Naphsi Phileloai, Autoris Graeci, Παραγέλματα. A Iacobo Blanchono Latinè facta, & Commentarijs explicata

16mo. pp. 62, [2]. Signatures: a-d⁸. Vellum, pastedowns from previous manuscript(s). Label pasted on front cover. Manuscript “Ex libris Biblioth. Bernardi Guillelmi…” Sig. “Vincem.” Manuscript notes on p. [3] of cover. Text primarily Latin; Greek and Hebrew interspersed. Woodcut printer's device on title page, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces.

Only edition of nine moral and educational precepts supposedly taken from a history of the otherwise unknown Scythen, King of Thebes, by the equally unknown Naphsus Phileloaus. Scythen had composed the work for the two sons he had with a certain ‘Dericiassar.’ Apparently an invented text, in the manner of pseudo-Phocylides, by the obscure jurist and classicist Jacques Blanchon of Uzès. Blanchon, whose commentary provides Latin versions and parallels (in Hebrew) from the Scriptures, presented the tiny volume to the senators of nearby Nîmes. The Languedocian jurisconsult claimed to have taken his text from a Vatican manuscript brought to Nîmes by a wandering scholar, a certain ‘Balphantius’, of whom nothing is known–nor is there any other record of ‘Naphsus Phileloaus’ or of the Greek texts. By 1675, a French translation by the lawyer and librarian Claude Joly had cast doubt on their authenticity, on circumstantial as well as philological grounds. No further investigation seems to have been made, however: the rarity of the original –only two other surviving copies are known, at Harvard and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France –may explain its neglect. The exposure by Claude Joly (1675) is available online. See also A. Freeman, “Hoax and Forgery, Whimsy and Fraud: Taxonomic Reflections on the Bibliotheca Fictiva,” in W. Stephens & E. Havens (eds.), Literary forgery in early modern Europe, 1450-1800, Baltimore, 2018, 20-21.

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