Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
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22
INTRODUCTION
How
did you study the Presocratics in the Renaissance? This simple
question has no simple answer. In
1567
Elie Vinet did so by commenting on
a late Latin text, itself adapted from Greek sources: the De die
natali
of
Censorinus.
1
In less
than
a decade Henri Estienne and Joseph Scaliger did so
in a far more original and systematic way, by collecting and analysing
fragments quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Simplicius and Sextus
Empiricus.
2
Ten years after
that
Isaac Casaubon could go even
further,
not
just assembling
testimonia
and fragments but setting them into a new
historical context. In 1584 Scaliger found himself baffled by Diogenes
Laertius' statement
that
Thales had written 'only two works, On
the
Solstice
and On the
Equinox,
since he considered other
matters
capable of being
apprehended
(KaraXrjTrrdy
(1.23).
'This', Scaliger admitted with unusual
humility, 'I do not
understand.'
3
But in the same year Casaubon overcame
the difficulty with ease. Set the text into its period, he suggested; consider
the 'uncultured and primitive' period in which Thales wrote. Surely one
should amend the text, economically, by adding an alpha-privative to
KaraX-qTTTa. Thales had considered phenomena other
than
solstices and
equinoxes
aKardX^Trra — 'incapable of being apprehended'.
4
This was a
natural
attitude,
after all, given his position at the very beginnings
of
Greek
thought.
5
This
little story illustrates some of the large problems posed by any
discussion
of
availability
of
ancient philosophical sources in the Renaissance.
It reveals rapid progress in the accumulation
of
texts, increasing sophistica-
tion in their
interpretation
and the development of a more and more
historical perspective towards them on the
part
of their modern
1.
Vinet
1568.
2.
Estienne and
Scaliger
1573;
see
Cavini
1977, p. 10. For an earlier publication of the fragments of
Pythagoras,
see Heninger 1974, p. 66.
3.
J.J.
Scaliger
1584, p. 180: 'Haec ultima non intelligo.' 4. Diogenes Laertius 1594, ad 1.23.
5.
Casaubon may have owed his historical insight to
Scaliger;
see Grafton
1983-,
1, ch. 7.
767
THE
AVAILABILITY
OF
ANCIENT
WORKS
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768
Appendices
interpreters.
6
Yet in isolation it could prove deceptive. By no means
everyone
accepted the evidence and
interpretations
that
these pioneering
philologists made available. At the end of the seventeenth century and the
beginning of the eighteenth, Isaac Newton and many others still tried
aggressively
to show
that
the Presocratics had developed a modern and still
valid
natural
philosophy.
7
New editions and new visions of the texts,
however
famous the scholars who created them, could not refute
well-
founded myths about the early history of philosophy. And all generalis-
ations about the
state
of knowledge of ancient texts in the Renaissance
should be made with this substantial reservation
well
in mind.
Four periods, perhaps, saw the most distinctive developments. From
1390
to 1420, first of
all,
the range of Latin philosophy, including works
little known in the Middle
Ages
(like Lucretius, De
rerum
naturd)
and much
material familiar
then
(like the philosophical works of
Cicero),
was
gathered into coherent collections by avid
hunters
like Poggio Bracciolini
under
the direction
of
such obsessive bookhounds as
Coluccio
Salutati and
Niccolo
Niccoli.
8
At the same time, the pupils of the émigré Byzantine
scholar Manuel Chrysoloras began to
retranslate
the major ethical and
political
works of Aristotle and to
translate
vital new sources like Plato's
major dialogues.
9
The work
of
men like Leonardo Bruni was not always so
original as has been argued by believers in the modernity
of
the Renaissance;
some at least of their 'new' translations amounted merely to rewritings of
older ones in more classical Latin.
10
Yet the effects of this first
burst
of
interest were profound. The new translations of works of direct political
and social bearing, like the pseudo-Aristotelian
Oeconomics,
reached a wide
public even outside the university faculties
that
had traditionally dominated
the study of Aristotle.
11
True, the new texts do not yet seem to have
infiltrated into formal philosophical teaching; the first professor
of
Platonic
philosophy in an Italian university, Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, assumed
his chair late in the sixteenth century.
