APOPHTHEGMATA PATRUM. — Apophthegma signifies a witty and sententious saying or reply, uttered by an oracle or by a distinguished person.
Among the Greeks, there are sayings attributed to the Seven Sages, to Themistocles, and to Isocrates. Three of the approximately 80 treatises by Plutarch included under the name Moralia are titled A. Diogenes Laertius made use of similar collections in compiling his Lives of the Philosophers. Among the Romans, we know from Cicero that Cato and Caesar wrote volumes of apophthegms.
Early Christian literature likewise preserves examples of this genre: sayings or maxims attributed to ancient ascetics, preserved and collected in various monasteries of the East, first by oral tradition and later in writing. The texts contained in PG, however, must be connected with many other texts in Greek, Arabic, and Coptic; some of these have been published, but the majority remain hidden in the manuscripts of the monasteries of Athos, Syria, and Egypt.
The most famous collection of these sayings was printed by Cotelier in 1677, precisely under the title *Apophthegmata Patrum*, in Latin A. P. This edition was later reproduced by Migne as a supplement to Palladius’ Historia Lausiaca (v.). The author of this work is unknown; he compiled, as best he could, earlier collections of sayings and arranged them according to the alphabetical order of the persons who uttered them. In the preface, he himself states that no effort was spared, for “there are many books in which the sayings and deeds of the holy elders are recorded without any order.” We do not know precisely when this work was composed: external and internal evidence suggests that it cannot date before the first half of the 6th century, and it must certainly be placed after 509 and perhaps even later. According to some scholars, the Verba Seniorum, which form Books V and VI of Rosweyde’s Vitae Patrum and contain nearly the same material but in a much more disordered arrangement, are to be considered one of its principal sources. If this hypothesis is correct, since the Verba Seniorum appear to have been compiled after 557, the date of composition should be shifted to the second half of the 6th century. The author, however, drew upon a wide range of preexisting material that circulated in small collections and in various languages from the mid-6th century onward. As for the place of origin, it seems to have been Egypt.
In addition to Cotelier’s edition, there exists a more extensive alphabetical collection in the British Museum manuscript Burnet 50. A third collection, organized by subject and divided into 44 chapters, is preserved in a Latin version published by Rosweyde as Book VII of his Vitae Patrum. These three fundamental collections draw upon much the same material, but each contains apophthegms not found in the others. Fazio owned a copy in which the sayings were arranged by subject and gives the chapter titles in Bibliotheca, cod. 198 (PG 103, 64); the title of the collection is *Ἀνθρωπώδων βίβλος* (cf. PL 73, 852).
There are several versions: a Latin one edited by Rosweyde in the Vitae Patrum, Books II, V, and VI, which in fact seem to form a distinct work, as noted above; an Armenian version in Le vite dei santi Padri (in Armenian), Venice 1855; a Coptic version in Zocca, Catal. cod. copt., pp. 287–361, from a Vatican manuscript, a mere fragment; and a Syriac version published in vol. VI of P. Bedjan’s Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum, Paris 1890–97, which, following Migne perhaps, presents them as a third part of Palladius’ work and titles them Paradiso dei Padri.
All this ascetic material, also known under the name *Ἀσκητάριον μέγα* or the Patristic Paradise, was read devotionally in monasteries until the late Middle Ages.