Censorinus

Censorinus, De die natali in the manuscript Cologne, Dombibliothek, 166, fol. 232r (8th century)

Censorinus was a 3rd century Roman grammarian and versatile writer .

Works

Censorinus is the author of the lost work De accentibus and the surviving treatise De die natali , written in 238 , which he dedicated to his patron Quintus Caerellius on his birthday.

The two parts of De die natali deal with different contents: the first deals with the natural history of man, the influence of the stars and genii , music, religious rites, astronomy and the teachings of the Greek philosophers . The second part deals with questions of time and timing and with mathematical questions. By means of the twelve-year dodecaeteris rhythm , he determined the main epochs of antiquity. The style is clear and short, if a little rhetorical, and Censorinus is quite good at Latin for his time.

The main sources used were probably Varro and Suetonius . Some scholars believe that all of the work is practically a plagiarism of Sueton's lost work Pratum (or Prata ).

Along with De die natali , a number of tracts not from Censorinus ( Fragmentum Censorini , De natali institutione ) dealing with astronomy, geometry, music and verse were preserved. The treatise De metris possibly goes back to Varro and contains the oldest representation of the Roman metric.

reception

The edition by L. Carrion, Paris 1583, is decisive for the censorinus reception of modern times . Heinrich Lindenbrog published another edition with commentary in 1614.

In the 19th century Otto Jahn published critical editions in 1845, Friedrich Hultsch in 1862 and Iwan Cholodniak in 1889.

The moon crater Censorinus is named after the ancient grammarian .

Translations

English

De die natali (the first eleven chapters are omitted) with annotations by William Maude, New York 1900.
De die natali, translated by Holt N. Parker: Censorinus. The Birthday Book, Chicago 2007, ISBN 0-226-09974-1

German

De die natali, translated by Kai Brodersen: Censorinus, Das Birthday Book, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-89678-752-1
De die natali, Latin-German by Kai Brodersen: Censorinus, About the birthday, Darmstadt 2012, ISBN 978-3-534-18154-4

literature

Overview representations

Menso Folkerts : Censorinus . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 3 : Pierre Cabanis - Heinrich von Dechen . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1971, p. 175-176 .
Richard Goulet: Censorinus. In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Volume 2, CNRS Éditions, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-271-05195-9 , pp. 259-260
Klaus Sallmann : Censorinus. In: Klaus Sallmann (ed.): The literature of upheaval. From Roman to Christian literature, AD 117 to 284 (= Handbook of Ancient Latin Literature , Volume 4). CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-39020-X , pp. 246-249

Investigations

Klaus Sallmann : Censorinus' 'De die natali'. Between rhetoric and science. In: Hermes 111, 1983, pp. 233-248.

reception

Rodney M. Thomson: The Reception of Censorinus, De Die Natali, in Pre-Renaissance Europe. In: Antichthon 14, 1980, pp. 177-185.

Web links

Literature by and about Censorinus in the catalog of the German National Library
“De die natali” in Latin and German
De die natali at LacusCurtius (Latin text from the edition of Cholodniak and French translation)

personal data
SURNAME	Censorinus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Roman grammarian
DATE OF BIRTH	before 238
DATE OF DEATH	3rd century or 4th century