege or mutilation, but Melanchthon has in mind not so much those who read but one of the epics, as those who thumb through one or both looking for fine-sounding phrases. Florilegia, or the compilation of sweet utterance without attention to the substance or science of the poem, is the antitype to a truly profitable reading. In a revealing parable, Melanchthon compares someone who reads the poem only for the sake of its choice aphorisms to a farmer who labors for the sake of flowers and garlands only, not for the sake of any fruit he might produce. “Hardly a judicious householder, someone called this one, and I do not think they were wrong.”⁷² The bad reader of the poem is like a poor oeconomos, steward or “householder.” This comparison is significant because the business of household management, or oeconomia, lent its name to poetic and rhetorical criticisms of literary structure. We have seen that the term is common in ⁷⁰ “Nec vero hic de natalibus, patria, et vita Homeri nobis oratio erit, haec enim ab aliis satis accurate et fuse explicata, qui volent requirere poterunt: de poëmata ipso, et utilitate, quam studiosi inde capere possint, breviter, atque ut patietur haec temporis angustia, agemus.” CR 11.400. ⁷¹ “Atque ut intelligamus istos magnificos titulos vere Homero tribui, intueamur poëma eius, totum nobis corpus proponamus, ne ut in disiecta statua ex mutilatis partibus et membris, facienda sit coniectura. Duplex est poëmatis Homerici argumentum: Alterum Ilias, alterum Odyssea inscribitur.” CR 11.404. ⁷² “. . . hunc aliquis recte, opinor, oeconomum parum prudentem dixerit.” CR 11.400.

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ancient scholia on Homer’s poetry, where it describes the poet’s artful arrangement of diverse material. Like the ancient scholiasts, Melanchthon takes a rhetorical principle of writing and applies it as a principle of reading: “Just as heads of households are typically circumspect in managing their domestic affairs, so we at the outset should straightway determine a method, if indeed we are to do anything worthwhile in reading this or that writer.”⁷³ Who then is a faithful and wise householder? I borrow the language of the gospel parables advisedly, since behind Melanchthon’s description of the prudent reader of Homer lies a character common to several parables, called in some the οἰκονόμος (steward) and in others the οἰκοδεσπότης (householder). To name the householder, Melanchthon uses the term paterfamilias, which was the usual Vulgate rendering of οἰκοδεσπότης, as in many parables about the master of a household, as well as Jesus’s commendation of the learned scribe or γραμματεύς in Matthew 13:52: “Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of the heavens is like a man in charge of a household, who brings forth from his treasury things new and old.” This verse inspired John Bunyan’s House of the Interpreter episode in The Pilgrim’s Progress, where Christian receives several object lessons in a kind of school of biblical interpretation (among these is an episode about the law and gospel which has clear roots in Luther’s doctrine of Scripture).⁷⁴ Jesus’s teacher-as-householder also informs Melanchthon’s imagination about what it is to faithfully teach the Homeric poem. Just as a householder must consider the whole household, a prudent reader of Homer must take a methodical not haphazard approach, addressing himself in the first place to an author’s whole work. And the poem, like a well-managed household, contains treasures new and old. Jesus’s division of the household treasure into new and old conveniently corresponds to the number of themes in the Homeric poem, a correspondence I’ll return to in the conclusion to the chapter. “Therefore, to speak truly, even if I am not so lacking in self-knowledge as to dare to pretend that I could perceive or recognize all those immense and innumerable riches of the Homeric poem (since surely not but the least part of them has been noted), nonetheless I feel sure that in my case, to paraphrase ⁷³ “. . . ut quemadmodum in sua re familiari cauti patresfamilias solent, ita initio statim nobiscum rationem ineamus, ecquod operae precium facturi simus evolvendo hoc vel illo scriptore.” CR 11.400. ⁷⁴ Bunyan’s allusion to Matthew 13:52 is clear in the narrative that unfolds and in his pointed introduction of the Interpreter as “the Good-man of this House” and “the Master of the House.” Both terms were used in the King James Version to translate οἰκοδεσπότης, which appears elsewhere in the gospels. The Pilgrim’s Progress, new edition, ed. W. R. Owens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 29.

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that other chap, abundance is making me poor.”⁷⁵ Throughout the declamation, the Homeric poem is like a treasury, and the speaker protests his inadequacy to discern what things to display and what to leave hidden. First this protest appears as a modesty topos, but whenever the speaker uses the figure of speech occupatio, we also are reminded of all that the speaker is not bringing forth, as in the following examples. “I shall say nothing,” he says, “of the hidden wisdom with which the Homeric poem is everywhere filled and crammed.”⁷⁶ Then later he reports that Homer spoke in oracles, as if from the sanctum sanctorum, but demurs to speak more about such matters at this time and in this place.⁷⁷ Nor is it the time to cover the philosophoumena, among which Melanchthon lists learning in natural philosophy, astronomy, physics, psychology, and anthropology. Such reminders of the hidden wealth of Homer’s poem illustrate the oration’s central theme, that the poem is a treasure house and that a faithful reader selects what is appropriate to bring forth. The poem-as-treasury and the teacher-as-householder throw into relief the real poverty of the superficial, excerpting reader. A true and faithful householder is steward over a genuine treasure, while an excerpter, one compiling choice sentences apart from context or without a view of the whole work, betrays an actual poverty behind an appearance of learning. This is not to discount the significance of Homer’s sententiae—the poem is full of aphoristic wisdom. These “bear the weight and authority of laws, and justly deserve to be observed scrupulously as if they were oracles or divine utterances, committed to memory, and constantly reviewed.”⁷⁸ Evidently there is a difference between excerpting for purposes of pleasure only and excerpting for profit. How can one tell the difference, though, between the two, between reading for sententiae (maxims) and sententiolae (nice phrases)? The answer seems to lie in the theme of the oration: the whole poem and its arrangement. The poem is arranged in such a way as to reflect God’s providence. To return to a passage quoted above, Melanchthon uses the terms of ancient criticism to praise the Homeric poem: ⁷⁵ “Ego igitur, ut verum fatear, etsi non ita oblitus sum mei, ut hoc mihi sumere ausim, me illas ingentes et innumerabiles Homerici poëmatis divitias omnes cernere aut cognoscere posse, cum haud dubie vix minima pars earum nota est, tamen hoc plane mihi accidere sentio, ut, quemadmodum ille ait, inopem me copia faciat.” CR 11.401; Ovid, Met. 3.466. ⁷⁶ “. . . non dicam de reconditis illis literis, quibus ubique plenum et confertum est Homericum poëma.” CR 11.402. ⁷⁷ CR 11.408. ⁷⁸ “. . . quae velut pondus et autoritatem legum habent, quaeque merito ut oracula aut divina responsa singulari cum religione observare, memoriaeque mandari, et semper ob oculos haberi debebant.” CR 11.403.

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Countless are the places in Homer that seem to have been conceived and invented by a divine providence. Not without reason did Horace call them marvelous. They are all of them composed throughout with such elegance and sweetness; given variety by various emotions—in particular the milder emotions (ἤθεσι)—and by many wonderful and pleasing events; and reduced to such an order and meaningful arrangement (οἰκονομίᾳ), that I would reckon him lacking in all human feeling, truly a brute and not a man, who is not charmed by the reading of Homer.⁷⁹

As we have seen, ἦθος or decorum of character and οἰκονομία or arrangement of episode were key criteria in the ancient scholia. They were signs of the artistic integrity of a work. It is these qualities or consistencies rather than any formal principle that constitute the unity of the Homeric poem and testify to its divine ordination. These qualities are not capable of being demonstrated or crystalized in a schema; rather, as Melanchthon avers in the Preface to Hesiod, where he describes the content of the lectures, they are observed in the course of reading, in a lectio perpetua or continua. Ethical decorum and οἰκονομία can be pointed out by the instructor, but they can only be perceived and appreciated through much observation and practice. The judgment gained by this observation and practice is ethical as well as aesthetic, and that practice or process itself may be the treasure to be gained from reading the poem. Along with the treasures of the household, the teacher-as-householder displays his own critical judgment, gained by careful reading of the Homeric poem. We might say that the unity of the poem, understood as an ordered collection of utterance satisfying some measure of completeness, is implied whenever the teacher indicates some part, brings forth some treasure. Οἰκονομία not florilegia, then, is the profitable method of reading. Although not about Homer’s life, the oration concludes with a defense of Homer’s material poverty, a subject central to ps.-Herodotus’s biography of the poet. Melanchthon argues that it is nothing new for the world not to reward excellence, and that Homer’s wealth lay in the finer, more divine, and eternal goods of the soul. Fittingly, the oration began with a condemnation of the corrupt judgments of the world, of those who pursue personal gain and material wealth, and neglect the study of the Muses. They despise the true and greatest gifts, pursuing instead inferior and harmful goods. “Everyone rushes ⁷⁹ CR 11.406–7. In “The H. Scriptures II,” George Herbert compares Scripture with the heavens: “Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, / And the configurations of their glorie!” The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 210. I discuss Herbert’s poem in the epilogue.

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ahead into the base and lucrative arts, and they serve their wretched cravings and their stomach, the only god they know.”⁸⁰ It was characteristic of many of Melanchthon’s academic orations from this period to lament the decline of liberal learning in favor of lucrative pursuits. In this context, the Preface to Homer is a defense of the liberal arts and an indictment of the times that cannot perceive providence in the divinely arranged Homeric song, much less the fall of a sparrow. Returning to the theme of the household, Melanchthon closes the oration with an epigram that someone placed over their house: “This house is indeed small. Now smallness is a sure sign of poverty, and poverty a sign of virtue.”⁸¹ The Greek epigram, which he renders in a Latin couplet, ties together the themes of the oration. Homer’s material poverty is matched by the spiritual treasure of his poem, which itself is like a household. It takes a prudent householder to perceive this wealth, and to bring forth its treasures, new and old, as circumstances dictate.

Conclusion: Treasures New and Old in the Homeric Poem In praise of the Homeric poem, Melanchthon is tantalizingly evasive when it comes to identifying the standard by which it is considered complete. Its arrangement is such as to inspire awe and gratitude, in the reader who attends and marks carefully its invention, embellishment, and arrangement. And in the following chapter we will see just such attention reflected in marginalia from Wittenberg in the 1550s. But appreciation of its order, not to mention the fitness of each place, hangs on an idea of its entirety, its completeness. Fond reader of Spenser’s Faerie Queene as I am, I am tempted to look to the portrait of the hero as the standard of completeness. As he describes it in the Letter to Ralegh that served as preface to the 1590 edition of the Faerie Queene in three books, Spenser brings together “in portrait in Arthur, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private moral virtues.”⁸² In the Preface to Homer, Melanchthon similarly praises the integrity of the Odyssey by its complete moral portrait of Ulysses. But in the Homeric poem is found a diversity of persons, as recognized by Spenser: “in the Persons of Agamemnon ⁸⁰ “Proruit se quisque ad sordidas et quaestuosas artes, diris cupiditatibus et ventri serviunt, praeter illum nullum Deum norunt.” CR 11.399. ⁸¹ οἴκος ὁδ᾽ ἐστὶ μικρὸς τόδε γαρ σημεῖον ἄριστον/τῆς πενίας μικρότης, τῆς δ᾽ ἀρετῆς πενία. CR 11.413. ⁸² The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, 2nd rev. ed. (Harlow: Pearson, 2007), 715. I have standardized the spelling.

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and Ulysses (Homer) hath ensampled a good governor and a virtuous man.”⁸³ Furthermore, when he describes the argument of the Aeneid, Melanchthon does not limit it to the portrait of Aeneas (as Spenser appears to do) but writes that its argumentum is twofold: arms and the man, not simply the man. Like the poem it imitated, Virgil’s had two themes. I wish to conclude by using the example of Scripture to illustrate a standard of literary completeness that is not defined by theme, plot, or character. Recall the image in Matthew 13:52 of the householder, the teacher who draws on a diversity of treasure. Patristic glosses on Matthew 13:52 commonly identify the “new and old” treasures of the parable as referring to the two Testaments of Scripture, and the householder as the preacher of Scripture. That allegorical interpretation describes a textual diversity, delimited by the scriptural canon. Though he probably was familiar with the patristic gloss, Melanchthon saw things differently. Early in his career in Wittenberg, in his 1520 lectures on the Gospel of Matthew, Master Philip glossed the verse in terms of a nascent doctrine of justification by faith: Every preacher takes from his treasure and preaches things new and old, that is the law and grace. For two things are needful for justification: Insofar as we are sinners, there is need for the law, so that we might recognize our sin. And then there is need for grace, which shows that our sin is forgiven, so that we might not despair.⁸⁴

Law and gospel (here law and grace) were the main interpretive lens through which Luther and Melanchthon viewed Scripture, bequeathing to generations of preachers an approach to exposition of the sacred text. Law and gospel are not textual units; in several places Luther and Melanchthon labor to disassociate the terms from the texts of the Old and New Testaments. Law and gospel are found as complementary speech genres throughout the Bible. Counterintuitively, the twin messages of law and gospel, so manifestly different, implied nonetheless a singleness of Scripture, a single work with perhaps two themes, or better two primary kinds of utterance working in tandem. By the measure of the divine word to humans, the two utterances are together complete. They are necessary and sufficient conditions of the ⁸³ The Faerie Queene, 715. ⁸⁴ “Omnis concionator depromat e thesauro suo et proferat nova et vetera, quod est legem et gratiam. Ad iustificationem quippe duo sunt necessaria: Quatenus peccatores sumus, opus est lege, ut cognoscamus peccatum, et gratia, quae ostendat condonatum esse delictum, ne desperemus.” MSA IV.180.

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proclamation of the word. That is, they are all a sinner needs to hear in order to believe, and they are both required. Luther and Melanchthon alike warn of the danger of preaching law without the gospel (legalism), or vice versa, the gospel without the law (antinomianism). Distinguishing where Scripture speaks as one or the other (something I will explore further in Chapter 6) was incumbent upon not just pastors but upon the universal priesthood of believers. And failing to distinguish between them (as Luther accused Erasmus of doing in the controversy over free will) introduced all manner of error. Scripture’s incorporation of diverse utterance in a complete proclamation of the gospel illustrates how speech itself, not merely as communication of a message but performance of a variety of offices, might supply a standard of completeness beyond theme, plot, or even character. In the 1523 oration Praise of Eloquence, Melanchthon describes a mental image of a speech, in which sentences face off in a meaningful array: I can hardly believe that there are some who are firmly convinced by the flimsiest of arguments that it doesn’t matter how we speak. Really? Would a painter represent a body rightly, if they commanded their brush with no method, if they waved their hand carelessly, and drew lines artlessly? No more will you represent the thought of your mind to others, unless you employ lucid and accurate words, arranged suitably into speech, and with a correct order of arguments. For just as we represent bodies by means of colors, so we represent the thought of our mind by means of speech. And so in speaking one must artfully conceive a certain image, which differentiates one from another the faces (so to speak) of the sentences.⁸⁵

That likeness, of a mental image of an array of sentences organized relative to one another like faces or perhaps masks in a dramatic or dialogical setting, helpfully describes Melanchthon’s imagination of the Homeric poem. A complete speech of one sort might tolerate a simple expression, for instance a syllogism, with a major premise, minor premise, and conclusion suitably facing off. It was characteristic of Melanchthon to use such a simple expression to describe the completeness of some classical orations, and at least one text of

⁸⁵ “Hoc miror, esse quibus tam frivolae argutiae serio persuaserint, nihil referre, quomodo loquamur. An vero recte corpus imitabitur pictor, si nulla ratione penicillum regat, si temere feratur manus, nec ducantur arte lineae? Ad eum modum nec animi tui sententiam aliis ob oculos posueris, ni propriis et illustribus verbis, apta vocum compositione, iusto sententiarum ordine utare. Nam perinde atque corpora coloribus, animi sententiam oratione repraesentamus. Quare necesse est dicendo certam aliquam imaginem arte concipi, quae discernat inter se tanquam vultus sententiarum.” CR 11.53.

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Scripture: the letter to the Romans. In response (sometimes indignant, sometimes indulgent), scholars have tried to make the syllogism the paradigmatic speech form in Melanchthon’s method of reading, but they have taken what Melanchthon presents as just one illustration of a complete speech array (appropriately simple) and misunderstood it as the master form for reading ancient and biblical texts. It was not. An appropriate expression of some speeches, the syllogism could hardly express a work of the imagination like the Iliad or the Odyssey. A look at Melanchthon’s annotations of Scripture and classical texts alike will produce few instances of “major premise” and “minor premise” (though admittedly terms like hypotyposis, which Melanchthon compared with the minor premise, will appear quite often and may be doing similar work). Instead what we find, for instance in the Virgil scholia, is a copious diversity of utterance observed in complex relationships, local and more global. Unlike his scholia on the Aeneid, which were preserved in numerous printed editions, Melanchthon left behind no comprehensive index to the Homeric poem. But we are lucky to have the next best thing—a comprehensive index of Homeric utterance, probably incorporating many of the Preceptor’s own notes and compiled by his successor in the professorship of Greek, recorded in the margins of the Iliad and Odyssey in Wittenberg in the 1550s. That index is the subject of Chapter 5.

5 The Wittenberg Scholia on the Homeric Poem Among the treasures of the Columbia University Library are two volumes that contain the 1517 edition of Homer’s works from the Venetian press of Aldus Manutius.¹ The volumes are handsomely bound in alum tawed pigskin, with elaborate stamping and engraved clasps. For these reasons alone you would expect to find them in a rare books room, but what makes them treasures is their provenance. They were a gift from Philip Melanchthon to Martin Luther in 1519, as recorded in his autograph inscriptions to Luther on three title pages.² The volumes were purchased in 1914 from the library of John Eliot Hodgkin by the educational publisher and rare books collector George Arthur Plimpton (1855–1936) and included in his gift to the Columbia University Library in 1935. Plimpton’s acquisition of the Homer volumes reflects his interest in the history of education in England in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, an interest that partly stems from his work for the textbook publisher Ginn & Co., which he worked for in college and eventually headed. A scholar as well as collector, he published volumes entitled The Education of Chaucer and The Education of Shakespeare, books describing and reproducing from his own collection the reference works, grammars, and other textbooks of literary education from these eras.³ Recognizing the shaping force of early education, ¹ Aldus Manutius first published Homer’s works in 1504. He died in 1516. Homeri Ilias (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1517). Columbia University Library, Plimpton 880 1517 H37 vol. 1, copy 1 [ColUL 1.1]. Vlyssea, Batrachomyomachia, Hymni xxxii (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1517). Columbia University Library, Plimpton 880 1517 H37 vol. 2 [ColUL 2]. The catalog record for an online reproduction of these and another volume from the Plimpton collection (Plimpton 880 1517 H37 vol. 1, copy 2) is found at https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/7821252. ² In addition to the two printed title pages to the Iliad and the Odyssey, Batrachomyomachia, and Hymns, somebody has handwritten a title to the collection of lives that were printed in gatherings with their own numbering: “Homeri poetae vita & insignia” or The life and notable achievements of Homer the poet (Vlyssea . . . , sig. 1ir). Probably many copies like this one were sold unbound, and could be bound in the front or back of a volume. In the Plimpton Homers, this copy was bound in 1559 at the end of the Odyssey volume. ³ George A. Plimpton, The Education of Shakespeare Illustrated from the Schoolbooks in Use in His Time (London: Oxford University Press, 1933); The Education of Chaucer Illustrated from the Schoolbooks in Use in His Time (London: Oxford University Press, 1935).

Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer. William P. Weaver, Oxford University Press. © William P. Weaver 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.003.0006

142    and the changing forms of education in historical and cultural context, Plimpton illustrates in these books the education and reading of Chaucer and Shakespeare with lavish reproductions from his collection. Secondarily he takes Chaucer and Shakespeare as guides to the education and learning of their times, illustrating his own collection by citing references to learning in their works. In doing so, he presents Chaucer and Shakespeare as testimonies to the public significance of this literature that might otherwise be regarded as of antiquarian interest only. There is no question that the 1517 Aldine Homers were to Plimpton relics not of Luther and Melanchthon alone but of a civilization, one he associated closely with the liberal arts traditions.⁴ The volumes nearly eluded him, as he recalls in an anecdote at the end of his memoir, which concludes with the words, “the books are invaluable in a library that illustrates the history of education.”⁵ Plimpton acquired these from the Hodgkin sale in London along with several books containing marginalia attributed to Melanchthon, attributions that stem from Samuel Leigh Sotheby and his unscrupulous sale of the library of Georg Kloss in 1835.⁶ Happily the Plimpton Homers (copy 1) can be disassociated from the Sotheby sale of “Melanchthon’s library.” The Hodgkin catalog of 1914 is the source of the erroneous association. It falsely describes Lot 1020 (hereafter the Plimpton Homers) as certain volumes sold by Sotheby in 1835.⁷ In fact it was not Lot 1020 but Lot 1021, a copy of a 1524 two-volume edition of Homer, that Sotheby sold in 1835 and reacquired shortly thereafter, when its authenticity was in doubt.⁸ In 1840 Sotheby reproduced several facsimiles from this copy in order to vindicate his attribution. (Plimpton acquired volume 1 of Lot 1021, and it is preserved in Plimpton 880 1517 H37 vol. 1, copy 2. This, not copy 1, is the source of Sotheby’s facsimiles in

⁴ Plimpton studied Latin and Greek at Philips Exeter Academy and at Amherst, where he studied Greek with Professor Tyler, “a dear, good old man. It was an inspiration to sit at his feet. He loved the Greek authors. They were a part of his life, and you could not but catch his enthusiasm for them. He didn’t care so much about the grammar, but he did want us to catch the spirit of what the authors wrote about.” George Arthur Plimpton, A Collector’s Recollections, ed. Pauline Ames Plimpton (New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 1993), 38. ⁵ A Collector’s Recollections, 67. ⁶ These include a Virgil that Plimpton describes in his Recollections, 66. See also George McCracken, “More Marginalia Attributed to Melanchthon,” Classical Philology 29 (1934): 341–3. ⁷ Catalogue of the Valuable Library Formed by the Late John Eliot Hodgkin (London, 1914). ⁸ Catalogue of the Library of Dr. Kloss (London, 1835), no. 1841. Samuel Leigh Sotheby, Unpublished Documents, Marginal Notes and Memoranda, in the Autograph of Philip Melanchthon and of Martin Luther. With Numerous Facsimiles (London, 1840), plate 11, no. 9, and plate 33, no. 1.

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1840.) The Plimpton Homers did not form part of Kloss’s library, and Sotheby made no description or facsimile of them.⁹ Plimpton accepted the attributions as described in the Hodgkin catalog, and he rehearses this information in his memoirs. (He may even have embellished the information by attributing some notes to Luther himself. A misreading of the Hodgkin catalog description may be the source of this misattribution.) According to Plimpton, the main hand in the Homer volumes is Melanchthon’s own and a second hand, which made numerous interlinear vocabulary glosses in the first several books of the Odyssey, is Martin Luther’s. A record of Luther’s sallies in Homeric Greek—no small prize that—but doubtless it was the Preceptor of Germany’s scribblings which made Plimpton prize these volumes for his library of Western education and civilization. Alas, apart from the three inscriptions to Luther, none of the annotations are evidently by Melanchthon. And experts have also corrected the attribution of the interlinear glosses to Luther. Apparently no writing in the volumes can be traced with any confidence to Luther. If he was deceived in the handwriting in these volumes, Plimpton was accurate in his assertion that for the history of education the books are “invaluable.” Although the notes are not in Melanchthon’s hand, they without a doubt reflect Melanchthon’s instruction. They can be traced to Wittenberg during Melanchthon’s lifetime, and they likely record his own annotations as transmitted and supplemented by one of his successors in the Greek professorship, Vitus Winshemius (Veit Oertel).¹⁰ The annotations, which span with remarkable consistency and regularity the entirety of the Iliad and the Odyssey, contain the most complete record and description of the Homeric poem as taught and annotated in Wittenberg during the Reformation. Therein lies their

⁹ Lot 1020 in Catalogue of the Valuable Library Formed by the Late John Eliot Hodgkin, p. 162. ¹⁰ A native of the imperial city Windsheim in Franconia, Veit Oertel (by convention named Vitus Winshemius or Veit Winsheim) fled Buda, where he was a schoolteacher, and came to Wittenberg and matriculated at the university in 1523. He received the MA on October 18, 1528, served as dean of the philosophy faculty and later as rector of the university. From 1536, when the Greek professorship was vacated by Franz Burchard, Winshemius took over several Greek lectures. Probably in 1538 he delivered the Preface to Homer, written for him by Melanchthon, announcing his Homer lectures. Melanchthon gave or loaned Winshemius a Homer volume in 1540 (MBW.R 2472), and in 1541 he became officially the professor of Greek, a position he retained until his death in 1570. In addition to teaching at the university and in a private school, Winshemius studied and practiced medicine, receiving the MD in 1550. He maintained a close friendship with Melanchthon and gave a eulogy at his funeral. See MBW.R 7935. The eulogy is found in CR 10, 187–206. See also Ralf-Dieter Hofheinz, Philipp Melanchthon und die Medizin im Spiegel seiner akademischen Reden (Herbolzheim: Centaurus, 2001), 311–12. Heinz Scheible provides a history of the professorship of Greek, including a biography of Veit Oertel, in “Lehrpersonal und Lehrprofil der Leucorea zwischen Neufundation (1536) und Tod Melanchthons (1560): Die Philosophische Fakultät,” in Die Leucorea zur Zeit des späten Melanchthons, ed. Matthias Asche (Leipzig: Leipzig Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2015), 192–4.

