Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge, University Library, MS Nn.3.18)
This 15th-century manuscript is entirely dedicated to Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the war between Sparta and Athens (431-404 BCE) down to the year 411 BCE. The manuscript is cited in editions of the text as N or Cn. The History is preceded by the brief anonymous life of Thucydides.
The manuscript was previously attributed to an unknown scribe named George the Cretan, but this erroneous identification was corrected by Diller, who identified the hand of Andronikos Kallistos (Andronicus Callistus). Kallistos was a Greek émigré and teacher of Greek literature in Bologna, Rome, Florence, Paris and London. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Kallistos went to Italy and entered into the circle of Palla Strozzi and Bessarion. He left Tuscany in 1475 and his presence is attested in Milan in 1475-1476, before he left Italy for France and eventually England, where he died in 1476 in London. This copy of Thucydides is linked to a copy of Herodotus now Cambridge, Emmanuel College, MS 30. The two manuscripts were conceived as pair, both for their content (the two major Greek historians) and for their physical characteristics.
The manuscript entered into Anthony Askew's collection, and was borrowed by the 18th-century classical scholar Richard Porson, who added the note on f. 1v and numbered the books in the upper margin of recto folios. According to Porson, the manuscript would appear to be the Clarendonianus used by Hudson for his 1696 edition of Thucydides.
Information about this document
- Physical Location: Cambridge University Library
- Classmark: Cambridge, University Library, MS Nn.3.18
- Alternative Identifier(s): 12248
- Scribe(s): Andronicus Callistus, -1478
- Date of Creation: 1455-1475
- Language(s): Greek
- Associated Name(s): Richard Porson; Strozzi, Palla, 1372-1462
- Extent: Codex8 + 3 + 299 + 3 + 8 Leaf height: 210 mm, width: 135 mm.
- Collation:
The manuscript now consists of 39 quires: quires 1-36 are regular quaternions, quire 37 lacks four folios without loss of text, the last folio of quire 38 is missing (in all likelihood blank like the preceding verso), and one bifolium was inserted between the sixth and the seventh folios of quire 38, consistently with the text which has not been interrupted.
- Quires 1-368ff. 1r-288v ([αον]-λϛον, a-N)
- Quire 378-4ff. 289r-296v (λζον, O)
- Quire 388-1ff. 297r-305v (P1-P7)
- Quire 392ff. 303r-304v inserted between ff. 302v and 305r (P*1-P*2)
Henry Bradshaw (1831-1886) added modern quire signatures and a general note on collation on f. [xv] recto, and notes throughout the manuscript on lost folios.
Original quire signatures in brown ink, in Greek numerals from αον (f. 8v) to λζον (f. 289r), on lower margin of the first folio recto of quires 2-37, and on the lower margin of the last folio verso of quires 1-36.Modern quire signatures by Henry Bradshaw in pencil in the lower right-hand corner of the rectos: quires 1-23 a-z (lower-case); quires 24-39 A-P (upper-case). Quire 38 bears the sequence P1-P7, quire 39 the sequence P*1-P*2.
One horizontal catchword by a later hand on f. 302v. - Material: Western paper, folded in quarto. Watermarks: barely visible; in quire 33 similar to a cloverleaf with stripein the gutter comparable to Piccard, 12-1-88 (Watermarks of this shape are in use in the second half of 15th century).
- Format: Codex
- Condition: In generally good condition. Upper external corner of f. 161 is torn away. Mould deposits visible on the right endleaves.
- Binding:
Binding in pale brown full leather covering over millboards. Marbled paper endleaves. The title and classmark are tooled in gold on the spine: Herodotus MS. Nn.3.18 xv. cent.. Binding signed by Wiseman of Cambridge, on lower margin of first marbled endleaf, verso.
Binding height: 226 mm, width: 155 mm, depth: 57 mm.
- Script:
Andronikos Kallistos: ff. 2r-290v.
