[Usyd_Classics_Events] CAH seminar 25th May Ben Brown

[Tamara Neal]

Dear Friends of Classics and Ancient History,

We are delighted to invite you to the final lecture in our Semester 1, 2026 Classics and Ancient History research seminar series.


Monday 25th May 2026 12.15pm

V. Gordon Childe Boardroom, Madsen Building Level 2.

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/89574510422

Chair:  Prof. Peter Wilson



Ben Brown (University of Sydney)

Zenobius Parisinus: a rationale for a practical edition of the vulgate MS (Parisinus grec 3070)

A significant body of evidence for early Greek history is found entangled in the complex recensions transmitting Ancient Greek proverbs. Many of these proverbs originate in the archaic and classical period and fossilise via a popular medium obscure events and institutions about which we are otherwise ignorant. The main proverb collections, transmitted via Byzantine MSS, very often contain—in addition to the proverbs themselves—scholarly exegesis, glosses, and the learned citation of lost literature. These exegeses are of great historical interest for the explanations and fragments they include. Most of these manuscripts contain epitomes of the larger collections made by Zenobius and Diogenianus early in the 2nd century CE. Zenobius and Diogenianus synthesised earlier Alexandrian scholarship (especially the work of Didymus and Lukillos of Tarrhaeus) that ultimately descended from the pioneering scientific approach to proverbs initiated by Aristotle.

These later epitomes were transmitted to the early Renaissance along broadly two traditions: one tradition arranged proverbs alphabetically by initial word. The other, the so-called ‘Athos Recension’, arranged proverbs non-alphabetically. 20th century scholarship has focused almost exclusively on the non-alphabetic ‘Athos' tradition—preserved in a celebrated manuscript (Paris Supplement 1164) found by Emmanuel Miller on Mt Athos and published in 1868—on the assumption that alphabetization was a later Byzantine reordering, and hence corruption, of the material. Since the 1890s the alphabetic, so-called ‘vulgate’, tradition has been considerably neglected.

This neglect is, in fact, quite profound. The two main editions of the ‘vulgate’ are those of Thomas Gaisford (Paroemiographi Graeci, Oxford 1836) and the Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum edited by E.L. Leutsch and F.G. Schneidewin (2 volumes, Göttingen 1839-51). Both are almost two centuries old. The discovery of the ‘Athos Recension’ in 1868 diverted much of the scholarly attention away from the vulgate texts of the epitomes of Zenobius and Diogenianius. The project briefly presented here is a step toward renewing interest in the vulgate tradition by providing a rationale for an updated text and translation of the manuscript containing the oldest, fullest, and best-preserved collection of the vulgate Zenobius (Codex Parisinus Graecus 3070, 12th century CE, containing 572 proverbs). What follows will be the first working edition, translation, and historical commentary on this important source in over 150 years.

Ben Brown is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney and co-founder of the Critical Antiquities Network.



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DR TAMARA NEAL FHEA | Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek (Education Focused) | Academic Advisor | Accredited University-wide Peer Reviewer of Teaching
President Classical Association of NSW<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/CWuDC91WPRTM11llgcofnUqZKAT?domain=classics.org.au>
Classics & Ancient History | School of Humanities | Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
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