144    significance for this project—they give a synoptic view of the Iliad and Odyssey as seen through eyes trained in what Robert Kolb has described as the “Wittenberg school” of interpretation.¹¹ In their uniformity and comprehensiveness, the notes provide an unparalleled example of the reading and critical practice of the Wittenberg school, at least as it was applied to secular texts. These notes, hereafter the “Wittenberg scholia,” have a further importance in that they record a tradition of ancient Homer scholarship in the Reformation. That Renaissance readers were interested in ancient scholarship, and that they drew on Alexandrian text-critical scholarship and the D-scholia or “scholia minora,” has been documented in several places by Anthony Grafton.¹² What the Plimpton Homers illustrate is the contemporary use of the so-called “exegetical scholia,” which puts them in conversation with ancient literary criticism. They represent an attempt to read and evaluate Homer as the ancients read and evaluated him. This is an aspect of Renaissance literary culture that has not before been documented, and given its Reformation context in Wittenberg, it may be of special significance for Protestant biblical interpretation. Before arguing their significance, in the first part of this chapter I argue Melanchthon as the primary author of the notes and credit Winshemius with their transmission, probably in lectures on Homer in the 1550s. Other notes and records from the era describe a clear pattern of Winshemius’s transmission of Melanchthon’s notes on ancient authors, and beginning with the inscription on the title page of the Iliad (a quotation attributed to Winshemius by name), there is a lot of evidence to associate these Homer notes with Melanchthon and Winshemius. As will be clear, we can locate the volumes with near certainty to Wittenberg in the 1550s, when the notes were recorded. Like many of Melanchthon’s own scholia or annotationes, these bear little resemblance to commentary. They do not stand alone or interpret themselves but rather draw on a common technical vocabulary to “index” the text, a metaphor Luther first applied to his colleague’s lectures on Scripture. Furthermore, unlike commentary the notes do not reference authorities on Homer—at least not authorities in the conventional sense. Indeed, the

¹¹ Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and Its Scripture-Centered Proclamation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 10–14. ¹² Anthony Grafton, “Renaissance Readers of Homer’s Ancient Readers,” in Homer’s Ancient Readers, 149–72; “How Guillaume Budé Read His Homer,” in Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 135–83; “Martin Crusius Reads His Homer,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 64 (2002–3): 63–86.

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authority most often cited in the notes, accounting for approximately fiftyseven percent of identified citations, is the poet Virgil. The Aeneid alone is the source of 202 of 379 citations.¹³ To illustrate the specific work that these citations were doing, I compare them with Melanchthon’s annotations on Virgil. These notes, which stem from his early classroom instruction on the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, were printed far more frequently in early modern editions of Virgil than any other commentary.¹⁴ Comparing these with the Homer notes, I show that we can label many of the unlabeled citations in the Homer notes with the aid of the Virgil notes. It was speech rhetoric that prompted annotations on Virgil, and it was speech rhetoric that prompted citations of Virgil in the Homer notes. In Wittenberg, a rhetoric of speech was central to understanding Virgil’s imitation, and this understanding was central to perceiving the integrity of the Homeric poem. In the remainder of the chapter, I characterize the Wittenberg scholia as an attempt to demonstrate the unity of the Homeric poem. A key resource in this attempt was ancient commentary. The Wittenberg scholia employ several terms of the ancient scholia, especially the rhetorical terms found in the bT or “exegetical” scholia on Homer. The central concept Melanchthon drew from the ancient scholia was οἰκονομία or arrangement, which he sometimes transliterated oeconomia and other times called by its Latin name dispositio. Beginning with the direct speeches in the Homeric poem, I illustrate dispositio commentary in action. Many of the notes reflect the use of rhetorical and dialectical lore to segment and label direct speeches of characters. But dispositio commentary is not limited to direct speech, which comprises just over half of the Iliad and Odyssey taken together.¹⁵ Uniquely in Wittenberg, dispositio is the model for reading the whole Homeric poem.¹⁶ That speech

¹³ These numbers are drawn from indexes prepared for my transcription of the notes. Indexes were compiled and edited manually. ¹⁴ By Craig Kallendorf ’s count, they appeared in part or in whole, often embellished by other annotators, in an astonishing 116 editions of Virgil between 1530 and 1599. Printing Virgil: The Transformations of the Classics in the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 31. For further discussion of the significance and popularity of the Virgil notes, see also Craig Kallendorf, “Uncommon Commonplaces: Melanchthon’s Vergil Commentary and the Paradox of Popularity,” Vergilius 65 (2019): 99–125. ¹⁵ For numerous stylistic distinctives of direct speech and narration in the poems, see Jasper Griffin, “Homeric Words and Speakers,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 106 (1986): 36–57. ¹⁶ In its use of speech properties to theorize a unity of the Homeric poem, the Wittenberg school of reading anticipates some aspects of the oral-formulaic reading of Homer. Albert Lord described “the unity of the oral poem.” See Richard Janko, “The Homeric Poems as Oral Dictated Texts,” Classical Quarterly 48 (1998): 135–67.

146    is a model for annotating the poem in all its parts is illustrated by annotations on similes, common places, and gestures. Close inspection of the Plimpton Homers yields the following conclusions. First, the Wittenberg scholia draw on ancient literary criticism and exegeticaltype scholia to demonstrate textual unity. The Wittenberg scholia do not depend directly on ancient scholia; rather, they use terms from the ancient scholia to construe the text as speech, and to locate the poem’s dispositio in an arrangement of utterances. Second, hundreds of Aeneid citations in the scholia serve to illustrate the dispositio of the Homeric poem as seen through the eyes of its greatest student, Virgil. The Wittenberg scholia transform the tradition of comparing Homer and Virgil, illustrating not only a theory of poetic imitation but also an exegetical method, a “rhetoric of speech.”

The Transmission of Melanchthon’s Notes in Wittenberg In 1547 the Wittenberg University Library was removed to Weimar after Maurice of Saxony’s defeat of Elector John Frederick, and in 1549 John Frederick reclaimed the university library, which he claimed as his patrimony, and moved it to Jena, where much of it survives today.¹⁷ The copies in the Plimpton volumes remained in Wittenberg, meaning that they probably were never part of the university library but remained in a private collection following Luther’s death in 1546.¹⁸ In 1559, the three publications, which up to that time may have remained loosely bound in paper wrappers, were bound together in the two volumes described above, volume 2 combining the Odyssey, Batrachomyomachia, and Hymns edition with the Lives edition. The binding includes suggestive evidence. On the covers of both volumes are stamped the initials S.T.W. and the year 1559. The initials have been identified plausibly as those of the Latinized name of Sebastian Dietrich of Winsheim (Sebastian Theodoricus Winshemius, 1521–74). Dietrich matriculated at the University of Wittenberg in 1537, took the MA in 1544, and began teaching in the arts faculty in 1545, eventually serving two terms as dean of the

¹⁷ Sachiko Kusukawa, A Wittenberg University Library Catalogue of 1536 (Binghampton, NY: MRTS, 1995), xi–xii. ¹⁸ In 1536, the Wittenberg University Library held copies of the Greek text of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and these may have been copies of the same 1517 Venice edition, but they were not the Plimpton Homers. See Kusukawa, A Wittenberg University Library Catalog of 1536, 7.

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arts faculty and two terms as university rector.¹⁹ He became professor of mathematics in 1550 and continued to teach math until 1571, when he took the doctor of medicine and began teaching in the medicine faculty. Dietrich married Vitus Winshemius’s daughter Katherine. If the volumes were Sebastian Dietrich’s, then it is possible that they came to him after his marriage as a gift from his father-in-law, who as professor of Greek at the university since 1541 might have come into possession of them following Luther’s death in 1546. Annotations in the volumes are stingy with information that would be helpful in attributing them, but all the evidence is consistent with a Wittenberg location. The only named contemporaries in the notes are Philip Melanchthon and Vitus Winshemius. Melanchthon’s translation of Il. 6.476–81, with attribution to “φιλ: μελ:” (Phil[ip] Mel[anchthon]) is copied in a lower margin of the Iliad volume.²⁰ But this sort of note is found in volumes throughout Europe, and besides by 1550 the translation of these lines circulated in an edition of Melanchthon’s verse. A citation of Vitus Winshemius, not widely known outside of Wittenberg, is far more conclusive. Winshemius is quoted in an inscription on the title page of the Iliad. At the very top of the page, in Hand 1, is written a summary judgment: “There is solemn grandeur in the poem of Homer and a notable sweetness joined with much gravitas. Doctor Vitus Winshemius.”²¹ The brief citation contains helpful information in dating and attributing the notes. First, as noted above, Winshemius was promoted to doctor (of medicine) in 1550. The note and its placement on the title page suggest Winshemius as the lecturer and immediate source of numerous notes written in Hand 1 throughout both volumes. Citations of authorities on medicine and anatomy, discussed below, may reflect Winshemius’s turn to medicine or Melanchthon’s own study of these texts while revising his work De Anima. These notes were partly mutilated when the volumes were cut for binding and stamped “1559.” Taken together, the promotion of Winshemius and the binding of the volume give us clear termini of the notes, 1550–9. Further bibliographical evidence supports the location of the volumes in Wittenberg in the 1550s and even suggests an ultimate source in Melanchthon. ¹⁹ Helmar Junghans, “Verzeichnis der Rektoren, Prorektoren, Dekane, Professoren und Schloßkirchenprediger der Leucorea vom Sommersemester 1536 bis zum Wintersemester 1574/75,” in Georg Major (1502–74): Ein Theologe der Wittenberger Reformation, ed. Irene Dingel and Günther Wartenberg (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2005), 235–70. ²⁰ ColUL 1.1, title page. ²¹ “Revera semnotes est in Homeri poemate et insignis suavitas cum magna gravitate coniuncta. D[octor] Vitus Wins[hemius].” ColUL 1.1, fol. 72a.

148    Hundreds of cross references in the volume reference ancient literature by conventional means, such as book number or book and chapter numbers. But in some cases the annotations cite a page and even line number of contemporary printed editions. These give us a general impression of the nature of the notes (they imply a personal or institutional library) and support a derivation from Melanchthon. At Iliad 2.212, a note cites by page number a commented edition of Sophocles: “On the death of Thersites see the commentary on Sophocles, fol. 177b.”²² The reference is to the Greek scholia vetera on Sophocles, which were printed in some contemporary editions with the Greek text of the seven tragedies. The death of Thersites is related in a scholion on fol. 178b of a copy of a 1544 Frankfurt edition. In other editions that include the scholia vetera on Sophocles, the scholion on the death of Thersites is nowhere in the neighborhood of fol. 177b. If the discrepancy in page number (177b for 178b) can be attributed to an error of memory or transcription, then it must be a reference to this edition. Melanchthon owned and annotated a copy of this edition, which is preserved in the Wittenberg Predigerseminar.²³ Two citations of Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica libri septem refer by page and line number to the first edition, printed in Basel in 1543 (annot. ad Il. 16.315, 22.394). Melanchthon read Vesalius in preparation of his revised publication of De Anima, his work on human psychology and physiology, in 1552.²⁴ He engaged Vesalius’s work closely in his revision, enlisting the modern study of anatomy to serve piety and theology. The first mention of Andreas Vesalius in his correspondence is 1549, when he described the need to revise errors in anatomy in his earlier work on the soul (Commentarius de Anima, 1540), which, he explains, he compiled before the appearance of

²² “De morte Thersite vide Sophocles fol. 177b.” ColUL 1.1, fol. 17b. ²³ Sophoclis tragoediae septem cum interpretationibus vetustis et valde utilibus ([Frankfurt: Peter Braubach], 1544). Wittenberg Predigerseminar, Hb Phil 2. ²⁴ For Melanchthon’s knowledge of Vesalius, see Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 114–23; Vivian Nutton, “The Anatomy of the Soul in Early Renaissance Medicine,” in The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions, ed. G. R. Dunstan (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1990), 136–57. “Wittenberg Anatomy,” in Medicine and the Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (London: Routledge, 1993), 11–32. Melanchthon’s learning in anatomy is eclectic but heavily draws on Galen (in 1540 Commentarius de Anima) and Vesalius (in 1552 Liber de Anima). He is drawn to Galen’s teleological understanding of the human body and its parts. He also draws on Vesalius to express wonder at the mysteries of the body and the limits of human reason. Melanchthon describes the working of the Holy Spirit as a physical operation in the human spirits.

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Vesalius’s work.²⁵ On various occasions in the following year, Melanchthon wrote four declamations on anatomy, medicine, and physics.²⁶ Only the last of these reflects a clear engagement with Vesalius, the first time he cites him in his academic speeches.²⁷ The citations of Vesalius in the Homer notes are therefore consistent with Melanchthon’s reading and pedagogical objectives in the 1550s. The same may be said of several Galen citations.²⁸ There is nothing in these citations to rule out Melanchthon as an ultimate source for the notes; indeed, they tend rather to confirm this hypothesis. We can confirm Melanchthon’s ownership of one of the editions (Sophocles) and his reading of another (Vesalius) cited in the notes. We know from his 1523 lectures on the Iliad that Melanchthon cited ancient works sometimes by book and chapter, sometimes by the page number of a specific edition.²⁹ While book and chapter references seem more useful in an institutional context, a lecturer might also reference specific copies. If the notes were taken down in university lectures, Vitus Winshemius was likely the lecturer. He too was studying medicine at this time, and so we cannot rule him out as the source of citations of Vesalius and Galen. But more likely he depended in characteristic fashion on the Preceptor. Winshemius was the most important transmitter of Melanchthon’s Greek and Latin scholia in the same period from which these notes stem. As Stefan Rhein has shown, Winshemius published in 1546 Melanchthon’s translation and marginal notes of five tragedies of Sophocles.³⁰ Although Melanchthon

²⁵ CR vol. 7, 1015–16 (no. 5137). For the dating of this letter see MBW.R 5579. Melanchthon’s annotated copy of the 1543 edition of De humani corporis fabrica is held in the Surgeon General’s Library, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland. See Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy, 114. ²⁶ CR 11, 924–54 (nos. 118–21). In the latter three of these, two of which were from the winter semester (August, November), and the third of which is dated to the year, there are several examples from the Iliad. The episode of Athena tempering Achilles’s rage in Iliad 1 figures in all three declamations, which give an allegorical interpretation of the episode. See cols. 936, 943, 953. In the Columbia notes the episode is annotated “Example of moderating anger” (Exemplum moderandae irae). Sig. A6r, at Il. 1.195. ²⁷ Hofheinz, Philipp Melanchthon und die Medizin, 178. ²⁸ Two page citations are to a 1538 edition of Galen’s Opera omnia, edited in part by Melanchthon’s friend Joachim Camerarius. Seven Galen citations in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Batrachomyomachia notes refer in the first place to Latin editions. References to book and chapter number rule out reference to Greek editions, which were not subdivided into chapters. But in two cases, these canonical references are supplemented by a page and line reference to the 1538 Basel edition. We know that Melanchthon was a reader of Galen. Given his friendship with Camerarius, it is likely that he consulted his friend’s Greek edition. But perhaps because he made the citations for the benefit of students, he referred them to more accessible Latin translations. ²⁹ In his 1523 dictation, Achilles Gasser took down a reference to a page number in a contemporary edition of Dionysius’s De situ orbis. ³⁰ “Melanchthon and Greek Literature,” in Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary, ed. Timothy J. Wengert and Patrick M. Graham (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 149–70.

150    receives no credit in this publication, the published notes are consistent with Melanchthon’s autograph notes in his copy of a 1544 edition of Sophocles, as well as notes copied by Paul Obermeier for Vitus Winshemius.³¹ In 1549 Obermeier also took down Winshemius’s lectures on Terence, suggesting that the intermediate source of the Sophocles notes may also have been lectures by Winshemius.³² Winshemius printed Melanchthon’s translation of speeches from Thucydides’s History, with some modifications, in 1569, along with his commentary, for which he drew on Melanchthon’s own annotations.³³ In his marginal glosses, he executes a similar kind of rhetorical annotation, and in several places these glosses copy verbatim from scholia taken down in Melanchthon’s Thucydides lectures.³⁴ The prose commentary of 1569 represents Winshemius’s most significant departure from the example of his mentor, whose characteristic written comments on the ancient poets take the form of marginal annotations, such as were printed in editions of Terence, Virgil, and Sophocles. In his own marginal annotations, Winshemius hewed closely to Melanchthon’s example, even copying verbatim his notes in the case of Sophocles. The marginal notes on Thucydides are consistent with the notes transmitted by Winshemius in his Sophocles edition and Terence lectures of 1549—more consistent with these, which definitively can be attributed to Melanchthon, than to the more elaborate commentary on Thucydides that Winshemius published in 1569. In their frequency, content, and regularity they most resemble the short annotations (“scholia”) on Virgil attributed to Melanchthon and printed (with variations and some augmentations not by Melanchthon) in many editions of Virgil’s Opera from 1530 onward.³⁵ From the Preface to Homer, we know that Winshemius intended, at the time of the declamation, dated to approximately 1538, to lecture on the entire Homeric poem, beginning with the Odyssey. If this was his usual practice, then lectures by Winshemius in the 1550s supply a plausible context for the copying of the notes in the Columbia Homer volumes.³⁶ The quotation ³¹ Sophoclis tragoediae septem cum interpretationibus vetustis et valde utilibus ([Frankfurt: Peter Braubach], 1544). Wittenberg Predigerseminar, Hb Phil 2. Obermeier’s transcription of the translation, which Rhein attributes to Melanchthon, and the notes is found in Ratsschulebibliothek Zwickau Ms.49. ³² Ratsschulebibliothek Zwickau Ms.81, pp. 1a–120b. Vitus Winshemius, Vinshemii Scolia in Terentiu(m) quem praelegit Vitebergae (1549). ³³ See Marianne Pade, “Thucydides’ Renaissance Readers,” in Brill’s Companion to Thucydides, ed. Antonis Tsakmakis and Antonios Rengakos (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 779–810, esp. 795–8, 801–2. John Richards illustrates Winshemius’s dependence on Melanchthon’s annotations in “Thucydides in the Circle of Philip Melanchthon” (PhD Diss. Ohio State University, 2013), 173–7. ³⁴ See Richards, “Thucydides in the Circle of Philip Melanchthon,” 33–8. ³⁵ CR 19.297–306, 349–58, 435–68. See also Kallendorf, “Uncommon Commonplaces.” ³⁶ Melanchthon’s correspondence and university records contain no record of Homer lectures in the 1550s. See Rhein, “Melanchthon and Greek Literature,” 149–70.

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attributed to Winshemius on the title page of the Iliad refers to “Homer’s poem.” Although in context this could be taken as referring to the Iliad, it is more likely to refer to the Homeric poem as Melanchthon understood that term.³⁷ “There is solemn grandeur in the poem of Homer and a notable sweetness joined with much gravitas.” The quotation attributed to Winshemius on the title page stands apart from the main body of notes in one respect. On the one hand, the statement coheres with Melanchthon’s argument of a single Homeric poem (and it keeps Melanchthon’s term to describe probably both the Iliad and the Odyssey). It argues a stylistic unity of the poem and is therefore an implicit refutation of ps.-Longinus’s criticism of the Iliad and the Odyssey, that they reflect the powers of a young and old poet, respectively.³⁸ As argued by ps.-Longinus, the Iliad has more vitality and the Odyssey betrays the poet’s waning powers. Eustathius had also differentiated the two poems in terms of style, drawing on Hermogenes’s ideas of style so popular in the Byzantine era.³⁹ Like Eustathius’s evaluation, the statement attributed to Winshemius places in focus critical terms from Hermogenes’s Ideas of Style, terms that are not characteristic of Melanchthon’s stylistic criticism, nor indeed of the notes. The terms “grandeur” and “sweetness” are two of seven chief types of style outlined in Hermogenes’s work, which was having a revival in the Renaissance.⁴⁰ References to grandeur and sweetness appear but are relatively infrequent in the notes. The word dulce (and its cognates) as a literary critical term appears nine times in the Iliad notes. The words gravis, grande, and vehemens (translations of the Hermogenean grandeur, σεμνότης) appear fifteen times together. The Odyssey notes contain about ten references to dulce, but the words to translate σεμνότης are rare. Far more frequent are

³⁷ Compare the reference to the Odyssey as “hoc poemate” at Od. 23.310. Judging from the pace Melanchthon set in 1523–4, and from lecture announcements preserved in the Scripta publice recitata volumes, this would have been ambitious but not impossible. Interlinear glosses on the first eight books in the Columbia copy of the Odyssey appear to stem from a classroom. Two breaks in the glosses of about sixty lines (4.51–112, 4.183–239) separated by a glossed section of seventy lines (4.113–82) may reflect two absences from a lecture due to an illness and one premature attempt to return to class. At the pace of sixty-five lines a day, it would have taken sixty-one sessions to cover the 3979 lines of the first eight books of the Odyssey. The glosses end abruptly at the end of book 8, which also suggests that they stem from a structured setting like a classroom. ³⁸ Ps.-Longinus 9.11–13. Longinus, On the Sublime, ed. and trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe, rev. Donald Russell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Francis Cairns, Virgil’s Augustan Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 180–1. ³⁹ Cairns, Virgil’s Augustan Epic, 179. ⁴⁰ See Annabel Patterson, Hermogenes and the Renaissance: Seven Ideas of Style (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). Hermogenes praised Odysseus’s speech as exemplary of virtuosity (deinotês). Laurent Pernot, Rhetoric in Antiquity, trans. W. E. Higgins (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2005), 6.

152    stylistic terms drawn from exegetical scholia, including ἦθος (ethos), πάθος (pathos), οἰκονομία (oeconomia), and παρασκεύε (preparation for a scene), some of which are discussed at length below. As far as stylistic criticism goes, the notes reflect a far greater interest in style as instantiated in persons, rather than the abstract categories of Hermogenes. This difference suggests some disconnect between the inscription attributed to Vitus Winshemius and the unattributed notes. The notes certainly do not prosecute the thesis of a stylistic unity proposed by Winshemius, suggesting that Winshemius or another has placed the summary judgment at the head of another’s annotations. The most striking aspect of these marginal notes is their regularity, consistency, and accuracy. They occur with a reliable frequency, in a legible hand, in the outer margins and in the inner margins. They are spare, consisting often of one word or a phrase. The lengthiest comments resemble glosses in the economical D-scholia, the ancient elementary scholia once attributed to the Alexandrian scholar Didymus (hence “D”) and containing some notes on mythology, geography, and prosopography. Indeed, some glosses in the notes are traceable to the D-scholia. But where most of the shorter D-scholia offer glosses on the meanings of words, the shorter Wittenberg scholia indicate topics in the text and/or kinds of speech drawn from the liberal arts of dialectic and rhetoric. The Wittenberg scholia, like some of Melanchthon’s annotationes on Scripture and his published Virgil notes, function as an index of the text as speech.⁴¹ Their primary purpose does not seem to be to interpret the text after the fashion of a commentary. If their primary role is to index the text, what exactly are they indexing? In the first place, the notes index the dispositio of the text, that is, its arrangement of speeches and arguments. The dispositio is a form of instruction that Melanchthon used early and late, for teaching sacred and profane writings alike, and for interpreting and composing learned text.⁴² As an instrument of interpretation, the dispositio offers a robust model of outlining the parts of a text, combining formal headings (like prologue, narration, epilogue) with operational headings (like from cause, from the contrary, and other topics of invention, or figures of amplification). With Melanchthon’s published and unpublished dispositiones as a guide, we can cull many a dispositio from the Homer notes without much editorial

⁴¹ Timothy J. Wengert, Philipp Melanchthon’s Annotationes in Johannem in Relation to Its Predecessors and Contemporaries (Geneva: Droz, 1987), 167–212. ⁴² See Opera Philosophica 2/2, p. 412. Kallendorf, “Uncommon Commonplaces,” 107–10.

      

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intervention. Here is an example from the notes to Nestor’s speech in Iliad book 1, lines 254–84: complaint by means of rousing indignation amplification from the excellence of both men counsel dissuasion an elegant reason amplification from his character and age this is suitable for an elder: he praises a bygone era [amplification] from the example of preeminent men [argument from] decorum [argument from] modesty a proverbial entreaty rebuke of both men he speaks his mind: monarchy is a gift of God compound word comparison he turns again to the king, as if implying his greater fault he speaks his mind⁴³ Apart from two comments, a note of a literary-critical type pointing out the decorum of attributing a speech praising a bygone era to an elder (note on Il. 1.262), and a note identifying a grammatical figure, κράσις or a compound word (note on ἀντιβίην, Il. 1.278), all the notes on Nestor’s speech identify types and strategies of persuasion and together constitute an outline or dispositio of the speech.⁴⁴ The outline is not concerned so much with the speech’s formal parts as with its operations of invention and amplification. It is incomplete as a dispositio, lacking a prologue and epilogue, and not even identifying a theme (propositio), but it does similar work in segmenting and labeling a speech into meaningful units of interpretation, with an eye perhaps not only to comprehension but to some further operation, such as translation or imitation. ⁴³ “254 querela p(er) indignationem 258 amplific(atio) ab utriusque excellentia 259 consilium 259 dehortatio 260 ratio elegans 261 amplif(icatio) a sua persona et aetate 262 hoc decet senem. Laudator temporis acti 264 ab ex(empl)o praestantiss(imorom) virorum 270 decor(um) 271 modestia 274 adploratio 275 castigatio utriusque 278 regnu(m) donu(m) dei. Noema 278 κράσις 280 collatio 284 Redit ad regem G(rae)ci ostendans eum plus peccare 284 noema” ColUL 1.1, fols. 7a–7b. ⁴⁴ A Virgil citation in the lower margin belongs to another passage, Achilles’s oath, and a comment in the upper margin remarks on the episode, not the speech.

