Fra traduzione e tradizione: problemi filologici e linguistici di un testo geografico in doppia redazione

The Expositio totius mundi et gentium is a late antique text translated from a lost Greek original, presumably uerbum de uerbo, into an uncertain and halting Latin. A revised and Christianized version of it exists in a more refined language, the Totius mundi descriptio, which descends from the same translation. A closer examination of the manuscripts, including discoveries made after the most recent critical edition (Rougé 1966), leads to a reconsideration of some commonly accepted textual choices, eventually contradicted by the agreement between the archetypes of the two versions on other readings that editors had discarded but which there is no solid reason to emend. Some examples are provided concerning geographical names or adjectives that present phonetic or morphological issues (§ 55 Deburtinum, § 40 Babilobycum in the genitive plural, possibly also uinum at § 55, § 57 Sirmi or Sirmin), often precisely due to the influence of the Greek model. Methodological and substantive considerations are drawn from these examples, also in anticipation of a new Teubner edition.