The manuscript is written by the scribe and scholar Andronikos Kallistos (RGK I 18) in a practised minuscule without any claim to aesthetic effect, related to the Druckminuskel.
Syllabic abbreviations and superscript letter endings usually appear only at the end of lines and rarely elsewhere (e.g. common abbreviation of μεν). Breathings are curved and joined to accents; circumflex accent is hat-like; almost vertical acutes and graves. Isolated trema is sometimes traced over iota and ypsilon; mute iota is present but not consisitently used. Horizontal bars over names are extended.
Kallistos' handwriting is characterized by the beta in bilobate shape, high gamma and lambda with curved elongated stroke if ligated, and enlarged lunate sigma.
Ligatures with rho are drawn up, traced in a single line and often with small closed loops.
Punctuation used includes the middle and upper point, lower comma and full stop.
Corrections and additions in brown pale ink in the margins are by the same hand.
This hand was previously identified with that of George the Cretan.
ff. 295r-305r probably written by a second hand, that displays a minuscule very closely following the model of Kallistos' handwriting, but slanting slightly to the right, with denser text.
- Foliation:
[i-ix + ixa, x-xii] + 1-290, 295-305 + [305a, xiii-xv, xva + xvi-xxiv]. Modern foliation in pencil in Arabic numerals in the top right-hand corner, recto. A previous foliation in brown ink in Arabic numerals in the upper margin, recto starts with "2" from f. 3r, occasionally lost in trimming. Folio numbers 291-294 are assigned to leaves no longer present in the volume (as per historic foliation practices at Cambridge University Library).
- Layout: ff. 2r-305r: A single column of 29 lines. Written space Written height: 160 mm, width: 95 mm.
- Additions:
Note by Richard Porson on f. 1v: "Videtur esse Hudsoni Codex Clarendonius", with reference to the 1696 edition by John Hudson. Porson also marked the number of the books in the upper margin of rectos in Greek numerals.
Henry Bradshaw added a general note on collation on f. [xv] recto, and notes throughout the manuscript on lost folios.
- Provenance:
The manuscript belonged to the library of the copyist and later to Baldassar Migliavacca active as commentator and book collector in last quarter of the 15th century in Milan; his ex libris remains on f. 1v: "κτῆμα ἐμοῦ Βαλτάσορος τοῦ Μελιαβακκοῦ". Kallistos sold most of his library in Milan in 1475-1476, before he left for France and England. Migliavacca probably purchased the manuscript from Kallistos himself or from Giovanni Francesco della Torre, who bought Kallistos' library (cf. Botley 2018). Kallistos' collection was sold again between 1481 and 1483, but Migliavacca could have been in possession of the manuscript as early as 1475.
The manuscript later entered the collection of Anthony Askew (1722-1774), physician and book collector.
- Origin: On a textual basis, it has been recognized that the manuscript has been corrected from Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Marcianus gr. cl. VII, 5 (manuscript Z of Thucydides), owned and partially copied by Palla Strozzi (1372-1462), of whom Andronikos Kallistos was a protégé. Closely related to CUL MS Nn.3.18 is Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Marcianus gr. 364 (manuscript V of Thucydides), dated 1469. Andronikos Kallistos afterwards left Italy, moving from Milan to France and eventually to England in 1475-1476. Since the manuscript bears the ex libris of Baldassar Migliavacca, active in Milan in the 1480s, it is highly likely that Nn.3.18 was also produced in Italy prior to Kallistos's departure for France and it can therefore be dated to the period 1455-1475.
- Acquisition: After Askew's death, the manuscripts were sold by G. Leigh and J. Sotheby in the auction of his library in 1785 (Nn.3.18 Lot. n. 601), and eventually bought by Richard Farmer for Cambridge University Library. The University of Cambridge general bookplate (engraved by William Jackson in 1706-1707) was added on f. 1v.
