Scevola Mariotti


Scevola Mariotti was an Italian classical scholar, lexicographer and university professor who taught at the Universities of Urbino and Rome. He was Emeritus in Latin literature at the Sapienza University of Rome.

Biography

Born in Pesaro from Scevola sr. and Teresa Mariotti, at 17 years of age he enrolled in the University of Pisa and won a studentship at the Scuola Normale Superiore, where he studied Ancient Greek literature with Augusto Mancini and German language and literature with Paul Oskar Kristeller, also attending Giorgio Pasquali's lectures in Classical philology. However, he left the 'Normale' in 1940: on 13 May of that year, he publicly dissented with a group of fascist students who were celebrating Italy's declaration of war against France, on Nazi Germany's side, and was suspended from the school ; when the suspension expired in autumn, he decided to leave the college and enrolled in the University of Florence, where he planned to graduate under Pasquali's tutorage. He began working on a dissertation on the authenticity of Plato's epistles, but Pasquali's leave due to a nervous illness, as well as wartime, forced Mariotti to return to Marche where he worked as temporary teacher at the Liceo Classico "Mamiani" in Pesaro.
He eventually graduated in 1945 at the University of Urbino, although he 'bureaucratically' was a University of Florence alumnus. His dissertation, on the topic of Aristotle's juvenile works, was prepared in one hour and delivered as a speech, with Mariotti defending it without preparing a written essay. He was habilitated to secondary school teaching and assigned to teach Italian literature and Latin language and literature the Liceo Scientifico "Marconi" in Pesaro; in 1949 he became teaching assistant in Latin language and literature at the University of Urbino and in 1956 the faculty promoted him to tenured professorship. In 1963 he moved to the Sapienza University of Rome, where he was Professor in Latin literature until 1990; in 1996 he retired and was nominated Emeritus.

Private life

His father, Scevola sr., taught French language and literature at the Mamiani high school in Pesaro and edited a French-Italian vocabulary. Scevola Mariotti had a sister, Eleonora Travaglini, teacher of Italian language and literature in public middle schools, and a brother, Italo Mariotti, Emeritus in Classical philology at the University of Bologna.
Mariotti had married Antonietta "Tota" Gaudiano in 1953; they had one daughter, Flavia, and remained together until his death. Scevola Mariotti died in Rome on Epiphany 2000, after a short illness.

Research activity

Mariotti published his first research article in 1938, when he was barely eighteen, discovering a neglected fragment of a juvenile dialogue by Aristotle. By the time he graduated in 1945, he had also already published on Synesius, Macrobius and Martianus Capella, Lorenzo Valla and was working on Enea Silvio Piccolomini.
Mariotti wrote on a wide range of subjects, including the Latin language in contemporary schools and universities and school reforms. He showed that the textual transmission of Virgil's Aeneid might contain authorial variants and wrote on the Greek and Latin Anthology, the Epigrammata Bobiensia, and technical and grammatical treatises of Late antiquity, as well as classical authors such as Horace, Apuleius and Catullus. He also studied Medieval and Renaissance Latin, and wrote on Italian literature.
His best-known work is IL – Vocabolario della Lingua Latina, which he completed following Luigi Castiglioni's death.

Works (selection)

  • *
  • *
  • *
*

Kleine Schriften

*

Honours

Trivia