12
But they had a dramatic impact on
the moral and political writings of early fifteenth-century humanists and
statesmen.
13
6. Storia delle storie
1981-,
1, pp. 138-48,
161-2;
Piaia 1983.
7.
See in general McGuire and Rattansi 1966; Walker 1972.
8. The standard work remains Sabbadini 1967, now supplemented for Latin authors by Texts and
Transmission 1983. See also Reynolds and Wilson 1974.
9. See in general Cammelli
1941-54,
1.
10.
No
full
study of the humanist translations has been made. See in general the tentative but
unsurpassed work of Garin 1951. 11. See, e.g., Soudek 1968. 12. Schmitt 1981, § m.
13.
For a case in point see Francesco Barbaro's De re uxoria
(1415-16)
in Earthly Republic 1978,
pp.
179-228.
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The
availability
of ancient works
769
In the second period, c. 1440-70, great
patrons
and single-minded
scholars come to the fore. Pope Nicholas V and Cosimo de' Medici paid
stipends to
translators
like George of Trebizond and Marsilio Ficino, who
were
in
turn
enabled to set about producing full translations of and
commentaries on larger and more technical works
of
Greek
philosophy. If
George's
new full translation of and commentary on Ptolemy's
Almagest
encountered withering criticism from experts in astronomy, his version of
Aristotle's
Rhetoric
exists in twenty-three manuscripts and would eventu-
ally
be
reprinted
some twenty-five times, while Ficino's new, complete
Latin
Plato, with his commentaries, came to be the distorting window
through which all
of
educated Europe viewed Plato for centuries.
14
In this
period such late-antique works as the
corpus Hermeticum
received the full
Latin
translations
that
made them the foundation for the
natural
magic of
the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
15
At the same time, the earliest
printers
set to work. At first, to be sure, they concentrated on traditionally
popular texts. Even Galen
—
whose popularity is usually thought to have
waned
in the Renaissance
—
found only a handful
of
editions until after 1500
(compared to more
than
600 between 1500 and 1600).
16
Yet
they did at least
make the
standard
works
—
Cicero's
Philosophica,
Pliny's
Naturalis historia
—
accessible
not in dozens but in
hundreds
of copies.
17
From 1490 to 1530, one great intellectual and publisher dominates the
scene.
Aldus Manutius, who settled at
Venice
in
1494,
produced during the
next twenty years a series of
editiones principes
for virtually all the classic
Greek
authors. Before 1500, bravely disregarding the technical difficulties
and the limitations of the market, he had
printed
Aristotle and
Theophrastus. In the 1520s, after Aldus himself was dead, the firm still
managed to bring out Galen and the Greek commentators on Aristotle. By
then
a Hellenist could read, in
printed
form, virtually the whole corpus of
ancient philosophy.
18
Between
1550 and 1580, finally, the advances of earlier years were
consolidated. In great printing centres like Paris and Basle, bilingual
editions
of
the Greek texts
that
Aldus had
printed
in the original made these
available
to the great majority of scholars who could not read Greek
14.
George of Trebizond 1984, pp. 322,
671-87,
698-701; Schoell 1926, ch. 1.
15.
Yates
1964. 16. Durling 1961.
17.
Examination of Flodr 1973 reveals a vast predominance of the Latin Aristotle (n editions of the
works,
147 of individual works, 22 of supposititious works, 370 editions of commentaries) and
Cicero
(296 works) before 1500. Yet we should also note
that
even one edition
of
a new
author
(like
Ficino's
Latin Plato) meant a vast increase in accessibility (in the case
of
the Plato, 1,025 copies were
made of the 1484 edn. at the cost of a few manuscripts; see Ficino 1937, 1, pp.
cliv—v).
18.
For the range and quality of these enterprises see Sicherl 1976; Lowry 1979.
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770
Appendices
unaided. Translations could now be compared and evaluated and commen-
taries assembled,
and a
lively
monographic
literature
grew
up in
which
controversy raged about
the
development
of
ancient thought.
