Ambrosianus M 94 sup. – Am

Previous descriptions: Martini, Bassi (1906, 654–5).

Reproductions: –

Siglum: Am

Shelfmark: Ambrosianus M 94 sup.

Family: d²

Date: Middle of the 15th century (before 1462)

Format: parchment, 277×179 mm, I+II (paper) + 257 ff.

Material: the parchment is in a perfect condition.

Binding: original, wood covered in leather.

Watermarks: none.

Scribes: A: 1r–254r; B: 255r–257v.

Annotations: on the rear paste-down Iulius polydeuces. est georgij Merlani Alexandrini et amicorum. emptus fuit per me Georgiu(m) ferrariae a nardo aurispae die XX[..] februarij 1462 ‘Julius Pollux. It belongs to Giorgio Merlani of Alessandria and (his) friends. It was bought by me, Giorgio, in Ferrara from Nardo Aurispa on 2 February 1462’. On the rear paste-down there are other notes in Latin by Giorgio Merlani, but they are not related to the book.

1 (1r‒254v). Pollux, Onomasticon. No title. The work is preceded (f.1r) by the Prefatory EpigramPrefatory epigram (Pollux) (incipit χρυσοῦ μεταλλεῦ καὶ γεωργὲ σπερμάτων, explicit ἂν εὐσέβειαν τοῖς πόνοις κεραννύεις). Contains books 1 (ff. 1r‒47r), 2 (ff. 47r‒78v), 3 (ff. 78v‒96r), 4 (ff. 96v‒121r), 5 (ff. 121r‒135r), 6 (ff. 135r ‒150v), 7 (151r‒180v), 8 (180v‒206r), 9 (ff. 206v‒225v), and 10 (225v‒254r). On these pages, Pollux’s text is arranged in two narrow columns, one word per line, sometimes more. It is a very rich parchment manuscript: chapter titles and initial letters are rubricated, and f. 1r is even illuminated. At the end of Book 10, another hand added μέλαν, μελανοδόχον, καλάμη (10.60, this passage is not omitted in the text); the same interpolation is found in the manuscript Laurentianus plut. 58.3Laur. plut. 58.3 (Lu), copied by Georgius TriviziasGeorgius Trivizias.

f. 254v: blank.

ff. 255r–257r: these folios were written by a different but still contemporary hand, which supplies the text that the first scribe omitted after ἀνδρῶν ἄριστος καὶ μάλιστ’ἐμοὶ ξένος (9.72) on f. 219r, where another hand annotated λείπει (this may be the same hand that intervened at the end of Book 10); they contain the text from ἀτὰρ παρ’ ἐμοί (9.72) to κατὰ συνωνυμίαν ἢ ὁμοιότητα (9.129). The layout is also different in these folios: instead of having two columns, the text is continuous.

f. 257v: blank.

It is very difficult to determine exactly where this manuscript was copied. However, it must have been in Italy before the winter of the year 1462, when Giorgio MerlaniGiorgio Merlani (on his life see DBI 73.679–685) bought it in Ferrara, as stated by the ownership note on the rear paste-down, from Nardo Aurispa, or – better – Nardo PalmieriNardo Palmieri, son-in-law of the renowned humanist Giovanni AurispaGiovanni Aurispa    (Noto 1376 – Ferrara 1459; on him see the recent Micciché (2021) with further and up-to-date bibliography). This manuscript contains a very good text by Pollux, which shares conjunctive errors with none other than Parisinus graecus 2647Par. gr. 2647 (B), but since the history of B is also obscure, this cannot be of any help. One feature which might shed some light, albeit weakly, is the interpolation at the end of Book 10, which appears in an identical form in Laurentianus plut. 58.3Laur. plut. 58.3 (Lu), copied by Georgius Trivizias in the 1460s or 1470s, and which might suggest a link between Am and Lu. Apart from this feature, however, the link between the two manuscripts is not very strong, since Am depends on B’s text, Lu on that of Matritensis 4625Matr. 4625 (E). To make Am even more elusive, we must bear in mind that this codex was sold in Ferrara by Nardo Palmieri and his wife Mita Aurispa in Ferrara to support themselves, but does not correspond to any item in the inventory of Giovanni Aurispa’s library (see Franceschini 1976, 40) and cannot be traced back to the Italian humanist.