Col. I 12-15: τῇ ἐπιστήμῃ ταύτῃ συναγωνίσασθαι […] ἕτοιμος εἰμὶ παραστῆσαι
Simonidis,
Epistolimaia Diatribé, London, 1860, p. 25: ἕτοιμος γὰρ εἰμὶ ἵνα ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐπιστήμης ποιήσω πᾶν ὅτι δύναμαι.
"bizarre polemical pamphlet on the interpretation of hieroglyphics"
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Meletios of Ioannina, a geographer and theologian at the beginning of the 18th century who was well known to Simonides – the latter, incidentally, attributed to a certain
Meletios the Συμαΐς that he himself had created out of nothing (Athens, 1849)
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Col. II 11-12: τῇ ὑποκειμένῃ χώρᾳ πέριξ βλέπων
Simonides,
Σύμμιγα, Odessa, 1853: τὴν πέριξ χώραν (
passim in the liminal text attributed to Kallinikos Hieromonachos).
===================
Col. I 35-37: πάντα πέριξ σκοποῦντα ἄγρυπνον εἶναι νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας.
Simonides,
Λείψανα Ἱστορικά, Liverpool, 1864, p. 8 (
sub fine): Νυκτὸς καὶ φωτὸς ἄγρυπνος φύλαξ εἰμί.
===================
the reworking of the manual of Christian iconography by Dionysius of Fourna that he himself rewrote and made numerous copies of in his own hand (in Athens in 1847 he sold one of the copies he had made to the French collectors Didron and Durand): Ὁ τὴν ζωγραφικὴν ἐπιστήμην μαθεῖν βουλόμενος ἂς ὁδηγῆται πρὸς αὐτὴν κατὰ πρῶτον καὶ ἂς προγυμνάζεται […] καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ φωτίσας εἰς τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν τοῦ ἀληθινοῦ Θεοῦ συνέτισον τὴν ψυχήν («Que celui qui veut apprendre la science de la peinture commence à s’en approcher et à s’y préparer d’avance pendant quelque temps […] éclairer son âme pour la connaissance du vrai Dieu» etc.: translation by Paul Durand, pp. 11-12 of the
Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine, Paris, 1845).
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he cited as crucial proof of continuity between Hellenistic and Byzantine painting (
Facsimiles of Certain Portions of the Gospel of St. Matthew, edited by Simonides, London, 1862, p. 32).
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Right from his first attempts at forging, he set about putting together a store of iconographic illustrations, and the hieratic images that he subsequently inserted in his
various books (from the Συμαΐς to the Θεολογικαὶ Γραφαὶ τέτταρες to the papyrus fragments of the Gospel of Matthew)
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the portrait of a supposed “master” to Dionysius of Fourna, Panselinos,
[11] whose face could almost be superimposed on that which is to be found on the extreme right of the
recto of the pseudo-Artemidorus, after the array of limbs and heads. The coincidental similarity, in itself significant, between a portrait drawn by Simonides himself and one of the faces which feature on the pseudo-Artemidorus is the culmination of a series of textual coincidences between Simonides’ writing and passages –
[11] This is MS former inv. 13871 from the Thomas Phillipps Collection, now in the St. John’s University, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (Collegeville, Minnesota, USA
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μεμειγμένα ὅπλα
mixed weapons
the unforgiveable modernisms such as μεμειγμένα ὅπλα (col. I, 18-19),
===================
the rather startling echoes of the introduction to Karl Ritter’s
Allgemeine vergleichende Geographie pointed out by Maurizio Calvesi,
[12] etc.
[12] M. Calvesi,
Un Artemidoro del XIX secolo, «Storia dell’arte», 119, 2008, pp. 109-128.
===================
Simonides had a kind of fixation with epitomes. In fact he
conceived[17] numerous forgeries of
epitomes by Greek historians and geographers, and offered an impressive number by great lost authors (which he claimed to possess) to the Science Academy of Saint Petersburg at the beginning of January 1851, but he had already made mention of some of them in the critical apparatus he ap
pended to his (completely invented) geographical dictionary by the non-existent Eulyros.[18]
[18] The documents pertaining to this whole affair are now in Volume C. Simonides, Opere greche, I (Κεφαλληνιακά), Bari, Edizioni di pagina, 2012.