154    Not all speakers in the Iliad and Odyssey are as prolix as Nestor, but speeches of all lengths are subject to some measure of rhetorical outline or labeling in the Wittenberg notes. Achilles’ slightly longer speech in complaint and prayer to his mother Thetis (1.365–412) receives only four notes—“389) a brief narration of the injury 393) the peroration 394) the petition 396) from circumstance: her ability (to answer his prayer)”—while Thetis’s intercessions to Zeus are simply labeled “a plea” (ad 1.504) and “a repetition of the suit” (ad 1.514).⁴⁵ Homeric speech was therefore paradigmatic in Wittenberg as it was in other traditions of learning, and the Wittenberg scholia offer a guide to the unique combination of dialectic and rhetoric that Melanchthon forged as a guide to reading the writings of the learned. My conjecture is that the notes were taken down from lectures in the 1550s, lectures by Vitus Winshemius, to whom the summary thesis statement on the title page of the Iliad is attributed. Winshemius was using Melanchthon’s notes or copies of Melanchthon’s notes, which he had used to teach Sophocles in the 1540s and possibly Terence in 1549. The Homer notes, which are very clean and regular, glossing difficult Greek terms only occasionally, may have been prepared as a fair copy for publication, like the Sophocles notes, or indeed the Virgil notes which circulated in many editions. They are basically different in appearance from a student dictation like that of Achilles Pirmin Gasser considered above. They might represent Winshemius’s or another’s teaching notes, but they are not in Winshemius’s hand or a hand I have been able to identify. The notes may have an intermediate textual source, since they are very clean (i.e., error-free) and relatively consistent. So far as I can tell, they do not betray any obvious audible errors, though they do not betray any obvious scribal errors either. The evidence of the volumes and notes is more than enough to warrant careful examination of the notes as the “Wittenberg scholia”: a synoptic view of the Homeric poem in Wittenberg c.1550. As I hope to demonstrate now, the notes abundantly reward examination.

Virgil’s Homer The significance of Latin imitation in Melanchthon’s reading and teaching of the Homeric poem, argued above in Chapter 4, is reflected in the quotation of ⁴⁵ “389 brevis expositio iniuriae 393 perorat(io) 394 petitio 396 circumstantia qua facultas p(ro) bat(ur)” ColUL 1.1, fol. 9b; “504 obtestatio 514 repetitio petitionis” ColUL 1.1, fol. 11b.

      

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521 lines of Latin verse copied into the margins of the Columbia Homers, including 416 lines of the Aeneid.⁴⁶ Every book of the Aeneid is cited in the Wittenberg notes, which quote seven lines from Aeneid book 8 (at the low end), and seventy-eight lines from Aeneid book 1 (at the high end). The quotations divide proportionately between the two Homeric epics; notes on the Iliad include 110 references to the Aeneid, while the notes on the Odyssey (about three-quarters the length of the Iliad) include ninety-one references. The frequency of reference is more uniform in the Iliad notes than in the Odyssey notes. Aeneid references are found in notes on all twenty-four books of the Iliad. With twelve references, the annotations to book 4 of the Iliad contain the most. In the Odyssey notes, Aeneid references are more concentrated. Books 5 and 9–12 of the Odyssey, which narrate Odysseus’s wanderings, account for more than half of the Aeneid references (fifty out of ninety-one). In keeping with a trend in the annotations in general, Aeneid references diminish toward the end of the Odyssey, where annotations on the last nine books include only five Aeneid citations. Like the 1523 notes in the Gasser volume, the Columbia notes contain references to the Adages of Erasmus, but the Adages no longer have the same prominence. Twenty-three adages are cited in a total of thirty places across the two epic poems. This is not insignificant, but quite a drop off from the early lectures, when Melanchthon referred to the Adages by name twentysix times in lectures on fewer than five books of the Iliad and Odyssey. It might be said that imitation has replaced translation as the primary lens on the poem and its integrity. Lines from the Aeneid comprise a significant, characteristic part of the notes and were instrumental in Wittenberg, as evidenced both in descriptions of the classroom (in the Preface to Hesiod) and in the Wittenberg notes.⁴⁷ But how exactly did they work? Did Melanchthon, like Knauer and other modern scholars, compare Virgil and Homer at the level of the scene or episode (see Chapter 4)? Was narrative, numeric, and formal coherence the principle of discovery, like it is for Knauer? Without understanding their methodology, we might mistake these citations of Virgil as a mere compilation of parallel passages. ⁴⁶ These numbers were compiled from an index of citations, and they represent only lines written into these copies of the Iliad and Odyssey, excluding duplicated lines (lines quoted in more than one place) as well as lines implied by the symbol “etc.” that appears following many quotations, and also excluding references to passages of Latin poetry without quotation. A compilation of all quotation of the Aeneid, including repetitions, implied quotations, and references, would produce a significantly higher number. ⁴⁷ Similar quotations, albeit fewer, appear in Melanchthon’s first teaching copy, the Cambridge Iliad considered in Chapter 2.

156    Melanchthon had given a reason for citing Virgil in his Homer lectures as early as 1533, in the Preface to Hesiod, discussed above in Chapter 4. I quote again a passage crucial to the understanding of the Columbia Homer notes: I cannot say enough about this topic without explicating the text, comparing Latin examples with the Greeks, and pointing out by hand all the figures of speech. Therefore I will not dwell on this now, but in the lectures I will point out, on the spot so to speak, those places whence the Latin writers made their selections, and what we ourselves ought to imitate, and what to select.⁴⁸

This agenda lies behind the Virgil and Ovid quotations that are copied throughout the Columbia Homers, especially in the lower margin, where several lines of verse could be quoted with line breaks. Melanchthon’s annotations on Virgil supply an important point of reference for the lines quoted in the Homer notes and may suggest reasons why the lines were notable or memorable in the first place.⁴⁹ Perhaps the same principle of annotation that guided the annotation of passages in lectures on Virgil guided the selection or recall of Virgil passages in lectures on Homer. Drawing on the general character of the Virgil notes, we might put this in the form of a hypothesis: Melanchthon’s comparison of Homer passages with Virgilian imitations was occasioned not primarily by verbal likenesses (though naturally one would expect verbal likenesses), nor by episodic or scenic congruence (which also would not surprise), but rather by congruence of speech units. I tested the hypothesis in the following way. First, I collated the Virgil quotations with the Virgil annotations. I noted where there is coincidence between the two. This initial result is impressive. Out of 201 instances of quotation of Virgil’s Aeneid in the Homer scholia, fully half quote places that are annotated in the Aeneid scholia. Melanchthon’s Aeneid scholia annotate an estimated 1072 places. That is a frequency of a little more than one line in ten (the Aeneid contains 9896 lines), so that from a random selection of quotations we might expect a yield of just above a ten percent coincidence. Fifty percent coincidence is therefore a significant result,

⁴⁸ “Sed de hac parte quia satis dici, nisi inter enarrandum conferantur Latina cum Graecis, et omnes figurae digito ostendantur, non potest, nolo in praesentia longior esse, sed in interpretatione velut in re praesenti indicabimus, quos locos hinc sumpserint scriptores Latini et quid imitari, quidque excerpere ipsi debeamus.” CR 11.245. ⁴⁹ Imitation is not the primary object of the Virgil annotations, which refer to Homeric sources only occasionally. That is, we are not dealing with a Virgil commentary with the express aim of locating Homer sources, as Melanchthon’s contemporary Johann Hartung was compiling at the same time.

      

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confirming in the first place that a similar method of selection informed the selection of passages in the Virgil and the Homer scholia. I then attempted to show that these coincidences correspond to the objectives outlined in the Preface to Hesiod, that they are occasioned by figures of speech and other passages notable for their “discretion in inventing; propriety, perspicuity, and abundance in embellishing; and diligence in arranging every speech.”⁵⁰ I compiled a list of the Aeneid scholia where there is coincidence of quotation in the Homer scholia. As expected, the list reflects a focus on figures of speech and key articulations of the text. Thirteen of one hundred are notes that index a narrative event or make a biographical or mythographic remark (e.g., “Nisus falls,” “single combat,” “son of Phimedia, wife of Alois, and Neptune,” “he alludes to the (Circe) myth”).⁵¹ Six are labeled “Homericum” (Homeric) or “ex Homeri” (from Homer). Another six indicate ritual scenes of ethnographic interest. Only three indicate commonplaces (“piety,” “the worthiness of Ascanius,” “luxury”).⁵² The remaining seventy-two gloss figures of speech, topics of invention, and genres of speaking. Table 5.1 is a compilation of the most frequent labels in these notes. Not surprisingly, similes top the list, since Virgil’s similes are some of his most conspicuous places of Table 5.1 Labels occurring more than once in Melanchthon’s notes on Aeneid lines copied in the Wittenberg scholia English translation

Latin term

Frequency

simile description exclamation prologue vivid sketch prayer strong emotion hyperbole from person curse impersonation

comparatio descriptio exclamatio exordium hypotyposis votum pathos hyperbole a persona imprecatio prosopopoiia TOTAL

12 12 8 8 6 5 4 3 2 2 2 64

⁵⁰ “. . . in omni sermone inveniendo prudentia, in explicando proprietas, perspicuitas, et copia, in disponendo diligentia.” CR 11.245. ⁵¹ “Nisus cadit.” Note on Aen. 5.328–30, quoted at Il. 23.763; “Singulorum certamen.” Note on Aen. 12.116–17, quoted at Il. 3.314; “Ex Phimedia, Aloi uxore, et Neptune.” Note on Aen. 6.582–4, quoted at Od. 11.311; “Alludit ad fabulam . . .” Note on Aen 7.15–16, quoted at Od. 10.139. ⁵² “Pietas.” Note on Aen. 1.378–9, quoted at Od. 9.20; “Dignitas Ascanii.” Note on 3.486–8, quoted at Od. 15.133; “Luxus.” Note on Aen. 11.736, quoted at Il. 24.271.

158    indebtedness (though he is far from servile in his imitations). But equally frequent are the places of description—and more frequent if we collect places labeled “description” and “vivid sketch” together. The remaining figures are similarly figures of conspicuous artistry, what Melanchthon called in the Elementa Rhetorices (1531) figures of amplification. Exclamation, wish, vivid sketch, curse, hyperbole, and impersonation (not to mention pathos)—these are the pyrotechnics of oratory, and hence major points of articulation in the Homeric poem and the Aeneid alike. But there are more modest nodes of comparison. The notes include a further thirteen genres of speaking, ten figures of speech, and ten topics of invention. Each occurring once, these labels are compiled in alphabetical order in Table 5.2. (Comparison of the tables will show a total of ninety-seven instances of forty-four labels. These are all drawn from annotations on seventy-two Virgil places, reflecting Melanchthon’s frequent combination of terms in a single note, e.g., “Prologue by means of a prayer” (exordium a voto).) Tables 5.1 and 5.2 provide a glimpse of the lens through which the Wittenberg scholiast saw correspondence between a place in the Homeric poem and a place in the Aeneid. What I have done in this comparison is draw on the Virgil scholia to “label” the corresponding places in the Homer scholia. Not surprisingly, the labels are common to both the Virgil scholia and the Homer scholia. That is, we do not need to look for another principle of observation. It is the same principle that is at work in the study of a poem qua poem and in the study of a poem qua imitation. Furthermore, the study of

Table 5.2 Labels occurring once in Melanchthon’s notes on Aeneid lines copied in the Wittenberg scholia Genres of speaking

Figures of speech

Topics of invention

exhortation (adhortatio) rebuke (castigatio) conclusio consolatio dissuasion (dehortatio) demonstratio reproach (exprobatio)

amplificatio comparison (applicatio) distributio emphasis digression (excursus) interrogatio ironia

prayer (invocatio) praise (laus) narratio speech (oratio) entreaty (precatio)

derision (irrisio) proverb (noema) difficulty (obscuritas)

from difficulty (a difficili) from place (a loco) from the necessary (a necessario) from fatherland (a patria) from an example (ab exemplo) from the noble (ab honesto) from the impossible (ab impossibili) from duty (ab officio) from the useful (ab utili) goodwill (benevolentia)

      

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an imitation of the caliber of Virgil’s Aeneid seems to enhance this kind of observation (of genre, figure, topic) in the Homeric poem. I further tested the hypothesis by compiling annotations from the Wittenberg scholia on the corresponding Homer passages, that is, those that occasioned the Virgil quotation. I expected that the scholia on these places would yield a similar set of labels, though I expected the labels would be less frequent, being supplemented by the Virgil quotations, which function as implied, that is unlabeled, annotations of genres, figures, and topics. In fact, in keeping with the general character of the Wittenberg scholia, which are more extensive and frequent than the Virgil scholia, the notes on these Homer places are more articulate than the Virgil notes. But they show a comparable attention to rhetorical dispositio. Of 201 places in the Iliad and Odyssey that occasion a Virgil quotation, 121 are annotated. Of these annotations, fully seventy-two label the place with a literary term, exactly the same frequency found in the Virgil scholia. More of the 201 Homer places are annotated, and there are more non-rhetorical annotations, but we find that about one in three places is annotated with a rhetorical label. In Table 5.3 I have compiled labels occurring at least twice, and in Table 5.4 I have compiled the remaining labels, those occurring once, again sorted by type (genre, figure, and topic). There is a remarkable consistency of terms between the Virgil notes (Tables 5.1 and 5.2) and the Homer notes (Tables 5.3 and 5.4) on these compared places. As with the Virgil notes, it is speech labels that overwhelmingly describe the Homer lines. More than one in three of the Homer places is annotated with a label identifying a speech unit, though it must be said that comparatio (simile) accounts for considerably more of these than in the Virgil notes (twenty-one instances compared with twelve). We do not consider simile primarily as speech, but as I will show below, the Wittenberg scholiast Table 5.3 Labels occurring more than once in the Wittenberg scholia on Homer lines that occasion a Virgil quotation English name

Label

Frequency

simile gesture occasion vivid sketch digression prayer prophecy portrait

comparatio gestus occasio hypotyposis parecbasis votum augurium eikon

21 4 4 3 3 3 2 2

160    Table 5.4 Labels occurring once in the Wittenberg scholia on Homer lines that occasion a Virgil quotation Genres of speaking

Figures of speech

Topics of invention

exhortation (adhortatio) threat (comminatio) confirmatio consolatio dissuasion (dehortatio) genealogia rebuke (increpatio) prologue (initium) raillery (insolentia) urging (instigatio) prayer (invocatio) reproof (iurgia) oath (ius iurandum) narratio entreaty (obtestatio) perjury (peieratio) request (petitio) complaint (querela) prophecy (vaticinium)

correctio doubt (dubitatio) feigning (fictio) proverb (noema) etymology (notatio) anticipation (parasceue) sarcasm (sarcasmus) simile (similitudo)

from experience (experientia) from strong emotion (pathos) from use (usus)

did. The Homer notes show a comparable attention to genres of speaking and figures of speech, though they show less attention to topics of invention. The labels are not entirely consistent with the earlier Virgil notes, but there is approximate consistency in the use of some labels, such as comparatio (simile), votum (prayer), and hypotyposis (vivid sketch). Other terms occurring in both lists include pathos, adhortatio, consolatio, dehortatio, invocatio, and narratio. In other ways the Homer notes are distinctive. Some labels common to the exegetical scholia, including occasio, parecbasis (digression), and parasceue (anticipation), are characteristic of the Wittenberg scholia and not the Virgil notes, though pathos is a term from ancient criticism common to both. And the more elaborate Homer notes more frequently (about fifty times compared with twenty-eight times) label things other than genres of speaking: characters, events, and topics. But overall a clear pattern emerges from these comparisons. On looking into these lines of Homer, the Wittenberg scholiast sees the same thing that Melanchthon saw in looking at comparable lines in Virgil: figures of speech and other passages notable for their “discretion in inventing; propriety, perspicuity, and abundance in embellishing; and diligence in arranging

      

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every speech.”⁵³ In Wittenberg, Virgil’s Aeneid was an audible guide to discovering and marking the artistry and above all the dispositio of the Homeric poem.

“Comparing” and “Applying” Speeches in the Epic Simile Like maxims (sententiae), which can seem interjected into a narration, the simile is not the most obvious place to look for principles of structural integrity. In fact, a common modern response to similes is to see them as relief from the tedium of battle.⁵⁴ Far from being integral to the narration, similes have been viewed as diversional or merely ornamental. But that has not always been the case. In their comments, the ancient scholiasts “show their sensibility to the less obvious implications and wider resonance of the similes.”⁵⁵ The oral-formulaic theory of composition has brought about a reevaluation of Homeric simile, suggesting the functional role of simile in recitation and performance. In a very illuminating essay on the epic simile, Richard Martin has argued that similes serve to demarcate boundaries of narrative, punctuating episodes in a way helpful (and meaningful) in a performative context. He writes, “similes do not occur in the middle of an action: they draw attention either to the start of an action or to its finish. Put another way, similes are not like freeze-frames or slow motion in film, but like transition shots, often accompanied by theme music.”⁵⁶ Drawing on linguistic evidence, Martin views the simile as a subgenre within the epic genre of the Iliad and Odyssey. Anomalies of theme, diction, and meter, and not just the like-clause and the so-clause, set similes apart from the surrounding action. Comparison of similes with Theognis and Pindar, whose poetry also shares some of these

⁵³ “. . . in omni sermone inveniendo prudentia, in explicando proprietas, perspicuitas, et copia, in disponendo diligentia.” CR 11.245. ⁵⁴ For this tradition and a critical alternative to it, see Richard Buxton, “Similes and Other Likenesses,” in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. Robert Fowler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 139–55. ⁵⁵ N. J. Richardson, “Literary Criticism in the Exegetical Scholia to the Iliad: A Sketch,” Classical Quarterly 30 (1980): 265–87. The quoted passage is on p. 280. René Nünlist writes, “The similes are a prime feature of Homeric epic, and they brought out the best in the scholars who commented on them.” The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 298. ⁵⁶ Richard P. Martin, “Similes and Performance,” in Written Voices, Spoken Signs: Tradition, Performance, and the Epic Text, ed. Egbert Bakker and Ahuvia Kahane (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 138–66. The quoted passage is found on p. 146.

162    anomalies, furthermore suggests a lyric source of similes, or at least “lyric/epic interaction in similes.”⁵⁷ Similes are part of the punctuation and performance of a narrative, and Martin draws on contemporary fieldwork in oral poetry to imagine the work similes might have done in a rhapsodic setting. Here again, as with modern scholarship on Virgil’s imitation of Homer, considered above (Chapter 4), we find some convergence with a Wittenberg perspective. Two of the most frequent labels in the notes are comparatio (likespeech) and accommodatio (so-speech), which identify the two formal parts of epic similes, the so-called “like-clause” and “so-clause,” respectively.⁵⁸ The labels have the effect of dividing the extended simile into two complementary speeches, recognizable by their characteristic incipits, ἠύτε and ὡς, which have given their names to the twin parts of the simile.⁵⁹ In fact, the labels comparatio and accommodatio recognize both the integrity of each part of the extended simile and their complementarity. From this perspective, we have not a “like-clause” and “so-clause” or “like-part” and “so-part,” modern labels that describe the units from the perspective of grammar or narrative and emphasize the partial quality of the fragments, but a “comparing speech” and an “applying speech,” labels that describe rhetorical units and imply their integrity as individual utterances. They come together in an unlabeled speech, which moderns call the “extended simile,” disposed into two parts that have a logical as well as grammatical relationship. In focus in the labels comparatio and accommodatio is the utterance of the simile. These labels identify two speeches that stand in relation to each other within the performance of a single speech. For illustration of this principle, I turn to a contemporary imitation of Homer. In her 2011 book-length poem Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad, Alice Oswald compiles similes from the Iliad in a work of imitation and translation (operations reflected in the ambiguous subtitle of the American edition of the poem: A Version of Homer’s Iliad).⁶⁰ In Oswald’s rendering the simile serves two kinds of recall, memory of the source poem ⁵⁷ Martin, “Similes and Performance,” 160. ⁵⁸ In the Virgil notes, dating from the 1520s, Melanchthon’s practice is to annotate the entire extended simile with the word comparatio. He uses the word applicatio to describe the fitting of an example to the present narration (ad 1.47, 1.250), and he also uses the terms coaptatio (1.156) and adaptatio (1.399, 7.308) to describe similar figures. Ancient scholiasts reserve the term parabolai for what modern scholars call “elaborate similes,” that is, those containing both a like-clause and a soclause. Buxton, “Similes and other Likenesses,” 143. This has been demonstrated by Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work, 282–6. ⁵⁹ Hermann Fränkel calls these Sostück and Wiestück, “like part” and “so part.” Die homerischen Gleichnisse, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977). ⁶⁰ Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad (London: Faber and Faber, 2011). Oswald writes in a preface, “This is a translation of the Iliad’s atmosphere, not its story” (1).

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and (more explicitly) memorialization of the fallen heroes, demonstrating one creative way of reimagining and rewriting a poem through one of its key enunciations. Furthermore, Oswald regularly limits her imitation to the comparing speech of the extended comparison and omits the applying speech. Instead of complementing the comparing speech with an applying speech, she typically repeats the comparing speech verbatim, lending an aural quality to the speech, as if in echo or antiphonal song. Since she does not translate the narrative part of the Iliad, she has no obvious use for the applying speech, which functions (according to Fränkel’s reasoning) to tie the comparison back into the narrative. That leaves a question of arranging the discrete songs. By Oswald’s description (in a preface) speech or song in Memorial is serial, organized like a graveyard. Its literary integrity derives not from its consistency of narrative (as for the ancient scholiasts) but from its consistency of utterance. Its integrity is archaeological, displaying one of the lyric strata preserved in the epic narrative. As part of her project of excavation, Oswald grants the comparing speech integrity as utterance. I understand the labels comparatio and accommodatio to be doing in the Wittenberg scholia a similar work: isolating units of speech for the sake of seeking out the integrity of the poem in its configuration (dispositio). Neither archaeological (lyrical) nor narrative (epic), the integrity that the Wittenberg scholiast seeks is rhetorical. Speech supplies the basic framework for construing the text, and speech units the units for distributing and recollecting it. This is clearest in simple configurations of utterance, like the extended simile, which combines two complementary utterances, a comparing speech and an applying speech. Every comparing speech is occasioned by the narrative, and many comparing speeches occasion an applying speech. These two utterances bear a clear relationship to one another, performing complementary operations in the poem. And through the operation of the applying speech, the comparing speech is related back to the narrative speech, for that is the work of the applying speech. It performs the relation of one speech to another, implying a dispositio of the poem, an artistic arrangement of speech parts. I have not come across comparable uses of the word accommodatio in rhetoric or rhetorical analysis. The word implies a work of suiting, adjusting, or applying a speech to its occasion.⁶¹ Though the word doesn’t appear to have

⁶¹ Melanchthon annotates Aen. 8.391 as “an elegant and suited simile” (elegans et accommoda comparatio), suggesting that the accommodatio (application) of a simile is answerable to the stylistic canon of decorum.

164    any affiliations with hospitality in the ancient world, there is a convenient, accidental suggestion of hospitality in the English word “accommodation.” Homeric similes have addresses, they testify in their utterance to the structure, the arrangement (oeconomia, dispositio) of the poem. Every comparison intrudes as it were on the poem and needs to be accommodated.

Oeconomia and the Wittenberg Scholia We must see this unique perspective on the extended simile and the Homeric poem as a Wittenberg development of an ancient exegetical tradition. This tradition is reflected in the use of the terms oeconomia (sometimes the Greek term οἰκονομία), parasceue, and occasio in the Wittenberg notes. Sometimes these coincide with related annotations in the exegetical (bT) scholia, but they do not appear to depend on a source. That is consistent with Melanchthon’s characteristic use of ancient scholia. Through his familiarity with ancient exegetical scholia on Homer or Greek tragedy or Aristophanes, all of which shared common lore and aims, Melanchthon grasped some principles of commentary and applied them in his lectures. An annotation on Od. 4.298, where Helen commands her maids to prepare beds for the guests, reads “oeconomia: the beds are prepared,” and although the term oeconomia seems to be used here in its literal sense to describe a scene of household management, an explanation follows on Od. 4.302 and makes clear that the term is being used in its literary sense: “Homer arranges his material in its time.”⁶² The note captures the spirit of many ancient scholia, though it may not be taken directly from a scholion at this place in the Odyssey.⁶³ In book 9, near the beginning of his yarn to the Phaeacians, Odysseus tells of his and his comrades’ nighttime landing opposite the Cyclops’ land, and of their day-long feast the following day. The scene in itself is unremarkable; feasting is commonplace in the Odyssey. But two notes praise the poet’s oeconomia in this episode, first on the circumstances of landing in the darkness of night and fog, and second on Odysseus’s comment that he yet had lots of wine stored away in his ships. On the nighttime landing (Od. 9.143), a note reads, “oeconomia, so that the narrative might be plausible.”⁶⁴ ⁶² “Oeconomia: parantur lecti.” “Temporibus res suas dispensat Homerus.” ColUL 2, fol. 32a. ⁶³ In a scholion on Od. 4.298, we find the Greek term for “he prepares for what is next” (κατασκευάσαι). Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam, ed. William Dindorf, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1865), ad 4.298 b2, Mc. ⁶⁴ “Oeconomia, ut sit verisimilis narratio.” ColUL 2, fol. 74b.

