{"id":474,"date":"2024-07-16T13:15:33","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T17:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/?page_id=474"},"modified":"2024-12-20T14:09:01","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T19:09:01","slug":"hidden-intellectual-labor-of-lexicography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/news-and-events\/scs-panel-2025\/hidden-intellectual-labor-of-lexicography\/","title":{"rendered":"Sub uoce: The text de uerborum significatu and the hidden intellectual labor of lexicography"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Blair, University College London<\/strong><\/p>\n

Knowledge production and other forms of intellectual labor by enslaved and formerly enslaved scholars in the Roman world were frequently submerged in the authorial personality of an enslaving aristocrat. By a process of “masterly extensibility” (Reay), the enslaved intellectual becomes a prosthetic appendage of the enslaver’s thought and work. Calvisius Sabinus, wanting to seem erudite, bought a large retinue of enslaved grammarians and philologists: “he thought that whatever anyone in his household knew, he knew himself” (Sen. epist. <\/em>27.8). Through a “fiction of voluntarism” (Geue), expropriations and erasures of freedpersons’ intellectual labor were represented as friendly collaborations. So the historiography of Sallust and Asinius Pollio was based on notes compiled by the freedman Ateius Philologus (Suet. gramm. <\/em>10); the once-enslaved Parthenius conducted mythographic research for Gallus’ learned poetry (amat. narr. <\/em>174r); Ciceronian polish depended on Tiro\u2019s work as editor (Howley 2011).<\/p>\n

Despite such patterns in the ancient evidence, scholars are slow to recover the traces\u00a0 of subaltern intellectual activity obscured by processes of Roman “epistemicide” (Padilla\u00a0 Peralta 2020), whether misled by Romantic fictions of individual authorship (Moss 2023) or by a prejudicial distinction between subaltern “schoolteachers” and elite “scholars” (Zetzel). Only recently has research begun to emphasize the contributions of subaltern intellectuals to the formation of texts (Moss 2021, 2023; Howley 2020) and to consider how the material\u00a0 conditions under which marginalized intellectuals produced knowledge in the Roman world\u00a0 shaped the body of knowledge itself (Padilla Peralta 2022, Uden).<\/p>\n

Little attention is paid, from this perspective, to the lexicon de uerborum significatu<\/em> by the Augustan antiquarian M. Verrius Flaccus\u2014arguably the most significant and most\u00a0 copiously preserved work of Roman erudition authored by a formerly enslaved person. Above all, Verrius (with his epitomators Festus and Paulus) has attracted the attention of source critics because of the tantalizing irregularities the lexicon presents (Reitzenstein; Kriegshammer; Strzelecki; Bona 1964, 1982, 1992; Pieroni; Scappaticcio). The alphabetization is not uniform; lemmata on related subjects sometimes begin with a telltale formula; some sources are only quoted in segments where the lemmata are least rigorously alphabetized, etc. It was once thought that Festus himself had added to Verrius in the process of epitomizing (M\u00fcller), but it is now almost universally accepted that Verrius left the text unfinished, dying before he could smooth out the kinks.<\/p>\n

Rather, I argue that the evidence for scholarly knowledge production in Verrius’ day\u00a0 unambiguously points to a collaborative project within a massive workshop of enslaved or\u00a0 low-status scholars, secretaries, and amanuenses. The unevennesses visible in the lemmata do\u00a0 not reflect different stages in Verrius’ revision, but multiple specialized hands engaged in a\u00a0 project of intellectual Fordism. In the case of de uerborum significatu<\/em>, the tools of Quellenkritik<\/em> can be applied to the novel purpose of identifying individual signatures among its anonymous contributors. This helps to paint a picture of a new post-Republican episteme\u00a0 (Wallace-Hadrill), in which enslaved and low-status scholars can be seen dismantling the “pyramidic” (Rawson) structures of Varronian systematic erudition and reorganizing knowledge along new lines.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/p>\n

