Tres bybliothecas habeo, unam Graecam, alteram Latinam

Adamik, Béla (2005) Tres bybliothecas habeo, unam Graecam, alteram Latinam. Acta Antiqua, 45 (2-3). pp. 133-142. ISSN 0044-5975

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Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine a sentence from Petron's Satyricon usually considered tobe problematic and corrupted (48, 4): tres bybliothecas habeo, unam Graecam, alteram Latinam. However, we demonstrate that the old conjecture proposed for healing that sentence, i.e. duas for tres, is untenable and in fact grammatically impossible and so the reading of the Codex Traguriensis is correct. Afterwards we explain the meaning of this sentence in accordance with those interpreters who explain Trimalchio's silence on his own third library with a kind of inferiority complex in the given situation activated by the sociolinguistic pressure motivated by the hegemonic Graeco-Latin bilingualism in the Roman World.

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