This scholar goes on quoting from Plautus, Captivi, Act I, sc. 2, vv. 12, 13; Amphitruo, Act I, sc. q.v. 116 and ibid. v. 174; and from Asinaria, Act IV, sc. 2, vv. 16 and 17 to prove this, and he further says:
“The phrase is a rare remnant of the old familiar language of Rome, such as slaves talked so long, that their masters ultimately adopted it—a language of which Plautus gives us glimpses and which the graffiti may perhaps help to restore. When Varius was emperor, this phrase of the kitchen was as rife as when Plautus wrote—a proof that occasionally slang has been long lived.”
Coote is a very able commentator. He has translated in the article quoted a number of Apician formulæ; and betrays an unusual culinary knowledge.
Modern Research
Modern means of communication and photography have enabled scientists in widely different parts to study our book from all angles, to scrutinize the earliest records, the Vatican and the New York manuscripts and the codex Salmasianus in Paris.
Friedrich Vollmer, of Munich, in his Studien (cit. Apiciana) has treated the manuscripts exhaustively, carrying to completion the research begun by Schuch, Traube, Ihm, Studemund, Giarratano and others with Brandt, his pupil, carrying on the work of Vollmer. More modern scientists deeply interested in the origin of our book! None doubting its genuineness.
Vollmer is of the opinion that there reposed in the monastery of Fulda, Germany, an Archetypus which in the ninth century was copied twice: once in a Turonian hand—the manuscript now kept in the Vatican—the other copy written partly in insular, partly in Carolingian minuscle—the Cheltenham codex, now in New York. The common source at Fulda of these two manuscripts has been established by Traube. There is another testimony pointing to Fulda as the oldest known source. Pope Nicholas V commissioned Enoche of Ascoli to acquire old manuscripts in Germany. Enoche used as a guide a list of works based upon observations by Poggio in Germany in 1417, listing the Apicius of Fulda. Enoche acquired the Fulda Apicius. He died in October or November, 1457. On December 10th of that year, so we know, Giovanni de’Medici requested Stefano de’Nardini, Governor of Ancona, to procure for him from Enoche’s estate either in copy or in the original the book, entitled, Appicius de re quoquinaria (cf. No. [3], Apiciana). It is interesting to note that one of the Milanese editions of 1498 bears a title in this particular spelling. Enoche during his life time had lent the book to Giovanni Aurispa.
It stands to reason that Poggio, in 1417, viewed at Fulda the Archetypus of our Apicius, father of the Vatican and the New York manuscripts, then already mutilated and wanting books [IX] and [X]. Six hundred years before the arrival of Poggio the Fulda book was no longer complete. Already in the ninth century its title page had been damaged which is proven by the title page of the Vatican copy which reads:
INCP
API
CÆ