From Ausonius' Schooldays? A Schoolbook and its Relatives

Abstract

Some time ago, pursuing humanistic Greek dictionaries, I was leafing through the volume of plates from Vienna MSS published by Josef Bick in 1930, when my eye was caught by a plate from a Latin–Greek dictionary, arranged not alphabetically but by topics. Bick and the catalogue informed me that there was a subscription at the end, written in beginner's Greek and then crossed out (Plate I): ‘And so ends, with God's help, the dictionary of Cicero, written out by me, Conrad Celtes, Poet, in the monastery of Sponheim, in the year of Our Lord 1495 on the seventh day of October, while Johannes Trithemius was Abbot. Praise be to God in heaven most glorious.’ On the first page of the volume, Celtes had written a table of contents:Continetur in hoc libello: I Grammatica greca brevissima, contracta ex diver sis autoribus per C.C. 2 Colloquia et conversaciones grece, quas vulgo apud Latinos Latinum ideoma dicunt (?), cum vocabulario per C.C. inventas. 3 Vocabularium rerum admirandum grecum, nuper a Conrado Celte in Hercinia silva apud druidas inventum. On the same page, Celtes had written instructions to a well-known publisher:Aldus meusis to add a short preface addressed to all the youngsters of Europe who want to learn Greek, and is assured that it will be a fine and very useful little book. Various additions are needed in the Grammar; but Aldus needs no telling, let him emend it all as necessary; and have accents added, for in Celtes' exemplar, and in all Greek books in France and Germany, there were none.