Symphosius (sometimes, in older scholarship and less properly, Symposius) was the author of the ''Aenigmata'', an influential collection of 100
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
riddle
A riddle is a :wikt:statement, statement, question, or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or Allegory, alleg ...
s, probably from the late antique period. They have been transmitted along with their solutions.
Biography
Nothing more is known of Symphosius's life than what can be gleaned from the riddles themselves: even his name is clearly 'a joking pseudonym, meaning “party boy” or the like'. Proposed dates of composition have ranged from the third century to the sixth. The prevailing view today is that they were probably composed in the late fourth or early fifth century. A range of circumstantial evidence in the content of the riddles suggests that Symphosius was writing in
Roman North Africa
Africa was a Roman province on the northern coast of the continent of Africa. It was established in 146 BC, following the Roman Republic's conquest of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisi ...
.
The riddles
The riddles themselves, written in tercets of dactylic
hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek as well as in Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of s ...
s, are of elegant Latinity. The author's brief preface states that they were written to form part of the entertainment at the
Saturnalia
Saturnalia is an Roman festivals, ancient Roman festival and holiday in honour of the List of Roman deities, god Saturn (mythology), Saturn, held on 17 December in the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities until 19 December. By t ...
. This could be a literary convention, and the passage may not even have been original, but the riddles do 'copy their form(and some of their content) from
Martial’s ''Xenia'', a collection of enigmatic descriptions of ''
xenia
Xenia may refer to:
People
* Xenia (name), a feminine given name; includes a list of people with this name
Places United States
''listed alphabetically by state''
* Xenia, Illinois, a village in Clay County
** Xenia Township, Clay County, Il ...
'' (Saturnalian gifts)'.
According to Sebo, the preface to Symphosius's riddles 'reveals that within Symphosius' milieu there is still a conception of riddles as oral and agonistic' going back to Antique traditions of the
symposium. However, the riddles themselves are highly literary: 'in thus removing the Riddle form from its popular context as a guessing game, so to speak, and endowing it with a new autonomy and intertextual sophistication Symphosius "invents" what was later termed the Literary Riddle'. Sebo also argues that the collection is carefully structured as a literary whole, proceeding from the more light-hearted to the more sombre, and drawing together material similar in subject (such as whether the solutions are plants, animals or artefacts), metaphorical themes, or aural similarity of lemmata. She argues that, since the solutions are transmitted with the riddles in the manuscript, they too are to be read as part of the sophisticated literary form of Symphosius's work; and she claims that overall the work meditates on the material world, giving voices to creatures and objects whose perspectives on the world were not ordinarily heard.
Symphosius's collection opens with riddles about writing; these riddles about the act of writing stand as a meta-comment on Symphosius's own literary act in writing the riddles: Thus the second riddle is ''Harundo'' ('reed'):
: ''Dulcis amica ripae, semper uicina profundis,''
: ''Suaue cano Musis; nigro perfusa colore,''
: ''Nuntia sum linguae digitis signata magistris.''
:
: Sweet darling of the banks, always close to the depths, sweetly I
: sing for the Muses; when drenched with black, I am the tongue’s
: messenger by guiding fingers pressed.
Another is ''
Echo''. Here, Symphosius mischievously proves 'prepared to defy Juno's curse and restore to Echo the ability to speak for herself':
: ''Virgo modesta nimis legem bene seruo pudoris;''
: ''Ore procax non sum, nec sum temeraria linguae;''
: ''Vltro nolo loqui, sed do responsa loquenti.''
:
: A modest maid, too well I observe the law of modesty;
: I am not pert in speech nor rash of tongue;
: of my own accord I will not speak, but I answer him who speaks.
