Rodrigo Caro

This paper examines historical concentrations of certain animals between the fifth and the fourteenth centuries, subdivided into time periods. Differences and similarities found in the archaeozoological material contribute to debates concerning the collapse of the Roman world and the establishment of new medieval structures.

This work deals with some features of the Latín metrics of Renaissance poets, who tried to emulate Ancient poetry, but managed this goal to varying degrees from one another. The quality of their verses is determined by the limited knowledge they had of classical metrics. In some cases, only the most general rules of versification are respected, sometimes without even checking the quantity of every vowel. But in other cases, attention is paid to all known precepts to compose verses as accuratly as possible, with the result that they somewhat surprisingly may even obey metric laws formulated much later, such as Marx’s law and Lachmann’s law.

This article describes the content and methodology of the treaty on the ancient Gods of Hispania by Rodrigo Caro (1573-1647). The autograph manuscript was written in 1628, but contains additions until 1641, when the author sent to Flanders a copy for printing, which eventually disappeared. Caro does not follow the allegorical method of traditional mythography, but rather the current criteria based on literary sources, ancient inscriptions and statues, coins and other archaeological remains. In addition he investigates the survival of pagan mythology at games, dances, parties and other cultural events, as well as in place names and Spanish words. He pays special attention to indigenous gods and to the Eastern divinities, and to the main places of worship, such as the Temple of Hercules in Cadiz, as well as to some fifty Greco-Latin divinities whose cult in Hispania was then attested. With this work, Rodrigo Caro stands as the founder of the modern studies on ancient religion in Spain, three centuries before the contemporary studies initiated with which a symposium on Roman religion in Hispania (Madrid, 1981), organized by the Institute of Archaeology "Rodrigo Caro" of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), named in honor of this father of Spanish Archeology, and the poet who better sang the archaeological remains and ancient ruins. The original manuscript of this work lies from the early nineteenth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where it came from the library of Jacob Philip d 'Orville (1696-1751) in Amsterdam. It belonged to Gosvinus Vilenbroek until 1729, and before him to Juan Lucas Cortés (1624-1701). Cortes probably bought it around 1666 after the death of Juan de Córdoba Centurion, son of Adam Centurion, Marquis of Estepa, to whom it had been dedicated and offered by Caro in his last will in 1647.

«Informe sobre la calidad de uno de los más antiguos manuscritos del gran humanista y poeta de las Ruinas de Itálica Rodrigo Caro (1573-1647)», en NOTICIAS DE INVESTIGACIÓN. Universidad de Sevilla, 1 de julio de 2016: https://investigacion.us.es/noticias/2290

The draft of a liminal poem attributed to Francisco Andino in Caro’s edition of Dexter’s chronicle has been preserved among the papers of Rodrigo Caro. This poem has many coincidences with other poems written by Caro, confirming that he was its real author. Another preliminary poem in praise of Caro had already been published under the name of his friend Andino, but had been written by someone else, too.

Philological analysis of Rodrigo Caro’s poetry and on his dialogue Días Geniales. I comment on the manuscript and printed transmission of this treatise and each of the poems, plotting their chronology and including a critical assessment and analysis of them.

Rodrigo Caro (1573 - 1647) composed several treatises and fifty poems in Castilian and in Latin. He also wrote letters and official documents in both languages. This was a common practice of those who felt part of humanistic Respublica litterarum.
He wrote in Latin a treatise on the ancient Gods of Hispania, and notes to his edition of Dexter’s history, and to the Spanish part of Nubiensis’s Geography. In Castilian he wrote other treatises on the antiques and the distinguished men of Seville, and on children's games in Antiquity and in his time.
His poems in Latin and Castilian, similar in number and extent, usually share literary genres and themes, and therefore they have many coincidences, connections and mutual influences. The structure, motifs and even some expressions of Castilian compositions often come from the tradition of Latin poetry.

This is the first edition, translation and commentary of the chapter on Minerva (identified with Pallas and Bellona) of Caro’s treatise on the ancient gods of Hispania, which is pre served in Oxford in an autograph manuscript of the Bodleian Library (Ms. D’Orville 47.), The author tells us of an island consecrated to Miner va on the Levantine coast according to Avienus, and of a sanctuary in a city near Malaga according to Strabo. He copies seven Latin Inscriptions, although just those from Barcelona, Niebla and Los Molares are authentic, offering some valuable transcriptions of the latter two, He comments the images of the goddess In a misinterpreted coin of the city of Searo, and in an oil lamp, which he explains in the light of a Greek epigram attributed to Homer, He quotes Cicero’s text on Coria as an epithet of Minerva, which he relates unwisely to the Spanish place name Coria. As evidence of Minerva’s predilection for Spain, only after Greece and Italy, he mentions twenty ancient writers, the Academy founded in Osca by Sertorius in the first century BC, and eight humanists related, in a greater or lesser degree, to the University of Salamanca.

Adriano (117-138) creó un discurso sobre sí mismo y sobre el Imperio que conformó su acción de gobierno, en Roma y las provincias. Sin embargo, aquel discurso no pervivió en el tiempo de manera coherente e identificable, a diferencia del que Augusto elaboró sobre sí mismo. El pasado fue un componente esencial del discurso sobre el Imperio que Adriano articuló. Se analiza en el texto el caso de Itálica, en buena media, una invención Adrianea, que permitió a los italicenses reeditar su historia y que pervivió en la tradición literaria hasta el Mundo Moderno. La recuperación del discurso Adrianeo es esencial para comprender su labor al frente del Imperio.