19
The last
gaps
in the
corpus
of
works
in
print
were plugged
by the
appearance
of
Sextus
and
Stobaeus. And
the
libraries
that
were coming
to be a
regular
feature
of
college
and
university organisation
now
made this
entire
pullulating mass
of
text
and
gloss available even
for
those
not
rich
or
dedicated enough
to
build collections
for
themselves.
This
general survey necessarily glosses over many varieties
of
individual
experience.
A
great collector
and
diligent reader like
Coluccio
Salutati
could
have direct access
to an
astounding variety of philosophical sources
before
the
great
age of
translation
(not to
mention
that
of
printing)
had
begun.
His
library included
the
Latin standbys like Macrobius
on the
Somnium
Scipionis,
the
Timaeus
in
Chalcidius'
translation and the
Phaedo
in
Aristippus',
Ptolemy's
Almagest
and
Apuleius'
Asclepius,
much Aristotle
and much Aristotelian commentary.
20
If it
did not
cover
the
entire
range
from Ramon
Lull
to
Cicero's
Laelius,
as
Pico's library
did a
century later,
Salutati's collection nonetheless offered
a
more varied
and
less exclusively
literary selection from the ancient philosophers
than
one might expect from
modern secondary accounts.
21
And finally,
we
should
not
forget
that
the
dedicated
student
could always annex
a
new text
to his
collection,
at any
time,
by the
simple (if laborious) expedient
of
making
his
own copy.
To
that
extent,
the
increasing availability
of
texts
did not
bring about
a
revolution
in the
nature
of
philosophical work, even
if it did
produce
a
widening
of
horizons among philosophers.
22
More complex
than
the
simple question
of
availability
of
texts
is the
larger one of how
—
and
whether
—
classical texts took
on a
new meaning
when understood
in
terms
of
a different, wider context. Here
the
evidence
seems less ambiguous.
An
occasional medieval philosopher showed
awareness
of
historical
and
chronological questions. Nicole Oresme,
for
example,
took pains
to
point out
that
the Ptolemy who wrote the
Almagest
in
the
second century
AD
could
not
have been
one of
the Ptolemies
who
ruled Egypt before Caesar conquered it.
23
But sensitivity
to
such issues was
uncommon
in an
intellectual world
attuned
not to
problems of historical
context
but to
nice points
of
logic
and
semantics. Medieval philosophers
19.
See,
e.g.,
Hooykaas 1958.
20.
Ullman 1963 reconstructs Coluccio's library.
21.
For a
reconstruction
see
Kibre 1936.
22.
On the
means
by
which Ficino
-
using manuscript sources
of
considerable linguistic difficulty
-
built
up his
extraordinary command of the Neoplatonic tradition, see Saffrey 1959;
M.J.
B.
Allen
1984a,
ch. 10. 23.
Pedersen 1974.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The
availability
of ancient works
771
rarely
treated
the ancients as historical individuals working in a distinct time
and place. Instead they
treated
the wisest ancients, like Plato and Seneca, as
impersonal
auctoritates
rather
than
fallible individuals.
24
Ancients with
erroneous
views
—
like Epicurus
—
they merely abused as believers in the
primacy
of
sensual pleasures, including fornication.
25
And they made little
effort
to reconstruct the coherent doctrinal schools to which
—
as
well-
known
texts suggested
—
the ancient philosophers belonged. Albertus
Magnus
—
for example
—
called Plato 'princeps Stoicorum' and identified
Pythagoreans as
well
as Platonists as Stoics.
26
By
the fourteenth century, individual humanists had arrived at a more
nuanced and historical vision
of
the ancients. Petrarch, writing De sui
ipsius
et
multorum
ignorantia,
tried to put Cicero in an exact historical position
—
that
of a philosopher whose concentration on moral issues and use of
eloquent, persuasive discourse marked him out as the product
of
the greatest
age
of
Roman culture
—
and whose polytheism marked him out with equal
sharpness as a pagan deprived by the dates of his
birth
and death of
knowledge
of
the
true
religion.
27
Cicero,
in
short,
became not
auctoritas
but
auctor
—
a
human and historical figure whose failings could be explained by
reference to his personal failings and the assumptions of his culture.
