Pieter Burman on the “Ciris”

In a letter written on 8 November 1713 in Utrecht and addressed to Gisbert Cuper, the Dutch classical scholar Pieter Burman the Elder (1668-1741) noted down several textual remarks on the Latin text of the Ciris, a brief mythological pseudo-Vergilian poem included in the Appendix Vergiliana. Burman died while preparing the edition of Vergil’s complete work, including the Ciris (which perhaps he planned on correcting along the lines expressed in the letter); this legacy was left to his nephew, Pieter Burman the Younger.The present work consists of a transcription and a detailed study of Pieter Burman’s unpublished handwritten notes to the Ciris, with preliminary remarks on the authorship and the chronology of the epyllion, a survey of the sources used (the printed editions and the Codex Basileensis), and a commentary on the preface to Burman’s 1746 posthumous edition of Vergil.