- Symphosius
Symphosius (sometimes, in older scholarship and less properly, Symposius) was the author of the "Aenigmata", a collection of 100
Latin riddle s of uncertain date. They were even attributed toLactantius , and identified with his "Symposium", but this view is that of a single 18th-century editor, and is not generally accepted.The riddles themselves, written in tercets of
hexameter s, are of elegant Latinity, leading some to date them as early as the 2d century; but the prevailing view today is that they were probably composed in the 4th or5th century A.D. The author's brief preface states that they were written to form part of the entertainment at theSaturnalia , but this is a literary convention.The "Aenigmata" are the only surviving collection of Latin riddles by a single author, and as such they have influenced the genre down to our own time, via the collections of
Aldhelm andTatwine . Theeditio princeps was by Joachimus Perionius, Paris, 1533; the most recent editions are:
*E. F. Corpet, Paris, 1868, with witty French translation
*Elizabeth H. du Bois (Peck), 1912, with elegant English translation
*Raymond Ohl, 1928, with English.External links
* [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Symphosius/home.html The Aenigmata of Symphosius] , in Latin and English translation from the Peck and Ohl editions with introductory material, at
LacusCurtius
* [http://www.archimedes-lab.org/latin_aenigmata.html The riddles of Symphosius] , complete original texts and links to related sites.
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