Soon
such
views
appeared in formal discussions
of
ancient texts. Pietro da
Muglio,
commenting on the reference to the death
of
Socrates
in Boethius'
De
consolationephilosophiae
1,
prose 3, shows us the precise moment at which
medieval
collections of anecdotes began to be transformed into the
beginnings of a critical history of philosophy:
He
gives
the example
of
Socrates,
who was the teacher
of
Plato (and Plato was the
teacher
of
Aristotle).
And
that
is an old example, and he says
that
many felt ill
will
towards Socrates since the
evil
always
disagree with the good, since good and
evil
are contraries. And Socrates had many misfortunes in Athens, and was a wise man
and suffered many seditions -
that
is, popular complaints - against himself,
especially
while the Thirty Tyrants ruled Athens. And those Thirty Tyrants
wanted [Socrates] to adore the sun, for they adored the sun, and he refused to do so,
and said, 'The sun
is
a sort
of
fiery
torch.' They, seeing
that
he refused to
believe,
at
length took him and imprisoned him and condemned him to death. Many -
especially
Socrates's pupils - took this ill,
that
he should die, . . . and wanted to
break into the prison to rescue him. And he said to them: 'I am
unwilling.
For
I
am
in my fatherland. If they
harm
me, what
will
foreigners do?'
28
24.
Even the most learned of the late medieval friars took this
view,
as is shown by Smalley i960.
25.
So Antoninus of Florence, for whom see Surtz
1957a,
pp. 24—5.
26.
See in general Stein 1888.
27.
Renaissance Philosophy of Man 1948, pp.
47-133.
28. Quoted by Garin 1961, pp. 28-9.
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772
Appendices
By
the fifteenth century such interests were finding expression in systematic
essays
on the lives and
views
of the ancient philosophers. Leonardo Bruni
wrote
sharp
and coherent lives
of
Cicero
and Aristotle,
Sicco
Polenton less
focused
ones of
Cicero,
Seneca and Pliny; Marsilio Ficino analysed Plato's
horoscope as
well
as his behaviour and his teachings.
29
Bruni also showed
that
modern scholars could collect
Sogai
of the ancient philosophers as
Cicero
and Varro had done. His
Isagogicon
moralis
disciplinae,
which now
seems a dry and slender treatise based on few and familiar sources,
started
a
fifteenth-century fashion which was ably carried on by Cristoforo Landino,
Bartolomeo Scala and Ficino.
30
The
vices
of
this early
literature
seem all too
apparent
to a modern reader.
Scala's
Epistola
de nobilioribus philosophorum
sectis
et de eorum inter se differentiis
of
April
1458 begins from Varro's idea
—
reported by St Augustine
—
that
one could distinguish 288 philosophical sects 'non quae iam essent, sed quae
esse possent'
(De
civitate
Dei XIX.I). In dismissing this classification as over-
subtle and reducing the number
of
real sects to the
three
that
disagreed over
the
summum
bonum,
Scala merely repeated Varro's own
rebuttal
of his
original hypothesis.
31
In adding to Varro's arguments a long account
of
the
disagreements
of
the philosophers over the
nature
of
the universe, he merely
grafted one piece of tralatician Roman doxography on to
another,
for his
account
of
the
physici
came almost word for word from
Cicero.
32
When he
tripped over contradictory evidence in his ancient sources, Scala simply
gave
all possible
interpretations
and went
off
rejoicing,
leaving his putative
correspondent in the dark:
On
penalties [in the afterlife] the Platonists also go wrong, when they say
that
all of
them are temporary and, so to speak, purgative. For, as the Christians rightly say,
many of them are eternal, as St Augustine says in De
civitate
Dei xx. Yet I recall
reading in Plato's
Phaedo
that
some are hurled down to Tartarus, because of the
great sins they committed in their lifetime, so
that
they may never emerge. And
Vergil
seems to have drawn from Plato his remark, 'Sedet eternumque sedebit,
infelix
Theseus' [Unhappy Theseus remains and
will
remain for ever
(Aeneid
vi.617—18)].
But to judge between these is not for this occasion or this essay; to
avoid
any
error
we have stuck to Augustine for now.
