I have taken some care and time to read Latin lately, for the sake of learning. I have focused on classical and renaissance texts about architecture and related fields. It all began with the term “barrel vault” we use to describe a well worn feature of Roman design. I went to look for the term in the original and found some interesting results, will write about that more later in a large work I call “A Natural History of Architecture”. So far in exploring antiquity, I have noticed enough content to supply my curiosity to my heart’s content.
Today what puzzles me most is an oddly anachronic find in Alberti. I went looking for the oldest edition I could find a scan of and it is the 1541 Strasbourg. The area of interest is Book Four, which has a large “universal” or geographic as well as ethnographic scope.
Liber Quartus, cui de universorum opere est titulus
Alberti cites many of his ancient sources, and adds descriptions of Gauls, Britons, Druids. Egyptians, Ethiopians, Arabs, various civilizations. What stuck out, to me, was this:
Apd Americos (inqt Liuius) regio fertilissima est, fed, q plaerumq ubere solet agro euenire, homines alit imbelles.
I encourage the reader to translate, as my Latin is lacking, but my interpretation, even if it is 1500 years off,”(according to Livy), the American region is fertile land and when this is the case it nourishes non-belligerent peoples”.
Livy lived around the turn from BCE to CE. Around year zero. 1500 years into the Common Era, Alberti wrote De Re Aedifacatoria in the 1450s. Alberti died in 1472. Amerigo Vespucci traveled to the Americas decades after that. Christopher Columbus traveled to the Americas decades after Alberti died as well. After Columbus died in 1506, the term Americas was first used to described the lands. When I first noticed this, my mind sped and I tried to reconcile what I was reading. After trying, I rested and looked more the next day. I soon found this in the Paris edition of 1553
Tite Live dict que la region d’Amerique est merueilleusement fertile, mais qu’elle nourit des hommes trop docillez & debiles, ainsi que font communemet tous pays gras abondans en richesses.
I encourage the reader to read and translate, but the meaning is pretty much the same as in the Strasbourg text.
In order to understand, here are some options. There are a few scenarios: I) I am still learning Latin and am oblivious to what is in these texts, II) Alberti, and or even Livy wrote about (Americos) Americas before they are known by Europeans, III) an editor sometime in the 1500s introduced the line about the Americas.
I checked a classical Greek and Latin concordance and did not find any mention of “Americos” therein. Will not go searching for the term in Livy, at present. Going to presume it was a false and fanciful idea of the editor who introduced it. After finding the Paris translation with the America line translated into French, which I am more experienced in, I am confident we can rule out scenario I).
Conclusions: If time is of the essence, then Renaissance anachronisms are more distractions.
SOURCES
Oldest Alberti I could find was published after his life, in Strasbourg. 1541. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100237433
Also cited is the Paris edition of 1553. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100578032
Logeion concordance mentioned. https://logeion.uchicago.edu/
Google Translate for a translation reference.
Wikipedia for general dates of events.
drdrr.work 