Disputatio:Hippolytus Salvianus

Titulus "aquatilium animalium historiae" librorum

Since the edit was made with an English summary, I comment here in English. The correct title of his book is a tiny point, but a difficult one. The work title as it appears on the title page is in the genitive, because the title page doesn't actually give us the work title but the title of the first book: here it is Aquatilium animalium historiae liber primus. Well, if we were going to write an article about the work at all, it would be about the whole work, not the first book. Now, on the first line of his preface, he gives a title for the whole work ... but in the accusative case, and with a variant word: here it is "constitui Animantium aquatilium historiam conscribere". And then in the running heads for the first part of the text he gives a work title, but beginning with "De ...", so that what follows is in the ablative case: here it is De historia aquatilium animalium. Does this determined stylist ever supply a simple title in the nominative? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:22, 27 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

LOL. I'd just addressed this question in the taberna! I think we can infer the correct title from what I wrote there and what you wrote here—and we can accept that Vicipaedia had it right in the first place, and 77.164.133.132's error should be reverted. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:36, 27 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

"His great work, entitled Aquatilium Animalium Historia" (Bushnan 1853: 23). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:59, 27 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

As Salviani's book is a collection of descriptions, I'm quite convinced that 'historiae' is not a genitive singular, but a nominative plural. Did you notice there's a comma between 'historiae' and 'liber'? 77.164.133.132 21:34, 27 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me, Bushnan makes the same error as you do, taking 'historiae' for a genitive singular, and thus citing the title incorrectly as Aquatilium animalium historia. The line in Salviani's work you cite in the above remark, is not the title of his work. The title is Aquatilium animalium historiae, the line in his introduction is about 'Animantium aquatilium historia', a general term. 77.164.133.132 23:09, 27 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

It may be useful to know that 'Liber primus' was not only the first 'book', but all that ever appeared. It's quite imaginable that Salviani envisioned to publish the book in two parts, part one being the synonymy, part two containing the historiae, but it's hard to believe he envisioned a second volume containing more 'historiae', as he already was quite exhaustive when it came to known species of that day. He already described 18 that were completely new to science in 1558. After the death of Cervini, his benefactor, Salviani obviously had to change plans. The title page, already printed, mentioning 'Liber primus', bore the year 1554, but the first part of the work was issued only in 1557. Salviani certainly wrote a new dedication, changing from one to Cervini to one to pope Paul IV. Probably he had to raise new funds. The change of plans may have included canceling a second and expensive title page for a 'Liber secundus'. Anyway, the work consists of only one volume, and one 'liber'. So if there's ever going to be an article on the work, it's not going to be one on a series. 77.164.133.132 22:47, 27 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

And now it says that he studied medicine in Rome. Where did you find corroboration for that? Apart from his place of birth and the names of his parents, we don't know anything about him from before he started to practice medicine in Rome, and teach at the university. And we know of only one medical work of his: De crisibus. Of other works that are sometimes attributed to him, he is only the printer (De urinis; 1560, authored by Leone Rogano) or they are authored by his son Salustio (like Variae lectiones de re medica; 1588). 77.164.133.132 22:00, 27 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

I see that Iacobus quickly corrected the statement. We currently say that he studied medicine (somewhere unspecified), which he then practised in Rome. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 11:23, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

I noticed, thank you. 77.164.133.132 12:33, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Emperor Charles V, no less, appears to give the book a title in the accusative singular, "Historiã aquatiliũ animalium". Higher up on the same page Pope Julius III does the same, and puts the words in the title page order: "aquatiliũ animalium Historiã". This note of mine is only meant as a tease: I really don't know what choice is best. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:47, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

From page 58 on, every right page has "De historia aquatilium animalium" at the top. But then beneath it, you will find 'historia prima', 'historia secunda' etcetera until 'historia nonagesima secunda'. At least many modern authors take the first three words of the title as one unit, treating historiae as a plural. The 'privileges' by Charles V, Julius III and Cosimo I were all written well before the work was finished. 77.164.133.132 14:59, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Bibliographia

*Bushnan, J. S. 1853. Ichhthyology: Fishes: Particularly their structure and economical uses. In The Naturalist's Library, ed. William Jardine Equite, vol. 135. Edimburgi: W. H. Lizars; et Londinii: Henry G. Bohn. Editio interretialis.

I don't know what you wanted to show with this reference. But if it had something to to with the title of Salviani's work on fishes, you'd better take a look at the title page of the work itself. The above work I'd rather cite as "Bushnan, J.S. (1853). Ichthyology, Memoir of Hippolito Salviani, in: Jardine, W., The Naturalist's Library 35: 17–43 because it's the chapter on Ippolito Salviani that's the relevant part. The volume by the way, is XXXV, not CXXXV. 77.164.133.132 21:42, 27 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Moving on?

Maybe it would be more productive all round if we expanded the article, adding footnotes to reliable sources? Unlike en:wiki, Vicipaedia does not deprecate citing primary and early sources (we love them if they are in Latin, of course, but any relevant language will do).

The pagename to choose for the article about the book is a non-issue, really, until someone creates it. And at that point I'd respect the choice of that creator, if based on reason. My comment, above, clearly wasn't intended to decide the matter. 16th century book titles aren't always easy to pin down. The comma is a good point (that title page sentence is unusually full of commas) and I think the Biodiversity Library takes it as the decisive factor. Perhaps they are right, after all, and Bushnan (with whom I appear to have agreed originally) is wrong. I can easily believe that.

