Suspicious toponyms in the De mirabilibus auscultationibus. Textual problems, "forgeries," and methodological issues.

In this paper I focus on several problematic toponyms in Mir. which have puzzled most scholars having to deal with the text as transmitted by the manuscripts. I will argue that in a few cases the mention of a place is due to the narrative need of geographically limit the paradoxon rather than to an objective reason. In other instances, the original toponym was obviously misunderstood by the compiler of the paradoxographical collection, and it would not be methodologically sound to emend it. Finally, some of the suspicious toponyms can and should be corrected conjecturally, since they were corrupted in the process of transmitting the text.