Nathaniel Hess
Classical scholars are fairly disembodied beings, one might think, withering at lonely desks as they cultivate the Sibylline leaves of a long-absent past. Surely it doesn’t much matter what a philologist looks like?
Looks nonetheless hold a curious fascination, even, or perhaps especially, when the type of scholarship a philologist conducts conceals any personality. There is a bizarre Teubner publication from 1911 entitled simply “Imagines philologorum”, which is simply that, a collection of 160 images of philologists, with precious little explanation. The perversity of anyone wanting to know what (for example) Herr Professor Kaibel looked like is opposed, however, by the rather broader significance of these questions in a Renaissance context. The early humanists were a different menagerie of beasts from the later philologists who would identify as their heirs. No distinction can really be drawn between classical scholarship and the hot literary trends of the day, trends that often found themselves wrapped up in courtly preferment. And the physical appearance of a courtier is of some importance.
Enter Angelo Poliziano, possessor of a nose more ineffable than that of Cleopatra. Poliziano was at once a poet (Latin and Italian), a master philologist, an abundantly-beneficed priest, and a lackey of Lorenzo de Medici; the last of these was to be his comeuppance, and he died in some discomfort (of poison or syphilis, the gossips say) in 1494, two years after the Medici had been driven out of Florence.
His body was recently exhumed (in an inconclusive attempt to resolve the murder case) and a team of Italian forensic scientists tried to reconstruct his face from the fragments of his skull.[1] All was going well until they reached the nose. “In facial reconstruction the critical points are the nose and the lips since their tissue is not preserved long after the death.” They try one method, resulting in a nose that is “extremely flat and unrealistic”. A different method is attempted, which again produces dissatisfying results: “the experience of the operators [...] suggested that even this result, produced a nose disproportionately voluminous and unrealistic even in case of a big nose of the living.” Naturally they take inspiration from Goldilocks, and their plastic Poliziano has a baby bear nose, which is “realistic and satisfying”. I’ll let you judge your satisfaction for yourself.
For all the undoubtable progress that scientists have made in other fields they seem only to have lost confidence on the question of Politianic nasology.
The 16th-century polymath Giambattista della Porta, author of the 1586 book De humana physiognomia, was far more certain. In this highly scientific work della Porta attempts to revive with considerable thoroughness the ancient art of physiognomy, of determining a person’s predispositions by examining their facial features. A very large nose, he says, marks a man too keen to judge others - nasutus, as is the common ancient term. After citing some classical authors - Martial, Persius, and Horace (all people to be trusted on medical matters, of course) - he states the example of Poliziano. Poliziano, he says, was a man with an enormous nose, and on account of this he also had a sharp and spiteful ingenium; he was a derider of others’ work and an admirer of his own. Poliziano’s critical nous, and his sharp temper, all derive from the fact that he had a “disproportionately voluminous” nose: appearance precedes scholarship.
Della Porta has a marvellous habit of illustrating his writing with images of animals next to uncannily theriomorphic people. Poliziano (his nose slightly enlarged) is juxtaposed with a particularly recognisable fellow, Dürer’s rhinoceros.
Why a rhinoceros?
Largely this has to do with Martial, who connects a sharp critical sense with the large nose of a rhinoceros: in Rome, he says to his vulnerable little book, young men, old men, and even boys have the nose of a rhinoceros.
Poliziano died two decades too soon to have seen a rhinoceros, but Martial’s references to the creature did not pass him by. As someone who appears to have suffered ridicule for the size of his nose this bulking nasute beast provided a useful way of appropriating mockery against his rivals. A particularly scabrous epigram - Poliziano often displays a surprising taste for the grotesque - has him return a savage counter-invective to a minor poet who has criticized his appearance. The nose brandished as a weapon has something of the effect of the threatening limp of Laurence Olivier’s Richard III. The poem is broadly in the style of Catullan invective, but the violence, to my mind, is more mordant than anything in Catullus. Without further ado, some rigorous philology from a 15th-century priest.
