Gripla - 01.01.1984, Síða 264

260
GRIPLA
Honorius Augustodunensis refers to the habit of the ancients of con-
structing their cities in the shapes of beasts in his lmago Mundi (1.28,
‘De Italia’, PL 172, 129C-D):
... In hac est urbs Roma, a Romulo constructa, et sic dicta. Antiqui
civitates secundum præcipuas feras, ob significationem formabant.
Unde Roma formam leonis habet, qui cæteris bestiis quasi rex
præest. Hujus caput est urbs a Rornulo constructa: lateritia vero
ædificia utrobique disposita: unde et Lateranis dicitur. Brundusium
autem formam cervi, Carthago bovis, Troja equi figuram habuit.* * * * 5
(1972), 248-9. Heinrich Beck (‘Hit óarga dýr und die mittelalterliche Tiersignifica-
tio’, in J. M. Weinstock, ed., Saga og Sprák: Studies in Language and Literature
[Hollander Festschrift, 1972], 99) includes the passage among his examples of the
image of ‘hit óarga dýr als verweisendes Tiersignum’, and suggests,
Der Beleg lieBe sich am ehesten als eine abgewandelte Griindungssage begrei-
fen. Das Tier bzw. das Tierzeichen sollte das Wohlergehen der Stadt garan-
tieren — so wie im Altertum der um die Peripherie der Stadt getragene Löwe
die Uneinnehmbarkeit der Stadt gewáhrleisten sollte.
He refers the reader to Otto Keller’s general discussion of the apotropaic use of
lion-figures by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans (Die antike Tierwelt
[1909, rpt. 1963] I, 56), but cites no analogues for the digression in Fóstbrœðra
saga.
5 On this extremely influential twelfth-century encyclopaedia see, e.g., Josef
Anton Endres, Honorius Augustodunensis: Beitrag zur Geschichte des geistigen
Lebens im 12. Jahrhundert (1906), 45—49; O. Doberentz, ‘Die erd- und völkerkunde
in der weltchronik des Rudolf von Hohen-Ems: §5. Des Honorius Augustodunensis
Imago Mundi in ihrem einfluss auf die geographieen des mittelalters’, Zeitschrift
fiir deutsche Philologie 12 (1881), 298-301, 387ff.; 13 (1882), 29ff.; Valerie I. J.
Flint, ‘World History in the early twelfth century: the Imago Mundi of Honorius
Augustodunensis’, in R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ed., The Writing
of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern
(1981), 211-238. Flint does not discuss Honorius’ note on the shape of Rome in her
doctoral dissertation, The Life and Work of Honorius Augustodunensis, with
special reference to Chronology and Sources (Oxford, 1969), but perhaps more in-
formation on the subject will be provided in her forthcoming edition of the Imago
Mundi (see Revue Bénédictine 92 [1982], 152, n. 1). Parallel texts for the passage
in question are also found, of course, in vemacular translations of Honorius’ work.
Cf., e.g., La Petite Philosophie, ed. W. H. Trethewey, Anglo-Norman Texts I
(1939), 36/1093-1108; L'Ymagine del Mondo, ed. F. Chiovaro (1977), 123/158-
171. A Catalan rendering of this section of the Imago Mundi is preserved in an
atlas dated c. 1375 (ed. J. A. C. Buchon and J. Tastu, ‘Notice d’un atlas en langue
catalane ...’, Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliotliéque du Roi 14
[1843], II, 8/14-9/2; see Arturo Graf, Roma nella Memoria e nelle Immaginazioni
del Medio Evó [1882-83], I, 10).