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On the abundance of wine in the ships (Od. 9.163), another note reads, “οἰκονομία, that the narration be plausible and consistent.”⁶⁵ While the former note seems to remark on Homer’s (or Odysseus’s) use of seemingly extraneous detail to lend the narrative credibility, the latter note remarks on the significance of Odysseus’s boast and reads it as anticipating his eventual use of wine to overpower the Cyclops. Other notes in the Odyssey include some critical elaboration of the principle of oeconomia. In book 16, Odysseus plots with Telemachus their surprise attack on the suitors (Od. 16.270–307). In an uppermarginal note, which was mutilated in the binding and may be fragmentary, the passage is described as a “proposition (directed) to the entire oeconomia of the things to come,” that is, something like an explicit anticipation of events by means of speech.⁶⁶ In book 17, Odysseus (disguised as a beggar) and Eumaeus the loyal swineherd have a chance encounter with the sycophant goatherd Melanthius, who will eventually face off with the beggar Odysseus in a lopsided wrestling match. This chance encounter is explained as a function of the poet’s oeconomia: “the accidental meeting is (indicative of) poetic economy.”⁶⁷ In this way, the Wittenberg scholiast was attuned to a unity of plot in the Homeric epics, and drawing on ancient exegesis, he interpreted some passages as illustrating Homer’s construction of a cohesive and consistent narrative.⁶⁸ Another term that comes directly from the ancient scholia, and is related to the overarching concept of oeconomia, is parasceue (“preparation” or “anticipation”), which appears in the Odyssey notes five times and in the Iliad notes six times.⁶⁹ Most indicate places where events in the narration are anticipated in a speech, from gods plotting or provoking certain actions (e.g., notes on Il. 5.127, 5.454, 7.24, 7.38), to seers prophesying events (e.g., Od. 8.564, 11.112), to simple declarations of intent (e.g., Od. 1.88).⁷⁰ Some seem purely formal, as when the Phaeacian king Alcinous asks Odysseus for news of any Greek ⁶⁵ “οἰκονομϊα ut sit verisimilis et conveniens fictio.” ColUL 2, fol. 75a. ⁶⁶ “Propositio ad totam oeconomiam eorum quae sequuntur.” ColUL 2, fol. 142b. ⁶⁷ “Casus oeconomia poetae.” Annot. ad. Od. 17.212. ColUL 2, fol. 150a. ⁶⁸ Furthermore, in as many notes, he indicates passages concerning oeconomica, that is, “household management,” including scenes of hospitality and domestic labor, and sometimes Melanchthon uses the terms oeconomia and οἰκονομία in a topical, not critical sense. This attention to topical passages illustrating the Homeric household (among other ethnographic topics) reflects Melanchthon’s didactic aims in his lectures. In some places, where household affairs seem part of the poet’s design, the use of the term oeconomia is ambivalent. At the beginning of the fourth book of the Odyssey, which sees Telemachus arrive at Menelaus’s Sparta, where they happen to be celebrating a double wedding, Melanchthon notes the poetic intention of this occasion: “Oeconomia: they interrupt a double wedding” (oeconomia interveniunt binis nuptiis). ColUL 2, fol. 27a. ⁶⁹ See Roos Meijering, Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia (Groningen: E. Forsten, 1987), 201–2. ⁷⁰ ColUL 1.1, fols. 50a, 55b, 74a; ColUL 2, fols. 71b, 94a, 4b.

166    heroes at Troy whom he saw in the underworld.⁷¹ Odysseus obliges. Others suggest more subtle observations of arrangement. Odysseus, himself a master of storytelling and thus exhibiting oeconomia in his own narration, relates how he came by the goatskin of strong wine, which he would eventually use to overpower Polyphemus.⁷² At least one instance of preparation aroused critical suspicion. In book 8 of the Odyssey, Alcinous relates a prophecy his father had told him (Od. 8.564–71). Poseidon, angered that the Phaeacians ferried men across the seas, would eventually punish them by smiting a ship in its return to harbor and hurling a mountain about their city. When the foretold event partly comes to pass in book 13 of the Odyssey, Alcinous recalls the prophecy anew (having forgotten it in a short space of time) and attempts to ward off the destruction of the city. Comparison of the passages led some ancient scholars to strike or “athetize” the earlier lines, citing some inconsistencies. If Odysseus knows the prophecy, why does he go on to disclose Poseidon’s disfavor with him? And when Alcinous learns of Poseidon’s disfavor, why does he provide transport for Odysseus if he recalls the prophecy? These were the objections raised. And the exegetical scholia record some replies or resolutions of the problem: didn’t the Cyclops pray that Odysseus would return “on a foreigner’s convoy”? And besides, the Phaeacians rejoiced in the wounding of a Cyclops, whose race had forced them to relocate.⁷³ A D-scholion, which reflects an even earlier stratum of criticism, resolves the debate in a moralizing way: “But why would Odysseus, having heard the prophecy, disclose Poseidon’s wrath? Because he wished to tell the truth.”⁷⁴ The Wittenberg scholia simply record this passage as a “preparation for what ensues.”⁷⁵ The terse quality of the note, which does not record any evaluative remarks, suggests a primary interest in oeconomia (and related terms like parasceue). Traces of composition left in the Iliad and the Odyssey were not evidence of redaction or interpolation, nor occasion of speculating about Homer’s intent.⁷⁶ Rather, they were occasions for reflecting on relationships between different utterances in the poem.

⁷¹ “παρασκευή ad sequentia.” Note on Od. 11.371. ColUL 2, fol. 98b. ⁷² “παρασκευή.” Note on Od. 9.197. ColUL 2, fol. 75b. ⁷³ Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam, ad 8.564 T. ⁷⁴ Die D Scholia zur Odyssee: Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Nicola Ernst (PhD Diss. University of Cologne, 2004). Published online http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/1831/. ⁷⁵ “Parasceue ad sequentia.” Note on Od. 8.564. ColUL 2, fol. 71b. ⁷⁶ Compare a remark in the bT scholia on Il. 7.24, which compares tragic composition with Homeric composition: “A spectator (lit. hearer) expects terrible events upon the entrance of the gods, events like those that have just occurred. But Homer postpones the thing expected. Setting aside the spectacle, he substitutes the pretense of Hector, the shame of the Greeks, the earnestness of Menelaus and Agamemnon, and the moving speech of Nestor.” Hartmut Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Scholia Vetera), 7 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969–88).

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Related to parasceue, which stems from both rhetorical manuals and ancient scholia on poetry, is occasio (“occasion” or “opportunity”). This occurs more frequently than oeconomia or parasceue, and it seems to be a more general way of describing and accounting for circumstances and reasons of narration. It occurs in the phrases “occasion of what follows” and “occasion of the following narration.”⁷⁷ In one instance it is used as a synonym of parasceue. In book 17, after the death of Patroclus, and while the Greek captains are protecting the corpse of Patroclus, Homer turns away from the central action to name two captains, Thrasymedes and Antilochus, and say that they were oblivious of Patroclus’s death and fighting in another part of the field, as commanded by Nestor (Il. 17.377–83). A note at 17.378 describes the lines as “an occasion or preparation” (occasio sive parasceue), referring to a later episode in the same book (Il. 17.651–701), when Menelaus finds and sends Antilochus to run to Achilles and bear the evil news of Patroclus’s death.⁷⁸ The note “occasio” thus serves as a kind of cross-referencing device, with reference not to lines (as is common in modern cross-referencing systems) but to speeches.⁷⁹ Of the forty occurrences of “occasio” in the Odyssey notes, and twenty-seven occurrences in the Iliad notes, many seem to participate in this tradition of observing Homer’s plot construction. They serve as intra-textual references, justifying the local utterance or episode with reference to the overall plot.⁸⁰ The Wittenberg scholiast thus drew on ancient literary terms to produce evidence in his lectures of integrity of utterance. Oeconomia, parasceue, and occasio—the Wittenberg scholia deploy these to argue convenience of speech. Just as the simile needs to be integrated into the poem by some convenient applying speech (accommodatio), many utterances in the poem have deferred or hidden conveniences. It is the work of the teacher to do the explicit work of

⁷⁷ Occasio appears to take the place of parasceue in the following note: “Occasio ad sequentiam.” Note on Il. 8.198 (ColUL 1.1, fol. 85b). “Occasio sequentium” appears in notes on Il. 8.80 (ColUL 1.1, fol. 83b) and Od. 1.35 (ColUL 2, fol. 3b). “Interrogatio quae est propositio et occasio sequentis narrationis” (Question, which is a proposition and occasion of the following narration). Note on Od. 8.573 (ColUL 2, fol. 71b). Cf. note on Od. 17.104 (ColUL 2, fol. 148a). ⁷⁸ ColUL 1.1, fol. 194b. ⁷⁹ As in the ancient scholia, the note “accommodates” the lines with reference to prior or subsequent events. An exegetical (bT) note in the ancient scholia explains, “He does this because he wishes to preserve one of these [i.e., Antilochus], the one most beloved of Achilles.” Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, ad 17.377. ⁸⁰ Sixteen occurrences of the term transitio in the Iliad notes and four in the Odyssey notes also serve as a way of observing the poet’s rhetorical construction of plot and narrative. For attention to transitions from narration to speeches in the ancient scholia, see Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work, 102–3.

168    suiting, adjusting, or applying such utterances to their occasions, which may lie at some remove from their partner speech and not next door (as in the case of a simile).

Prayer and the Speech of Heroes Annotations on heroic prayer in the Wittenberg scholia offer an important supplement to Richard Martin’s characterization of muthos in The Language of Heroes.⁸¹ Through a rigorous discourse analysis of the Iliad, with implications for speech in the Odyssey too, Martin identifies two general speech types in Homer’s poetry. Heroic speech acts including command, threat, oath, and boast characterize what the poem labels “muthos” (μύθος) and reserves largely for heroes. In Martin’s compelling account, muthos corresponds to a hero’s stature and is a means of performing kingship and other public roles.⁸² Most other speech acts, including familiar speeches in public and private contexts, the poem designates under the label “epos” (ἔπος). Martin includes among epos numerous prayers in the Iliad; indeed, because of its intimate quality, private prayer “epitomizes” epos.⁸³ Though they did not attempt a division of speech kinds on the scale that Martin did, there is evidence that Melanchthon and Winshemius perceived the difference he describes between muthos and epos. We can see this in their division of two types of prayer, labeled in the Wittenberg scholia votum (prayer, oath, wish) and precatio (prayer, petition). Significantly, these types of prayer are distributed almost exactly between what Martin characterizes as muthos and epos. As early as 1523, in his lectures on the Iliad, Melanchthon had identified prayer among the types appropriate for princely speech. With other genres and figures, including curses, exclamations, and questions, vota (prayers or perhaps he means also “oaths” here) were characteristic of the ruler.⁸⁴ This list of speech genres reminds us of the ethical quality of reading Homer and helps distinguish the rhetorical commentary on the Homeric poem from purely formal applications of rhetoric. Rhetorical commentary was subservient to ethical reflection and judgment, supplying a means to imagine and hear, so to ⁸¹ The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1989). ⁸² Mary Depew discovers similar performative qualities implied by a Homeric word for prayer, εὔχομαι. “Reading Greek Prayers,” Classical Antiquity 16 (1997): 229–58, esp. 232–4. ⁸³ The Language of Heroes, 38. ⁸⁴ Stamp.Pal. IV.801.3, fol. 1a.

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speak, rhetorical genres being deployed in character. Martin describes this normative quality of Homeric speech in this way: “Homeric poetry so keenly attends to socially correct forms of speech.”⁸⁵ Although prayers are not limited to princes in the Iliad and Odyssey, where we overhear servant women praying, prayer is a common way for princes to speak, and prayers are among those public speaking kinds that characterize this ruling class. Agamemnon’s exemplary speeches in Iliad 4, considered in Chapter 3, include four prayers.⁸⁶ Later, at a critical juncture for the Achaeans, when the Trojans are pressing them against their ships, having broken through the defensive wall, the Achaeans take to prayer, and the poet quotes Nestor’s own prayer as an example (Il. 15.372–6). Addressed to “father Zeus” and in other ways indistinguishable from private, formulaic prayers in the epics, this one is described as being a public prayer—the Achaeans call “to one another and to all the gods” (Il. 15.368). The Odyssey also supplies significant examples of public prayer. A spirited speech by Telemachus in response to Antinous in the Ithacan assembly closes with an imprecation: “but I shall invoke the everlasting gods, and may Zeus grant me vengeful deeds” (Od. 2.143–4). In this agonistic context, Telemachus’s muthos signals his growth in honor, and prayer plays an important role in that muthos. Modeling speech for the young prince in books 3 and 4, Nestor and Menelaus also offer prayers in the context of their speeches. Such prayers were of great interest to the Wittenberg scholiast, who marks twenty-four passages in the Iliad and twenty-three in the Odyssey as “prayer” (votum). Indeed, “prayer” is one of the most frequent annotations in the Columbia Homers. The label votum can mean a wish, oath, or prayer; some wishes are made as prayers to select or indefinite deities, and other wishes are implicitly prayers, as for instance Nestor’s characteristic wish that he were a young warrior again. In the same speech, he makes the same wish with and without reference to the gods (cf. Il. 7.132 and 157). Votum describes both imprecations and curses, and in some cases, an invocation of a god or gods labeled votum hardly rises above the level of an oath. In addition to these prayers of a rhetorical, occasional sort, the Wittenberg scholia also designate many speeches as precationes, “prayers.” The annotation precatio appears thirteen times in the Iliad notes and nine times in the Odyssey notes. That is about half the number of vota noted in the scholia but still among the more common speech kinds marked. Comparable speech kinds to judge by frequency in the notes include exemplum (nine in the Iliad, eleven in ⁸⁵ The Language of Heroes, 40.

⁸⁶ Il. 4.189, 288, 313, and 363.

170    the Odyssey), noema or sentence (thirteen, nine), and ratio or reason (eleven, seven). Although both words can mean “prayer,” votum and precatio refer to different speech kinds in the Homeric poem. The prayers marked precationes are typically independent of other speeches, and they are offered privately. They are the speeches that Homeric scholarship on prayer has focused on, since they are thought to be mimetic of cultic practices in the archaic period.⁸⁷ It is this sort of prayer that Martin has in mind when he writes, “Prayer, which epitomizes private communication, is in fact never designated a muthos in the Iliad.”⁸⁸ But as we have seen, numerous shorter prayers are in fact offered up in the context of what are clearly muthoi, political or heroic speeches. Martin does not count these as prayers or give them any special attention, leaving unremarked a considerable aspect of muthos in his account of heroic speech. And as noted Homer scholarship on prayer has had less to say about prayers of the occasional or free sort.⁸⁹ Given the lengthy, personal, even intimate prayers of the precatio kind, it is easy to dismiss prayers of the votum kind as merely figures of speech (indeed, rhetoricians would eventually consider prayer primarily as a figure of speech) unrelated to religious belief or practice.⁹⁰ Votum or muthos-type prayer has fallen through the sieves of both Martin’s discourse analysis and others’ prayer scholarship. Why was it so important in Wittenberg, where it was annotated with twice the frequency of precatio or epos-type prayer? If precatio or epos-type prayer describes a private utterance (perhaps in a cultic context), votum or muthos-type prayer is a decidedly public, rhetorical utterance. It exemplifies the kind of prayer that might be spoken reverently and earnestly in the context of a heroic speech, including speech in the assembly. We have seen that Melanchthon listed it among the exemplary types of heroic speech as early as his Homer lectures of 1523. By the 1550s, when he routinely included prayers at the beginning and end of declamations written for performance in academic assemblies in Wittenberg, pointedly labeling them vota in the text of the declamations, there is no chance that marking vota in the Homeric poem would not draw comparisons with actual ⁸⁷ Simon Pulleyn recognizes the problem of treating cultic prayer as the norm in the archaic period. In Homer’s poetry, “free prayer is much commoner than cultic.” Prayer in Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 11. Pulleyn defines free prayer as prayer unaccompanied by sacrifices, so it is a broader category than what the Wittenberg scholiast calls votum. ⁸⁸ The Language of Heroes, 38. ⁸⁹ Pulleyn, Prayer in Greek Religion; see also the scholarship cited in Depew, “Reading Greek Prayers,” 231–6. ⁹⁰ In his 1521 lectures on rhetoric, Melanchthon listed votum among the commonplaces for writing a prologue. He lists some classical orations as examples but also recognizes familiar letters as a context for beginning with a prayer. Opera Philosophica 2/2, p. 218.

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rhetorical and religious practice modeled by the Preceptor. I cannot demonstrate it, but I think there is a distinct possibility of Homeric influence on Christian eloquence in Wittenberg (see the Epilogue). For now, it is enough to recognize the significance of the label votum, a Homeric speech kind that corresponded to an actual speech kind and religious practice in Wittenberg in the 1540s and 1550s. Distinguishing between two types of Homeric prayer, the Wittenberg scholia clarify the public, rhetorical uses of vota. The most revealing difference between votum and precatio is found in how they are designated in the notes. Of the near fifty utterances marked votum in the Wittenberg scholia, not one includes the name of the speaker. Compare the typical annotation of precationes, which are prayers typically of a named character. So in the notes to the Iliad we find notes indicating “the prayer of Achilles to his mother,” “a prayer of Chryses contrary to the earlier one,” and “a prayer of Diomedes to Pallas (Athena).”⁹¹ Hector, Glaucon, and Ulysses are also named in the attribution of precationes in the notes. There are more numerous annotations of vota in the notes, but no votum is attributed to a named character. Rather, votum is typically described as belonging to a character type. One is labeled “worthy to be spoken by a prince.”⁹² It is spoken by Agamemnon, but that seems incidental to the quality of the prayer, which is reflective of a certain type of character. Nestor’s prayers of this sort are typically labeled “elderly” (senile), and from the point of view of the Wittenberg scholiast, it is among the elder warlord’s burdens to exemplify elderly speech. Other prayers are labeled “generous,” “harsh,” and “heroic,” terms to be understood morally and compared with the speaking character.⁹³ Some prayers are described simply as being “suited to the character.”⁹⁴ In view here is not necessarily the known character of an Agamemnon or Nestor (the two speakers in question), but more likely the public persona that Agamemnon and Nestor perform. As we have seen, the use of the word persona in the context of scholia, ancient and modern, refers not to a dramatic persona but to the rhetorical criterion of ἦθος (character), that standard by which deeds and words can be compared and evaluated. Some such comparison is performed in the poem itself. Homeric speakers are

⁹¹ Notes on Il. 1.352 (ColUL 1.1, fol. 8b), 1.451 (fol. 10b), and 5.115 (fol. 50a). ⁹² “Votum dignum fato principe.” Note on Il. 2.372 (ColUL 1.1, fol. 20a). ⁹³ Notes on Il. 3.174 (“generosum,” ColUL 1.1, fol. 32a), 16.97 and 18.333 (“durum,” fols. 175a, 207a), and 21.279 (“heroicum,” fol. 233a). ⁹⁴ “Votum in hac persona conveniens.” Note on Il. 4.313 (ColUL 1.1, fol. 43a). “Votum conveniens personae.” Note on Il. 11.671 (fol. 125b).

172    often reviewing one another’s speeches, lauding them for the fitness of their words.⁹⁵ Votum might be described in English as “common prayer,” since some examples are attributed to Trojans and Greeks indifferently. Prayers that are offered up by both Trojan and Achaean armies in advance of the monomachiai in the Iliad (ad Il. 3.298, 320) are thus labeled “public prayers.”⁹⁶ These prayers illustrate the corporate, public quality of vota, and the poem presents them as exemplary: “So did any one of the Achaeans or Trojans speak.”⁹⁷ The prayers are anonymous and commonplace. Today we might call them formulaic along with the entire scene, which is labeled in the notes “the preparation of the single combat.”⁹⁸ They are distinguished in the same episode from the very personal, private prayer of Menelaus. After the common prayers attending the ritual oaths on both sides, Menelaus’s personal prayer for vengeance stands out as different, and the Wittenberg scholia distinguish it, giving it the label precatio.⁹⁹ But since both surround the same scene, we might see them in dialogue. Menelaus’s prayer appears to supplement the public prayers, interpreting the prayer and applying it to the particulars of his case. He takes the general intercession for justice and makes it a private request for justice. We can extend the characterization of votum by attending to some other, less conspicuous uses of the label in the notes. These might be characterized generally as rhetorical. In a rhetorical context, prayer can be used to frame a speech, setting forth or recapitulating a theme. In the Iliad, Nestor uses prayers in this way to introduce and conclude his recollections of past exploits. His characteristic prayer “Father Zeus and Athena and Apollo, if only I were young again . . .” corresponds exactly to the substance of his muthos, some exemplary youthful exploit that he goes on to narrate.¹⁰⁰ For good measure, at the end of one of these speeches, he reiterates the prayer, framing the speech with a statement of argument and recapitulation. In the Wittenberg scholia, this passage is labeled “He returns to his votum.”¹⁰¹ The repetition of the prayer to close the speech may reflect the futility of the wish. Nestor similarly

⁹⁵ For example, Agamemnon responds to Nestor by saying, “To be sure, reverend sire, all this is spoken to the point (κατὰ μοῖραν).” Il. 1.286. Jasper Griffin’s study of evaluative language in direct speech in the epics is invaluable. “Homeric Words and Speakers,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 106 (1986): 36–57. See also Rachel Ahern Knudsen, Homeric Speech and the Origins of Rhetoric (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 8–14. ⁹⁶ These corporate prayers are labeled “publicae preces” and “publica vota,” with the rare label prex appearing here as a synonym for votum. Notes on Il. 3.298 and 3.318 (ColUL 1.1, fol. 34b). ⁹⁷ Il. 3.319. ⁹⁸ “Adparatus monomachiae.” Note on Il. 3.314. ColUL 1.1, fol. 34b. ⁹⁹ Note on Il. 3.351. ColUL 1.1, fol. 35a. ¹⁰⁰ Il. 7.132–3. ¹⁰¹ “Redit ad votum.” Note on Il. 7.157.

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frames his heroic speech to Achilles with prayers (vota) during the funeral games in book 23. This use of prayer to occasion a lengthy recollection closely resembles the poet’s own use of prayer, labeled invocatio in the notes. What is striking about the label is the way it is construed rhetorically. The Wittenberg scholiast describes the poet’s first invocation of the Muse in the Iliad in rhetorical terms. The first line is a “poetic setting forth of the theme together with an invocation, as in (Horace’s) speak to me, Muse, of the man.”¹⁰² The citation of Horace’s translation of Odyssey 1.1–2 here at Iliad 1.1 is significant because it clearly is not cited as a translation or mere cross-reference. Horace’s lines occur to the scholiast here because they were written in the context of rhetorical criticism, and a criticism more specifically of order or dispositio. Horace is warning the young poet not to attempt a grandiose prologue to his theme. Some poets (he cites a particularly poor example) begin a poem by promising more than they can deliver, arguing a grand theme through bombastic words. Not so Homer, who begins the Odyssey modestly, arguing a modest theme (a man down on his luck), only then to introduce marvels and monsters later. Horace sums up his praise: He always hastens to the point and carries away his audience with the action underway as if it were already well known. Whatever he has no hope of telling brilliantly, he leaves out, and he is so artfully deceptive, blending falsehoods with truths in such a way that the middle harmonizes with the beginning, and the ending with the middle.¹⁰³

The display of Homer’s judgment in organizing the poem is evident from the first line, which is already harmonized with the poem’s middle and end. That is the force of the Horace citation in the Wittenberg scholia on the Iliad. It signals the purpose of marking the speech genre with which the poem begins: to reflect on the fitness and arrangement of utterances in a unified poem. Like invocatio, votum serves to introduce and even actualize utterance. It marks the boundaries of a certain kind of utterance, particularly the memorial, commemorative utterance of former heroic deeds.¹⁰⁴ When Nestor

¹⁰² “Propositio poetica una cum invocatione ut dic mihi Musa virum.” Note on Il. 1.1, quoting Ars P. 141. ColUL 1.1, fol. 3a. ¹⁰³ Ars P. 148–52. Horace, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (1926, repr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929). Translation is my own. ¹⁰⁴ Cf. Athena’s (in disguise as Mentor) speech to Telemachus in Od. 1.255ff. Elsewhere in the Odyssey, Nestor invokes Zeus to protest his wealth, both material and moral (Od. 3.346).

174    concludes a lengthy digression by reiterating a prayer, the utterance serves like the figure accommodatio (applying speech), which ties an epic simile back to the narrative context. If a simile-length embellishment stands to be related back to the main narration, how much more Nestor’s meandering recollections! And echoing a prayer serves the trick. Prayers in the Iliad and Odyssey more often begin a speech than conclude a speech, but some do conclude a speech with a word of blessing or curse. Concluding his instructions to Patroclus before he puts on arms in Iliad 16, Achilles turns to the gods: “Father Zeus and Athena and Apollo, would that not one of the Trojans might escape death, however many they be, nor even one of the Achaeans, but that we two might escape destruction until that time when we wreck the hallowed citadel of Troy.”¹⁰⁵ The reckless wish echoes the main gist of the speech to Patroclus: survive, stay out of harm’s way.¹⁰⁶ In the Odyssey, the elder Ithacan Aegyptius prays a blessing on the assembly at the end of his brief opening remarks.¹⁰⁷ Telemachus prays for retribution on the suitors at the end of his emotional response to Antinous.¹⁰⁸ In these ways, consistent with rhetorical instruction on prayer, prayer serves as an enunciative strategy in persuasive contexts, and the scholia attend to the use and place of prayers in the dispositiones of Homeric speech.

Action (too) Is Eloquence In the various ways explored in this chapter, the Wittenberg scholia appear to be an attempt to demarcate the boundaries of the poem as speech, that is, as an artistically arranged compilation of speeches. That is not to say that the notes attend primarily to the acoustic properties of the text. Some acoustic figures are noted, but consistent with Melanchthon’s relegation of acoustic figures to the study of grammar, the notes draw primarily on figures of invention and/or amplification, and types of argument, as a way to attend to the text as speech. Utterance supplies a universal principle of segmenting, labeling, and accessing the parts of a poem assumed to be itself an utterance of integrity. By way of concluding, I wish to show that this principle applies even to gestures narrated in the poem.

¹⁰⁵ Il. 16.97–100. ¹⁰⁶ This prayer may be compared with the equally futile wish of Priam, in his woeful speech to Hector. See Il. 22.41. ¹⁰⁷ Od. 2.33–4. ¹⁰⁸ Od. 2.143–5.

