Abstract

The Italian ‘recentiores’ of Gellius, over 100 in number, include Niccoli’s manuscript, N, probably written in 1431, which alone of them contains only Books ix-xx and stays close to the medieval tradition. It is defended here against the charge of contamination from the humanistic vulgate, but links are established with the manuscript that Lamola signed in 1432, one of fifteen others that belong either certainly or by general agreement to the first third of the century. Ten of these are studied in detail, an eleventh added, and the other ‘recentiores’ as far as possible grouped round them. Most of the textual evidence comes from two passages that the ‘recentiores’ give at the end without a break: xx 10.7-11.5, also present in N but absent from the medieval tradition, and the preface, absent from N and otherwise confined to the medieval tradition of Books i-vii. There are no medieval ‘capita’ for Book xix, and the distribution of those that some ‘recentiores’ supply is explored. A concluding section challenges the common view that Books i-vii and ix-xx were transmitted from Antiquity in a two-volume copy that never included or had lost Book viii.