Grammatici Latini, VI. Scriptores artis metricae. Marius Victorinus, Maximus Victorinus, Caesius Bassus etc., ex recensione H. Keilii, Hildesheim 1961, 630, 2-631, 12 (reprografischer Nachdruck der Ausgabe Leipzig 1874)

The manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 7530 (P), “une sorte d’encyclopédie des arts libéraux” (Holtz 1975, 99), was written in Montecassino between 779 AD and 796 AD (Holtz 1975, 106). An example of the most ancient and studied Beneventan minuscule, this Paris codex is a “livre du maître” intended to teach and record the scholarly activity and cultural interests at Montecassino in the time of Paul the Deacon. It contains a collection of texts joined together in a compact way, to the extent that sometimes the transition from one work to another occurs without a break. The manuscript is on line at http://www.europeanaregia.eu/en/manuscripts/paris-biblioth-que-nationale-france-mss-latin-7530/en; further bibliography can be found in Passalacqua 1978, 279-280 and on the site of BNF; for updates to the bibliography from 1990 on, see the online bibliography of manuscripts in the Beneventan script: http://edu.let.unicas.it/bmb/.

            This manuscript is the unique witness of two anonymous fragments concerning rhythm and iambic meter, edited by Keil in the Fragmenta parisina. It also preserves the first part (GL VI 627, 2-14) of a fragment concerning the final parts of the clauses (de structuris), likewise anonymous, that appears in the codex of Bobbio Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, lat. 2 (ex Vindobonensis 16), and was edited by Keil among the Fragmenta Bobiensia. The de structurisand de iambico metro appear in P (ff. 45r, 23-35v, 36) in the middle of a series of texts connected to Servius, and specifically between two of his texts, the De centum metrisand De metris Horatii. This brief work on iambic meter was first published by J. von Eichenfeld and S. Endlicher in the Analecta Grammatica, Wien, Beck 1837, 521. The anonymous author —on whom we do not have any information —used the metrical teaching of Juba (from around the middle of the 3rd century: Schmidt 1997), whom he explicitly cites at the start of the fragment. As Rufinus seems to confirm (GL IV 562, 11-18), Juba is a common source for the compiler of the Parisian fragment and for Aphthonius (GL VI 80, 5-7), for the theory of the five types of feet admitted in iambic meter (iamb, spondee and its solutions, tribrach, dactyl, and anapest). The anonymous writer and Aphthonius (GL VI 80, 7-81, 3) also write similarly on the possible positions of the various feet within a verse (on which, also cf. Hephaestion, 15, 17-23), and both analyse the Latin verse comedians, who frequently violate the metrical rules in order to imitate the sermo cotidianus. These similarities lead us to believe that the rest of the fragment’s teaching also derives from Juba (Keil; Schanz - Hosius, T. III, § 606). [M. Callipo tr. C. Belanger]