How the Sauce Got to be Better than the Fish: Scholarship and Rivalry in Isaac Casaubon’s Studies of Ancient Satire

Abstract

Isaac Casaubon’s 1605 Persius edition and its companion-piece, the De satyrica Graecorum poesi et Romanorum satira, likewise published in 1605, have long been considered milestones in the history of scholarship on Ancient satire. Marshalling evidence from humanist correspondences, annotated copies of early printed books, manuscripts and visual materials, this study offers a fresh and much fuller and more nuanced view of either book’s trajectory from concept to print and distribution, of the motivations and guiding principles behind Casaubon’s research, and, more generally, of scholarly endeavor around the turn of the seventeenth century. I demonstrate how Casaubon’s work on satire is linked to the humanist recovery of Ancient scholia, how its erudition integrates observations on the contemporary world and non-textual evidence, and how it is marked by fierce scholarly rivalry and – hitherto underestimated – confessional differences.