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Disticha Catonis: Greek Antiquity and Latin Learning

The Disticha Catonis is not, contrary to its name, a classical text. Though it was originally attributed to the famously conservative Roman senator Cato the Elder (or possibly his son, Cato the Younger), its true author is unknown, but probably lived in the 3rd or 4th century CE, up to four hundred years later than either Cato. However, this Latin text was extremely popular in classrooms throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, its two-line hexameters providing moral advice and guidance to diligent students who often translated the text into their own vernacular languages.

Such a translation accompanies the 15th-century copy of the text held by the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. The Anglicana script with its looping flourishes and long descenders records each couplet of the Disticha Catonis (sometimes imperfectly) and pairs it with an English translation, which is often several lines longer than the original Latin couplet. In addition to the Disticha, this manuscript contains several other texts within the same binding. Altogether, these texts form a motley collection in several different hands, including genealogical tables, copied letters between Pope Leo and King Charles of France, and a listing of Eastbury sheep farmers, just to name a few. Most of these hands, however, appear to be roughly contemporary—except for a few striking lines at the end of the text.

Several students gather around a manuscript during the 2023 Göttingen International Palaeography Summer School to examine the text and illustrations.

On the very last pages of the manuscript, in a darker ink and later hand, a new language appears—a few phrases of Greek at the bottom of the final folio. This is the only Greek in the manuscript, and its appearance is both exciting and startling. While Latin remained an important language, especially for Western literature, scholarship, and diplomacy, for centuries after it was no longer the lingua franca, ancient Greek language and literature was much more neglected until the Renaissance turned to an idealized vision of classical antiquity as a model for cultural excellence.

The recto of the final folio with text in the Göttingen copy of the
Disticha Catonis, with two lines of Greek finishing the page.

But Greek wasn’t totally unknown in those intervening centuries, and as interest in ancient literature, culture, and art rose again, it became a subject of study once more, appearing not only in schoolroom texts, but also sometimes scrawled in the margins of other works—like here. A closer look at this handful of lines gives a glimpse into one person’s engagement with Latin, Greek, and the relationship between language, learning, and literature.

The first pair of Greek lines (74r) reads: πολλα μέταξυ πελεῖ κυλιχος | κ[α]ὶ κείλεος αχρ[ου]. Once the abbreviations have been deciphered, the sentence is perfectly recognizable Greek—except for the word κείλεος, which simply doesn’t exist. But this puzzle is easily solved when we realize that the phrase is an ancient proverb, which has been attributed without evidence to the both the Greek writer Palladas and the more famous epic poet Homer, but first appears as an already well-known saying in the 2nd-century Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Locating this source reveals the anonymous writer’s error—the word κείλεος should actually be χείλεος. This in turn leads us to a complete translation—“Many things come between the cup and the topmost lip,” or, as Paton translates more idiomatically, “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.”

But why the mistake? In fact, the Greek letters kappa (κ) and chi (χ) sound quite similar to the English ear, so mistaking one for the other would be quite easy, especially if the writer was recalling the lines from memory or listening to someone else dictate them, rather than copying directly from another written source. Of course, there’s no way to be certain that’s what happened; the writer could also have copied from a source with an error or misread the original text. Still, this small slip in otherwise very good Greek suggests that our writer knew the language well—but perhaps not perfectly.

A similar conclusion can be drawn from the Greek on 74v, which reads: φιλωτιμος πατὴρ | ὅν φιλεῖ θεος αποθνήσκει νέος. The first line, “honor-loving father,” is fairly generic and could be equally fitting in an ancient context or a later one. The second, however, quite nearly matches a famous quotation from a fragment of Menander: ὃν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνῄσκει νέος, meaning “he whom the gods love dies young.” Once again, our unknown writer has not gotten the quote exactly right—the article οἱ is missing, and we have a singular verb and subject (φιλεῖ θεος) instead of the original plural (θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν).

The verso of the
Disticha Catonis’ final folio at the end of the text.

The writer is clearly familiar with the Menander quotation, but there are small errors. The writer might have just forgotten to add the article, and we may also note the switched positions of subject and verb in the phrases φιλεῖ θεος and θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν. This is not a grammatical mistake, but not a perfect quotation either, especially given the change from singular forms to plural ones. But that change might not be a mistake at all. In the first line, φιλωτιμος πατὴρ is singular—perhaps the writer changed θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν to φιλεῖ θεος on purpose so that it agreed with the singular subject φιλωτιμος πατὴρ, intentionally changing “gods” to one God—the honor-loving Father. Is this a reflection of the cultural shift from Menander’s polytheism to Christian monotheism? It’s impossible to know for certain whether this is a clever adaptation of Menander’s original text or a misremembered quotation.

Either way, taken together, these two bits of Greek do make it clear that the writer was familiar not only with the language (note the accent marks included in the phrases), but with ancient Greek literature as well. Though there are minor mistakes, this is no newbie student practicing his alphabet. It’s also worth noting that these quotations fit the spirit of the original text, the Disticha Catonis. Though other texts fill the pages between the Disticha and the later Greek, these short additions are just the sort of quick, quippy wisdom encapsulated by the Disticha Catonis. Thus, they make a fitting finish to this delightful collection of texts!

You never know what you might find in the margins of a manuscript (or an incunable), but the little notes and details found there can add richness and depth to our understanding of the texts themselves, and the people who worked with them. Göttingen’s copy of the Disticha Catonis has passed through many hands over the centuries since it was first produced, but every reader had their own story, and the faintest traces of those stories can still be found within the pages if we look closely.

Bibliography

The Greek Anthology, Volume IV: Book 10: The Hortatory and Admonitory Epigrams. Book 11: The Convivial and Satirical Epigrams. Book 12: Strato’s Musa Puerilis. Translated by W. R. Paton. Loeb Classical Library 85. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918.

Menander. Aspis. Georgos. Dis Exapaton. Dyskolos. Encheiridion. Epitrepontes. Edited and translated by W. G. Arnott. Loeb Classical Library 132. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.