Punctuation back then was unstandardized and often highly idiosyncratic, hardly something to rely on. Even today we have the fact that the US and Oxfordian half of the English-speaking world reads the famous dedication "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God" as involving an appositive. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:45, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Mehercle! I hadn't actually looked at the Bushnan reference till now. If Jardine set out to puzzle bibliographers about how best to treat his "Library" he succeeded. And I speak as a trained (many years ago) bibliographer. Since it's a rainy day and I can't go and prune my apple trees, I'll offer you gentlemen a third way to deal with the thing, following Iacobus's order of elements. Play with it as you like, but, if you love me, don't reinstate "Equite" and don't make the date of publication into a link.

Well, but he was a knight! :) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:48, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

In imposing his order of elements on the Teissier reference Iacobus mistyped the date. Easily done. But it was a weak reference anyway, mea culpa, and the link was dead. I have now corrected this reference too, and found an online source for the text. There is very little meat in it, I'm sorry to say. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:23, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

I recently created a page on Salviani for the Dutch Wikipedia, for which I did a lot of research. That was my motive to come here. I first checked every Wikipedia to see if they cited sources I did not yet find, and after I finished my page, I checked the other Wikipedia's again, to see if the 'facts' they mentioned could be corroborated by the available sources. Feel free to check the Dutch page. Apart from references to bibliographies and library catalogues (I didn't list them) I think I was quite exhaustive in citing the available sources. With respect to the book, I found Hendrikx, S. (2015). Salviani, Ippolito (1514–1572); Aquatilium animalium historiae, on the website of the Amsterdam University Library, quite helpful, as she mentions a few new things the other sources don't, although she made some errors when citing page numbers and plates. 77.164.133.132 13:09, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Re "Salviani, Ippolito (1514–1572); Aquatilium animalium historiae, on the website of the Amsterdam University Library." The Amsterdam University Library cites the title not in that brief form, but as AQUATILIUM ANIMALIUM HISTORIAE, liber primus, cum eorundem formis, aere excuses, with two brand-new errors: at the end, the subjunctive verb excuses 'may you apologize' (!) for the participle in the ablative, excusis 'engraved', and a silent correction of eorumdem to eorundem. Also, note that the library cites Gessner's Historiae Animalium, Liber IV (1558), with the same comma (Of the story of the animals, book 4), and later it cites De piscibus libri V (1613): both titles follow the syntax highlighted below. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:34, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

When I speak of a comma, I speak of the one in this page, put there by the author himself. 77.164.133.132 18:55, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Looks good. Maybe you already know this: there is a 2017 article in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, on line, which I will add to the bibliography. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:14, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Yes, you did already know it. And that looks like a good article on the Dutch Wikipedia, though I don't read Dutch :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:19, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

I only mentioned the page so one could find some extra sources. I know Dutch is not read by many. But English, French and Italian are. 77.164.133.132 14:38, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

The common syntax of titles

One reason the first Latin words printed on a title-page in the Renaissance are often likeliest to be a noun or noun-phrase in the genitive is that we expect them to be!—either that (the genitive), or a prepositional phrase. What we then expect to follow is a generic word for the object in hand: annotationes, commentarius, liber, opus, scrutinium, sermones, tractatio, or whatever. ¶ Often, the first words (in the genitive) are the author's name. See Des. Erasmi Rot. in Novum Testamentum annotationes and Athanasii Kircheri e Societatis Iesu Scrutinium physico-medicum and Martini Crusii Poematum Graecorum libri duo. In a slightly different style in this example, the first words are Iulii Caesaris 'of Julius Caesar', but what we nowadays consider the noun representing the title is merely quae exstant, while the subject of the sentence as printed is actually Joannes Goduinus. The syntax of genitive + quae exstant again appears here. So the expected pattern is AUTHOR OR SUBJECT (genitive) + GENERIC NAME OF THE OBJECT (nominative). Or, as in Goduinus's example: AUTHOR OR SUBJECT (genitive) + GENERIC NAME OF THE OBJECT (accusative) + VERB (often edidit or a verb showing some similar curatorial process) + CURATOR'S NAME (nominative). Another way of doing it puts the name of the object in the nominative, with the verb now a participle in the nominative and the curator's name in the ablative. ¶ For "author or subject," we often find a prepositional phrase. Salviani's own De crisibus, ad Galeni censuram liber is of this type. ¶ And here's an example that has both the author's name in the genitive and a prepositional phrase giving the subject, and then a generic object-name: Jo. Gottlieb. Heinecii JC. ad legem Juliam et Papiam Poppaeam commentarius (1741). ¶ Title-pages exemplifying the syntax discussed above are easily found on the internet, and they are legion. As I've already pointed out (in the Taberna), if the underlying title in question here were being conceived as Aquatilium Animalium Historiae (nominative), the title-page would likely read Aquatilium Animalium Historiarum liber primus. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 16:06, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Here's one whose syntactical pattern is about as analogous to that of the book in question as can be: C. Plinii Secundi Naturalis Historiae, Tomus Primus. The adjective naturalis shows that historiae is genitive, not nominative. The generic word for the object in hand is tomus. And note even the comma: Of Gaius Secundus Plinius's natural history, the first tome. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 18:46, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Here's one where the object in hand is a number! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 00:55, 30 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)

Quite apart from the current context, I find these general observations very interesting and useful. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:42, 28 Ianuarii 2021 (UTC)