Four word in Latin letters, transcribed by Boccaccio in his autograph of the Bucolicum carmen,
are the first evidence of a proverb, Ἄνθρωπος ἀγράμματος ξύλον ἄκαρπον (“an illiterate
man is a fruitless tree”) which circulates among modern Greeks in the form Ἄν. ἀγ. ξύλο(ν)
ἀπελέκητο(ν) (“an illiterate man is an unplaned wood”) as recently shown by G. De Gregorio,
who found a precise parallel only in a work of a sixteenth-century Parmesan grammarian, L.
Vitruvius Roscius (Rosso). This paper provides new evidence, which proves that Roscius was
plagiarizing a text of Agostino Dati, a Sienese chancellor and humanist of the fifteenth
century, who in his turn learnt the proverb probably from the mouth of Francesco Filelfo, his
master of Greek.
Greek proverb, Boccaccio, Agostino Dati, Francesco Filelfo, L. Vitruvius Roscius.
