Meta Description: Join Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe in Ad Navseam Episode 206 as they discuss Anthony Grafton’s Forgers and Critics. Discover the harsh skepticism of 19th-century German scholars, the debunking of the Corpus Hermeticum, and how to master the Latin language.
Introduction: Post-Holiday Banter and the “Wintry Mix”
Welcome back, classical gourmands, to Episode 206 of the Ad Navseam Podcast! Broadcasting live from the subterranean safety of Vomitorium Central on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, your hosts, Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe, are back in action.
Jeff is feeling tanned, planned, and ready to be grand after a relaxing holiday season spent right in his hometown. While Jeff and his wife have a long-standing tradition of skipping presents for each other, he admits he loves buying strange gifts for his children—including a t-shirt featuring the famed cryptozoological Mothman for his youngest son, who shares his father’s deep affinity for urban legends. Dave, on the other hand, received a wonderful collection of Cicero’s letters from Mrs. Noe, requiring her to do a bit of academic archaeology to track down the older volume.
This prompts Dave to ask a vital question: why was there no pasta in Jeff’s stocking? The hosts marvel at the fact that nobody has created a dedicated pasta subscription service yet. They immediately brainstorm a business model titled “You’re Not Pasta Prime,” delivering a different box to your door every month. February brings Fettuccine, March brings Macaroni, and December delivers Durum Semolina in the shape of Cavatappi.
Moving to the local climate, the boys express their deep frustration with Michigan meteorologists. The local weather forecast constantly threatens a “wintry mix”—a delightfully vague term that provides zero actual information. Dave jokes that a wintry mix sounds like a disc jockey dropping hot tracks at a club, spinning one jam after another, or perhaps a bowl of sweet puppy chow and Chex cereal. Ultimately, it is just a meteorological dodge; forecasters throw a potpourri of weather at the wall so they can confidently claim they accurately predicted whatever actually falls from the sky.
Enter Anthony Grafton: The Master of the Footnote
With the introductory patter concluded, the hosts dive into the main event: Chapter 3 of the fascinating 1990 book, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship, written by the eminent historian Anthony Grafton and published by Princeton University Press.
Dave is an absolute devotee of all things Grafton. Born in 1950, Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton, a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and a winner of the prestigious Rome Prize. Dave first encountered his work through the highly niche but exceptionally entertaining book, A Brief History of the Footnote. While massive historical tomes—like J.B. Bury’s history of Greece or Ron Chernow’s 900-page biography of Ulysses S. Grant—are excellent, they require a massive appetite. Grafton’s 140-page exploration of the footnote acts as the perfect, bite-sized academic aperitif. Dave even managed to get Grafton to write a blurb for one of his own books, cementing it as the highest achievement of his career thus far.
Grafton’s central thesis in Forgers and Critics is wonderfully counterintuitive: literary critics and historical forgers fundamentally need each other. Modern high criticism actually developed as a direct, necessary response to forgery. The intense academic attempt to detect, identify, and avert fake documents is precisely what birthed the strict rules of literary criticism we use today. Rather than attempting to write an exhaustive, encyclopedic history, Grafton smartly chooses just three critical scholars—the ancient philosopher Porphyry, the early modern scholar Isaac Casaubon, and the 20th-century philologist Richard Reitzenstein—and examines how they each uniquely responded to one specific forged document.
The German Skeptics and the Art of Doubting
To set the academic stage, Jeff reads a highly engaging quote from Grafton regarding the German scholars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Grafton writes that these men were masters at creating elaborate hypotheses that rested like inverted pyramids delicately balanced on a single point of evidence, frequently finding it “easy to believe three impossible things or more before breakfast”.
Dave pauses to admire Grafton’s punchy, flavorful writing style. He recalls his own graduate school days when he attempted to use colorful language in a paper on St. Augustine. His professors immediately scolded him, advising him to keep his scholarship strictly dry and dull to avoid professional criticism. Jeff notes that an author typically has to “earn their bones” and establish a stellar reputation before they are allowed to write with Grafton’s level of flair.
Grafton explains that these German academics were actually far better at doubting than believing. Scholars like Friedrich August Wolf and Barthold George Niebuhr aggressively dissected classical texts. They doubted the perfection of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, questioned the historical accuracy of Livy’s Roman history, and attacked the authenticity of Cicero’s speeches.