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The term gestus (“gesture”) appears sixty-one times in the Iliad notes and twenty-three times in the Odyssey notes, making it after comparatio and accommodatio (considered above) and hypotyposis (vivid sketch) the most frequent term in the Wittenberg scholia. Shedding tears, extending hands, clasping knees—these are just the most frequent of the non-verbal kinds of eloquence narrated in the poem and marked in the scholia. In several instances, the scholiast notes gestures that accompany a speech. Agamemnon clasps Menelaus’s hand when addressing him (4.154), Odysseus looks angrily when replying to Agamemnon’s rebuke (4.349), and Diomedes plants his spear to address Glaucon (4.232).¹⁰⁹ Such annotations extend the rhetorical analysis of the text from the direct speech into the narrated action.¹¹⁰ They reflect attention to not only the words but also the delivery, as well as perhaps the character (ἦθος) and emotion (πάθος), of the speech. The gestures narrated in the poem supply further material for the exercise of critical judgment, which might weigh the propriety of gestures for various speakers under various circumstances. The Wittenberg notes label “gesture” many other actions in the poem, including actions seemingly unrelated to speech. But even these, I find, are labeled not merely as actions or “motions,” another possible meaning of gestus, but are labeled as gestures, that is, non-verbal eloquence or non-verbal speech. Some of them have a ceremonial quality, suggesting an ethnographic interest of the scholiast.¹¹¹ The gods rise and greet Zeus in a show of deference. Diomedes and Glaucon clasp hands in an exchange of gifts. Achilles pours dust over his head to mourn Patroclus’s death. Such study of ritual gesture extends to military bearings and procedures, such as how the troops behave during a single combat, or even in less formal scenarios. Fallen warriors stretch their hands to comrades in appeal for help. The Achaean kings lean on their spears to observe a battle, or they lean on their shields. Troops stand in amazement at a portent. Sitting, standing, leaning, leaping from one’s feet— no action seems too ordinary for the scholiast’s scrutiny. Other actions are notable for their poignancy. The naturalistic description of Andromache dropping her shuttle (when she hears the mourning for Hector’s death) is

¹⁰⁹ Notes on Il. 4.154, 4.349, 6.232. ColUL 1.1, fols. 40b, 43b, 67b. ¹¹⁰ Gesture was a topic of classical rhetoric, being a subdivision of actio (“performance”), one of the five duties of the orator, who has not only to contrive but also to deliver a persuasive speech, and do so in the flesh. Melanchthon had little to say on the topics of actio and memoria, and he expressly omits these topics from his own textbooks on rhetoric, deferring their study to a more advanced, comprehensive treatment. ¹¹¹ Ceremonial and ritual acts are also regularly pointed out in the notes. Like gestures, these may be seen as part of the performative dimension of the poem, perhaps a species of its non-verbal eloquence.

176    labeled “gesture.”¹¹² The stunned silence of a warrior facing death is likewise a “gesture.”¹¹³ Even in the cases of less eloquent action, such as when warriors mount and dismount their chariots, it seems to me that the Wittenberg scholiast is applying a singular attention in observing gestures in the poem. Actions are read as non-verbal speech and are subjected to the same measure of propriety. “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature.”¹¹⁴ So Hamlet counsels the players when he commissions them to play The Murder of Gonzago. His counsel illustrates the significance of gesture as something that like speech can be measured and judged by standards of decorum. Done rightly it reflects discretion, and like the moral virtues it also admits of excess and deficiency. For Hamlet, decorum of gesture is in imitation of a natural law, the “modesty” (or observance of the mean) of nature. Within the Wittenberg scholia, I would argue, Homeric gesture has a similar moral quality but obeys the law of usage (consuetudo) not nature. It reflects not only discretion of character and circumstances—of time, place, occasion, and speech—but also the particulars of heroic civilization. For the modern reader, marking action in the poem, especially actions of the ritualistic kind, might draw attention to its vivid ethnographies, something it was lauded for in ancient criticism. For the Wittenberg reader, I think, it is not so much ethnographic knowledge as exercise of judgment that is the point of marking, because marking heroic gesture exercises a certain kind of attention. Like speech, action exhibits usage that is relative to circumstance, culture, and civilization. And the Wittenberg scholiast seems to be applying a common kind of observance of action and speech in the poem, sampling the usage exhibited in action and speech, and marking examples for the sake of comparison, memory, and judgment. In some cases there might be unwritten rules governing action (such as the gods rising in deference to Zeus), but more often than not action seems to be governed by patterns of practice, not unlike fluency of speech. Between Virgil’s imitation and the ancient exegetical tradition, Melanchthon and Winshemius found ways of accounting for the propriety of these utterances, and their place in the composition of a poem. Centrally the principle of oeconomia allowed for reflection on the relationship of different parts of a text

¹¹² Note on Il. 22.448. ColUL 1.1, fol. 246b. ¹¹³ Note on Il. 17.695. ColUL 1.1, fol. 200a. ¹¹⁴ Hamlet, ed. A. R. Braunmuller (New York, NY: Penguin, 2001), act 3, scene 2, lines 17–19.

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to one another and to a larger composition. The ancient scholia and the rhetorical tradition that fed them thus gave Melanchthon and his successors powerful instruments with which to present the Homeric poem as a training ground for reading Scripture. If the poema models life nobly lived, the Wittenberg scholia model how to read a poema in its integrity, shadowing a mature and literate reading of Scripture in its integrity.

6 Rightly Dividing the Word Well, then, where have I landed now, and who lives here? Are they pridefully overbearing and lawless? Or friendly to the stranger, and mindful of God? Od. 6.119–21

What was the theological significance of reading Homer for eloquence? Or what did Homer have to teach theology students that they could not learn in rhetoric and the other liberal arts? Was it enough for Homer to supply examples of eloquence, so that students might imitate them in their own exercises, with perhaps some dividends being paid out in their sermons? Or that they might recognize similar patterns in Scripture, and discern with finer ear the message of the text? These offices, which Homer did perform, were no mean ones, and they secured his poem a place in the arts faculty, but they do not necessarily tell us anything specifically theological about the training of theology students, other than that they might be expected to have a facility in exegesis. They remain somewhat abstract from the particulars of the Homeric poem, supreme though it was for an illustration of eloquence and such critical standards as oeconomia, ethos, and decorum. How was the theological, and not just the philosophical, formation of students advanced in the reading of the Homeric poem? The significance of Homer for theology in Wittenberg came into sharp focus in the 1540s, a time in which the university suffered a reversal of fortune. When imperial troops threatened the city, the university closed in late 1546. Faculty and students were war refugees, though some, including Melanchthon and Vitus Winshemius, soon returned to resume teaching under a new prince in the summer of 1547. Others settled elsewhere. The Council of Trent had opened in 1545, and to Melanchthon the council represented, alongside the emperor’s militaristic attempt to bring Protestant princes into religious conformity, an existential crisis for both the gospel message and the university. Ottoman forces were threatening the eastern borders of Europe, and Melanchthon’s prayers of the era are full of petitions for delivery from this

Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer. William P. Weaver, Oxford University Press. © William P. Weaver 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.003.0007

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menacing foe.¹ One might draw several moral parallels between the fictional wars and wanderings told in Homer and the experience of war and exile in Wittenberg in these years. Probably they suggested themselves to many a reader of Homer, and some comments in the Wittenberg scholia seem to reflect on contemporary events. But it is not these external factors, or not these alone, that moved Melanchthon to articulate anew the theological significance of reading Homer. Instead it was an internal battle (certamen) and disputation that clarified the importance of Homer for both practical and biblical theology. In the preface to a new textbook on logic, Erotemata Dialectices (1547), which incredibly he published soon after returning to Wittenberg following a fugitive existence, Melanchthon describes a psychomachia at the very threshold of every Christian prayer, a battle between belief in God’s promises on the one hand and grief or terror in response to God’s law on the other. Developing Luther’s influential reading of Scripture as law and gospel, not to mention Luther’s psychology of the conscience, Melanchthon thus describes these twin messages as combatants locked in deadly strife. Threat and promise, law and gospel—these were the premier utterances of Scripture, and it was the duty of teachers and preachers to train the laity in being able to rightly divide them. Dialectic, illustrated by reading literature, was an important tool for developing this skill of “rightly dividing” (ὀρθοτομεῖν), a word Melanchthon borrows from Paul to describe the most urgent application of dialectic in the church. He had developed the concept earlier in the 1540s to describe the preacher’s office, but in Erotemata Dialectices, a textbook which may stand for the most universal, inclusive application of logic since Rudolf Agricola’s De Inventione Dialectica, he applies it towards practical theology.² In this chapter I will take Melanchthon’s practical theology of prayer from these years (1543–52) to illustrate some theological applications of reading Homer. Prayer came to the forefront of Melanchthon’s thought and writings in the 1540s, such as in his three-year revision of the Loci Communes published in 1544 as the Loci Theologici (the so-called “third era” Loci).³ In earlier versions, he treated the topic of prayer (and interjected numerous prayers)

¹ Melanchthon commemorates the ninety-first anniversary of the fall of Constantinople in a declamation of 1544. CR 11.641–7. Ottoman incursions of recent memory are a warning of God’s wrath and a call to repentance. ² In a preface to a 1541 edition of his works, Melanchthon describes the impact Agricola’s dialectic had on his formative years. MBW 2780. For further context of the writing and publication of Erotemata Dialectices, see Philip Melanchthon, The Dialectical Questions: Erotemata Dialectices, trans. Jeanne Fahnestock (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 1–27. ³ Prayer was a central theme of Melanchthon’s thought and practice, of increasing importance throughout his life. The years 1543 and 1544 saw an emphatic turn to prayer as subject and practice of theology. See Martin Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie bei Philipp Melanchthon: Das Gebet im Leben und in der Lehre des Reformators (Tübingen: Mohr, 1998).

180    under several different headings, but in this version of his theology textbook, he expanded his treatment of prayer and elevated it to a topical heading. A confluence of troubles seems to lie behind this notable turn to prayer: a nearly fatal sickness apparently brought on by public scandal over Philip of Hesse’s bigamy, a failed attempt at religious compromise with the emperor Charles V at the Diet of Regensburg in 1541, a severe injury to his hand in a road accident, Charles’s turn to military means to bring conformity, and Pope Paul III’s preparations for the Council of Trent, called in 1543 and finally convened in 1545. By the time of the Erotemata Dialectices there were pastoral and polemical grounds for his attention to prayer. Many found themselves displaced by war and were comparing their temporary or new church homes with memories of worship, speech, and practice in their former congregations. Who preserved the gospel message and the legacy of Luther, who had died in 1546? Whose speech and which speech kinds were proper to the gospel message? Which were alien? How did a refugee in a turbulent and uncertain time recognize the true church?⁴ For his part, Melanchthon determined prayer to be the supreme Christian virtue and the mark of the true Christian community, and in a 1544 oration on prayer he urged the study of Homeric prayers as a way of distinguishing Christian from heathenish prayer. Distressed by the calamities of the age and tasked with the encouragement of the church, he characteristically turned to speech as a means of teaching doctrine and discerning the truth. Recognizing Christian prayer was not a doctrinal issue alone but required a clear discrimination of utterance, ethos, and voice—in other words, a right dividing of the word. Reading Homer contributed vitally to this exercise of discerning voices. The methods are largely the same as I have been describing throughout the book, and with one exception my illustrations of Homer exegesis are not from this era, but their theological application becomes clearer by comparison with declamations and other writings of this late period, particularly Melanchthon’s writings on prayer and penitence. The first illustration is found in an unlikely place: Melanchthon’s and Winshemius’s divergent teaching of the pseudo-Homeric mock-heroic poem Βατραχομυομαχία, the Battle of

⁴ Some theologians, including former students of Melanchthon, were quite certain and vocal about these matters, refusing to compromise on any matters of doctrine or practice. Some took advantage of the chaotic geopolitical situation to draw some strict and very definite lines that excluded Melanchthon and others who had returned to Wittenberg. And so there was an urgent need to discern the particular marks of the Christian, addressed both in pastoral and in polemical contexts: to meet the needs of the troubled or uncertain laity, and to respond to the assaults of some belligerent faculty.

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the Frogs and Mice. This ludic short poem was put to high-minded use in Wittenberg, where its attribution to Homer was defended on grounds of its Homeric ethos and divine inspiration. It illustrates in nuce the practices applied to the much larger and more complex Homeric poem (the Iliad and the Odyssey), as well as the practical discriminations that could be applied immediately to hearing the utterances of Scripture and engaging in the psychomachia between law and gospel on the threshold of prayer. It is worthy of our attention, convenient both for its brevity and because it was the subject of varying interpretations in Wittenberg, which may reflect a development in Melanchthon’s thought, a divergence of his and Winshemius’s thought, or a combination of both.⁵ A second illustration is found in Melanchthon’s printed commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid. Commenting on a passage in which Jupiter is described as being troubled in concern for mankind, Melanchthon glosses it as a “foreign place,” convenient for the narration of the poem but alien to Roman theology. The judgment, conveniently on a point of theology, illustrates the close operations of eloquence in establishing the “commonplaces” of doctrine. In this late period, reading Homer in Wittenberg was no act of literary piety or prostration before a well-wrought urn, but a training ground for spiritual warfare. Despite its superficial resemblance to formalism, rhetorical reading had as its object judgment and its corollary, eloquence. Right judgment, discriminating between the adversarial law and the consolatory gospel, was the prelude to right prayer. Prudence and eloquence—these could not be had independently of God’s grace, but with God’s grace both admitted of exercise, and the Homeric poem made for excellent training ground in both.

A Universal Priesthood of Readers Reading Homer in Wittenberg was not academic, at least not in the limited way that academic concerns are often segregated from real life. For Melanchthon the academy was vitally connected to the well-being of both church and commonwealth, a belief articulated in his correspondence and oratory, and one that informed his return from exile to Wittenberg in 1547 to

⁵ In an illuminating article on readings of Sophocles in Wittenberg, Micha Lazarus has traced a development in Wittenberg interpretations of Sophocles (centrally Oedipus Rex) and demonstrated Winshemius’s instrumentality in that development. There is a striking parallel in varying interpretations of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, discussed more fully below. “Tragedy at Wittenberg: Sophocles in Reformation Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 73 (2020): 33–77.

182    reestablish the university.⁶ More like Odysseus than Aeneas in this respect, he had no uncertainty about where “home” was. “Home is where my colleagues are,” he wrote in an admirable flourish of nostalgia.⁷ And although he attributed the power of the church and the stability of the commonwealth ultimately to God alone, he believed that God used schools and universities in a special way to preserve gospel teaching. Among Luther’s most impactful critiques of the Roman Church was his attack on the artificial, institutional barriers separating the clergy from the laity. He rejected priestly and religious ordination (vows) as a sacrament, and he drew on 1 Peter 2:9, among other places in Scripture, to argue the “universal priesthood of believers.”⁸ This was a doctrinal challenge of great political and cultural significance, with lasting consequences for Western civilization. The Roman Catholic division of the clergy and laity was the basis of many social and sacred divisions, including the celebration of the mass. By the late medieval period, the cup was generally reserved for the clergy and withheld from the laity, who celebrated the mass by partaking of the bread only, or even by adoring the elements and partaking of neither. Luther’s doctrine took aim at this and other divisions in the body of Christ. There were right divisions to be made, but the division between the laity and the clergy was not one of them. Parallel to Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of believers in the church, Melanchthon taught in the university context what we might call a “priesthood of teachers,” a non-sacramental but nonetheless sacred office of teaching. As we have seen, God’s providence is manifest in the order of the Homeric poem, but it is also reflected in the vocation of some to be teachers of the poem, and the investing of them with a specially appointed teaching office. Analogous to the distinctive calling and authority of preachers of the word, teachers had a special authority and responsibility in applying the liberal arts to the reading of poetry. A universal priesthood of teachers is in evidence wherever we see Melanchthon describe the priestly office in terms of teaching, and the teaching office in terms of sacrificing.⁹ ⁶ See for example the 1543 declamation entitled Oratio de necessaria coniunctione scholarum cum ministerio evangelii. CR 11.606–18. ⁷ “Nunc mihi patria est, ubicunque ille coetus est virorum doctissimorum et integerrimorum, in quo vixi toto iam annos, quorum opera literae in his regionibus late sparsae sunt” (That is my homeland, wherever is found that gathering of virtuous and learned men, among whom I have lived for so many years, and whose writings are dispersed widely in these lands). MBW 4803, MBW.T 17.51. ⁸ See his letter “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation,” one of the great Reformation treatises of 1520. ⁹ He developed these comparisons in Greek epigrams, including CR 10.549 (no. 134) and CR 10.552 (no. 144), as well as in a lengthy Latin verse epistle entitled Collatio de Impositione manuum in dedicando Sacerdote, et dedicanda victima (“A Comparison of the Laying on of Hands in Dedicating

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Of great interest is a 1545 declamation on the word ὀρθοτομεῖν (to rightly cut) which Paul uses in the second letter to Timothy (2 Tim. 2:15): “Study to present yourself acceptable before God, a worker without cause for shame, rightly dividing the word of truth.” The frequent English rendering of ὀρθοτομεῖν as “to rightly handle” echoes the Vulgate and sanitizes Paul’s image of cutting, which Melanchthon understands in a metaphorical sense: the preacher is to rightly carve (secare) the word of God, as if administering a sacrifice.¹⁰ In the declamation, delivered by the theologian George Major, Melanchthon develops from this single word ὀρθοτομεῖν an allegorical reading of animal sacrifice in the Old Testament.¹¹ It is a combative interpretation, which Melanchthon directs first against those who take a dim view of learning, including the Anabaptists and others who claim direct revelation from God without study. “When he commands him to rightly divide teaching, Paul enjoins considerable learning, diligence, judgment, and even art.”¹² But it is not only the unlearned against whom Melanchthon directs the speech. Equally grievous are those who butcher the word of God through pretended learning (like Origen in his allegories) or through false subtleties (like the scholastic theologians). These do positive harm through their false teachings and interpretations. Melanchthon describes the division of the word of God in three complementary ways. First is logical-rhetorical. Learning, study, diligence, and art manifest themselves in operations that closely resemble the offices of logic and rhetoric. Elaborating Paul’s exhortation to Timothy, he writes that the word is rightly divided whenever “its parts are rightly distributed, severally proposed in a suitable manner, and harmoniously reconciled with those subjects about which the divine voice is speaking.”¹³ Second, the most important distinction to be made in the reading of the word (the “apostolic utterance,” sermo apostolicus) is that between law and gospel. Since Luther’s treatises of 1520, law and gospel had been the primary, complementary lenses of interpreting Scripture in Wittenberg. Melanchthon had defined them as principles of

the Priest and in Dedicating the Sacrificial Offering”), CR 10.572–5 (no. 186). The latter was intended to be included with Melanchthon’s treatise entitled “On Ordination,” which never appeared. See MBW 2669. ¹⁰ Compare the Vulgate rendering: “recte tractantem verbum veritatis.” Sacrifice is also implied by Paul’s use of the word “to present” (παραστῆσαι), which could mean presenting offerings or sacrifices at altars, as in Rom. 12:1. ¹¹ “De verbo ὀρθοτομεῖν,” in CR 11.684–9. ¹² “At Paulus magnam eruditionem, diligentiam, iudicium, denique artem requirit, cum iubet recte secari doctrinam.” CR 11.685. ¹³ “recte distribui partes, et singulas apte proponi, et concinne ad eas res accommodari, de quibus vox divina loquitur.” CR 11.685.

184    reading Scripture in the 1521 Loci Communes, and Luther referred to them in his response to Erasmus on the freedom of the will in 1525. Failure to divide between law and gospel, Melanchthon writes, leads to chaos.¹⁴ Thirdly, Melanchthon illustrates the word ὀρθοτομεῖν by comparison with Old Testament ritual: For I think this word was taken from the office of the priests, who carved the parts of the victims. They were not licensed to carve rashly as they saw fit. But God would have them discard some parts, burn up others in an offering to him, and reserve others for the priests. Clearly there was an art of dividing the sacrifice.¹⁵

He proceeds to interpret these parts figuratively, for their sacred meanings are open not only to the prophets but also to the pious and learned, though some have erred in their foolish allegorizing. The primary reason of these rites is a practical one (utilitatis rationem). The priests reserve the most substantial portions (shoulder and ribs) for themselves and burn what is least substantial (the fat and tail), for God wishes the priests to be nourished by the sacrifice. Then there is a figurative meaning. The priesthood is like the breast of counsel and beast of burden (baiulus) to the people, governing them with wisdom and bearing their sorrows and troubles. These rites are a reminder to the priesthood of their duties, which are to teach and labor and suffer, and these duties point ultimately to Christ’s sacrifice as the great high priest and the true type of all teachers. The unsubstantial parts, those to be burned, represent the mortal nature of the priesthood subject to tribulation and death. Instead of earthly glory, power, and kingdom, teachers can expect sorrows, yet their consolation is that sacrificial victims do not fall by chance or accidentally but by God’s will. And so they may rejoice when called to suffer likewise. From a single word of Paul to Timothy, Melanchthon thus describes the relation of study to the ministry, and the sacred relation of training in the liberal arts to the office of the ministry. Rightly dividing is not to separate oneself from the unlearned in a show of ingenious readings, and thus to cut them off from the grace of God. Rather, it is to make a philosophically and morally responsible proclamation of the word of God, to foster right prayer, and to bear the burdens of the church, the single body of Christ. “For God ¹⁴ CR 11.686. ¹⁵ “Arbitror enim sumptum esse verbum a sacerdotum officio, qui secabant hostiarum membra, nec enim licebat temere partiri, ut cuique videbatur: sed Deus alia membra abiici, alia sibi inflammari, alia attribui sacerdotibus voluit. Plane ars erat dividere hostiam.” CR 11.687.

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wishes the teaching of his gospel to be carried abroad, that he might be honored and rightly invoked. He wishes this teaching to shine in our confession and the diligence of our behavior.”¹⁶ That discipline and sense of divine providence, leading to right prayer, begins in the teaching of the liberal arts. Only two years following this declamation, on the other side of the capitulation of Wittenberg, on the other side of his flight and return, Melanchthon would return to the priestly image of “rightly dividing the word” to introduce a new textbook on dialectic, the 1547 Erotemata Dialectices. In a prefatory letter to this work addressed to Johann Camerarius, son of his dear friend Joachim, he compares the study of dialectic to the priestly office.¹⁷ Citing the Pauline phrase “rightly dividing the word,” Melanchthon rehearses the figurative reading of the carving of the sacrifice and then draws the comparison with dialectic: “Just as the sacrifices were once to be carved in a certain way, in the same way the heavenly oracles must be distributed into parts. Now since the right way [of distributing God’s word into parts] is suitably handed down by the art of dialectic alone (sola dialectica [!]), we may say that this art is like a knife to this carving.”¹⁸ But dialectic is necessary not only for the ordained priesthood and the ministry of the word. It is necessary for the laity, even in daily offices such as prayer. Indeed, prayer is the routine exercise that Melanchthon next uses to illustrate the utility of dialectic in practical theology. For each earnest prayer entails “a fierce contest, when we dispute within ourselves, whether and for what reason we are certain to be accepted and our inexpressible groans and petitions (gemitus et vota) heard.”¹⁹ On the one hand our fears and crimes accuse us, making us doubt that we will be accepted or heard. To this accusing voice must be opposed the gospel word, which reassures us, no matter how sullied we are, that we are accepted on account of the Son of God. “This is the learned disputation, in which both the learned and unlearned must engage. And so even the general public must be trained in the rudiments of dialectic, lest they stray from God in the disputation.”²⁰ ¹⁶ “Vult circumferri doctrinam Evangelii, ut agnoscatur et vere invocetur: vult hanc lucere in confessione nostra et diligentia regendorum morum.” CR 11.689. ¹⁷ MBW 4875. ¹⁸ “Ut autem hostiae certo modo secandae erant, ita certa ratione sententiae coelestes distribuendae sunt, cuius rei via cum in sola dialectica proprie tradatur, haec ars tanquam culter huius partitionis existimari poterit.” MBW.T 17.151. ¹⁹ “Accenditur et in omni seria invocatione difficile certamen, cum disputamus, an et cur certo recipiamur et nostri gemitus ac vota exaudiantur.” MBW 4875, MBW.T 17.151. ²⁰ “Haec est erudita disputatio, de qua necesse est pariter doctos et indoctos cogitare. Quod ut fiat, etiam populus dialectice erudiendus est, ne in hac disputatione a deo aberret.” MBW 4875, MBW.T 17.151–2.

186    It is for this reason that Melanchthon wrote the Erotemata Dialectices, not an advanced or complete dialectic, but a primer, an instrument in the hands of teacher and student (it takes the form of questions and answers), and equipping the laity (populus) for rightly dividing the word of God into its commands and promises, and so rightly hearing and praying law and gospel, overwhelming the accusing voice with the liberating voice of God. To turn to God in prayer is therefore to defeat, with the help of dialectic, the adversarial voice and to convince oneself of the promises and favor of God. This victory cannot be won without the Holy Spirit, but Melanchthon also recognizes that the battle is fought by verbal means. Where there is no right division between law and gospel, there are consequences both internal and external. Internally, the consequences are grave: doubt, oppressive guilt, and ultimately unbelief. Externally, chaos in doctrine ensues. The latter problem is central to a contemporary declamation on prayer, which makes an explicit claim for reading Homeric prayer as a means of recognizing the distinctives of Christian doctrine.

By Their Prayers Will You Know Them Contemporary with his declamation on the verb ὀρθοτομεῖν, Melanchthon wrote a declamation on prayer, and his teaching on prayer in this critical period illustrates the theological significance of the liberal arts for practical theology.²¹ In this declamation, he specifically invokes Homer and urges the study of Homer’s prayers in order that students might discern the distinctives of Christian prayer.²² (This encouragement may lie behind the annotation of nearly seventy prayers in the Wittenberg scholia. See Chapter 5.) Homer’s are the best of heathen prayers, and they reflect a universal inborn response to calamity and distress. But they have a profile that contrasts with the profile of Christian prayer, and comparison of the two kinds of prayer is salutary for the believer.²³

²¹ Martin Jung focuses his study of Melanchthon’s lifelong devotion to prayer to the years 1543–4, decisive years in which prayer took center stage in Melanchthon’s theological writings, including a new edition of the Loci Communes. Building on treatment of prayer under multiple headings in prior editions of the Loci Communes, this edition devotes a heading to prayer for the first time. Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 230. ²² CR 11.659–68. Parenthetical references in the text are to column number in this edition. ²³ Melanchthon highly valued Homeric prayers, which satisfied his doctrine of prayer in this, that they were basically petitionary. Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 246–7.

