Reference edition:


C. Iulii Solini, Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium, iterum recensuit Th. Mommsen, Berolini, apud Weidmannos, 1895

This edition presented a typo at 25, 14 (expugnabilea instead of expugnabiles). The typo has been corrected.

Iulius Solinus wrote his Collectanea rerum memorabilium between the third and fourth century AD. Solinus compiled all the known pieces of information that he deemed worthy of preservation, collecting them in a single work. For this reason scholars have considered the Collectanea rerum memorabilium a work of encyclopaedic ambition. Solinus chooses to develop his argument following the chorographic description of the orbis terrarum. Solinus describes a number of memorable items in his chorographic itinerary: not only detailed geographical data, but also pieces of ethnographic, historic, artistic, zoological, botanical, and mineralogical knowledge.

The itinerary starts from Rome, presented as caput mundi. From there, Solinus discusses Italia, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicilia, the Vulcaniae insulae, Graecia, Thessalia, Macedonia, Thracia, the Greek Islands, the Hister, Hypanis, and Borysthenes rivers, the Arimphaei, the Scythian Islands, Germania, Gallia, Britannia, Hispania, Libya, Mauretania, Numidia, Africa, the Nasamones, the Garamantes, the Ethiopians, other less known populations of Libya, Aegyptus, Arabia, Ostracine, Iudaea, Scythopolis, Cilicia, Lycia, Asia, Galatia, Bithynia, the ora Pontica, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Assyria, the portae Caspiae, other Eastern peoples, Taprobane, the itinerarium Indicum, Parthia, Babylonia and the Gorgades, Hesperides, and Fortunatae islands.

The manuscript tradition has transmitted a second version of the work, accompanied by a different preface. The original preface was addressed to Adventus; the new one to a different person, whose name has not come to us. In this second preface, the author states that the work had earlier circulated in an unfinished form without his approval. For this reason, the author decided to give it a new title, Polyhistor, in order to distinguish the new, final version from the earlier, incomplete version circulating among readers, the Collectanea rerum memorabilium. Mommsen thought that the second version was in fact the work of a forger. More recent studies consider it an authentic version by Solinus. The second version includes additional pieces of information, and a series of stylistic and lexical changes.

The work is transmitted in more than 250 manuscript. It became the geographical reference text in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages in Europe. Authors such as Ammianus Marcellinus, Servius, Augustine of Hippo, Martianus Capella, Priscian, Isidore, Bede, and Alcuin used Solinus as a source of information.

[D. Paniagua; translation L. Battezzato]