Prvi iza Petrarke: recepcijski i percepcijski putovi Marulićeve zbirke In epigrammata priscorum commentarius

In epigrammata priscorum commentarius (A commentary on the old inscriptions) created between 1503 and 1510, is a collection of ancient inscriptions complete with commentaries, and is counted among Marulić’s small prose works and works of an antiquarian and local-community character. The structure of the work is tripartite: after a prose introduction, or dedication to Marulić’s friend Dominik Papalić, comes the first part of the inscriptions with commentaries, those that are to be found in Rome (Romana, a total of 36 inscriptions), with the transcript of one military testament (Militis cuiusdam testamentum); then comes part two, 75 inscriptions from the rest of Italy (Externa). The third part consists of a prose fore-word the addressee of which is Papalić again, and 18 inscriptions from Salona (Salonis). After the Salona inscriptions comes the Peroratio of the work and an-other 11 inscriptions found subsequently in Salona (Salonis postea repertum). The text of the Commentary is the only known Marulić work that has not yet been printed in its entirety, while interest in the Marulić collection of epigraphs was renewed by the paper of Darko Novaković in 1998, written in response to the finding of the autograph of the Commentary, explaining in detail the filiation of the accessible manuscripts of the Commentary and their relation to later editions. The work was printed in partial editions, from Lucić’s (Venice, 1673, just the Salona epigraphs), via Kukuljević’s (Zagreb, 1869, only the paratexts), Mommsen’s (Berlin, 1873, only the Salona inscriptions), Ljubić’s (Zagreb, 1876, the Salona part of the text), Šrepel’s (Zagreb, 1901, the paratexts) to the last, Lučin’s (Split, 2005, paratexts). Parts of the text that are most commonly published are the paratexts in the Commentary particularly the foreword to the Salona part of the collection. This is a text that tells of the local interests of Marulić the antiquarian, a text that provides information about the glorious past of Salona and Split, and a description of Diocletian’s Palace as it was in Marulić’s time. Apart from these segments and the motives that particularly intrigued previous editors of the text of the Interpreter, in the foreword to the Salona part of the collection, there are some particularly interesting sections of motifs that appear in the texts of several Italian Humanists of the 14th and 15th centuries. In the texts of Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder (1370-1444) and