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In De dei invocatione Melanchthon makes the bold claim that prayer is the chief of the Christian virtues, and the mark of a Christian. True prayer is a means by which one can perceive the true Christian and diagnose one’s own faith (660–1). On the eve of the opening of the Council of Trent, perhaps Melanchthon foresaw new challenges to the evangelical movement, and a need for the literate public to make judgments about the truth. Whatever threat or need he perceived, he characteristically turned to speech as a means of teaching doctrine and discerning the truth. De dei invocatione illustrates a theology of speech, one that takes a speech genre as a means of practicing and reflecting on theology. And like De verbo ὀρθοτομεῖν it suggests a vital application of the literary judgment cultivated in reading the Homeric poem. It opens with a critique of those who, in the name of purity, would throw out all acts of public worship, foolishly discarding “the true exercises of piety along with ceremonies” (659). Among these exercises and virtues, prayer is the greatest (660), and its gestures, including groaning, weeping, and wailing, are not to be despised. Christian prayer is characterized by pathos, a term from the rhetorical tradition (and one that occurs often in the Wittenberg scholia, though not necessarily in comments on prayers). Melanchthon defends an expressive, emotional form of prayer that is responsive to the natural and political calamities that reveal divine judgment and call for repentance. He cites Jesus’s violent weeping and shedding of tears in Gethsemane as exemplary, comparing Jesus to a πρωταγωνιστής of a divine tragedy (661).²⁴ He rejects a pagan prohibition of “pitiful displays” (tragoediae) in the worship of God, prohibited because such displays are characteristic of war captives. On the contrary, tears, groaning, complaint, and wailing are becoming of Christians, because they recognize their spiritual bondage to far worse enemies. He writes, “And so I acknowledge that I do invoke God with these pitiful displays of war captives, and with great sorrow, groans, and tears, being aware of my miseries, and of divine wrath.”²⁵ Melanchthon thus justifies gestures by the same standards applied in the evaluation of speech and act in the Homeric poem: ethos and decorum. But since calamities are universal, and Homer and others attest to a universal seeking of divine aid in calamity, tears alone are no distinguishing mark of Christian prayer. Prayer expresses theology, and Melanchthon looks first to competing doctrines of God to differentiate Christian and Homeric

²⁴ Cf. the prefatory letter to the 1543/4 Loci Theologici. CR 21.603–4. ²⁵ “Ego igitur fateor, me his captivorum tragoediis sensu aerumnarum mearum, et irae divinae, et magno dolore, gemitu et lachrymis Deum invocare.” CR 11.661.

188    prayer.²⁶ First, in the epics, Homer portrays the gods as but limited, secondary causes of things, and Melanchthon cites as evidence of this view Zeus’s boast in the Iliad that not all the gods could compel him out of heaven, though they hung a golden chain from heaven and tugged with all their might (Il. 8.18–27). Second, like Callimachus, who was also famous for his Greek hymns, Homer says nothing in the Homeric Hymns of divine inspiration comparable to the gift promised as part of the new covenant: the pouring out of a spirit of grace and supplication (663, cf. Zechariah 12:10). So Homer’s gods manifest neither the power nor the promises of the biblical God. With the other poets, Homer does show that humans are driven to prayer by necessity, but he cannot show the right way to pray because his theology is deficient, or rather his gods are deficient. Homer’s prayers are a foil for true Christian prayer, which stems from a right knowledge of God’s power and his promises (in terms of topical invention, his ability and motive). De dei invocatione thus makes explicit claims for the theological significance of reading Homer’s prayers in a Christian context. Preeminent among pagan prayer, Homeric prayer instructs in the wrong way to pray: without faith in an all-powerful God who gave prayer as a means to express faith in his promises. “So distinguish your prayer from heathen, Jewish, and Muslim prayers, so that you might speak to the true God, not to false divinities, and truly affirm why he wishes to be plied with prayers (invocari et flecti).”²⁷ Christian prayer reflects true belief in God’s revelation of himself in Scripture and through the Holy Spirit, and it expresses this belief in characteristic speech genres. These are law and gospel, or more accurately the commands and promises of God. Prayer is obedience to the command of God to pray, expressing faith in his revelation of himself in Scripture. So it is firstly a response, a speech act of obedience.²⁸ Secondly, true prayer rehearses the promises, a notable difference from pagan repetitions (βαττολογία) that stem from uncertainty.²⁹ “We must in no way tolerate such doubt, which flees

²⁶ On Melanchthon’s identification of prayer with doctrine, see Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 233. ²⁷ “Seiungito tuam invocationem ab Ethnica, Iudaica, Mahometica, ut verum Deum, non commenticia numina alloquaris, et vere statuas, cur et invocari et flecti velit.” CR 11.664. ²⁸ Melanchthon’s comparison between a slave’s fear (timor servilis) and child’s fear (timor filialis) in De poenitentia further illustrates the difference between pagan and Christian responses to the terrors of divine judgment. CR 23.650. ²⁹ Cf. Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 119.

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from and shows contempt for God in the pagan style (ethnico more).”³⁰ In addition to these speech genres (or acts), there is a figure of speech characteristic of Christian prayer: boldness or outspokenness (παρ᾽ῥησία).³¹ Citing Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians to approach God boldly in prayer, Melanchthon commends confidence and outspokenness.³² Comparing the certainty of God’s favor and promise with the clear and present calamities afflicting the commonwealth and the church, the Christian will boldly approach God in earnest prayer. In the peroration, the speaker proceeds to a recitation of the miseries experienced in Christian Europe and beyond, recaps a theology of prayer, and then invites the audience to join him, with heart and voice (et linguis et pectorum pietate), in an exemplary prayer, a “common prayer” (communem precationem). It is by far the longest of the prayers in the declamations, most of which are a third of its length. If the prayer was spoken in unison by the assembly, it must have been available in copies, perhaps printed for the occasion. That the prayer was a congregational prayer, spoken in unison, is indicated by the imperative pronuntiate, “say” or “proclaim,” as well as the speaker’s reference to the “voices” of the audience. This public, audible prayer works as a refutation of the view rejected at the beginning, that in order to eliminate ceremonies, one had to go all the way and eliminate organized, public exercises of worship. Common prayers like the one that concludes De dei invocatione are the “true drills of piety.” That metaphor is a recurrent one in declamations of this era, when Melanchthon introduced prayer into academic oratory.³³ Furthermore, his defense of prayer in the academic assembly coincides with an increasing characterization of the academic assembly as a military cohort (exercitus). The schools are the cohorts of the studious (discentium agmina), places of scholarly drills (exercitia scholastica) and literary battalions (literaria ³⁰ “Huic dubitationi fugitanti et contemnenti Deum ethnico more, nequaquam indulgendum est.” CR 11.665. Elsewhere Melanchthon characterizes heathen prayer by its doubt. Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 245n216. ³¹ This threefold argument of the true nature of prayer (obedience, faith in the promise, boldness) may be compared with several places. 1) Melanchthon’s contemporary treatment of prayer in the Loci Communes. Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 131–42. 2) His threefold discussion of penitence in De poenitentia, written in 1548 in response to an attack by Flacius Illyricus and first printed in 1549. CR 23.647–66, Mel.dt 2.51–85. The true teaching of penitence is a “summa” of the entire gospel (CR 23.647). 3) His argument of three reasons to pray in a 1552 declamation entitled De precatione. CR 11.983–92, Mel.dt 2.110–23. ³² Eph. 3:12. The citation of this verse is significant because of its context. Paul is persuading the Ephesian church that though they were once outsiders (ἔθνη or gentiles), they are now insiders (Israel), belonging to the church of Christ. ³³ For prayers in the declamations, and the turn from a third-person invocation of God to a direct address in 1543, see Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 113–26.

190    militia, togata militia).³⁴ Like a commander, the speaker in the assembly must employ emotion and histrionics to accomplish one of the main ends of the assembly: exhorting the young men to study of the disciplines.³⁵ In the following sections, I illustrate two ways in which reading Homer and other poets might equip the Christian soul for this battle. First, the Homeric poem gave students practice in discriminating between character types and types of speech suitable to each. Attuned to the laws of decorum and oeconomia, students were better prepared to arbitrate between law and gospel when they attempted to pray. Second, the Homeric poem in its integrity described boundaries in which one could determine what belongs to a text and what appears interpolated. Within a text, characteristic speech and gesture are key parts of determining loci communes, doctrines common to the text, and sniffing out loci alieni.

The Battle of the Frogs and Mice and Practical Theology An application of dialectic to practical theology, reading the Homeric poem prepared students to discern between the voices of law and gospel. It’s not an obvious learning outcome, to borrow the language of modern syllabus design. Homer’s boastful, taunting, insulting speakers seem a far cry from the commands and promises of God. Their railing words sound more appropriate for contending with flesh and blood, not with the principalities, powers, world rulers of this present darkness, and spiritual hosts of wickedness listed in Paul’s catalogue of armies in Ephesians 6:12. True, Jesus said, “let your conversation be seasoned with salt,” and there is salty language to be found in the Iliad and the Odyssey. But Thersites’s vile insults, Polyphemus’s blasphemies, and the suitors’ craven threats—these seem hardly the obvious place to look for training theologians, much less a literate priesthood of believers. And yet it was precisely in hearing the concrete, impersonated, motivated language of recognizable characters and character types such as Thersites that one might develop the skills to discern between the premier speech kinds of Scripture. Like the Homeric poem, Scripture had its own style and voice, and recognizing this, becoming familiar with it, was instrumental in teaching right doctrine: affirming a true doctrine (like the doctrine of God’s providence) and ³⁴ These phrases are found in CR 11.675, 569, 555. ³⁵ “I don’t consider it to be a useless practice, when military leaders would rouse their troops not just with speech, but with the horn” (Nec opinor morem Ducum prorsus inutilem esse, qui non solum oratione, sed etiam tuba milites exuscitant). CR 11.556.

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suppressing the false (for instance Epicurean or Stoic teachings). So far my focus has been on the unities of Scripture and the Homeric poem, but in turning to a practical theology that ministers to a conscience turned against itself, I must address the plurality of speech kinds in these same texts. There are times when a penitent sinner needs to recognize some of Scripture as the condemning law and other Scripture as the reassuring gospel. This implies a discriminating reading, and a text that can be parceled and distributed as audience or occasion requires. In the same way the Homeric poem also illustrates a plurality of parts, speakers, and motives. Like a sacrificial animal, the Homeric poem has sinews and joints, corresponding to the speech units of the poem and their ligaments, and reading it rightly implies carving it rightly. The dialectical training supplied in the Homeric poem is illustrated in miniature in the pseudo-Homeric Battle of the Frogs and Mice. This mockheroic narration in 294 hexameters records the brave words and derring-do of the terrestrial and amphibian tribes, who cross swords in a cataclysmic war that ends only through the intervention of Zeus, a deus-ex-machina closure device that invites comparison with tragic poetry. Its attribution to Homer, no longer accepted, was widely though not universally accepted in the sixteenth century, when it was routinely collected in editions of Homer’s works, as in Aldus’s octavo edition of 1504 and subsequent reprintings. Melanchthon defended the Battle as an authentic part of the Homeric corpus. In undated lectures preserved in an edition of 1542 and reprinted numerous times thereafter, he wrote that “it is clear from the work itself, that it was a rare man and of exceedingly great judgment” who wrote this short poem, “sweetest of songs.”³⁶ Despite its diminutive size and laughable subject matter, then, the Battle of the Frogs and Mice was no holiday, no mere recreation to spice up the study of Greek. According to the Preceptor, it exhibits the same prudential description of character and the same moral wisdom as the Iliad and Odyssey, and he undoubtedly taught it to prime students for reading these. These virtues, and ³⁶ “. . . hoc melitissimum carmen . . . Constat enim ex ipso opere, quendam eximium et multo maximi ingenii hominem fuisse, a quocunque profectum sit hoc poemation.” CR 18.141–2. Some of these reiterate closely the language of the Gasser notes. It is uncertain when, in between 1523 and 1542, they date, though there is enough verbal variance with the Gasser notes to suggest that they do not stem from common lectures. The notes printed in 1542 appear to be advanced, and they do not continue the morphological focus of the 1523 notes. Perhaps they were updated by Franz Burchardt, one of Melanchthon’s successors in the professorship of Greek. Vitus Winshemius, professor of Greek from 1541, carried on the tradition of teaching the mock-epic poem. In the Columbia Homers, which probably record Winshemius’s own notes or his lectures in the 1550s, the poem is annotated with the same attention, and with many of the same terms, as the Homeric poem. Together, notes on this poem comprise a corpus representing three decades of Reformation in Wittenberg.

192    perhaps too its antiwar message, account for its otherwise surprising stature in Wittenberg and beyond in the sixteenth century.³⁷ When we consider the comparable neglect of the Homeric Hymns, which after 1518 do not appear to have played much of a role in Greek pedagogy in Wittenberg, this attention to the Battle of the Frogs and Mice is all the more striking. In June 1523, Achilles Pirmin Gasser, whose Wittenberg notes on the Iliad and Odyssey were considered in Chapter 3, took down Melanchthon’s instruction on the Battle of the Frogs and Mice.³⁸ Consistent with the Iliad and Odyssey notes, the majority of these early notes attend to the meaning and morphology of Greek words, as one might expect of an elementary Greek lesson. There are also metrical notes on some occasional exceptions to the spondees and dactyls of the hexameter line, and a couple of geographical and mythological glosses. In addition to these notes of a grammatical sort, there are indications of the exegetical reading that would be more fully realized in the 1542 printed notes. The first such note is on line 24, the beginning of a “Thrasonical” boast by the mouse Psicharpax (“Morselpinch”): Just as Plautus portrays his Pyrgopolinices, and Terence his Thraso, so Homer suggestively portrays the haughtiness, arrogance, and violence of his [Psicharpax’s] tribe. Consequently the principle of decorum, and the oeconomia of the plot, require that straightway the Mouse give a fullthroated hymn in praise of himself.³⁹

The note attributes to the passage significance in the oeconomia of the whole poem, being an appropriate representation of character in relation to what follows. It must be said that it seems easier, in the case of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, to take into account the reason of the whole poem, consisting as it does of fewer than three hundred lines, less than a typical book of the Iliad or ³⁷ Jessica Wolfe credits Erasmus and Melanchthon with raising the profile of Homer by means of their scholarship and their particular brands of political theology. Through his commentary in the Adages, including hundreds of adages based on parcels of Homer’s two epics, Erasmus campaigned against the militarism and vainglory of the era, drawing on Homer’s portrayal of battle to argue the merits of peace. Delving further into the Homeric oeuvre, Melanchthon continued the campaign against strife in his teaching of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice. Homer and the Question of Strife from Erasmus to Hobbes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 116–20. ³⁸ BAV Stamp. Pal. IV.1061.2 (hereafter BAV 3). He copied the notes on a copy of the text printed in Leipzig by Valentin Schumann in January 1523. ³⁹ “Quemadmodum Pyrgopolinicem Plautus, Therentius Thrasonem finxit, ita Homerus eius generis fastum, arrogantiam et violentiam adumbrat; propterea decori ratio et oeconomia argumenti postulat ut statim suas laudes pleno ore decantat Mus.” BAV 3, sig. A2v, note on Batr. 24. The same remark is recorded, nearly verbatim, in the notes printed in 1542. CR 18.144, note on Batr. 25.

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Odyssey. But its brevity and compactness of plot might have been the virtue of the mock-epic poem in a pedagogical setting where the instructor was attempting to teach habits of literary judgment: discernment of speech units and their relationship to other speech units, including the whole poem. Early in the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, then, hardly after the prologue and during the exposition, Melanchthon identifies a testimony to the meaning and reason of the whole composition. Consistent with his distinctive rhetorical theology, a theology of speeches not signs, he identifies a speech-in-character as evidence of oeconomia. Through the speech of Psicharpax, Homer prepares or anticipates the entire drama that will unfold from the rash words and deeds of the mouse. That is, Psicharpax’s “haughtiness, arrogance, and violence” prepare the reader to accept and perhaps expect the reaction of his tribe following his unfortunate demise. In this literary economy, his deeds too implicate his tribe. “The poet gives warning that those boastful types (Thrasones istos) are practically heedless,” reads a note at line 65, when Psicharpax accepts the frog Psusignathus’s invitation to ride on his back across the pond, and the whole sorry episode is summed up in the gnomic device, “experience is the teacher of fools.”⁴⁰ In this way, Psicharpax has the misfortune to be the standard bearer for speech and action that will lead to the universal conflagration that is the battle of the frogs and mice. If Psicharpax’s machismo anticipates the start of the war, the contrary mild manners of the amphibians anticipate its conclusion: the intervention of Zeus to deliver the frogs from the aggressors. (The commonplace of Zeus’s concern for mortals is the subject of the next section.) Even in the delicate matter of arming the pond-dwellers, Homer observes decorum, for contrary to the manufactured quality of the mice’s arms, he has the frogs arm themselves in implements of a domestic sort.⁴¹ Then, after a digression in Olympus, where the gods look on as if spectators of an amusing scene, Homer returns to the battlefield in order to further demarcate the tribes. Lines 200ff. are a “lovely description of battle, in which he most exquisitely places before the eyes the difference between the two armies.”⁴² This general remark is replaced in the later notes by a fuller explanation of what kind of attention Melanchthon requires of his students in these combat scenes: “These are actions (gestus) by ⁴⁰ “Monet poeta fere incautos esse Thrasones istos.” “Eventus stultorum magister.” BAV 3, sig. A3r, notes on Batr. 65, 70. Cf. CR 18.147, notes on Batr. 66, 70. ⁴¹ “Note that he preserves the principle of decorum by the homely quality of their weapons” (Observa decorum esse servatum in armis domesticis). BAV 3, sig. B1r. Cf. CR 18.150, note on Batr. 161. ⁴² “Pulchra pugnae descriptio qua varietas utrorumque exercitum ob oculos ponitur elegantissime.” BAV 3, sig. B2r.

194    which Homer characteristically varies his descriptions of combat. Otherwise they had been a little harder to discern. Therefore you must diligently note, who is engaged by whom, who is killed by whom, and for what reason (a qua occasione). In time you will discern the matter more nearly, even as if before your eyes.”⁴³ Where others see indiscriminate carnage, the judicious reader, trained in the right dividing of the word, sees the unfolding of a well-arranged narrative. Everywhere in Melanchthon’s notes, as in the ancient scholia, Homer the poet is credited with writing a poem that allows for and even trains this comprehensive vision. But unlike the ancient commentators, Melanchthon credits God as the ultimate author. The moral of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, articulated in Melanchthon’s prefatory notes, is “that the harm that they intend for others is frequently turned back on the head of the authors of sedition.”⁴⁴ “Sedition” is not the most obvious description of the action in the mock-epic poem, which rather tells the story of heroic revenge: an ill-conceived and overblown reprisal for accidental muricide. But Melanchthon abstracts from the particulars of the poem to paint in general terms its strife, a lopsided and unholy battle between a peaceful, domestic tribe and a belligerent, haughty tribe. Having distinguished the tribes in this moral way, drawing on stock character types of Roman comedy, he then locates in the fighting words and dread deeds of the mice the seeds of civil strife.⁴⁵ Notes on the Battle of the Frogs and Mice in the Plimpton Homers do not depend on Melanchthon’s earlier notes. There are occasional correspondences in notes indicating rhetorical genres, including propositio and amplificatio, but such were characteristic of annotation in the period, and were even printed in the margins of some editions of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice. The signal correspondence between the two is the characterization of Zeus’s speech to the council of gods as a παρέκβασις or digression.⁴⁶ Along with ethos and pathos, this is one of the literary terms from the ancient scholia that Winshemius ⁴³ “Gestus sunt, quibus ubique Homerus descriptiones pugnarum variare solet. Alioqui paulo obscuriores essent futurae. Itaque diligenter observandum, qui a quo occupetur, a quo occidatur, et qua occasione; et futurum est, ut rem propius tanquam oculis subiectam cernas.” CR 18.152, note on Batr. 207. ⁴⁴ “. . . in caput plerumque autorum seditionis verti periculum, quod aliis moliebantur.” CR 18.143. ⁴⁵ This interpretation of the pseudo-Homeric Battle of the Frogs and Mice is not evident in the 1523 notes recorded by Gasser. It may reflect Melanchthon’s writings between 1525 and 1536 against the Anabaptists, that radical wing of the Protestant Reformation. In classical usage, “sedition” can mean in some contexts civil strife or general turbulence, but it has a more common usage to describe rebellion or uprising. It is in this common usage that Melanchthon uses the word frequently in his writings against the Anabaptists, whose activities and beliefs he presents as posing a great threat to the social and political order. ⁴⁶ CR 18.150, note on Batr. 168; ColUL 2, fol. 216b, note on Batr. 168.

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characteristically applies in his annotations, and it reflects his interest in the unity and arrangement of the Homeric poem. To mark a digression in a narrative is to imply a main narrative of some coherence, and it is that implication that Winshemius will develop in his own annotation of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice. Where Melanchthon observed in the poem a moral exemplum, Winshemius seems to have viewed it rather as a tragedy, and it is terms from literary criticism of ancient tragedy by which he rightly divides the poem in his lectures.⁴⁷ In addition to ἐπίτασις and καταστροφή, that is, rising action and reversal of fortune, he describes the action of the poem in terms of sinning or mistaking, evoking Aristotle’s use of ἁμαρτία in the Poetics.⁴⁸ On line 65, when the mouse rashly accepts the frog’s invitation, he writes, “There is error on both sides. But the mouse errs by recklessness.”⁴⁹ Later, on line 84, when the frog dives, Winshemius identifies his error: “he errs out of fear.”⁵⁰ It is a neater, more symmetrical assignment of blame than found in Melanchthon’s reading, who in order to derive a moral from the story refers to stock character types and sees in every circumstance opportunity for amplification or extenuation of fault.⁵¹ Winshemius is more inclined to attribute mistakes to accidents: “Adverse fortune is the occasion,” he writes of the unlucky appearance of a snake.⁵² The only indication of moral judgment in his reading is a comment on the outbreak of war: “Note that the frogs open the battle and suffer defeat.”⁵³ That the peaceful frogs drew first blood is a circumstance that had escaped Melanchthon’s careful notice. Winshemius’s non-judgmental reading allows him to focus on the plot construction of the narrative, its rising action and reversal, its mistakes and the ineluctable consequences of these. Tragic poetry and ancient criticism on tragedy supplied him with an apparatus for dividing the poem with respect to action. There is no separation of sheep and goats (or rather frogs and mice) here, only division of a narrative. The approach is consistent with the use of ancient literary criticism to describe the Homeric poem in the Plimpton ⁴⁷ Melanchthon’s moralizing reading of the mock-heroic poem is consistent with his moral interpretation of Greek tragedy from the 1530s, for which see Lazarus, “Tragedy at Wittenberg,” 45. In the 1540s, in response to adverse and uncertain developments on the political front, Vitus Winshemius developed a more nuanced and in some ways more satisfactory reading of Sophocles, significantly via a comparison of Greek tragedy with the (biblical) law and its offices. Ibid., 47–9. ⁴⁸ The notes ἐπίτασις and καταστροφή appear at Batr. 254 and 261. ColUL 2, fol. 218a. ⁴⁹ “Uterque peccat, hic temeritate.” ColUL 2, fol. 215a. ⁵⁰ “Peccat metu.” ColUL 2, fol. 215b. ⁵¹ See CR 18.150, note on Batr. 147. ⁵² “Occasio adversus casus.” ColUL 2, fol. 215a, note on Batr. 81. ⁵³ “Nota: ranae incipiunt pugnam et vincuntur.” ColUL 2, fol. 217a, note in lower margin on Batr. 202.

196    Homers, and it is consistent with a note that appears at the head of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice. This reads, “At first there were the epic poets such as Homer, then from these came the gnomic poets, from these the lyric poets, and from these the dramatic poets, the tragic and comic poets.”⁵⁴ The “Tragedy of the Frogs and Mice,” a title Winshemius might have given to the poem, pays tribute to its roots in heroic song through its construction and diction. Where Melanchthon argues a diversity of heroic voices, Winshemius argues a more uniform tragic voice. The Wittenberg scholia on the Battle of the Frogs and Mice are consistent with Winshemius’s reading of Sophocles from the 1540s. As Micha Lazarus has shown in a fascinating study, Winshemius developed in his Greek lectures in the 1540s an interpretation of Sophocles that set aside Melanchthon’s moralizing reading, according to which vices are punished in a terrifying and spectacular manner, for a more modest recognition of Sophocles’s tragic vision. The tragedies don’t answer to a logic of rewards and punishments but express eloquently, in Winshemius’s view, the pagan worldview and its concept of law without the gospel. Study of the tragedies contributes to one’s better recognition of and appreciation for the gospel. Melanchthon’s words in De dei invocatione tend to confirm and may build on Winshemius’s reading of Sophocles. In that oration, pitiful displays of emotion (tragoediae) are acknowledged to be common to Christian and pagan, but Christian tragoediae are distinguished by special marks like the promises of God and a free-spoken boldness.⁵⁵ A revised reading of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice in Wittenberg in the 1550s might have been a legacy of that formative rereading of Sophocles discovered by Lazarus. Winshemius’s reading of tragic unities in the Battle of the Frogs and Mice satisfies some tenets of Melanchthon’s dialectical theology. By highlighting the literary composition of the poem, it supplies a basis for inferring a providential, benevolent God who governs eloquence no less than the universe. Melanchthon’s reading goes further, seeing in the poem not only evidence of unity (in a Homeric not tragic quality) but also an illustration of competing dispositions and speech kinds appropriate to them. The race of mice, being disposed to haughtiness and violence, squares off with the race of frogs, disposed to peace and a domestic life. The resolution of the conflict reflects not just a formal device but as it were a foreordained divine intervention that is ⁵⁴ “Primum epici ut Homerus deinde gnomici hinc lyrici hinc scenici tragici comici.” ColUL 2, fol. 214a. ⁵⁵ In De poenitentia, Melanchthon characterizes heathen prayer as afflicted by a “wretched discourse: God does not hear sinners” (haec tristis concio: Peccatores Deus non audit). CR 23.664.