- Funding: The Polonsky Foundation
- Data Source(s): Description (2019) draws on A catalogue of the Manuscripts preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, vol. 4, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1861, p. 489-490.
- Author(s) of the Record: Matteo Di Franco
- Bibliography:A catalogue of the manuscripts preserved in the library of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1861) 4.Dain, A., "Liste des manuscrits de Thucydide", Revue des Études Grecques 46 20-28 (1933).Powell, J. Enoch, "The Manuscript S of Herodotus", The Classical Review 51 4 118-119 (1937).Powell, J. Enoch, "The Cretan Manuscripts of Thucydides", The Classical Quarterly 32 2 103-108 (1938).Hemmerdinger, Bertrand, Essai sur l'histoire du texte de Thucydide (Paris: Les Belles lettres, 1955).de Meyier, K. A., "Two Greek scribes identified as one", Scriptorium 11 99-102 (1957).Diller, Aubrey, "Three Greek scribes working for Bessarion: Trivizias, Callistus, Hermonymus", Italia medioevale e umanistica 10 403-410 (1967).Gamillscheg, Ernst and Dieter Harlfinger, Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten, 800-1600. I. Grossbritannien, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Byzantinistik Bd. 3 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981).Diller, Aubrey, Studies in Greek manuscript tradition (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1983).McKitterick, David, Cambridge University Library: a history [2], The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).Easterling, P. E., "From Britain to Byzantium: the study of Greek manuscripts", in Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jeffreys (eds), Through the looking glass: Byzantium through British eyes: papers from the twenty-ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, London, March 1995, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies publications 7 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).De Gregorio, Giuseppe, "L'Erodoto di Palla Strozzi (cod. Vat. Urb. gr. 88)", Bollettino dei Classici dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 23 31-130 (2002).Naiditch, P. G., The library of Richard Porson (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2011).Russell, Eugenia, Literature and culture in late Byzantine Thessalonica (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).Orlandi, Luigi, "Baldassar Migliavacca lettore e possessore di codici greci", Studi medievali e umanistici 12 141-195 (2014).Orlandi, Luigi, "Andronico Callisto e l'epigramma per la tomba di Mida", Medioevo greco 14 163-175 (2014).Botley, Paul, "Greek Literature in Exile: The Books of Andronicus Callistus, 1475-1476", Dumbarton Oaks Papers 72 181-196 (2018).
Section shown in images 34 to 629
- Title: History of the Peloponnesian War
- Alternative Title(s): Historia belli Peloponnesiaci
- Author(s): Thucydides
- Note(s): TLG 0003.001
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- Physical Location: Cambridge University Library
- Classmark: Cambridge, University Library, MS Nn.3.18
- Alternative Identifier(s): 12248
- Scribe(s): Andronicus Callistus, -1478
- Date of Creation: 1455-1475
- Language(s): Greek
- Associated Name(s): Richard Porson; Strozzi, Palla, 1372-1462
- Extent: Codex8 + 3 + 299 + 3 + 8 Leaf height: 210 mm, width: 135 mm.
- Collation:
The manuscript now consists of 39 quires: quires 1-36 are regular quaternions, quire 37 lacks four folios without loss of text, the last folio of quire 38 is missing (in all likelihood blank like the preceding verso), and one bifolium was inserted between the sixth and the seventh folios of quire 38, consistently with the text which has not been interrupted.
- Quires 1-368ff. 1r-288v ([αον]-λϛον, a-N)
- Quire 378-4ff. 289r-296v (λζον, O)
- Quire 388-1ff. 297r-305v (P1-P7)
- Quire 392ff. 303r-304v inserted between ff. 302v and 305r (P*1-P*2)
Henry Bradshaw (1831-1886) added modern quire signatures and a general note on collation on f. [xv] recto, and notes throughout the manuscript on lost folios.
