APPENDIX 2
FICINO AND THE EARLIER HUMANIST
VERSIONS OF REPUBLIC 546A FF.

Three humanist versions preceded Ficino's. The first was a collaborative effort by Manuel Chrysoloras and Uberto Decembrio published in 1402, though Uberto continued to revise the translation in later life. The second was by Pier Candido Decembrio, Uberto's son, completed by June 1439 after three years of labor and published in 1440 (this was indebted to Uberto's version—so much so that Guarino of Verona dismissed it, incorrectly, as merely a rifacimento ). The third was left among the papers of the minor humanist Antonio Cassarino when he died in 1447.

In his authoritative study, Plato in the Italian Renaissance , James Hankins has found no evidence of Ficino's familiarity with either of the two later versions, declaring "Ficino did not . . . make use either of Pier Candido Decembrio's or of Cassarino's translations of the Republic , neither of which seems to have been known in Florence during the fifteenth century" (2:472; cf. 1:352n). But Ficino did make "extensive use," he argues, of the earlier translation by Chrysoloras and Uberto Decembrio, "a manuscript of which existed in Florence in Ficino's day" (1:310; cf. 2:420) based on a still unidentified manuscript stemming from MS Vindobonensis Gr. 7 (cf. Boter, Textual Tradition , pp. 61–62 [no. 53 with the siglum W]). This debt is surprising in that the collaboration of the distinguished Greek scholar and the Italian humanist—Uberto was not, again despite Guarino's carping, merely Chrysoloras's scribe—had in fact produced "a rather crude piece of work: an opaquely literal rendering interspersed with

patches of paraphrase" plus errors and omissions, the whole demonstrating a slight understanding of Plato's thought (1:105–117 at 108). Ficino was forced to make severely "critical" use, therefore, of it, his version being "for the most part entirely fresh" and representing a clear advance in philosophical understanding (2:471–472).

Apart from the archetype, Milan's Ambrosiana B 123 sup., Hankins has identified nine manuscripts of this 1402 translation (which he lists in his index of translators at 2:820). Among them is the Laurenziana's Plut. 89 sup. 50, which was probably the manuscript Ficino used (2: 684 [no. 79]; see also Eugenio Garin, "Ricerche sulle traduzioni di Platone nella prima metà del sec. XV," in Medioevo e Rinascimento: Studi in onore di Bruno Nardi [Florence, 1955], 1:339–374 at 341–344; and Gentile in Mostra , pp. 9–10 [no. 8]).

Hankins has edited Uberto's notabilia , his prologue to the Republic , and his argumenta for each book (2:412–414 and 525–530). For Pier Candido's prologue to book 8, see Garin, "Ricerche," pp. 354–355. For other severe comments on the 1402 translation, see Hankins's related article, "A Manuscript of Plato's Republic in the Translation of Chrysoloras and Uberto Decembrio with Annotations of Guarino Veronese (Reg. lat. 1131)," in Supplementum Festivum , pp. 149–188, esp. pp. 149–161.

The following is my own transcription of the Chrysoloras/Uberto Decembrio translation in the archetype, the Ambrosiana B. 123 sup. 193r.3up–193v.18 (for this MS see Hankins, Plato 2:698 [no. 158] with further references):

Difficile quidem est moveri constitutam talem civitatem, sed cum omni creato subsit interitus talis etiam^[*] constitutio solvetur, nec est possibile eam omni tempore permanere. Que equidem dissolutio: nedum plantis sed etiam [193v] terrenis animalibus fertilitas et infertilitas animae generatur et corporum, quando circuitiones convenerint quorumlibet circulorum, brevis evi videlicet que progressus fuerint brevioris, aliterque contrarium. Vestri vero generis bonam generationem vel sterilem, quamvis sapientes fuerint, quos civitatis principes statuistis, nil intellectu magis cum sensu sequentur, sed ipsosque diffugiet et plerumque pueros dum oportunum non fuerit generabunt. Est autem

divino creato equidem periodus quam numerus continet diffinitus. Humano vero in quo primo augumentationes, potentes videlicet et sub aliorum potentia consistentes, tres distantie quatuor terminos cum acceperint, similantium et dissimilantium, crescentiumque atque decrescentium, omnia appellabilia et dicibilia ad invicem prebuerunt, quorum epitritus pithmin quinitati coniunctus, ter augumentatus, duas exhibet armonias, unam quidem equalem equaliter, centum centies, alteram vero equalis quidem longitudinis, promiche vero, centum s[c]ilicet numerorum ex diametris, dicibilibus quinitatis indigentibus uno cuiuslibet, indicibilibus vero duobus. Centum cuborum autem trinitatis. Omnis vero iste numerus geometricus talem auctoritatem habens, generationum meliorum s[c]ilicet et peiorum est quas cum custodes vestri ignoraverint, nec in tempore debito sponsas sponsis coniunxerint, non ingeniosi aut felices pueri nascentur.