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legible even in the speeches of the protagonists. We know how this is going to turn out if we know something about the divine being who presides (Homer’s portrait of a Zeus who cares) and compare carefully the competing dialects of the combatants. Trained in this way, a priesthood of readers is perhaps better prepared to arbitrate between the divided, hostile voices in the tribunal of their conscience, “their thoughts meanwhile accusing them or even defending them” (Rom. 2:15).

A Foreign Place of Theology in Virgil’s Aeneid Dialectical training might be used finally to discern what teachings belong to a text and what teachings are impostors or brought in from somewhere else. In a cultural landscape where purity of doctrine was policed and disputed with sometimes violent consequences, such a faculty of discernment was not to be despised. (Shortly after Luther’s death, especially as a consequence of his negotiations with Maurice of Saxony, Melanchthon himself became the object of attack by several censorious, “authentic” Lutherans, who included among their most vocal number some of his own students.) In his annotations on Virgil, which first appeared in print around the time of the first so-called “antinomian controversy,” which was instigated by Melanchthon’s friend and student Johann Agricola (to whom he dedicated a rhetoric in 1521), Melanchthon argued a central point of difference between the theologies of Homer and Virgil.⁵⁶ In so many ways Virgil was authoritative for Melanchthon, not least in his imitation of Homer. As we have seen, Virgil was reckoned among the finest commentators on Homer, and Melanchthon hardly mentioned Homer in the context of talking about the liberal arts without mentioning Virgil. All the more significant, then, that he perceived a difference between their teachings. And it was a critical one, concerning the doctrine of God and his concern for humans. Homer’s doctrine of divine providence is a point of repeated praise and affirmation in Melanchthon’s writings. The differences between the Olympians who are only secondary causes and the God of Israel are manifold, but on one point, the testimonies of the Homeric poem and Holy Scripture are unanimous: human affairs are a matter of concern to the gods or to God, ⁵⁶ The antinomian controversy, which divided Lutherans over the preaching of the law, was renewed in the late 1540s. According to Agricola, the preaching of the gospel alone, and not law and gospel (as Luther and Melanchthon held), led to penitence. See Timothy J. Wengert, Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1997).

198    respectively. In a 1538 declamation, On the Study of Theology, for instance, Melanchthon compares a Pauline and Homeric view of divine providence.⁵⁷ In the prologue, as a means of capturing the attention of his audience and appealing to the importance of the subject, he delivers a lengthy exhortation: In all creatures, the heavens, the earth, the seas, and this whole world mechanism, not to mention the marvelous craftsmanship of our very body, we may contemplate the infinite and immeasurable goodness of God, his everyday miracles, his divine presence, the greatness of his works, and, as Paul says, his manifold wisdom. We may see that he is not a God far off, who has no concern for human affairs (as he is dreamed by the folly of human wisdom corrupted by original sin). For instance, even Homer the poet rebukes this dullness of human wisdom when he sings of Jove feasting with the Ethiopians. No, God is always present with us, as the prophet Jeremiah says.⁵⁸

What I’ve translated in four sentences Melanchthon wrote as one, setting Homer’s testimony in between testimonies from the New and Old Testaments, in order to rebut a perennial objection to the study of theology: humans are of no concern to God. God is transcendent, if not aloof, and it is presumption to think he cares about what we do or suffer. Melanchthon frequently attributes this general thought to Epicurus and his tribe, and he considered it to be among the greatest disincentives to religion and duty.⁵⁹ Melanchthon alludes to lines from the Iliad to illustrate a truth of Homeric religion and the greater truth of the Christian religion.⁶⁰ The lines occur prominently in the first book. Jove (Zeus) and the other gods are at the moment away from Olympus feasting with the Ethiopians, as we know from ⁵⁷ CR 11. 41–50. In 1913, Otto Clemen corrected the date given in CR (1521) to 1538. See Andreas Gößner, “Deklamationen, Reden und Postillen,” in Philipp Melanchthon: Der Reformator zwischen Glauben und Wissen: Ein Handbuch, ed. Günter Frank (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 280. ⁵⁸ “Deinde et in omnibus creaturis, coelo, terra, mari, et hac tota mundi machina, adeoque proprii corporis nostri mirabili opificio, infinitam illam et immensam Dei bonitatem, quotidiana miracula, et praesentiam divinam, operumque eius magnitudinem, et, ut Paulus inquit, multipliciter variam sapientiam Dei animadvertamus, quod ipse scilicet non sit Deus a longe, cui non sint curae res humanae, (sicut imbecillitas humanae rationis peccato originis corruptae somniat) quemadmodum et Homerus Poëta, de Iove apud Aethiopas convivante, eam hebetudinem humanarum mentium taxat, sed Deus admodum nobis praesens, sicut Hieremias Propheta inquit.” CR 11.42–3. ⁵⁹ Melanchthon’s enumeration of things in the created order (skies, land, sea, and this whole world mechanism) resembles Lucretius’s list of things supposed (falsely) to be eternal: terras et solem et caelum, mare sidera lunam (5.115). Lucretius rejects beliefs in divine creation and providence in De rerum natura 5.156–74, among other places. ⁶⁰ “Although Melanchthon makes implicit reference to the basic similarities of the Christian and Homeric religious worldviews, he nevertheless recognizes the historical limits of the ancient worldview.” Thorsten Fuchs, “Antike Literatur,” in Frank, Philipp Melanchthon, 591–608. I have translated from p. 599.

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Thetis. After responding to her son Achilles’s prayer and hearing his complaint, Thetis promises the enraged warrior that she will intercede for him with Zeus—as soon as he returns from the feast (Il. 1.423). The scene, which is only mentioned not narrated, is exemplary for its portrait of divine nearness and even familiarity. Homer’s gods condescend and feast with the mortals (cf. Od. 1.24–6, 23.205–7). Unlike the Homeric gods, Melanchthon understands God’s nearness to be a constant not occasional reality: on the testimony of Paul his miracles are “everyday” and on the testimony of Jeremiah he is “always present.” Homer’s Zeus is of course not omnipresent. His nearness to the Ethiopians is decidedly time-bound (he celebrates a twelve-day feast) and he is not in many places at once (he is similarly indisposed, though for more burlesque reasons, in book 14 of the Iliad).⁶¹ Thetis has to wait for Zeus to return to Olympus to present her supplication and intercession for her son. Homer’s testimony is therefore not cited with the same authority as Scripture but rather in a well-known argument called a fortiori or “from the stronger.” Elaborating the implicit comparison, we can state the argument in this way: If even a pagan without divine revelation portrays the gods consorting (however occasionally) with men, how can the Christian, with the testimonies of Scripture, believe that human affairs are of no concern to God? Jupiter is “the defender of heroes,” or so a note on this place in the Columbia Iliad suggests.⁶² How much more the God of Israel? Melanchthon drew attention to this aspect of Homer’s theology early on. In Gasser’s notes on the first book of the Odyssey, which date from 1523 or 1524, he states a principle: “that the gods watch over human life.”⁶³ This sententious observation appears to arise from lines describing Zeus’s concern (and even anguish) for mortals—in this case, Aegisthus, who is formulaically described as “blameless”: The father of men and gods was the first among them to speak, for he thought in his heart of blameless Aegisthus, slain by far-famed Orestes, son of Agamemnon. (Od. 1.28–30) ⁶¹ A scholion ad Od. 1.22b compares two occasions in which the gods are distracted: Poseidon’s sojourn with the Ethiopians at the beginning of the Odyssey and Zeus’s post-coital slumber in Iliad 14. F. Pontani, Scholia Graeca in Odysseam: Scholia ad libros α–β, vol. 1 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007). ⁶² “Iuppiter heroum defensor.” ColUL 1.1, fol. 10a, note on Il. 1.423. Another note on the same place interprets this passage as an “astrological puzzle” (astrologicum aenigma), presumably some conjunction of the planets. Such allegorical interpretations are rare in the Columbia notes. ⁶³ “Deos curare hominum vitam.” BAV 2, fol. 2. Note on Od. 1.27.

200    In the Columbia Odyssey, annotated nearly a quarter-century later than the Gasser copies, a note on the same passage reads, “the affairs of man and of a great man are of concern to God.”⁶⁴ Melanchthon found many such testimonies in the Homeric poem of the care of the gods.⁶⁵ Zeus’s concern for Aegisthus is interesting because it manifests itself in Zeus’s words, his warning and command transmitted by Hermes. Such concern and communication resonates with Melanchthon’s theology. In the 1559 edition of the Loci communes, he describes God’s saving work in terms of familiar speech: “From the beginning and without ceasing God delivers some word or testimony, going forth from his hidden throne for the sake of our salvation and revealing himself and speaking with us as with intimates.”⁶⁶ Like Homer, Melanchthon thus recognizes a transcendence of the divine, but one that does not prevent divine condescension. Indeed, Melanchthon’s Lutheran theology of the law and gospel made God’s communication of himself in ordinary speech genres a critical part of Christian theology.⁶⁷ God’s concern for mortals, a truth common to the Homeric poem and Scripture, was not a truth universally acknowledged. In early lectures on the Aeneid, Melanchthon draws on the same commonplace to gloss the transition in book 1 from the complaints and sorrows of Aeneas and his shipwrecked companions, to Olympus where Jupiter is described as looking down in fatherly concern. Jupiter is described as “agitated in his mind by such great cares” when Venus approaches him (Aen. 1.227). In a fascinating comment, the Wittenberg scholar describes this passage as a “foreign place” or a passage fetched from somewhere else (namely Homer). He writes, “He feigns that Jove cares about the human as well as the divine order of things. It is a foreign place that he inserts, in order to introduce more conveniently the order of the poem and story.”⁶⁸ This is a signal departure from the typical annotation on such places. Typically Melanchthon is content to point out the commonplace—that is, the expression of a truth not particular to one text but common to many texts, common even to different languages and religions. The concern of the gods (or God) for mortals is one such commonplace. As we have seen, ⁶⁴ “Res hominum et viri magni Deo curae.” ColUL 2, fol. 3b, note on Od. 1.29. Cf. Seneca, Dial. 1.2.6. ⁶⁵ An explicit statement of Zeus’s care for mortals is found in Il. 2.27. ⁶⁶ “Ita semper Deus ab initio procedens ex sua arcana sede propter salutem nostram et sese patefaciens ac familiariter nobiscum colloquens tradidit aliquod verbum et testimonium.” MSA vol. 2.1, p. 175. ⁶⁷ Robert Kolb, “The Pastoral Dimension of Melanchthon’s Pedagogical Activities for the Education of Pastors,” in Philip Melanchthon: Theologian in Classroom, Confession, and Controversy, ed. Irene Dingel et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 29–42, esp. 35. ⁶⁸ “Iovem habere curas humanarum divinarumque rerum fingit. Est autem alienus locus insertus, ut commodius ordinem operis ac historiae insinuaret.” CR 19.437.

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Scripture and the Homeric poem are unanimous on this point. Then what makes this commonplace “foreign” in the context of the Aeneid? What makes this one Homeric borrowing, in a poem full of them, alienus—an interpolation? Probably the rhetorical principle of decorum lies behind Melanchthon’s rejection of the place on providence as a “foreign place.” As noted above, Melanchthon draws on the literary terms of the ancient scholia in his lectures on Virgil. Among the most important of these are terms describing the suitability of various speeches and actions. Speeches and actions must observe the standards of τὸ πρέπον (the fitting), being appropriate to time, place, and other circumstances, and ethos, being appropriate to a certain character. Among the most conspicuous debates transpiring in the ancient scholia are those that defend or attack the integrity of a poem where it is troubled by seemingly inconsistent passages or words. This is generally a concern of the Preceptor’s in his lectures on Virgil, as illustrated by numerous references to character, suitability, and propriety. In this critical context, we can gloss the unique term alienus. In the Preceptor’s view, the portrait of Jove as a concerned father of gods and men does not square with the integrity of the Aeneid, or specifically with the character (ethos) of Jove as portrayed there. It is not fitting (decus, accommodatum), to borrow the language of the annotations. Why not? The portrait of Jupiter in the Aeneid is, to say the least, complex, contributing to contemporary debates between pessimist and optimist readings of the poem. In Julia Hejduk’s view, Virgil’s mixed portrait of Jupiter, divided as the god appears to be between sunny and stygian polarities, at times paternal and at times cruelly indifferent to mortals, is of a piece with the poet’s approach to complexity and mystery.⁶⁹ Virgil puzzles the reader by combining antithetical properties in his characterization of the god. How is this complexity reflected in the matter of Jupiter’s concern for mortals? As Hejduk shows, Virgil’s Jupiter is indeed concerned and involved and capable, but his concern is not of the emotional type, and a far cry from the fatherly care that Melanchthon sees reflected in Homer’s Zeus. Jupiter cares, but not about human suffering. He cares about glory and imperium.⁷⁰ I can’t say that Melanchthon would subscribe to Hejduk’s portrait of Jupiter, but her portrait illustrates how book 1, line 227, which appears to describe his grief over human affairs, might seem in conflict with Jupiter’s words and deeds ⁶⁹ “Jupiter’s Aeneid: Fama and Imperium,” Classical Antiquity 28 (2009): 279–327. ⁷⁰ In a chapter on Virgil in her recent book, Hejduk reasserts this thesis but takes a more generous view of fama and imperium. The God of Rome: Jupiter in Augustan Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 39–102.

202    elsewhere in the poem. Purely from the standpoint of the narrative and its oeconomia, which lead inexorably to imperium, it might make sense for Jupiter to care about the fate of the Trojans. But this comes at the cost of the integrity, or ethos, of Virgil’s Jupiter portrait. Implicitly this is a fault of imitation. Recall that Melanchthon had praised Virgil’s imitation in precisely this, that among other things, he omitted whatever in Homer does not jibe with Roman mores.⁷¹ Jupiter’s unaccustomed tenderness towards mortals appears to have been a rare exception, though even this didn’t escape Virgil’s notice, who brought it in intentionally for the sake of a narrative structure. Melanchthon thus both critiques and defends the portrait of an anguished Jove with respect to the rhetorical terms of ancient criticism. His sentence on the portrait of Jupiter illustrates how rhetorical reading might serve theological judgment, insofar as theology, whether Homeric or Roman or Scriptural, was examined in respect of textual correspondences. This textual basis or criterion of the truth of a statement is of great significance for understanding Melanchthon’s innovative method of theology instruction in the Loci Communes, the “commonplaces” (later the “chief topics”) of theology. It wasn’t enough for a commonplace to be articulated in a text; the strength of the commonplace, as well as its affirmation, came by comparison with other places in the text. From such comparisons were inferred a textual oeconomia and a textual character (ethos), and these gave in turn testimony to the truth and authenticity of such theological commonplaces as the assertion of God’s providence. I have attempted to illustrate in this chapter the theological significance of Melanchthon’s speech rhetoric. Speech marks not just textual divisions, as it does for instance in the presentation of some narrative and dramatic poetry, it marks social, religious, and cultural divisions. We use the term “code switching” to describe our own use of speech to recognize and demarcate groups and boundaries. At present, we are probably most attuned to our use of certain terms or keywords as a form of code switching. And our focus on the semantic signals in our speech acts may obscure a variety of other ways that our speech performs or signals boundaries. For instance, ethical, formal, and rhetorical qualities no less than semantic qualities of speech may register belonging. It was these qualities and not necessarily keywords that were in focus in Wittenberg. There attention was trained at the level of the utterance, the speech kinds or speech units that describe or even inscribe boundaries—in ⁷¹ Opera Philosophica 2/2, p. 367, and see Chapter 4.

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society, mores, and even (as we have seen) doctrines. In Homer these might be boundaries between the heroic and non-heroic, between mortals and immortals, between sacred and secular, between what is suitable and indecorous, between what is righteous and what is not. It was no merely formal exercise but a rigorous training ground of the ear, judgment, and heart, a conditioning of the literate soul to engage in that battle of battles, in the arena of the conscience and on the threshold of prayer, where the sinner must arbitrate between competing voices—the adversarial speeches of the law on the one hand and the promises of the gospel on the other. Rhetorical reading, dialectical reading, or simply “eloquence”—in Wittenberg the activity points ultimately to prayer, or to prayers. Prayer, itself treated as a commonplace of theology in later editions of the Loci Communes, was the chief of the Christian virtues, and it entailed right judgment. And prayers, diverse according as one knew or believed the gospel, were the telltale expressions of Christian belief.

Epilogue In this book I have argued that Homeric speech was instrumental in the reform of the liberal arts and theology in Wittenberg. Drawing on ancient scholarship and Luther’s biblical exegesis, Melanchthon developed methods of demonstrating textual authority on the basis of utterances and their interrelationships. Eloquence implied mastery of occasions and utterances, and the Homeric poem presented a consummate array of circumstance and speech. It was a prime training ground for developing eloquence. Refusing a division of reason and eloquence, Melanchthon implied furthermore that prudence was a consequence of eloquence. Prudence was eloquence’s shadow, not the other way round. Prudential reading was a product of acquired familiarity with and sensitivity to speech kinds occurring within a divinely inspired, learned poem. It required faith to read the Homeric poem in Wittenberg—not necessarily Christian faith or even faith in God, but a certain faith in the text. Because the text is not understood to be a sign for something else, but simply means in its saying, at the local, circumstanced utterance, there is no short cut to interpretation. Because the poem’s meaning is inscribed in its oeconomia, furthermore, understanding is deferred or in any case provisional. Reading rhetorically was an act of patience. To give attention to all circumstances of action and speech, to attempt to hear in speeches nuances of character, suggested in figures of speech and patterns of thought, and to record all this observation in a way that could be recalled and compared—that took a lot of faith in the Preceptor’s view that these things did relate, that they did come together in a large-scale configuration. Even on the relatively small scale of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, with its simpler plot structure that bears several points of comparison with tragedy, Melanchthon asked of his students unusual powers of attention and discrimination. Scaling up to the Homeric poem, such lectio continua or lectio perpetua implied nothing less than a religious belief, a belief in a sacred quality of the text. Melanchthon frequently expressed such a belief in his Latin verse. Throughout his career he was animated by a sense that the poetry he was teaching was divinely inspired, and not in a metaphorical sense. In an epigram written for his scholars and dated 1522 (soon before lectures recorded by Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer. William P. Weaver, Oxford University Press. © William P. Weaver 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192864154.003.0008

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Achilles Pirmin Gasser), Melanchthon attributes to Homer divine inspiration. Homer’s poetic gift is nothing less than a divine gift to men, who can read God’s favor and providence in the lines of the Homeric poem. Entitled “On reading Homer,” the epigram was collected by Johannes Reiffenstein in 1528.¹ On reading Homer True is the tale that good poets were stirred by a divinity, for God compels their pure hearts. They sing the precepts of virtue, and God the author of these gave them to the poets to be taught on earth. And since abundant fluency comes from heaven, yet again he gave second gifts, the powers of eloquence. It is therefore a kind of reverence to know Homer, when from the dwelling of the gods he bears good gifts. De lectione Homeri Vera est fama bonos agitari numine Vates, Nam Deus illorum pectora casta movet. Virtutis praecepta canunt, ac vatibus autor Tradidit in terris illa docenda Deus. Largaque cum coelo veniat facundia, rursus Eloquii vires altera dona dedit. Est igitur pietas quaedam cognoscere Homerum, Cum bona de superum munera sede ferat. The Homeric poem is a divine gift not to be spurned. In its wealth of precept and eloquence, it testifies to the doctrine of providence that Melanchthon defended on many occasions.² One is reminded of Odysseus’s words in Phaeacia, and his attribution of fine speech to the gift of the gods.³ Here Melanchthon celebrates the moral instruction and eloquence found in Homer, but elsewhere he focused on the divine gift of song. An undated epigram entitled “That poetic impulses are gifts of God” gives clear expression to the doctrine.⁴

¹ CR 10.483, no. 15. The poems were not written for publication but in the context of Melanchthon’s private instruction to scholars at his home. See the letter of Reiffenstein in CR 10.463. ² See also the epigram on Homer in CR 10.591, no. 219. ³ Od. 8.167–8. ⁴ CR 10.668, no. 385.

206    That poetic impulses are gifts of God Heroic virtue that surpasses human powers testifies that there is a God who gives such impulses. So too the copiousness of a vein pouring forth in song shows that there is a God, for that impulse too is from God. So confess God, and with due honor revere him when you read the harmonious lines of a learned poet. Impetus poëticos esse dona Dei Humanas superans vires Heroica virtus, Tales qui motus dat, monet esse Deum. Sic etiam ubertas fundentis carmina venae Esse Deum ostendit, motus et ille Dei est. Ergo agnosce Deum, et iusto venereris honore, Cum docti vatis scripta sonora legis. As a learned poet, Homer not only gives divinely granted instructions, he does so in a divinely inspired voice, and this too is a sign (here a demonstration) of God’s existence and proof of his goodness. Melanchthon begins with an enthymeme (here I use “enthymeme” to mean a syllogism lacking one of the premises) inferring a superhuman cause from superhuman effects. Then he develops an analogous enthymeme inferring a divine cause of divine eloquence. Since enthymeme and reasoning by analogy are both devices associated with the art of rhetoric, it is a probabilistic demonstration, and the argument itself illustrates a divine gift of persuasive speech. So for his assertions of eternal providence, and for his illustration of eternal providence in his divinely inspired song, Homer was a key ally in Melanchthon’s perennial campaign against atheism and other forms of unbelief. Reading in this fashion approaches doxology, like Herbert’s rapturous sentences on Scripture: Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, And the configurations of their glorie! Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine, But all the constellations of the storie. This verse marks that, and both do make a motion Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie: Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion, These three make up some Christians destinie:

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Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good, And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing Thy words do finde me out, & parallels bring, And in another make me understood. Starres are poore books, & oftentimes do misse: This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.⁵

Configurations, constellations, anticipations, secrets, comments, parallels— such terms approximate the terms of the ancient Homeric scholia, which were being used in Wittenberg to discern and bring forth the riches of the Homeric poem. When Herbert writes of one verse “marking” another, which marks another even further on, he comes very near to describing structural comparisons made in the scholia, suggesting that Protestant hermeneutics in Cambridge, where Herbert was active, had assimilated some of the principles of ancient literary criticism revived in Wittenberg. These interpretive operations have been the focus of this book. But Melanchthon described the last act of reading not in terms of judgment but in terms of eloquence. Somewhat at odds with the science of hermeneutics that he is sometimes credited as pioneering, reading did not culminate in understanding but in speaking. Speech begets speech, and the divine gift of eloquence returns to its giver in the form of praise. In recognition of that productive end of reading for eloquence, and as a final illustration of Homer’s legacy in Wittenberg, I want to briefly consider evidence of Homeric eloquence in Melanchthon’s declamations written for the university in the 1540s and 1550s. When the history of Melanchthon’s declamations is written, it will describe a major transformation between the years 1543 and 1544, when Melanchthon published a revision of the Loci Communes (the so-called “third era” Loci).⁶ Responding to failed religious colloquies, renewed military threats, and geopolitical uncertainty, Melanchthon began including prayers of an earnest and public sort in the declamations, academic orations written on historical, moral, and academic subject matter. Almost all declamations after 1544 begin with an invocation of God, and many conclude with a prayer. Here is a typical example of prayer found in a prologue, from the year 1545:

⁵ “The H. Scriptures II,” in The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 210. ⁶ Martin Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie bei Philipp Melanchthon. Das Gebet im Leben und in der Lehre des Reformators (Tübingen: Mohr, 1998), 113–26.

208    First to you eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, maker of all things, preserver and helper, founder of your Church, together with your coeternal son Jesus Christ our Lord, and your Holy Spirit, we give thanks. For you have sent us your Son, and you set ablaze the light of the Gospel, and so far you preserve [it]. Then also we beseech you with earnest prayers (ardentibus votis), that you not allow this light of the Gospel to be put out, but keep some sure evidence of your Son among us, and govern the ministry of the Gospel and our studies of doctrine, and gather to yourself the eternal Church. Preserve also these lands, which are hosts to your Church, and their discipline.⁷

Occurring in the prayer and again immediately after, where the speaker commends “these prayers” (haec vota), the word vota is pretty nearly the exclusive term used to label such prayers in the declamations, and “labeling” is exactly what the term is doing. In this model oratory, written and performed as an example for imitation, Melanchthon incorporates some labels into the speech, signaling the rhetorical or dialectical dispositio for the sake of students. Reading these labels in the printed text gives one the impression that paratextual elements, like headings of model school themes, have made their way into the text of the speech. Martin Jung has characterized the change in 1543 in formal terms, noting that prayers were not entirely new in this context. In the 1530s Melanchthon included many indirect petitions invoking God in the third person (Er-stil).⁸ But once he attempts direct invocations to God in the second person (Du-stil) in 1543, he doesn’t turn back. In light of speech’s primacy in Melanchthon’s philosophical theology, I find more going on here than a formal change of voice. I find the prayers after 1543 to be nothing less than new speech kinds with the potential to transform the entire speech. The textbook tradition on rhetoric and a few specimens of ancient oratory supply a rationale for vota in this context of formal oratory. Beginning an oration “from a prayer” (a voto) appears in textbooks on rhetoric (including

⁷ “Primum tibi, aeterne Deus, pater Domini nostri Iesu Christi, conditor omnium rerum, et conservator et opitulator, conditor Ecclesiae tuae, una cum filio tuo coaeterno Domino nostro Iesu Christo, et Spiritu sancto tuo, gratias agimus, quod et filium nobis misisti, et Evangelii lucem nobis accendisti, et hactenus servas. Deinde etiam te ardentibus votis oramus, ut non sinas hanc Evangelii lucem extingui, sed noticiam filii tui serves inter nos, regas ministerium Evangelii et doctrinae studia, et colligas tibi aeternam Ecclesiam: has etiam politias, quae sunt hospitia Ecclesiae tuae, et disciplinam tuearis.” CR 11.684, appearing at the beginning of the declamation De verbo ὀρθοτομεῖν. See Chapter 6. ⁸ Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 116–18. For a comparison of Er-stil and Du-stil prayer, see ibid., 92–3.