33
And
when the evidence was too overwhelming to be cited, Scala simply
ignored it - as he did when he pretended
that
no Christians had accepted
Plato's 'ridiculas transmigrationes' of human souls, even though he must
have known the texts on transmigration by Origen
that
had captivated his
29.
Bruni 1928, pp.
113-20,
41-9. 30. Bruni 1928, pp.
20-41;
A. Brown 1979, pp. 263-6.
31.
Cf. the text in Stein 1888, p. 541 with Augustine, De civitate Dei XIX.I.
32.
Cf. the text in Stein 1888, pp. 543-4 with
Cicero,
Academica
11.118
and De natura deorum
1.25-41.
33.
Stein 1888, pp.
550-1;
for the order of the text see A. Brown 1979, p. 265 n. 30.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The
availability of
ancient
works
773
contemporary Matteo Palmieri
and
would form
the
basis
of the
Citta
di
Vita.
3
*
Yet even Scala
did
present,
in
systematic
and
accessible form, some
generally
accurate historical material.
And
Bruni
at
least reached
a far
higher
level
of
learning
and
acuity. His
Vita
Aristotelis,
for
all its dwelling
on
the details
of
Aristotle's
personal appearance, also uses
the
rhetorical device
of
ovyKpiois
-
systematic comparison,
a
technique practised
by
Bruni's
teacher Chrysoloras
35
—
to
present genuinely insightful thumbnail sketches
of
both Aristotle
and
Plato
as
philosophers:
Plato,
a remarkable and outstanding man, was endowed with
knowledge
of
many
things
of all
sorts,
and so
eloquent
that
his
speech seems
to
surpass human
capabilities.
But his teachings sometimes seem
to
fall
into
the
category
that
rely
on
the persuasion
of a
favourably minded audience
rather
than
on
rigorous
demonstration.
For
many
of his
teachings
on the
nature
of the
soul
and its
transmigration
and
descent into bodies seem
to be
more pronouncements
than
proofs
. . .
Moreover, Plato's doctrines
are
varied
and
unclear.
For
Socrates
is
brought
on in
every scene,
and
races,
so to
speak, from
the
starting-block
to the
finishing-line,
and
keeps
no
order
in
his teachings,
but
treats
now this,
now
that,
arbitrarily, and in argument seems
less
to
say
what he thinks
than
to refute the
views
of
others. But Aristotle was both more cautious
in
propounding his
views
—
for
he
sets about nothing
that
he cannot prove
—
and more modest in venturing opinions.
Indeed, he seems to have striven to be
of
help in the practical affairs
of
everyday
life
rather
than
to
have pondered things alien, disgusting
and
profitless.
36
Here Bruni transcended
the
different stereotypes beloved
of
humanists
and
scholastics.
He
appreciates Plato's eloquence without losing sight
of
Aristotle's
rigour
and
dedication
to the
realities
of
the earthly city. Perhaps,
then,
it is
fair
to say
that
the new
philosophical
literature
of
the fifteenth-
century humanists
at
last established
that
the
ancient philosophers
had
been
human
as
well
—
and
made
it
possible
to
see
that
they were simply different
from
one
another
in
their aims, methods
and
styles.
In
the
course
of the
fifteenth
and
sixteenth centuries,
the
humanists'
historical approach
to
classical philosophy developed
in
three
directions.
In
the first
—
and
simplest
—
place,
the
humanists mastered
the
language
of
Greek
and
Roman philosophy more securely
than
anyone
had
since ancient
times. Bruni, early
in the
fifteenth century, stood
out
from earlier
commentators
on the
pseudo-Aristotelian
Oeconomics
precisely because
he
knew
that
in
that
work 'tragoedia' meant Greek tragedy
rather
than
'sermo
vituperativus'.
37
By
the end
of
the century
Angelo
Poliziano
had
produced
formidable essays
on
technical
terms
like ivreXex^ca
and
ivdvfjurjiJLa.
Direct
study
of the
Greek text
of
Aristotle
and his
commentators repeatedly
34.
See,
e.g.,
Walker
1985,
§ xn. 35.
Baxandall
1971,
p. 80. 36.