F. Bona (1964), Contributo allo studio della composizione del De verborum significatu di Verrio Flacco<\/em>, Milan.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014 (1982), Opusculum Festinum<\/em>, Pavia.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014 (1992), “Il ‘de uerborum significatu’ di Festo e le XII Tavole, 1. Gli ‘auctores’ di\u00a0 Verrio Flacco”, Quaderni Camerti di Studi Romanistici <\/em>20: 211\u201328.<\/p>\n

T. Geue (2018), “Soft Hands, Hard Power: Sponging Off of the Empire of Leisure (Virgil, Georgics <\/em>4)”, JRS <\/em>108: 115\u201340.<\/p>\n

F. Glinister, C. Woods, J.A. North and M.W. Crawford (eds.), Verrius, Festus, & Paul: Lexicography, Scholarship, & Society<\/em>, London.<\/p>\n

J.A. Howley (2011), Intellectual Narratives and Elite Roman Learning in the <\/em>Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius<\/em>, diss. St. Andrews.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014 (2020), “In Ancient Rome”, in M. Ribery and L. Price (eds.), Further Reading<\/em>,\u00a0 Oxford: 15\u201327.<\/p>\n

R. Kriegshammer (1903), De Varronis et Verrii fontibus quaestiones selectae<\/em>, Leipzig.<\/p>\n

O. M\u00fcller (1839), Sexti Pompei Festi de verborum significatione quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome<\/em>, Leipzig.<\/p>\n

J.E.G. Zetzel (2018), Critics, Compilers, and Commentators: An Introduction to Roman\u00a0 Philology, 200 BCE\u2013800 CE<\/em>, Oxford.<\/p>\n

C. Moss (2021), “Between the Lines: Looking for the Contributions of Enslaved Literate Laborers in a Second-Century Text (P. Berol. 11632)”. Studies in Late Antiquity <\/em>5: 432\u2013 52.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014 (2023), ‘The Secretary: Enslaved Workers, Stenography, and the Production of Early\u00a0 Christian Literature’, Journal of Theological Studies<\/em>, NS, 74: 20\u201356.<\/p>\n

D. Padilla Peralta (2020), ‘Epistemicide: The Roman Case’, Classica <\/em>33: 151\u201386.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014 (2022), ‘Slavery, theology, and revolution in Varro’s antiquitates rerum divinarum<\/em>‘, lecture delivered at the Institute of Classical Studies, London, 24 February.<\/p>\n

P. Pieroni (2004), Marcus Verrius Flaccus’ De significatu verborum in den Ausz\u00fcgen von Sextus Pompeius Festus und Paulus Diaconus. Einleitung und Teilkommentar (154,19\u2013 186,29 Lindsay)<\/em>, Frankfurt am Main.<\/p>\n

E. Rawson (1978), “The Introduction of Logical Organisation in Roman Prose Literature”, Papers of the British School at Rome<\/em> 46: 12\u201334.<\/p>\n

B. Reay (2005), “Agriculture, Writing, and Cato\u2019s Aristocratic Self-Fashioning”, CA<\/em> 24: 331\u2013 61.<\/p>\n

R. Reitzenstein (1887), Verrianische Forschungen<\/em>, Breslau.<\/p>\n

M.C. Scappaticcio (2020), “Verrius Flaccus, his Alexandrian model, or just an anonymous\u00a0 grammarian? The most ancient direct witness of a Latin ‘Ars grammatica’”, CQ <\/em>70: 806\u2013 21.<\/p>\n

L. Strzelecki (1932), Quaestiones Verrianae<\/em>, Warsaw.<\/p>\n

J. Uden (2020), ‘The Margins of Satire: Suetonius, satura<\/em>, and Scholarly Outsiders in Ancient Rome’, AJP <\/em>141: 575\u2013601.<\/p>\n

A. Wallace-Hadrill (2009), Rome’s Cultural Revolution<\/em>, Cambridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Blair, University College London Knowledge production and other forms of intellectual labor by enslaved and formerly enslaved scholars in the Roman world were frequently submerged in the authorial personality of an enslaving aristocrat. By a process of “masterly extensibility” (Reay), the enslaved intellectual becomes a prosthetic appendage of the enslaver’s thought and work. Calvisius […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23724,"featured_media":0,"parent":142,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/no-sidebars.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/474\/revisions\/614"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}