Francisco Carrasco, the translator of Cicero's Pro Ligario? Alfredo Adolfo Camús and translational fiction

Abstract

In 1857 Alfredo Adolfo Camús (1817-1889), Professor of Latin Literature at the Central University of Madrid, published in the Semanario Pintoresco Español a supposed translation of Cicero’s Pro Ligarius. Camús tells us that he had found it in an old manuscript when it was about to be destroyed by a ragman and argues that it is a translation by a character of the eighteenth century, Francisco Carrasco, Marqués de la Corona, whose other versions of classics are not known by us. Both fictional circumstances, namely, the find of the manuscript as well as its doubtful attribution suggest us that this is not but a false translation and that, in fact, Cicero’s text does not come from a direct version, but the remake of a previous text written in the eighteenth century.

Keywords: Pro Ligarius; Cicero; Alfredo Adolfo Camús; Rodrigo de Oviedo; fiction