Bruni 1928,
p. 45.
37.
See the
elaborate study
in Der
Kommentar 1975,
pp.
99-118
(Goldbrunner).
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774
Appendices
enabled Poliziano to refute both the Byzantine emigres who had imported
philosophical
Greek into Italy and the ignorant Latins 'qui se peripatéticos
hodie profitentur'.
38
In the sixteenth century, finally, scholars began to
emend philosophical Greek successfully by conjecture. Michael Sophianus
and Nicasius Ellebodius emended Aristotle's
Poetics
with a better grasp of
his usage and vocabulary
than
most
of
their successors in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
39
And
if
the new mastery
of
the terms sometimes led
scholars like Ellebodius and Daniel Heinsius into over-confident efforts to
rearrange the transmitted texts by wholesale transposition,
40
it also laid the
foundation for such solid contributions to historical study as the philosophi-
cal
léxica
of
the splendid Rudolphus
Goclenius,
which set out the key terms
of
philosophy
systematically,
with
close
attention to individual variations in
context
and usage.
41
Second,
and more important, scholars from
Valla
to Lipsius reassembled
the main tenets of each of the great ancient philosophical schools into
coherent systems clearly different from one another and from Christianity.
In the fourteenth century, for example, Stoicism seemed an ancient
anticipation of Christianity,
given
its stress on asceticism and self-control,
while
Epicureanism seemed a mere code word for antinomianism and
immorality. But the rediscovery
of
Diogenes
Laertius and Lucretius made
clear
that
Epicurus had been far more
than
a mere lover of the pleasures of
the flesh. As an individual, he had been a profound student
of
the fears and
weaknesses
of
the human spirit and an austere and contemplative sage. As a
thinker, he seemed to have recommended such reasonable positions as the
acceptance
of
moderate pleasure from the good things
of
the natural world
or the pursuit of perfect tranquillity of soul.
42
Erasmus and More took
pleasure in showing the high morality of many genuinely Epicurean
beliefs.
43
Meanwhile, closer examination
of
the tenets
of
the Stoics showed
that
these rested on assumptions about the order
of
the universe
that
no
true
Christian could accept. By the late sixteenth century no philologist would
commit the solecism of confusing the terms of the ancient philosophical
schools
with their Christian homonyms. Isaac Casaubon - who liked to read
Seneca
not for information but for consolation in his many troubles
—
admitted
that
the morals he found in the
Epistulae
had not been intended to
be read as he read them. He described his method as one of'accommodat-
ing'
sentences
that
had been false when Seneca framed them to the Christian
38.
Poliziano
1489,
sigs.
b
iiii
v
-viii
r
;
1972, iv, pp.
104-Ó;
cf. Kraye 1983.
39.
Kassel
1962; cf.
also
Wagner 1973. 40. See in
general
Sellin
1974.
41.
Goclenius
1613. 42. Garin 1961, pp.
72-92.
43. Surtz
1957a.
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The
availability
of ancient works
115
verities
that
alone could validate them.
44
Still later,
Jean
Leclerc would use
the Christian
interpretation
of
Seneca's
anima
in his manual
of
hermeneutics
as a prime example of misreading the classics.
45
Third, the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a vast effort to
codify
and arrange all
of
ancient philosophy and modern commentary on it.
Polyhistors
likeJonsius,
Vossius
and Fabricius assembled the first systematic
biobibliographies
of the ancient philosophers. Historians like Hornius and
Stanley
tried to impose at least a chronological order on the development of
the ancient
sects.
By the middle
of
the seventeenth century, vast amounts of
matter
had been collected, to serve as the material for
that
new and critical
study of philosophy
that
would be created by
Bayle
and Brucker.
46
To
end as we began, it
will
not do to exaggerate the prevalence of this
historical approach. The humanists rediscovered much
that
was historically
baffling.
For example, when they imported Plato from Byzantium, they
imported along with him both the pseudepigraphic works of Hermes
Trismegistus
that
were thought to be his sources and the Neoplatonic
commentators who had imposed foreign systems on the dialogues. Like
most Byzantine scholars, western ones tended to accept the claims of the
Neoplatonists, to see them not as appropriating Plato for their own ends but
as
—
in Ficino's words
—
'laying bare' the
true
theology which Plato had
veiled
'both by mathematical numbers and figures and by poetic
inventions'.