Original quire signatures in brown ink, in Greek numerals from αον (f. 8v) to λζον (f. 289r), on lower margin of the first folio recto of quires 2-37, and on the lower margin of the last folio verso of quires 1-36.Modern quire signatures by Henry Bradshaw in pencil in the lower right-hand corner of the rectos: quires 1-23 a-z (lower-case); quires 24-39 A-P (upper-case). Quire 38 bears the sequence P1-P7, quire 39 the sequence P*1-P*2.
One horizontal catchword by a later hand on f. 302v. - Material: Western paper, folded in quarto. Watermarks: barely visible; in quire 33 similar to a cloverleaf with stripein the gutter comparable to Piccard, 12-1-88 (Watermarks of this shape are in use in the second half of 15th century).
- Format: Codex
- Condition: In generally good condition. Upper external corner of f. 161 is torn away. Mould deposits visible on the right endleaves.
- Binding:
Binding in pale brown full leather covering over millboards. Marbled paper endleaves. The title and classmark are tooled in gold on the spine: Herodotus MS. Nn.3.18 xv. cent.. Binding signed by Wiseman of Cambridge, on lower margin of first marbled endleaf, verso.
Binding height: 226 mm, width: 155 mm, depth: 57 mm.
- Script:
Andronikos Kallistos: ff. 2r-290v.
The manuscript is written by the scribe and scholar Andronikos Kallistos (RGK I 18) in a practised minuscule without any claim to aesthetic effect, related to the Druckminuskel.
Syllabic abbreviations and superscript letter endings usually appear only at the end of lines and rarely elsewhere (e.g. common abbreviation of μεν). Breathings are curved and joined to accents; circumflex accent is hat-like; almost vertical acutes and graves. Isolated trema is sometimes traced over iota and ypsilon; mute iota is present but not consisitently used. Horizontal bars over names are extended.
Kallistos' handwriting is characterized by the beta in bilobate shape, high gamma and lambda with curved elongated stroke if ligated, and enlarged lunate sigma.
Ligatures with rho are drawn up, traced in a single line and often with small closed loops.
Punctuation used includes the middle and upper point, lower comma and full stop.
Corrections and additions in brown pale ink in the margins are by the same hand.
This hand was previously identified with that of George the Cretan.
ff. 295r-305r probably written by a second hand, that displays a minuscule very closely following the model of Kallistos' handwriting, but slanting slightly to the right, with denser text.
- Foliation:
[i-ix + ixa, x-xii] + 1-290, 295-305 + [305a, xiii-xv, xva + xvi-xxiv]. Modern foliation in pencil in Arabic numerals in the top right-hand corner, recto. A previous foliation in brown ink in Arabic numerals in the upper margin, recto starts with "2" from f. 3r, occasionally lost in trimming. Folio numbers 291-294 are assigned to leaves no longer present in the volume (as per historic foliation practices at Cambridge University Library).
- Layout: ff. 2r-305r: A single column of 29 lines. Written space Written height: 160 mm, width: 95 mm.
- Additions:
Note by Richard Porson on f. 1v: "Videtur esse Hudsoni Codex Clarendonius", with reference to the 1696 edition by John Hudson. Porson also marked the number of the books in the upper margin of rectos in Greek numerals.
Henry Bradshaw added a general note on collation on f. [xv] recto, and notes throughout the manuscript on lost folios.
- Provenance:
The manuscript belonged to the library of the copyist and later to Baldassar Migliavacca active as commentator and book collector in last quarter of the 15th century in Milan; his ex libris remains on f. 1v: "κτῆμα ἐμοῦ Βαλτάσορος τοῦ Μελιαβακκοῦ". Kallistos sold most of his library in Milan in 1475-1476, before he left for France and England. Migliavacca probably purchased the manuscript from Kallistos himself or from Giovanni Francesco della Torre, who bought Kallistos' library (cf. Botley 2018). Kallistos' collection was sold again between 1481 and 1483, but Migliavacca could have been in possession of the manuscript as early as 1475.
