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exemplum collected in Precept IV under the locus De educatione, institu-
tione & doctrina liberorum (Exemplum 13 in the Icelandic text) – ultimately
derived from Laertius’ De vita et moribus philosophorum through Conrad
Wolffhart’s collection of apothegms Apophthegmatum sive responsorum
memorabilium loci communes – which preserves one of the few quotations
left in Latin in the Icelandic translation.15 It relates that when Demetrius
I of Macedon (c. 377–283 BC) conquered the city of Megara, he ordered
Stilpo’s (c. 360–280 BC) house to be saved and made sure that everything
his army had plundered from him would be restored to him. But when he
asked Stilpo to provide him with a list of what he had lost, Stilpo answered
that he had lost nothing of his own, since no one had taken from him his
learning, and that he still had his eloquence and his knowledge, which he
defines as his best domestic goods “id est domestica propriaque bona,” a
reading nowhere to be found in the German editions.16 Below is a collation
of the German Promptuarium exemplorum published in Frankfurt in 1595
and the Latin Theatrum historicum published by Laurentius Seuberlich in
Wittenberg in 1604.17
Further circumstantial evidence is provided by another example trans-
lated from Precept IV under the locus De edvcatione, institutione & doctrina
liberorum (Exemplum 46 in the Icelandic text), originally derived from
Pausanias and Valerius Maximus, relating the myth of the Sicilian brot-
hers Amphinomus and Anapius, who saved their parents during an erup-
tion of Mount Etna and were consequently considered by Romans as
noble examples of filial piety and devotion to duty.18 The Icelandic text
conscriptum, iam vero, labore et industria Philippi Loniceri latinitate donatum, multisque in locis
auctum, et illustratum, trans. by Philipp Loncier (Frankfurt am Main: Sigmund Feyerabend,
1575). [2o] . It contains 713 pages (paginated).
15 On the use and circulation of Wolffhart’ s Apophthegmatum in early modern Scandinavia,
see especially Three Humanist Compendia in Icelandic Translation, ed. by Dario Bullitta and
Kirsten Wolf, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 54 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press,
forthcoming).
16 Domestica translates the Greek οικεία.
17 Andreas Hondorff, Theatrum Historicum sive promtuarium illustrium exemplorum ad ho-
neste pie beateque vivendum cuiusvis generis et conditionis homines informantium ex antiquis
imula c recentioribus sacrarum et prophanarum historiarum monumentis collectum et in decem
classes secundum Mosaicae legis praecepta distinctum (Wittenberg: Laurentius Seuberlich,
1604) [8o].
18 See, for instance, James D. Garrison, Pietas from Virgil to Dryden (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 52–53.
A REPOSITORY OF PROTESTANT EXEMPLA