These German academics elevated their intense desire to doubt into a fundamental principle of the scholarly method. Driven by the rising influence of the scientific method, they insisted that no real historical construction could take place until the ground was utterly cleared by impartial, systematic skepticism. The scholars essentially competed against one another to see who could aggressively debunk the most revered authors of antiquity.
Richard Bentley and the Philological Scalpel
Before the German skeptics arrived on the scene, the groundwork for high criticism was laid by the English scholar Richard Bentley.
Bentley demonstrated the inauthenticity of multiple supposed classics by using highly specific, vigorous arguments. In his 1691 essay, Epistola ad Millium, Bentley successfully proved that supposedly classical verses preaching monotheism were absolute fakes, rather than the genuine work of the Greek playwright Sophocles. He also mercilessly ridiculed texts attributed to the legendary poet Orpheus, as well as the prophecies falsely ascribed to the ancient Sibyl (who was ludicrously claimed to be Noah’s daughter).
Bentley achieved this by digging down to the granular, philological level. He closely examined specific word usages, phrasing, and syntax to determine if a text actually fit the era it claimed to be from, or if it was hopelessly anachronistic. The hosts note that this is a core component of mastering the Latin language and ancient Greek: understanding how vocabulary naturally evolves over centuries to spot an obvious textual fake.
The Corpus Hermeticum and the Triple-Decker
This brings the discussion to the central case study of Grafton’s chapter: the Corpus Hermeticum.
The Corpus Hermeticum is a highly mysterious, intensely liminal collection of ancient magical spells and mystery cult language. It purported to be a deeply ancient Egyptian text written by the prophetic figure Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice-Great). Dave jokingly refers to the author as the “triple-decker,” noting that if a local burger joint offered a “Trismegistus” sandwich, he would eagerly order it.
Astoundingly, this text was widely revered and accepted as genuine antiquity well into the 16th century, right up to the era of Isaac Casaubon. It was the French Protestant scholar Casaubon who finally applied the strict tools of philology to completely demolish the document’s lofty claims of antiquity. Casaubon proved that the text could not possibly date back to ancient Egypt; instead, the vocabulary and linguistic structure clearly placed its origins squarely in the second or third century AD.
As Grafton points out, weak critics frequently fail because they try to force textual evidence to support a pre-existing philosophical or theological thesis. Casaubon, however, succeeded by relying on testable, concrete linguistic evidence, analyzing the text just as the meticulous German critics would do centuries later. The ultimate takeaway from Grafton’s excellent chapter is that the history of close, precise literary criticism is directly fueled by the presence of clever forgeries. By constantly refining their tools to detect the fakes, scholars actively preserve the integrity of the true classics.
Sponsors: Fueling the Classical Renaissance
Before the local meteorologists send the “Abdominal Snowman” to bury the Vomitorium in a vindictive pile of wintry mix, the hosts thank the loyal sponsors who make the show possible.
- The Moss Method & Latin Per Diem: If you want to study texts like Casaubon and Bentley, you need to know the languages. Go to latinperdiem.com to take your skills from neophyte to erudite. You can master ancient Greek through the Moss Method or conquer the Latin language using Hans Ørberg’s Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata. Use the coupon code 10PLUS at checkout for 10% off your entire order.
- Calvin’s Latin Bible App: The podcast’s incredible sound engineer, Mishka, has been working diligently on the Calvin’s Latin Bible app, available on Apple and the Google Play Store. A $9.99 lifetime subscription grants you access to the premium edition.
- Jeff Scheetz Music: A massive thank you to the exceptionally talented guitarist Jeff Scheetz from Kansas City, who provides the show’s intense intro track, “Thrill Seeker,” and the bumper music, “Rush Hour”.
The Gustatory Parting Shot
To close out Episode 206, Dave provides a highly unusual Gustatory Parting Shot from Elias Canetti’s novel, Auto-da-Fé :
“His meals were always punctual. Whether she cooked well or badly, he did not know. It was a matter of total indifference to him. During his meals, which he ate at his writing desk, he was busy with important considerations. As a rule, he would not have been able to say what precisely he had in his mouth. He reserved consciousness for real thoughts. They depend upon it. Without consciousness, thoughts are unthinkable. Chewing and digestion happen of themselves.”
While the hosts strongly disagree with the idea of totally ignoring the flavor of a good meal, it remains an incredibly fascinating thought experiment.Whether you are dodging a wintry mix or investigating a clever historical forgery, keep taking in the classics. Valete!
