Arrhidaeus and the Desire to Diagnose: A New Approach to the Heidelberg Epitome

Abstract

This paper treats the Heidelberg Epitome (BNJ 155) as a part of the manuscript in which it was found (Codex Palatinus Graecus 129). Several basic features of the manuscript that have gone unnoticed in Classical scholarship offer new light on the obscure text we call the Heidelberg Epitome. First, the identity of the manuscript’s creator is known, contrary to what is stated in standard editions of the Heidelberg Epitome. Well-known 14th-century polymath Nicephorus Gregoras created this manuscript as a personal reference tool, and his methods of taking notes and using them later have been observed. Second, many long sections of this manuscript summarize extant texts and, where they depart from their exemplars, they exhibit intrusions of 14th-century intellectual preoccupations. A brief survey of Gregoras’ summaries of Arrian’s Anabasis and Indica and his use of scholia to Lucian illustrate his methods of transcription. By comparing this material to Gregoras’ arrangement of the Heidelberg Epitome, I argue that several unique features of that text make more sense when seen as the result of the 14th-century context in which it was selected for preservation. In particular, the idea that Philip Arrhidaeus lived with epilepsy is most likely to be a 14th-century conjecture.