The manuscript later entered the collection of Anthony Askew (1722-1774), physician and book collector.
- Origin: On a textual basis, it has been recognized that the manuscript has been corrected from Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Marcianus gr. cl. VII, 5 (manuscript Z of Thucydides), owned and partially copied by Palla Strozzi (1372-1462), of whom Andronikos Kallistos was a protégé. Closely related to CUL MS Nn.3.18 is Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Marcianus gr. 364 (manuscript V of Thucydides), dated 1469. Andronikos Kallistos afterwards left Italy, moving from Milan to France and eventually to England in 1475-1476. Since the manuscript bears the ex libris of Baldassar Migliavacca, active in Milan in the 1480s, it is highly likely that Nn.3.18 was also produced in Italy prior to Kallistos's departure for France and it can therefore be dated to the period 1455-1475.
- Acquisition: After Askew's death, the manuscripts were sold by G. Leigh and J. Sotheby in the auction of his library in 1785 (Nn.3.18 Lot. n. 601), and eventually bought by Richard Farmer for Cambridge University Library. The University of Cambridge general bookplate (engraved by William Jackson in 1706-1707) was added on f. 1v.
- Funding: The Polonsky Foundation
- Data Source(s): Description (2019) draws on A catalogue of the Manuscripts preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, vol. 4, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1861, p. 489-490.
- Author(s) of the Record: Matteo Di Franco
- Bibliography:A catalogue of the manuscripts preserved in the library of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1861) 4.Dain, A., "Liste des manuscrits de Thucydide", Revue des Études Grecques 46 20-28 (1933).Powell, J. Enoch, "The Manuscript S of Herodotus", The Classical Review 51 4 118-119 (1937).Powell, J. Enoch, "The Cretan Manuscripts of Thucydides", The Classical Quarterly 32 2 103-108 (1938).Hemmerdinger, Bertrand, Essai sur l'histoire du texte de Thucydide (Paris: Les Belles lettres, 1955).de Meyier, K. A., "Two Greek scribes identified as one", Scriptorium 11 99-102 (1957).Diller, Aubrey, "Three Greek scribes working for Bessarion: Trivizias, Callistus, Hermonymus", Italia medioevale e umanistica 10 403-410 (1967).Gamillscheg, Ernst and Dieter Harlfinger, Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten, 800-1600. I. Grossbritannien, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Byzantinistik Bd. 3 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981).Diller, Aubrey, Studies in Greek manuscript tradition (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1983).McKitterick, David, Cambridge University Library: a history [2], The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).Easterling, P. E., "From Britain to Byzantium: the study of Greek manuscripts", in Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jeffreys (eds), Through the looking glass: Byzantium through British eyes: papers from the twenty-ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, London, March 1995, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies publications 7 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).De Gregorio, Giuseppe, "L'Erodoto di Palla Strozzi (cod. Vat. Urb. gr. 88)", Bollettino dei Classici dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 23 31-130 (2002).Naiditch, P. G., The library of Richard Porson (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2011).Russell, Eugenia, Literature and culture in late Byzantine Thessalonica (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).Orlandi, Luigi, "Baldassar Migliavacca lettore e possessore di codici greci", Studi medievali e umanistici 12 141-195 (2014).Orlandi, Luigi, "Andronico Callisto e l'epigramma per la tomba di Mida", Medioevo greco 14 163-175 (2014).Botley, Paul, "Greek Literature in Exile: The Books of Andronicus Callistus, 1475-1476", Dumbarton Oaks Papers 72 181-196 (2018).
- Title: Life of Thucydides
- Alternative Title(s): Vita anonyma Thucydidis
- Title: History of the Peloponnesian War
- Alternative Title(s): Historia belli Peloponnesiaci
- Author(s): Thucydides
- Note(s): TLG 0003.001
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Section shown in images 34 to 629
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