Two Giraffes Emended

Abstract

In 1880 Spyridon Lambros discovered in the library of the Dionysiou monastery on Mount Athos a manuscript containing, among other things, the missing second book of a compilation of zoological lore made for the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (912–59), generally referred to as the Sylloge Constantini. The first book, already known from a manuscript in Paris, proclaims in its heading that the compilation was based on the epitome of Aristotle's περ ζῴων by Aristophanes of Byzantium, with supplements from the writings of Aelian, Timotheos and others. These supplements are found exclusively in the second book, which Lambros edited, along with the first, for the Supplementum Aristotelicum. They add greatly to our knowledge of the περ ζῴων by the fifth-century grammarian Timotheos of Gaza, a work hitherto known only from the so-called Epitome Augustana, a selection of 53 unconnected chapters made in the reign of Constantine IX Monomachos (1042–55).