In his lists and apparatus we in fact find: Epitome of the 40 books of Diodorus reduced to 17 (Saint Petersburg List, n. 11); Epitome of Duris di Samos’s ὅροι [sic] (n. 12 = Eulyros List n. 8); Summary of the History of the Greeks and the Samians (n. 13 = 9); Epitome of Arrian’s History (n. 15 = 11); Epitome of Aristodemus (n. 16),[19] Epitome of Democritus’ Geography (24 = 16); Epitome of Ephorus’ History (26 = 18); Epitome of Eratosthenes’ Geography (27 = 19); Epitome of Polemon of Ilium’s collection of epigraphs (28 = 20); Epitome of Charmos of Athens’ Geography (38); Epitome of Posidonius’ History (33); Epitome of Demetrius of Callatis’s treatise on the eruptions of volcanoes (43); and so on.[20]
[19] The nature of this διαδραμάτιον is controversial.
[20] On Simonides’ obsession with epitomes, cfr. also:
Il viaggio di Artemidoro, Milano, Rizzoli, 2010, p. 278.
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rare neo-Greek work, published in Vienna by the Zosimadai brothers, which confirmed beyond doubt – in the eyes of Simonides – that that fragment on the division into provinces of Roman Spain [= 21 Stiehle] was part of an
Epitome by Artemidorus: it was the monumental Συλλογὴ τῶν ἐν ἐπιτομῇ τοῖς πάλαι Γεωγραφηθέντων, τύποις ἐκδοθέντων (Collection of printed and published geographical epitomes), which includes – on p. 475 of Tome I (1807) – that fragment between the τεμάχια Ἀρτεμιδώρου. The Συλλογή
declares that all the material it contains comes from epitomes: that much is immediately clear from the title and the rest of the title page where Artemidorus is explicitly named. It is stated that the work is «funded by the Zosimadai brothers», χάριν τῶν τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς παιδείας ἐφιεμένων Ἑλλήνων. Amongst the beneficiaries of this generous patronage was Simonides, to whom Athanasios Zosimas provided funding in 1853 for the edition of Ἑρμηνεία τῶν ζωγράφων, by Dionysius of Fourna, published in Athens. To the “immortal brothers” Zosimadai, Simonides would subsequently dedicate his eccentric work
Horus of Nilopolis (1863). Incidentally, the Zosimadais had shown themselves to be generous patrons by providing funding for Korais’ “Hellenic Library”, and in the political field had made important contributions to the cause of Greek patriotism; they had close connections with Ypsilanti, a symbolic figure for all Greek irredentists and patriots (Simonides had sought to demonstrate, when he had succeeded in obtaining an introduction to the Science Academy of Saint Petersburg, that he was related indirectly to Ypsilanti himself).
===================
To return to the Viennese
Collection of geographical epitomes, the proof of the direct use that Simonides made of it is in his adoption of the title-phrase
the Epitome of Artemidoros and Menippos (in
The Periplus of Hannon King of the Karchedonians, London, Trübner, 1864, p. 16), which exactly mirrors the form used in the
Collection: τεμάχια τινὰ Μενίππου καὶ Ἀρτεμιδώρου. And it should be remembered, besides, that it was right there in the
collection – and certainly not in Müller’s collection
Geographi Graeci minores (I, Paris, Didot, 1855), from which, with the exception of two pages at the end of the volume containing only a handful of fragments “from the Epitome of Artemidorus”, Artemidorus is missing – that he was able to actually find the fragments of Artemidorus. In short, all the information available to him led Simonides to believe that there was in existence an epitome of Artemidorus’ work written by the geographer himself: whence his decision to have “his” Artemidorus say, «λήψομεν ἐν ἐπιτομῇ τὰ διαστήματα τῶν τόπων».
===================
What we have then is quite a paradox: a “complete fragment”, one of Simonides’ finest works, almost on a par with the Hanno and Matthew papyri, his real achievements in the field of forged papyri.
===================
While no (surviving) ancient work begins with τόν and infinitive + δεῖ (or viceversa: δεῖ + τόν and infinitive), we do find such a structure not only in the above-mentioned introduction to Dionysius of Fourna’s
Manual, which was such a favourite of Simonides’, or rather in Simonides’s pseudo-Egyptian text («δεῖ πάντας ἀνθρώπους καθαρῷ νῷ καὶ σώματι αἰνεῖν τὸν κύριον» etc.),
===================
(It is no coincidence that the pigments of the
verso have never been chemically analysed).
