The problem of the prologue of "De aetatibus" and its alipogrammatic translation

Abstract

This is the first alipogrammatic translation into Portuguese of the prologue of the work De aetatibus mundi et hominis, credited to the African writer Fulgentius, the Mythographer. Inserted in the Late Antiquity period, De aetatibus is a consecutive lipogram subdivided into 14 Books, in which the use of lexical units containing graphemes related to the 14 initial letters of the alphabet adopted by its composer is avoided. Furthermore, although there is a discussion about the constrained character of the prologue, this translation seeks to follow the alipogrammatic conformation present in the critical edition of Rudolf Helm (1898). Finally, it should be noted that this work is part of a more comprehensive research project, which aims to develop two different translation proposals from De aetatibus, one lipogrammatic, which seeks to highlight its poetic dimension, and another alipogrammatic, aimed, above all, at those who wish to access the Latin text through a more fluid language.