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Potamius of Lisbon, “De Martyrio Isaiae Prophetae” Again1
NEIL ADKIN Universidad de Nebraska
Recently an effort has been made to temper the wholesale condemnation of the literary style of Potamius of Lisbon, who is the earliest author of Christian prose to survive from the Iberian peninsula2. The passage in question, which comes from the opening sentence of his De martyrio Isaiae prophetae, reads as follows: quasi parum fuerit si immanitate lymphatica martyrem dei acuto ense transfoderet, aut ipsa lamina insontis viri per iugerum fidiculae saevientis per costas stridente ictu sulcaret 3. Potamius’ latest editor and commentator repeats the view expressed in his dissertation that here fidiculae should be taken with iugerum to produce a collocation to which he gives the highly improbable rendering “an extremely long line of iron teeth”4; it has however been argued elsewhere by the present writer that iugerum
1 Works are cited according to Thesaurus Linguae Latinae: Index librorum scriptorum inscriptionum2, Leipzig 1990. 2 Cf. the present writer, “Potamius of Lisbon, De martyrio Isaiae prophetae 1: Per iugerum fidiculae”, Euphrosyne n.s. 28 (2000) 369-73, together with the approbatory comments on this article by A.A. Nascimento, ibid. 445 and ibid. n.s. 29 (2001) 426-7. 3 Text of A.C. VEGA, Opuscula omnia Potamii Episcopi Olisiponensis, Escorial (Script. Ecclesiast. Hispano-Lat. Vet. et Med. Aevi 2) 1934, 35. 4 M. CONTI, The Life and Works of Potamius of Lisbon, Steenbrugge (Instr. Patr. 32) 1998, 77, reproducing the translation in id., Potamii Olisiponensis opuscula omnia: Text,
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