.... The failure to analyse the pigments in the ink used on the
verso is a far from insignificant confirmation that this is where the “trick” lies
===================
No one who is aware of Simonides’ impressive works with papyrus will be surprised to see that the writing in the
Panegyric to Geography and the
Epitome of Spain appear to be the same. His papyruses in fact, as Livia Capponi has accurately pointed out in her important essay
Visita ai papiri di Simonides, «although presented as texts by different authors from different eras, are characterised by similar writing. In other words, papyruses [which are supposed to be] from completely different eras and genres and of completely different provenance are often in exactly the same writing». She goes on to specify:
«Simonides uses no more than four paleographic styles which resemble each other and are sometimes even found alongside each other in the same text».
[26]
[26] L. Capponi examined the collection of Simonides papyruses at the Museum of Liverpool on 9 November 2007. She wrote an account of what she saw and this, along with a considerable quantity of accompanying photographic evidence, can be found in her above-mentioned essay, which is appended to the volume L. Canfora, Il papiro di Artemidoro, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2008, pp. 457-461.
The photographic material gathered by Livia Capponi is particularly instructive and demonstrates moreover Simonides’ increasing interest in creating damaged, frayed papyruses (see plates 14 and 15 in the volume cited in the note).
One defect in the way he writes on papyrus is the almost total absence of ligatures between the letters as well as the distance between them (cfr. Capponi, p. 458): the same characteristic is to be found in the pseudo-Artemidorus.
[27]
[27] This was highlighted in a number of papers presented during the workshop on the pseudo-Artemidorus held in Bologna, in the Department of Classical Philology, on 30 November 2011.
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the adoption of cartographic illustrations to accompany geographical texts (invented ones, naturally) had been part of Simonides’
modus operandi right from the beginning. When he introduces the reader to Eulyros’ geographical lexicon (entitled Ἐθνικά, like Stephen’s lexicon) explaining that he is including only the section on Cephalonia, Simonides takes it upon himself to also describe the characteristics of the whole manuscript that he says he owns: «τὰ Ἐθνικὰ φέρουσι καὶ πίνακας χωρογραφικοὺς (= illustrations, geographical maps) χρώμασι παντοίοις ἐπὶ μεμβρανῶν» (thus begins the third paragraph of the Προαγγελία τῆς πρώτης βίβλου τῶν Ἐθνικῶν Εὐλύρου, at the end of the short volume Γεωγραφικά τε καὶ Νομικὰ τὴν Κεφαλληνίαν ἀφορῶντα published in Athens in 1850, p. 28). Eulyros’ lengthy manuscript, of which Simonides previewed only a small sample in that short edition, thus included πίνακες χωρογραφικοί. It is clear that the so-called “map” in the pseudo-Artemidorus is the πίναξ χωρογραφικός intended to “embellish” the geographical
Epitome which features right alongside it (in coll. IV and V).
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9. The tools of the trade of Simonides the “geographer”
In 1853, Simonides, having failed in his attempt to establish the “epicentre” of his business first in Saint Petersburg and then in Constantinople, arrived in England after a long journey around the Mediterranean, of which not all the details are clear.
[33] In London he attempted, with some success, to peddle his merchandise to the British Museum, where at that time the manuscripts department was rigorously presided over by Frederick Madden. Madden went to great lengths to make sure he was buying only genuine goods and turned down a large number of fakes (some of which had already been offered to the Academy of Saint Petersburg in 1851). Everything that Madden turned down, however, was purchased by Thomas Phillipps, a voracious collector who was by no means averse to acquiring items that were fake, suspect or dubious. Unfortunately, over the course of more than a century, Phillipps’ collection was broken up and, as a result, some of Simonides’ pieces, such as the aforementioned fragment of Eulyros’ Ἐθνικά, kept reappearing on the world antiquarian market (Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and elsewhere): in July 1972, in 1973, and again in June 2005.
