Abstract
For the reader unfamiliar with the first-century CE North African Stoic philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, Professor Boys-Stones has provided for the first time in a single volume all our extant textual evidence for this ofttimes overlooked philosopher. The work comes at a time when Roman philosophy is being positively reassessed with a resultant renewed appreciation for its originality. Boys-Stones wishes us to understand Cornutus as a ‘cosmopolitan intellectual,’ part of a larger Stoic international movement and a participant in a textual community, a network united in their appreciation of an inherited Stoic corpus. As such, Cornutus is a participant in a broad Mediterranean Stoic plexus with a shared interest in ethics, logic, and metaphysics which is often realized in active polemic with competing ideologies.
The introductory chapters first place Cornutus within the broader Stoic critique of Aristotle’s Categories. Cornutus’ concerns about the purview of the Categories as evidenced in the fragments and testimonia see him emerge as a legitimate Stoic logician. Next in view is Cornutus’ interest in the transmission of knowledge, ‘the relationship between information to be communicated and the way our linguistic practices—orthographical, rhetorical, and poetic—actually operate.’ (p. 25) As a Stoic, Cornutus’ interests strictly speaking lie not in ancient allegory, but rather etymology as a channel through which one can understand primitive thought. Cornutus’ Greek Theology is the primary source for what we understand of his physics with its geocentric cosmology which in turn provides a naturalistic world view as the basis for ethics and virtue. Boys-Stones wishes us to see Cornutus as an original and independent intellectual, not merely derivative, whose deference to his philosophical forerunners ought not to be confused with unoriginal dependence.
In his preface to Greek Theology Boys-Stones challenges the view that the work lacks structure. To the contrary, he proposes that there are literary markers which frame a clear outline. An outline, he suggests, which may responsively track that of the Timaeus. The text itself is presented in corresponding Greek and English facing pages. Footnotes pertaining to the Greek text almost exclusively point to variant readings between the Teubner text of Carl Lang (1881) on which the translation is based, and the newly published text edited by José Torres (2018).
Cornutus has been recognized as both philosopher and grammarian and the next work considered in this volume is his Orthography, which was likely inspired by Cornutus’ interest in the Latin poetical tradition, principally Virgil, and his study of etymology with a focus on the evolution of ideas. In the following chapter we find catalogued a substantial number of fragments and testimonia arranged thematically with all but two referring to Cornutus’ by name. Both an index of sources and a concordance are provided for the fragments. The volume appropriately concludes with a facing translation of Suetonius’ Life of Persius and excerpts from Persius’ Satires which memorialize the relationship between Persius and his mentor and friend, Cornutus.
Boys-Stones has provided not only a long overdue translation of Greek Theology and a ready point of reference with this all-inclusive collection of evidence pertaining to Cornutus, but his introductory chapters give at one and the same time substantive context and fresh perspectives to reshape views of Stoicism in this period.