On “Aristotene”
I believe, like Pertusi (Leonzio Pilato tra Petrarca e Boccaccio, 109), that Boccaccio got most all of IV.lit.110 from the Chronicon of Eusebius. On p. 66a of Helm’s ed of the Chronicon, the name that Boccaccio cites as Aristotene (Aristothenes) actually corresponds to Eratosthenes. Boccaccio makes a mistake of transcription here. On line 17, the affirmation that Homer flourished a hundred years after the fall of Troy is attributed to Eratosthenes (a word whose only variants, Helm records, are “Eratostenes” and “Erathosthenes.”). Padoan, in fact, reaches a similar conclusion in his notes. How should we encode this?
I wonder whether the issue of name ambiguity and/or variants can be solved through encoding or requires instead annotation. We faced a similar (albeit not identical) issue with place names in the Decameron and we opted for a normalized list with variants (for the same name). How many instances have you identified so far of name variants such as the one Mike pointed out?
This is a good point. I’m afraid that there will be lots more of these as we continue. In canto IV alone, there are at least two more similar things:
1. Giulio Proculo (IV.lit.167). Boccaccio erroneously cites Julius Proculus as being the son of Agrippa and, therefore, grandson of Tiberinus. Boccaccio seems to have eschewed Ovid’s version of this succession (Met. XIV.617-20) in favor of Livy’s (I.3). Villani did likewise (Cronica I.25) but more logically uses Aremolus Silvius as the name. A certain Julius Proculus is mentioned in relation to the lineage of Rome (e.g., Livy I.16; Cicero, De re pub. II.20 and De Leg. I.3; Ovid, Fasti II.499) but he was the Roman to whom Romulus appeared after his death.
2. Francone e Marcomanno (IV.lit.168). The adjectives “franconus” and “marcomannus” merely referred to two of the Germanic tribes, not to individuals. Boccaccio was here using Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum historiale as his source (II.66). See Gen. VI.xxiv.8. Many medieval French historical texts had already accepted the transformation. Marcomer was the name, for example, of a famous late fourth-century Frankish duke and descendant of the Trojans, who followed the same general path into France (Cf. Grandes chroniques I.3).
The problem, then, I presume is not how to encode, but how to annotate.