Quando le filigrane diventano indispensabili per il filologo. La necessità di un nuovo stemma per i cosiddetti Excerpta Constantiniana de Legationibus Gentium (ELG)

Can watermarks be of interest for a philologist? Why? Starting from a question of Sever Voicu, here are displayed some methodological and factual observations about the so-called Excerpta Constantiniana (tenth century), focusing on the volumes about embassies (Excerpta De Legationibus Romanorum ad gentes [ELR]) and Excerpta De Legationibus Gentium ad Romanos [ELG]). The codices are all recentiores, written in Spain by Andreas Darmarios and his collaborators in the 1570s, before the editio princeps published in 1582 by Fulvio Orsini. Little research has been done about the watermarks of the ca. 15 manuscripts; yet they are worth some in-depth investigation to shed some light onto the organization and distribution of work among the scribes, including the workflow of Darmarios himself. Finally, the issue of a new stemma is focused, not only for ELR (in press for Teubner/de Gruyter) but also for the ELG extracts. The latter have a multiple stemma, i.e., different stemmata according to the sections: actually, Carl de Boor’s stemma of 1903 does not account for the evidence from the last section, with extracts from Procopius of Caesarea, Arrianus, Appianus, Malchus of Philadelphia Priscus of Panion and Eunapius.