A post to mark what is hopefully the final stage of bringing Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’ newspaper Alaudae–Latin text, English translation and explanatory notes–to publication. Some final proofing remains, and the rather daunting prospect of composing an index, but we are so very nearly there, and coming in on time as the 200th anniversary of Ulrichs’ birth approaches on 28th August 2025.

It’s maybe not inappropriate at this stage of the process to have a post about books and libraries, so here is one of Ulrichs’ poems from Alaudae (p. 136-7, in the double issue 17-18), a comical account of an inadequately heated library. A text of the poem from the newspaper is followed by an English translation, and then I’ll provide some explanations and context which may give a final glimpse of a theme of my blogs over the last four years or so, what a buzz it can be to edit material like this.

The library in question is the Provincial Library in Aquila, to which we could safely have assumed that the impoverished author of Alaudae, who lived in this Apennine town from 1883 until his death in 1895, would have had recourse for some of his material. There is some positive evidence to that effect, however. In Issue 3 of his newspaper, in relation to an ancient inscription he has been discussing, Ulrichs cites its publication in Volume IX of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Bearing in mind that Niccolò Persichetti, Ulrichs’ later patron, said of Ulrichs in his eulogy at his funeral that “he had neither capital nor inheritance, nor even a collection of books, though he carried a library in his head. The books he did have were limited to some dictionaries and some works that had been given to him…”, his access to CIL would be surprising were it not for the kind of remarkably specific information one can gather from Google Books: that the library in Aquila had recently sold duplicate copies of books and used the proceeds to purchase, among other things, Mommsen’s Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. I assume it’s still there.

Research on the nineteenth century is very different from research on the first, as I may have mentioned once or twice before, and the big difference is this kind of granular evidence. The characteristic mental state of the Classicist, or maybe of this particular Classicist, is the evidence-light hunch. In the nineteenth century hunches very quickly become either confident assertions or embarrassing misconceptions.

But let’s talk about this poem. It is a light-hearted piece of work, and has a metre to match, a couplet of iambic trimeters and dimeters which is most familiar from Horace’s Epodes (which are imitating Archilochus’ metrical practice), but which is here, as Ulrichs indicates, a bit more loosely realised than Horace and more like Phaedrus’ iambics, most obviously in where long syllables are allowed. Less rigid realisations of metres, broadly speaking, indicate less serious poetic exercises, and that is a clear enough dynamic in this case.

Some explanations of details before I get to the nub of things. The Vestal Virgins guarded the flame in the temple of Vesta on the persistence of which Rome’s ongoing existence depended, a bit like the Barbary macaques on the Rock of Gibraltar. Baku, meanwhile, now in Azerbaijan, boasts a famous Ateshgah, a Zoroastrian fire temple. And in the second-last line we encounter something called “tmesis”, a divided word. The Latin verb for “averts” is averruncat, but Ulrichs has broken it up with a -que, “and.” He is illustrating, of course, the librarian’s last-minute wipe of the drip from his streaming nose.

Finally, though, my title. The Greek word at the top of the third column is βιβλίων, bibliōn, “of books” (cf. the Bible), and Ulrichs is here playfully the title of the “librarian”, in Latin bibliothecarius, in Italian bibliotecario, in Greek βιβλιοθηκάριος, bibliothecarios. It’s my title because the main business of this blog is the identity of the bibliotecario of the Provincial Library in Aquila, and thus the target of Ulrichs’ poem.

At this point in the editing of this text, pennies are dropping so loudly for me regarding various anonymous contacts of Ulrichs that they’re audible nextdoor. For instance, the unnamed individual keen on collecting newspapers from all around the world in Issue 13 is surely Oscar von Forckenbeck, founder in 1886 of the Zeitungsmuseum in Aachen. He is described as a “Belga” by Ulrichs, but this Prussian had established his museum in Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle, which is in the classical space of the Belgae tribe but also, if one is mischievously disputing Prussian territorial rights (and Ulrichs is always up for that), could be considered Belgian. Meanwhile a Spaniard from Adahuesca in Aragon, a regular correspondent to the newspaper whom Ulrichs refers to as “V. T. C.” or “Victor T.” or “Dr. V. T.” is, I’m very certain, Víctor Torrente Cosín (or Cossín), a doctor and Latinist with an interest in anthropology—a profile which corresponds nicely with what we hear from him in Alaudae. Meanwhile, a tragic story, the ship that Ulrichs calls “Albis”, and which he tells us, on his very last page, had foundered, taking copies of Alaudae bound for the United States down with it, was the SS Elbe (“Albis” being the Latin for the river Elbe, as I belatedly clocked).

I’d love to have more time for what we in Classics call prosopography, chasing up the fascinating people across Europe and the world subscribed to Ulrichs’ newspaper, but we need to crack on and publish the thing, so I shall restrict myself here to one. Before I do, though, an observation, which is Ulrichs’ superlative capacity to make friends with his readers, comparable in my experience only to Ulrichs’ favourite author, Horace. Read this newspaper, as I hope you will when it’s published, and you’ll understand why people like Forckenbeck, Torrente Cosín and William Brayden were so keen to make and retain Ulrichs’ acquaintance. These friends of the newspaper he never met. With more immediate friends, I can add, Ulrichs is appealingly willing to take the mickey. Almost immediately after this poem another composition celebrates the award of an Austro-Hungarian knighthood to his old friend August Tewes (1831-1913), a professor of Law in Graz. After that, though, Ulrichs has fun pondering all the knights there were across Europe who hadn’t a clue how actually to ride a horse. We see something similar, an affectionate ribbing, in the library poem.

The librarian of the Provincial Library in Ulrichs’ time was Prof. Enrico Casti. He then is the man with the drippy nose. I think also we spot his name, “Casti”, in the reference to the Vestal Virgins toward the top of the second column. To me, though, Casti is most familiar as the author of the inscription on Ulrichs’ tombstone, the surest sign of friendship. The Latin text on the stone ends, “HIS DEVOTED FRIENDS,/ GATHERING THEIR OWN DONATIONS AND THOSE OF ADMIRERS EVEN BEYOND THE ALPS,/ PLACED A MEMORIAL FOR A FRIEND OUTSTANDING AND GREATLY MISSED/ TO ENSURE THAT VIRTUE BE NOT ENTIRELY A PLAYTHING OF FORTUNE.”