47
The Renaissance
thus
preserved and passed on to a vast
audience many serious
errors
about the
nature
and history of Greek
philosophy —
errors
which were, naturally, quite fruitful ones
philosophically.
In the second place, the universities and the presses kept producing
traditional as
well
as
up-to-date
materials. If the publication of medieval
Aristotelian
commentaries
fell
off
after
1535,
it certainly did not cease, and
as late as the
1570s
the
standard
large editions
of
Aristotle
normally included
the old Latin translations with the commentaries of
Averroes.
48
And this
traditional form
of
Aristotelian
study experienced,
if
anything, a renewal at
the end of the sixteenth century, when renewed doctrinal controversy
impressed the virtues of scholastic theology on Catholics and
Protestants
alike.
In the
third
place, and most
important,
it is not altogether clear
that
any
44.
Casaubon 1850, 1, p. 21. 45. Leclerc
1712,
1, p. 304.
46.
Braun 1973; Storia delle storie
1981-.
47.
Prefaces 1861, p. 601. The Aristotelian corpus also included spurious texts and unhistorical
interpretations, of course; see Platon et Aristote 1976, pp. 359-76 (Cranz); Schmitt 1984, § ix.
48.
Minio-Paluello 1972, pp. 483-500.
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776
Appendices
Renaissance reader was fully successful in reading his texts
historically.
After
all,
Plato and Aristotle worked in contexts
that
Renaissance scholars could
not fully
understand,
using concepts
that
generations
of
commentators had
distorted to meet new needs. To
that
extent, one should not exaggerate the
validity
of the scholars' new vision of the past of philosophy.
49
CLASSICAL
AUTHORS
AND THEIR
AVAILABILITY
ALEXANDER
of
Aphrodisias
(c.
AD
200), a Peripatetic philosopher, wrote
on a variety
of
moral and metaphysical subjects. Some
of
his works
—
above
all
De
fato
and De
intellectu
—
circulated in Latin in the Middle
Ages
and
played
a prominent role in thirteenth-century controversies over
Averroism.
These works figured anew in sixteenth-century debates over
the freedom of the
will
and fate, while Alexander's
Opera
reached
print
in
Greek,
almost complete, in
1513—16.
This renewed interest and wealth of
material stimulated retranslations (e.g., De
fato,
1544) and translations of
works
previously unavailable (e.g.,
Quaestiones naturales
et
morales, 1516
(in
part),
1541).
50
APULEIUS
(second century
AD)
was widely known in the Middle
Ages
as
the
author
of a work on Plato's teachings, an adaptation of the pseudo-
Aristotelian
De
mundo
and the
Asclepius,
a translation from the Greek
corpus
Hermeticum.
His
Metamorphoses
and
Apologia
survived the Middle
Ages
in
one Monte Cassino manuscript and did not circulate until the fourteenth
century. These works soon found a receptive audience for their rich
information about ancient magic and religion. Giovanni Andrea de' Bussi
printed
the
Metamorphoses
and other works in 1469, and Filippo Beroaldo
equipped it with a rich commentary in 1500. Reassembled and explicated,
the Apuleian corpus had considerable impact on Renaissance thought.
51
ARCHIMEDES
(287-212
BC)
produced a very large variety of works on
mathematics, statics and dynamics. He offered his readers not just a large
corpus
of
demanding mathematical problems and solutions, but an example
of
science which seemed to lie outside Euclidean norms (in bringing
arithmetic and geometry together) and outside Aristotelian prejudices (in
treating physical questions quantitatively). Though many of his works
circulated in more or
less intelligible
medieval versions, the Renaissance saw
especially
intense interest in the Greek texts and their
interpretation.
Iacobus
49.
Cf. Platon et Aristote 1976, pp. 359-76 (Cranz).
50.
Catalogus translationum i960-, 1, pp.
77-131.
51.
Texts and Transmission 1983, pp.
15-18;
Krautter 1971.
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