Contents
The complete set of solutions of Symphosius's riddles (according to Hickman du Bois) is: 1. graphium/stilus, 2. harundo/reed, 3. anulus cum gemma/signet ring, 4. clavis/key, 5. catena/chain, 6. tegula/roof-tiles, 7. fumus/smoke, 8. nebula/fog, 9. pluvia/rain, 10. glacies/ice, 11. nix/snow, 12. flumen et pisces/a river with fish, 13. navis/ship, 14. pullus in ovo/chicken in its shell, 15. vipera/viper, 16. tinea/bookworm, 17. aranea/spider, 18. coclea/snail, 19. rana/frog, 20. testudo/tortoise, 21. talpa/mole, 22. formica/ant, 23. musca/fly, 24. curculio/corn-worm, 25. mus/mouse, 26. grus/crane, 27. cornix/crow, 28. vespertilio/bat, 29. ericius/hedgehog, 30. peduculus/louse, 31. phoenix/phoenix, 32. taurus/bull, 33. lupus/wolf, 34. vulpes/fox, 35. capra/she-goat, 36. porcus/pig, 37. mula/mule, 38. tigris/tiger, 39. centaurus/centaur, 40. papaver/poppy, 41. malva/mallow, 42. beta/beet, 43. cucurbita/gourd, 44. cepa/onion, 45. rosa/rose, 46. viola/violet, 47. tus/frankincense, 48. Murra/Myrrh, 49. ebur/ivory, 50. fenum/hay, 51. mola/mill, 52. farina/flour, 53. vitis/vine, 54. amus/fish-hook, 55. acula/needle, 56. caliga/boot, 57. clavus caligarius/boot-nail, 58. capillus/a hair, 59. pila/ball, 60. serra/saw, 61. ancora/anchor, 62. pons/bridge, 63. spongia/sponge, 64. tridens/trident, 65. sagitta/arrow, 66. flagellus/scourge, 67. lanterna/lantern, 68. vitreum/glass, 69. speculum/mirror, 70. clepsydra/water-clock, 71. puteus/well, 72. tubus ligneus/wooden pipe, 73. uter/wine-skin, 74. lapis/stone, 75. clax/lime, 76. silex/flint, 77. rotae/wheels, 78. scalae/flight of steps, 79. scopa/broom, 80. tintinnabulum/bell, 81. laguna/earthenware jar, 82. conditum/spiced wine, 83. vinum in acetum conversum/wine turned to vinegar, 84. malum/apple, 85. perna/ham, 86. malleus/hammer, 87. pistillus/pestle, 88. strigilis aenea/bronze strigil, 89 balneum/bath, 90. tessera/die, 91. pecunia/money, 92. mulier quae geminos pariebat/mother of twins, 93. miles podages/gouty soldier, 94. luscus allium vendens/a one-eyed seller of garlic, 95. funambulus/rope-dancer, 96. missing?, 97. umbra/shadow, 98. Echo/Echo, 99. somnus/sleep, 100. monumentum/tombstone.
Influence
The ''Aenigmata'' were influential on later Latin riddle-writers, inspiring the
Bern Riddles, those of
Aldhelm,
Tatwine, and others. Ten of them appear in the riddle-contest in
''Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri''. They had some popularity as school-texts among
Renaissance humanists: some appear in the anonymous ''Aenigmata et griphi veterum et recentium'' (Douai 1604), which
Joachim Camerarius translated seventeen into Greek for his ''Elementa rhetoricae'' of 1545.
[Archer Taylor, ''The Literary Riddle before 1600'' (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), p. 53).]
Manuscripts
The ''Aenigmata'' come down to us in more than thirty manuscripts. The most notable of these is the famous
Codex SalmasianusParis, 10318.
Editions
The
editio princeps
In Textual scholarship, textual and classical scholarship, the ''editio princeps'' (plural: ''editiones principes'') of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts. These had to be copied by han ...
was by Joachimus Perionius, Paris, 1533; the most recent editions are:
*E. F. Corpet, Paris, 1868, with witty French translation
*Elizabeth Hickman du Bois (ed. and trans.),
The Hundred Riddles of Symphosius' (Woodstock, Vermont: The Elm Tree Press, 1912), with elegant English translation
*Raymond T. Ohl. 1928. ''The Enigmas of Symphosius'' (Philadelphia) (with English translation)
*Fr. Glorie (ed.), ''Variae collectiones aenignmatvm Merovingicae aetatis (pars altera)'', Corpvs Christianorvm, Series Latina, 133a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968), pp. 620–723.
*Bergamin, Manuela,
Aenigmata Symposii: La fondazione dell'enigmistica come genere poetico', Per verba. testi mediolatini con trad, 22 (Florence: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 2005)
*Symphosius,
The Aenigmata: An Introduction, Text and Commentary', ed. by T. J. Leary (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).
*Christian Rösch, ''Symphosius. Rätsel'' (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2025) (with German translation and commentary)
References
Further reading
*
;Attribution
*
External links
in Latin and English translation from the Peck and Ohl editions with introductory material, at
LacusCurtiusThe riddles of Symphosius complete original texts and links to related sites.
{{Authority control
Latin-language writers of late antiquity
Riddles