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Melanchthon’s Institutiones Rhetoricae) among the topics for capturing the goodwill of an audience. In other words, there do exist purely persuasive or strategic grounds for offering a prayer at the beginning of a formal oration, and it might have been this tradition that first suggested prayer to Melanchthon in this context. Before 1540, Melanchthon employed ad nauseam the modesty topos in the prologue to declamations, and I imagine that in 1544 prayers of the votum sort were initially met with relief by a university audience expecting yet another apology for the speaker’s apparent audacity of addressing such an august and distinguished congregation, etc. But the textbook rationale for praying in the declamations is no more satisfactory than a formal description of the change (Er-stil to Du-stil). Clearly the prayers are doing more than performing a persuasive function.⁹ This is where rethinking the liberal arts as the speech arts reveals its value for reading Renaissance eloquence, including sacred eloquence, as I think we must consider the declamations of this period. From the perspective of the speech arts, votum-type prayer has a profile defined by its appearance, uses, and occasions in the writings of the learned. For example, the reader of the Homeric poem who has studied and perhaps labeled votum as a speech kind there occasioned by and related to other speech kinds in an array or oeconomia cannot but hear or even perform prayers of this sort (labeled or unlabeled) without an imagination of the speech prayers in their Homeric occasions. Whether Melanchthon consciously or unconsciously imitated Homeric speech to supplement university oratory in Wittenberg, there are many reasons for us to consider the example of Homeric speech when describing prayer in the declamations. As shown in Chapter 5, votum is speech characteristic of princes, and like the muthoi of which it seems to be a part, it has a performative function in the Homeric world, asserting kingship and other attributes of the hero. Introduced into the didactic, exemplary context of the declamations, its performative function becomes even clearer. There each prayer seems to illustrate how one ought to pray on these public, academic occasions. Sometimes introduced with a description of the academic assembly as a military cohort, votum-type prayer asserts a kind of membership. In Homer’s words, “So might one of the Trojans or Greeks speak.”¹⁰ In his indiscriminate attribution of heroic prayer to Trojans and Achaeans, Homer identifies the speech kind with a social class.

⁹ The textbook topic a voto (“from a prayer”) may be less important as an instruction for speech, and more important as a mental place for collecting exemplary speech. ¹⁰ Il. 3.297, 3.319. The formulaic line introduces many speeches, including these prayers.

210    Homeric vota also appear to ritually mark speech boundaries, appearing typically at the beginning and end of the speech. The effect in the Homeric poem is to parcel the text into speech units, suggesting boundaries and relations within the text. We might consider the prayers to have a similar defining function in the declamations, where they mark boundaries of discourse and give an originally written text performative shape. (Is it coincidental that Melanchthon introduces prayers shortly after the first printed collection of his orations appears?) Finally, in light of Melanchthon’s definition of Christian prayer by contrast with heathen, Jewish, and Muslim prayer, we must view the vota as illustrating how Christians talk on these occasions. That exclusionary quality of vota in the declamations seems to be where the comparison with Homeric vota breaks down, since Homeric prayers as we have seen are not divisive but pretty catholic: “So might one of the Trojans or Greeks speak.” But here too vota in the declamations beg comparison with Homeric vota. Melanchthon comments on one prayer in a 1543 declamation, anticipating the argument in De dei invocatione by a year, saying that “This form distinguishes Christian prayer from heathen, Jewish, and Muslim prayer.”¹¹ Then in De dei invocatione he urges that this distinction be recalled daily. Perhaps he discovered at this time that the declamations would be a good place to showcase Christian prayer for the sake of illustrating its distinguishing characteristics. There a student might mark some differences with heathen prayers, especially if the same label were being applied in both cases. Melanchthon’s frequent use in these contexts of the phrases ardentes vota and gemitus et vota, and his frequent reminder of the efficacy of Christian prayers, reaffirms the comparative, rival qualities of these public prayers, common to Christians but exclusive of others. “These vota bear oft repeating in these assemblies,” he writes more than once. “Let us not reckon them prophane displays but rather understand that they were established on account of discipline. As in the church [worship service], so in this gathering let the chief acts be prayer and admonition about the studies of doctrine and right behavior.”¹² As is made clear here and elsewhere, Melanchthon’s primary model for the academic assembly is the church worship service, and we must consider the primary model for vota in the declamations to be prayers offered on those Christian occasions.¹³ But the ¹¹ “Talis forma discernit precationem Christianam ab Ethnica, Iudaica et Turcica.” CR 11.615. ¹² “Haec vota in his congressibus saepe repetenda sunt: non enim existimemus eos prophana spectacula esse, sed disciplinae causa instituti sunt, et ut in Ecclesia, ita in hac frequentia sint praecipui actus, invocatio, et commonefactio de doctrinae studiis, et de disciplina.” CR 11.788. ¹³ Jung, Frömmigkeit und Theologie, 125–6.

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heroic assembly in the Homeric poem might have been a secondary and rival model. Accordingly, we might see vota in the declamations as emulating Homeric prayers of the same type. They are attempts not to reproduce but surpass the model, implicitly citing the model even as they go beyond it. Melanchthon’s transformation of academic oratory between 1543 and 1544 may thus be among the most significant and unanticipated of Homer’s legacies in Wittenberg.

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Schmit-Neuerburg, Tilman. Vergils Aeneis und die antike Homerexegese: Untersuchungen zum Einfluss ethischer und kritischer Homerrezeption auf imitatio und aemulatio Vergils. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1999. Schneider, John R. Philip Melanchthon’s Rhetorical Construal of Biblical Authority: Oratio Sacra. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. Sherman, William. Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Sotheby, Samuel Leigh. Catalogue of the Library of Dr. Kloss, of Franckfort aM., Professor; Including Many Original and Unpublished Manuscripts, and Printed Books with Ms. Annotations, by Philip Melanchthon. London, 1835. Sotheby, Samuel Leigh. Unpublished Documents, Marginal Notes and Memoranda, in the Autograph of Philip Melanchthon and of Martin Luther. With Numerous Facsimiles. London, 1840. Tinkler, John. F. “Renaissance Humanism and the genera eloquentiae.” Rhetorica 5 (1987): 279–309. Walker, Jeffrey. Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Weaver, William P. “A More Excellent Way: Philip Melanchthon’s Corinthians Lectures of 1521–22.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 37 (2014): 31–63. Weaver, William P. “Triplex est Copia: Philip Melanchthon’s Invention of the Rhetorical Figures.” Rhetorica 29 (2011): 367–402. Weaver, William P. Untutored Lines: The Making of the English Epyllion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Wels, Volkhard. Triviale Künste: Die humanistische Reform der grammatischen, dialektischen und rhetorischen Ausbildung an der Wende zum 16. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Weidler, 2000. Wengert, Timothy J. Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1997. Wengert, Timothy J. “Philip Melanchthon’s 1522 Annotations on Romans and the Lutheran Origins of Rhetorical Criticism.” In Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: Essays Presented to David C. Steinmetz in Honor of his Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson, 118–40. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996. Wengert, Timothy J. Philip Melanchthon, Speaker of the Reformation: Wittenberg’s Other Reformer. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Wengert, Timothy J. Philipp Melanchthon’s Annotationes in Johannem in Relation to Its Predecessors and Contemporaries. Geneva: Droz, 1987. Wengert, Timothy J., and M. Patrick Graham, eds. Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and the Commentary. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997. West, Martin L. Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2001. Wetzel, Richard. “Melanchthons Verdienste um Terenz unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ‘seiner’ Ausgaben des Dichters.” In Philipp Melanchthon in Südwestdeutschland: Bildungsstationen eines Reformators, edited by Stefan Rhein, Armin Schlechter, and Udo Wennemuth, 101–26. Karlsruhe: Badische Landesbibliothek, 1997. Wilson, N. G. From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Wolfe, Jessica. Homer and the Question of Strife from Erasmus to Hobbes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

Index Note: Tables and figures are indicated by an italic “t” and “f ”, respectively, following the page number. For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. adage. See under Erasmus; See proverb Aeschylus 91–3 Aesop 3–4 Agamemnon 79, 107–13, 137–8, 169, 171–2, 175, 199 Agricola, Johann 197 Agricola, Rudolf 10–11, 81–2, 105–6 De Inventione Dialectica 71, 179 Aldus Manutius 42–3, 93, 141, 191 allegory 31–2, 69–70 as interpretive method 2–6, 44–5, 138, 183 as threshold concept 3–4 Anshelm, Thomas 21, 34–5, 91–3, 92f aphorism 63, 72, 94, 133–5 Aphthonius 64, 71 Aristarchus of Samothrace 117–18, 122–3 Aristophanes 164 Aristotle 21, 46, 65–6, 80–1, 116, 121–2, 132 De anima 119–20, 147–9 Homeric Problems 122 Poetics 119–22, 124–5, 195 Rhetoric 119–20 Athenaeus 99–100 Augsburg 85–6 Augustine of Hippo 11 Bible 17–20, 82, 114–16, 138–9, 144–5, 152, 190–1, 197–8, 200–1, 206 “composition and scheme” of 11–12, 110, 190–1 Corinthians I and II 19–20, 61–2 Ephesians 188–90 Galatians 53 gospel parable 134

householder (οἰκοδεσπότης) as interpreter of 116–17, 134 interpretation of 16–20, 49, 61–2, 84, 107–8, 134, 138, 144, 176–7, 183–4 law and gospel 1–2, 20, 138–9, 179–81, 185–6, 188–91, 196, 198 Peter I 182 quoted in Melanchthon’s Greek grammar 24–5 Romans 53, 61–2, 139–40, 196–7, 202 scholarship on 19–20, 123–4 sola scriptura 17–18, 115–16 Timothy II 183–5 Titus 34–5, 49, 52–8, 69–71, 73–5, 110 Zechariah 187–8 Boccaccio 35 Bracciolini, Poggio 35–6 Budé, Guillaume 50–1 Bunyan, John 134 Burchard, Franz 127–8 Burmeister, Karl 86 Cairns, Francis 131 Cambridge 207 Camerarius, Joachim 87, 185 Camerarius, Johann 185 character description 54–63, 68–70, 72, 74–5 Chaucer 141–2 Chrysoloras, Manuel 21–2 Cicero 9–10, 13–14, 35–6, 68 De Officiis 67–8 Cittá di Castello, Gregorio da 42–3 Colie, Rosalie 89 commonplaces 67–8, 71–5, 77, 88–9, 94–5, 97, 102–3, 106–7, 145–6, 157–8, 172, 180–1, 200–2

224  commonplaces (cont.) degraded use of 133–4 copia 1–2, 4–5, 83–4 Cornutus 31, 40–1 Council of Trent 178–80, 187 Crusius, Martin 50–1 Cummings, Brian 17–18 declamation 81–2, 84, 181–2, 189–90, 207–11 decorum 59, 178, 187, 190, 192–4, 201 dialectic 15–16, 18–19, 71, 74, 77–81, 152, 162, 208 applied in theology 190–1, 196–7 applied to reading Scripture 183–6 illustrated by the Adages 95–7 illustrated by the Aeneid 102–3 in relation to rhetoric 52–3, 63–7 dialogue 99–100, 104–7, 172 Didymus 124, 152 Dietrich, Sebastian of Winsheim 146–7 digression 194–5 dispositio 99, 163–4. See also oeconomia Eden, Kathy 27, 31–2, 119–20 education, history of 141–4 eloquence 20, 30–1, 40–4, 74, 84, 114, 129–30, 174–8, 180–1, 196–7, 202–3, 205–7, 209 Agamemnon’s 79, 107–13 as goal of education 4–5, 7–8, 76, 78, 80–5 illustrated by the Adages 96–7 illustrated by the Aeneid 101–4 in relation to prudence 76–8, 81–2 Epimenides 55 epithet 65, 69–70 epos 168, 170–1 Erasmus of Rotterdam 1–2, 55–6, 58, 62, 64, 66, 81–2, 123–4, 127, 138–9, 183–4 Adages 22, 78–9, 88–101, 107–8, 111–13, 123, 155 De Conscribendis Epistolis 9–10 De Copia 10–11, 58–60, 71, 94, 96–7. See also copia pedagogy 93–4 Praise of Folly 93 Eratosthenes 44

ethos 102, 131–2, 171–2, 175, 178, 180–1, 187, 194–5, 201–2 etymology 32–3, 37, 40–1, 98, 102, 107 Eustathius 97, 104–5, 151–2 fable 69–70, 72 figures of speech 28, 156–61, 157t, 158t, 159t, 160t, 170, 188–9, 204 in Erasmus’s translation of Adages 93–4 scholarship on 89–90 Virgil’s apt use of 101–3 Fränkel, Hermann 163 Galen 148–9 Gasser, Achilles Pirmin 78, 85–8, 94, 124, 154, 192 Gaza, Theodore 21–2, 34–5 Gellius, Aulus 99–100 genre 59, 68–9, 108–9, 111, 120, 187 demonstrative 52–3, 60–1, 66, 71–2, 119–20 didactic 51–3, 63–71, 74–5, 95, 97–8, 100, 105–7, 122–4, 209 epic 161–2 speech 52–3, 138, 157–60, 157t, 158t, 159t, 160t, 168, 188–9, 200 Geoffrey of Vinsauf 9–10 Gereander, Paul 21 gesture 131–2, 145–6, 174–7, 187, 190, 193–4 Goyet, Francis 4–5 Grafton, Anthony 17, 50–1, 122–3, 144 grammar 141–2, 174, 192 correct reading of poets 25–34, 44–6 illustrated by the Aeneid 102–3, 105–7 important for biblical studies 24–5 in liberal arts education 35–7, 46–7 See also under Greek language Greek language comparative study of 36, 39–40 cultural significance of 34–6, 86 dialects 37–9, 45–6 difficulty of learning 21–2, 24, 38–9, 46 grammar 22, 25, 37, 46, 52, 56–7, 68–9 learning 86–8, 90, 101, 104, 107–8, 129–30, 191–2 See also etymology Gregory the Great 46–7 Grynaeus, Simon 80 Guarino, Battista 94

 Hartung, Johannes 129–30 Heerbrand, Jacob 39 Hejduk, Julia 201 Heraclides Ponticus 31 Herbert, George 206 Hermogenes 64, 151–2 Herodianus 40–1 Herodotus 132–3 Hesiod 28, 57–8, 114, 127–30 Melanchthon’s declamation on 127–8 Melanchthon’s scholia on 33, 40–1, 56–7 Theogony 25, 29–31, 56–7 Work and Days 127–8 Hessus, Helius Eobanus 80, 129–30 history 28, 40, 53, 65, 86, 106–7 Hodgkin, John Eliot 141–3 Homer as teacher 24, 42–8 [ps.] Battle of the Frogs and Mice 35, 146, 180–1, 190–7, 204 biographies of 132–3, 136–7 defense of 44–6 divinely inspired oracle 116–17, 134–6, 205–6 father of philosophy 41–2 Homeric Hymns 187–8, 191–2 Homeric Problems 122 Iliad 49–50, 56–7, 60–3, 67–70, 87–99, 152–4, 162–3, 167–9 in revival of learning 34–5, 41–2, 49, 52–3 in the liberal arts 37 Odyssey 87–8, 100, 130–3, 164–6, 173, 178, 181–2, 199–200 poverty of 136–7 praise of 83, 125, 132–7, 151–2 source of many proverbs 90, 95, 135 theology of 187–8, 197–201 Horace 9–10, 40, 125, 136, 173 humanism 55–6, 71, 76–9, 81–2, 85–6, 90, 99–100, 105–6, 116, 129–30 imitation 99–107, 126–32, 154–61 Jesus 5–6, 84, 134, 184, 187, 190, 208 John Frederick, Elector of Saxony 146 judgment 60–1, 67–8, 77, 81–2, 87–9, 104–7, 151–2, 168, 176

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exercised in reading poetry 27–9, 31–2 object of rhetorical reading 180–1, 183, 192–3, 195, 202–3 See also prudence Jung, Martin 208 Kallendorf, Craig 15–16 Karlstadt, Andreas 80–1 Kloss, Georg 142–3 Knauer, Georg 129–31, 155 Knudsen, Rachel 13 Kolb, Robert 143–4 Kusukawa, Sachiko 49–50 Latin language 36, 90, 204–5 grammar 37, 39–40 learning 37, 46–7 law 58–9, 65, 72, 119–20 law and gospel. See under Bible Lazarus, Micha 196 liberal arts 80–4, 89, 96, 104–6, 116–18, 136–7, 141–2, 152, 178, 182, 184–6, 197, 204, 209 logic. See dialectic Lombard, Peter 80–1, 115–16 Lucan 40, 127 Luther, Martin 11, 49–50, 53–4, 61–2, 80–1, 138–9, 141–6, 179–80, 183–4, 197 biblical exegesis 204 critique of Roman Church 182 doctrine of scripture 134, 182 theology 85–6 Mack, Peter 77 Macrobius 14–15, 99–100, 105, 127, 129–30 on proverbs in Homer 95 on Virgil’s imitation of Homer 126, 130 Saturnalia 78–9, 91–3, 99–108, 111–13 Major, George 183 Martin, Richard P. 161–2, 170 Maurer, Wilhelm 1 Maurice of Saxony 146, 197 Maurus, Bernardus 96 maxim 28–9, 56–7, 63, 94, 108–10, 135, 161 Maximilian I 85–6 medicine 65, 85–6, 147, 149

226  Melanchthon, Philip author of Augsburg Confession 6–7 commentary 88–9, 101 De corrigendis studiis 46 De dei invocatione 187–90, 196, 210 De Rhetorica Libri Tres 51–3, 58, 63–6, 68–72, 74, 96 Elementa Rhetorices 127, 157–8 Erotemata Dialectices 179–80, 185–6 flight from Wittenberg and return 178–9, 181–2 Institutiones Graecae Grammaticae 23–5, 29–31, 33, 38–40, 52, 56–7 Institutiones Rhetoricae 208–9 Loci Communes 110, 179–80, 183–4, 190, 200, 202, 207 on education in Germany 34–5 on inspiration 205–6 On the Study of Theology 197–8 pedagogy 26, 37–41, 49–51, 56–8, 61–3, 70–1, 74–5, 87–8, 100, 114–16, 148–9, 181–2 poems 204–6 Praise of Eloquence 76–8, 80–5, 99, 103–6, 110, 117–18, 139 Preface to Hesiod 136, 155–8 Preface to Homer 125, 132–3, 136–8, 150–1 sickness and injury 179–80 university rector 24–5, 76–7 Montaigne 59, 76–7 Muses 21–3, 25–6, 29–34, 39–41, 46, 56–8, 136–7, 173 muthos 168–73, 209 Mylius, Crato 87 Nestor 152–4, 167, 169, 171–4 Nicolas of Lyra 3–4 occasio 160–1, 164, 167–8 Odysseus 44–5, 111, 125–6, 137–8, 154–5, 164–6, 171, 181–2, 205 oeconomia (οἰκονομία) 124–5, 127, 131–4, 136, 145–6, 152–3, 164–8, 173–4, 176–8, 190, 192–3, 201–2, 204, 209 Ong, Walter 4–5 Origen 3–4, 123, 183 Oswald, Alice 162–3 Ovid 40, 156

parasceue 164–8 pathos 102–3, 130–2, 152, 157–61, 175, 187, 194–5 Paul the Apostle 5–6, 34–5, 53, 55–7, 62, 69–73, 110, 179, 183–5, 188–90, 197–9 Petrarch 35 Philip of Hesse 179–80 Philip the Upright, Elector Palatine 43–4 Pisistratus 84–5, 123 Plantin, Christopher 129–30 Plato 67–8, 81–2 Phaedrus 31, 120 Republic 28–9 Plimpton, George Arthur 141–3 Plutarch 27–33, 40–1, 46–7, 132–3 [ps.] Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer 63, 117–18 How to Study Poetry (De audiendis poetis) 25–34, 47 Moralia 26–7 poema 116–21, 176–7 poesis 118–19, 121 poetry considered as speech 88–9, 174 divine inspiration of 24–5, 33–4, 134–6, 204–6 Latin 127–8 oral tradition of 161–2 pleasure of reading 27–8, 31–2, 114 recitation of 84 study of in grammar school 25–34, 44–6, 64 unity 116, 120–2, 124–5, 146, 196–7 of Homer’s poems 121–32, 136, 145–6, 151–2, 173, 194–5 of the Aeneid 129 Poliziano, Angelo 26–7, 87 Pope Nicholas V 42–3 Pope Paul III 179–80 prayer as Christian virtue 180, 187 as expression of theology 187–8 as type of heroic speech 168–9 in declamations 170–1, 207–11 of Homer 20, 186 of Melanchthon 178–9 practical theology of 186–90 two types of 168 precatio 169–72

 votum 159–60, 168–74, 180–1, 184–90, 202–3, 207–11 progymnasmata 64–5 proverb 88–96, 92f, 98–9, 124 Erasmus on 95 oral traditions of 89–90 traditions of marking 91–3, 97–9, 124 prudence 78–9, 103–11, 137, 204 Homeric 76–8 shadow of eloquence 81–2 See also judgment psychology 103–4, 148–9, 179 Aristotelian 119–20 Puttenham, George 9–10 Quintilian 13–15, 24–5, 34–42, 64 Reiffenstein, Johannes 204–5 Reuchlin, Johannes 35 Rhein, Stefan 149–50 rhetoric 8–14, 18–19, 58–9, 152, 163–4, 172–3, 178, 181, 183–4, 202, 206, 208–9 applied to reading 78, 101–3, 105–7 humanist 18–19, 24–5 in liberal arts education 51, 63–7, 77, 103 literary 9–11 scholarship on 19 speech rhetoric 8–14, 100, 145–6, 152, 202–3 Roman empire 43, 85–6, 126, 178–9, 201–2 Scheible, Heinz 1 Schmit-Neuerburg, Tilman 131–2 scholarship Alexandrian 91–3, 122–6 exegetical scholia 14–15, 17, 31–2, 74–5, 122–4, 144–6, 151–2, 160–1, 164–6 exemplified by Erasmus’ Adages 95–7 exemplified by Macrobius’ Saturnalia 101–7 history of 16–17, 161, 194–5 Latin 78–9 transmission of Melanchthon’s notes 146–54 Wittenberg school 143–6, 176–7 Servius 102, 105, 129–30 Shakespeare 76–7, 141–2 Hamlet 176

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simile 106–7, 145–6, 157–64, 167–8, 173–5 Solon 84–5, 123 Sophocles 121–2, 147–50, 154, 196 Sotheby, Samuel Leigh 15–16, 142–3 Spalatin, Georg 55–6 speech 8–14, 38, 57, 78–9, 83–4, 87–8, 97, 99, 104–7, 128, 131–2, 139, 145–6, 162–3, 167–70, 176, 179–80, 190, 192–3, 204, 206–9 Homeric 12–13, 79, 107–8, 154, 173–4, 204, 209 study of 99 theology of 187, 193 Spenser, Edmund 137–8 Statius 127 Strabo 14–15, 42–8, 51–2, 116–17, 122 style 104–5 syllogism 19, 67, 139–40, 206 Terence 59, 91–3, 149–50, 154, 192 Theocritus 39, 129–30 Theognidea 22–3 theology 7–8, 20, 43–4, 47, 58–9, 65, 72, 86, 115–16, 178–81, 198, 204, 208 of Virgil’s Aeneid 197–203 practical 190–7 Thersites 40–1, 56–7, 65, 68–70, 74–5, 147–8, 190 Theseus 67 Thucydides 149–50 topics of invention 67–8, 70–1, 102–5, 109, 157–60, 157t, 158t, 159t, 160t, 188 tragedy 191, 195–6 Tübingen 1–2, 21, 23–5, 28, 46, 49–51, 56–7, 63–4, 91–3, 117–18 Ursinus, Fulvius 129–30 Valla, Lorenzo 10–11, 81–2 Veronese, Guarino 42–3 Vesalius, Andreas 148–9 Virgil 7, 14–16, 40, 101–7, 114, 126–32, 139–40, 149–50, 152, 154–61, 176–7 Aeneid 39–40, 101–4, 111, 112f, 116–18, 126, 129–32, 137–8, 144–6, 154–61, 180–1 as orator 103–4 as scholar 101, 103–4, 131–2

228  Virgil (cont.) Eclogues 129–30, 145 Georgics 129–30, 145 imitation of Homer 130–1, 162, 197 Melanchthon’s scholia on 15–16, 126, 140, 145, 156–8 Walker, Jeffrey 30–1 Wartburg 80–1 Winshemius, Vitus 8, 17, 63, 132–3, 143–4, 147, 149–52, 154, 168, 176–81, 194–7 Wittenberg Capitulation of 178–9, 181–2 state of printing in 34–5, 54

university library 146 Wittenberg Movement 80–1 Wolfe, Jessica 90 ἁμαρτία 195 ἀνάληψις 124–5 ἐπίτασις 195 ἐπιφώνημα 99 καταστροφή 195 κράσις 153 οἰκονομία. See oeconomia ὀρθοτομεῖν 179, 183–4, 186–7 παρασκεύε. See parasceue παρέκβασις. See digression πρόληψις 124–5 τό πρέπον 131–2, 201