Micaela Brembilla: Prolegomena to a New Critical Edition of Mustio's Gynaecia

Abstract

The Gynaecia of Mustio is a medical treatise written during the second half of the 6th century in the Roman province of Africa. The author adapted the Greek Γυναικεῖα of Soranus of Ephesus into Latin in order to provide a comprehensible manual to contemporary midwives ignorant of Greek. The didactic aim of Mustio is a driving force clearly detectable in the text, executed through a simplified language, a specific speech of midwives called muliebria uerba, a question-and-answer structure and explicative drawings of foeti in utero. The first and, so far only, critical edition was produced by Valentin Rose in 1882, for the Teubner series. In this work, Mustio’s Gynaecia is considered a mere translation of the Greek model, and the reconstructed language conforms to the Classical Latin norms more than what seems plausible for such a Late Antique text.

The principal aim of this dissertation is therefore to provide the reader with the criteria and the methods to be applied in a future new critical edition. This edition takes into consideration the didactical nature of the Gynaecia, as an original element of Mustio and a fundamental aspect for the correct reconstruction of the text, and it presents a Late Latin more aligned with the dating and the production of the text.