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On the other hand, the pieces acquired by the British Museum have, obviously, remained put. The one that stands out is a particularly valuable geographical manuscript consisting of about thirty folios of Manuscript 655 from the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, which Simonides had fraudulently removed: after being purchased by the British Museum, this “booty” was classified as
Additional 19391. We have already analysed elsewhere the contents of these folios.
[34] It is worth pointing out here, though, that there is a connection between these contents and Simonides’ “creative” dealings in the field of ancient geography:
1) Among these folios is to be found the
Periplus of Hanno (13
r-v), which is one of the most painstakingly put-together of the geographical fakes that Simonides created and circulated.
2) The
Additional opens with an anonymous «ὑποτύπωσις γεωγραφίας, ἐν ἐπιτομῇ» (=
Geographi Graeci minores, II, Paris, Didot,1861, pp. 494-509), which begins with «ἡ τῆς ὅλης γῆς» and ends with «ἡ καθ᾿ ἡμᾶς θάλασσα τοιαύτη». From the lists of “unpublished works” that Simonides compiled for the Academy of Saint Petersburg and the Athens edition of Eulyros, we can deduce that, in the case of the (planned) Posidonius’s
Epitome of Geography (n. 24 on the Saint Petersburg list = n. 16 in the Eulyros edition), he intended to include an introductory part that would begin (or actually began) with the words «τάδε ἔστι γεωγραφικά».
3) These folios also include an incomplete map of Spain with an accompanying description (ff. 20
v-21
r): this is a portion of Ptolemy’s
Geography now illustrated with maps, the rest of which is to be found in Vatopedi 655. Charles Stewart, in his biography of Simonides (
A Biographical Memoir of Constantine Simonides, London, Skeet, 1859, p. 33) describes this (and the following) map as «two very curious geographical tablets». He is not wrong: what is striking is the unusual decision to designate the various places with very sketchy drawings of little houses, not always accompanied by place names. The map of Spain is particularly riddled with mistakes, both as regards the series of rivers that run through Lusitania and flow into the Ocean, and in the drawing of the Atlantic coast (where the Sacred Promontory seems to appear twice). The folios, in other words, contained numerous stimuli for the creation of an
Epitome of Spain complete with map. And this is precisely what we find in the so-called Artemidorus papyrus. In which – as we know – there is also a second text consisting of a “general” treatise,
On Geography, that manages to be both rambling and perfunctory.
4) These folios of the
Additional also contain Agathemerus as well as part of the pseudo-Arrian (Periplus Ponti Euxini), in which the name of Artemidorus appears. What we have, in both cases, are pages that from a stylistic point of view (the arid, formulaic nature of the
stadiasmòs), appear to form the basis of the model of
stadiasmòs contained in column V (from line 17) of the pseudo-Artemidorus, as well, of course, as for the pseudo-Eulyros.
5) The whole thing is accompanied by a land and sea map of the entire globe framed by the animals and the figures representing the signs of the zodiac.
6) The
Additional also contains the beginning of Strabo’s
Chrestomathies (fr. 26), with the introductory reference to the philosophical nature of geography (the topic with which the pseudo-Artemidorus begins).
===================
One cannot ignore the fact that in order to have decided to “remove” those folios, Simonides
must have been personally acquainted with the rest of the Vatopedi 655 Manuscript and the whole wealth of geographical material that it contains. Thus the idea of a
miscellaneous manuscript,
entirely on the subject of geography, which opened with a general epitome
On Geography was further nourished.
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Amongst the numerous Byzantine authors he was acquainted with, thanks to his constant contact with Greek manuscripts in a wide range of libraries, Simonides found a number of Epitomes, Διαγνώσεις, ὑποτυπώσεις, synopses, and geographical summaries:
[35] first in the pages he removed from the Vatopedi (= Addit. 19391) and then in the manuscripts of Nikephoros Blemmydes, of Dionysius Periegetes, of Eustathius, etc., which, in any case, from 1861 were included in the second volume of
Geographi Graeci minores.
He was especially familiar with the literary genre of the geographical epitome and the περὶ γεωγραφίας.
[35] And he was able to consult some of them in the second volume of
GGM.
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10. Is anyone on Simonides’ side?
Of course, it is possible to cling to the belief that Simonides’ creations were genuine, and there are those who have done so.
Some scholars of African studies, for example, accepted the authenticity of the papyrus of the Periplus of Hanno, with all its alterations and final additions.
