historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 6. New tidings
tions raised by the Bediedinge. 23 Finally, George Hornius reveals in his preface
to Boxhorn’s Originum Gallicarum liber (Book about the Origins of the Gauls),
which he published after Boxhorn’s death, that Boxhorn had started working
on his ‘Scythian’ thesis in 1646 during a recovery from a serious illness, a story
that shows some similarities with the information we can find in the letters
Boxhorn wrote to Fabricius and Bruno at the end of 1646. 24
Thus, serious questions can be raised about the date of Boxhorn’s letter to
Salmasius. Although the issue may seem trivial, it does hold some importance.
In 1640 Salmasius published a work called the Tabula Cebetis (Tablet of Cebes). 25
The work had been compiled by Johann Elichmann (c.1600-1639), a doctor
who had served at the Persian court and who, after he had come to Leiden,
became the friend of Salmasius and Descartes. 26 In the preface of the Tabula
Salmasius made clear that Elichmann had discovered many correspondences
between German, Greek, and Persian that not only showed lexical similarities,
but also ‘words with similar flexional endings’ and ‘the same morphological
composition’. German, Persian, and possibly also Greek, according to Elichmann,
came from the same origin (ex eadem origine), ‘Scythian’. Three years
23 Ibidem, p. 218. ‘Quid ex Scythiâ illâ nostrâ, illâ, ut iste loquitur, vaginâ gentium & officinâ nationum,
proxime exspectandum sit ex his Questionibus, ad quas jam respondeo, facile intelliges.’ The letter
can be found between a letter of Boxhorn to Adriaen Hoffer, March 18, 1644, and a letter to Rochus
Hoffer, April 21, 1644. Ibidem, pp. 216-18. In this letter to Huygens Boxhorn quotes Jordanes, De origine
actibusque Getarum, IV.25. ‘Ex hac igitur Scandia insula, quasi officina gentium aut certe velut vagina
nationum, cum rege suo nomine Berig Gothi quondam memorantur egressi.’ ‘Now from this island
of Scandza, as from a hive of races or a womb of nations, the Goths are said to have come forth long
ago under their king, Berig by name.’ Latin text taken from Jordanes, De origine actibusque Getarum. A
cura di Francesco Giunta e Antonino Grillone (Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo; Rome, 1991),
IV.25, p. 12. English translation taken from Jordanes, The Gothic History of Jordanes. Edited by Charles
C. Mierow (Evolution Publishing; Merchantville, 1 st ed. 1915, 2006), IV.25, p. 57. In the undated letter
to Salmasius Boxhorn quotes the same line. Boxhorn, Epistolae et poemata, p. 93. ‘Aut admodum fallor,
aut a Scytharum Su ita dicuntur. Germanis autem, ex Scythia etiam, ut vagina, sicut Jordanes loquitur,
gentium & officina nationum, progressis, idem nomen, & idem significans, superest in vocabulis prope
infinitis.’ The quotation also returns in the Antwoord, p. 64. ‘Hier toe dienen oock, en sulle dit sluyten, de
woorden van Jordandes, een outd schrijver van der Gothen saecke, by den welcke het Noorden genaemt
werdt; Vagina gentium et officina nationum; dat is; de scheede ende de winckel van volckeren.’
24 Hornius, “Preface”, i. ‘Cum A. Ch. MCDXLVI ex Anglia redux ipsum officii & honoris ergo salutassem,
tum forte ex gravissimo convalescentem morbo reperi: cumque virium debilitas consuetos in Academia
labores nondum ferret, neque tamen domi otiosus omnino desidere posset, ut longi temporis taedia falleret, Origines
vocabulorum Belgicorum examinare coepit. Vidit innumera vocabula, Germanis, Latinis, Graecis & aliis per
Europam nationibus, communia esse. Inde conjiciebat à communi fonte eam similitudinem profectam, id est eâdem
omnium illarum gentium Origine. Displicuerunt Goropii & Schrickii conatus, neque satisfaciebant novae Cl.
Bochardi, pro Phoenicibus, machinationes. Quare alia via rem aggressus, communem quandam Linguam, quam
Scythiam vocabat, matrem Graecae, Latinae, Germanicae & Persicae statuit, ex qua illae velut Dialecti, proficiscantur.
Non ergo vel Latinos à Graecis, vel hos à Germanis, quae communia inter se habent, hausisse, sed ab
eâdem, id est Scythica origine.’ For Boxhorn’s letters to Fabricius and Bruno, see above.
25 Cebes, Tabula Cebetis Graece, Arabice, Latine. Item Aurea Carmina Pythagorae, cum paraphrasi Arabica
(Johannes Maire; Leiden, 1640). The Tabula Cebetis is a moralistic allegorical work probably from the
first-century A.D. The authorship of Cebes, a philosopher from Thebes and disciple of Socrates, is now
therefore denied. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Tabula enjoyed great popularity.
26 Droixhe “Boxhorn’s Bad Reputation”, p. 360.
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