In Mabilium responsum (Content warning: homophobic imagery)
Quod nasum mihi, quod reflexa colla
Demens obiicis, esse utrumque nostrum
Assertor ueniam uel ipse: nam me
Nil nasutius est, sagaciusque,
In te dum liceat uibrare nasum.
Nam quis te rogo sic inelegantem,
Insulsum, illepidum uidens, ineptum,
Versus scribere prorsus infacetos,
Non centum cupiat sibi esse nasos?
Centum rhinocerotas, atque barros,
Ronchos, auriculas, ciconiasque (Pers. 1.58-9)
Cum splene et petulantibus cachinnis? (Pers. 1.12)
Condas te in putidum licet lupanar,
Mergas te in mediis licet cloacis,
Non cedas olida licet latrina,
Quoquo diffugias pauens Mabili,
Nostrum non poteris latere nasum.
Prendam te miser, utque trux molossus
Frangam dentibus imbecille tergum.
Sed nasus superest tibi Mabili,
Curtus, dimidiatus, osseusque,
In quo pulypus exurit, uel ipse
Quo cimex posuit sibi cubile,
Quo tutas pulices habent latebras,
Qui iam peruius est adusque frontem,
In quo nidificare uespa possit,
Qui neutro patet indecens hiatu
Clausus sentibus hic quibus: sed ille
Plenus cassibus est araneorum.
Sed quid te cruciat, reflexa colla
Si interdum gero? Num parum uidetur
Si pronos statuis tuos cinaedos?
Si pronum statuent miser Mabili
Mox te carnificis manus, uelut nunc
Pronum te statuunt mutoniati?
Atqui tu resupina colla demens
Posthac desine iam mihi exprobare.
Nam qui pronus obambulas popinas,
Spurcatum caput erigas libenter,
Si pondus sinat herniae Mabili.
You mock my nose, my bent-back neck?
An idiot’s jibing. I’m the first
To own their status. Nothing, see,
Is quite so nosey, so astute
As I am - at least as long
As I can jab my nose at you.
Dull, tasteless, charmless, and inept,
And author of such awful verse -
There’s surely not a man on earth
Who’d see you and not wish he had
A hundred noses? No, more than that -
A hundred rhinos - jumbos too,
And scoffs and V-signs and up-yourses,
And loutish cackles from the spleen.
You can hide in a filthy whorehouse;
You can take the plunge in the sewers;
You can stay on the stinking shitter:
Whatever place your jittering rout
Takes you, you won’t escape my nose.
I’ll take you: like a great big dog
I’ll break your dumb back with my teeth.
But look, Mabilius, your nose
Survived! Short, bony, cleft in two.
Is that a polyp? Sore? Or - there -
Is that a bug taking a nap?
The fleas have found a safe abode,
What with that straight path up the brow.
A wasp could build its nest in it -
It spreads out so that neither hole’s
Unsuitable. Brambles close up
The first one, and the second’s full
Of spider’s webs.
But, tell me, how
Are you tormented if I hold
My neck bent back from time to time?
I thought you liked your boys face down -
It won’t be seen much. Likewise, if
The gaolers’ hands force you, face down,
To sprawl out on the block. You like
It when you’re forced, face down, by men
With great big choppers now, I think.
Now, though, best stop berating me.
You moron. I’ll hold up my neck.
I see you, as you shuffle out, face down,
Through all the sleazy dives. I know,
Mabilius, you too would raise
Your head, muck-smeared as it is, up high,
If your hernia didn’t weigh it down.
(my translation)
[1] S. Benazzi, E. Stansfield, C. Milani, G. Gruppion (2009) “Geometric morphometric methods for three-dimensional virtual reconstruction of a fragmented cranium: the case of Angelo Poliziano.” International Journal of Legal Medicine 123(4): 333-44.