In 1923 a scholar named
Maria Monachesi published The Shepherd of Hermas (Rome, Libreria di Cultura) with an Italian translation and notes. On pp. 4-5 of the introduction, she provided the reader with the following information: «The original text, in Greek, came down to us via two handwritten codices, one from the Monastery of St Gregory on Mount Athos, the other from the Monastery of St Catherine at Mount Sinai. The former (now in the Leipzig Library), which was discovered by Constantine Simonides in 1856, contains almost the whole work (except for the last part) on its 9 folios, and dates back only to the beginning of the 15th or the end of the 14th century […] but until 1856
The Shepherd was known only in the Latin – or so-called Vulgate – version (of which there are many manuscripts), etc.».
It was in vain that Tischendorf produced evidence that Simonides himself, who had turned up in Leipzig in 1855,[36] had created those pages using very good imitations of medieval Greek script for his translation back into Greek of the Latin version of The Shepherd. And it was then that Simonides began to see Tischendorf as a rival, a prelude to his making the provocative claim, years later, that he himself, the eternal forger, was the author of the
Codex Sinaiticus Bible, a “revelation” that nearly led to
the easy-going Tischendorf losing, if not quite his mind, then his ability to reason calmly.
Even as recently as 1990,
Carsten Thiede (
Jesus: Life or Legend?, Oxford) embarked, with the fervour of an apologist oblivious to the fact that for a scholar scientific rigour is absolutely obligatory, on a
defence of Simonides’ Matthew papyrus. Only (admittedly justifiable) prejudice against Simonides – wrote Thiede – leads to the conclusion that the Matthew papyrus is also a fake. But in this case, he objected, «he cannot have faked the papyrus fragments because he had only obtained authorisation to read them, which he did in John Mayer’s library, most of the time in the presence of the owner and other people» (p. 86). We are very familiar with Simonides’ strategy, which – with the complicity of the Reverend Stobart – consisted in creating the impression that he had never seen the parchment or papyrus in question until the moment when the unwary buyer, encouraged by Stobart, called him in to decipher the script (which was actually his own work that Stobart was skilfully marketing). Thiede, who was perhaps aware of this, concentrates on championing the authenticity of the Matthew papyrus (the unmasking of which caused a scandal) because he needed to be able to point to early – or rather,
very early –
evidence of the Gospel; and, according to its long, implausible
subscriptio, the papyrus Simonides had manufactured constituted just such evidence. It was the same mental process as that which had led him and others to claim that a
“Markusfragment” really had come down to us from the Qumran caves. They do not want to have to admit that there is no written evidence of the corpus of the New Testament from before the end of the 1st century AD. It is not productive, however, to use such methods, whether for religious or other reasons, when attempting to ignore the difference between what is counterfeit and what is authentic. One risks paying an astronomical sum for an almost perfect
Cimabue, peeping out from a corner of which is a «small but perfectly identifiable Mercedes-Benz».
[37]
[36] After an extremely long journey involving stops in Athens, Constantinople, Saint Petersburg, London, Paris and Leipzig in order to try to sell his “unpublished” works.
[37] As happens in Frederick Forsyth’s well-constructed tale,
The Art of The Matter, set in the world of the London auction houses: it can be found in Forsyth’s collection of short stories,
The Veteran, 2001.
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Simonides had first-hand knowledge of those epigraphs at Priene (I, Priene, 37); he copied and made profitable use of them (cfr.
Quaderni di storia, 73, gennaio-giugno 2011, pp. 199-209). As for Didyma,...
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13. An indisputable model
Finally, it is worth noting how in the first column of the pseudo-Artemidorus,
Simonides – himself an aspiring bishop –
[42] imitates the letter in which Synesius of Cyrene, writing to his brother, describes the “stirring of his own soul” at the prospect of becoming bishop.
[43]
Let us compare the two texts:[44]
[42] Cfr. on this subject J. Schmid, s.v.
Simonides, in
Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, IX, 1964, col. 774. The second edition of the
Lexikon has no entry for Simonides.
[43] I am indebted for this very important insight to the erudition of Luciano Bossina.
[44] It should not be forgotten that in the Vatopedi Monastery there is a manuscript (n. 685) of the letters of Synesius.
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