Between the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century, the two most important manuscripts that preserved Lives in its entirety were copied, probably from the same source: Parisinus gr. 1759 (eleventh/twelfth century), copied in Constantinople (siglum P), and the codex of Naples III B 29 (twelfth century), probably copied in the Norman court of Palermo from an example that derived from Constantinople (siglum B).
It is believed that the scholar John Tzetzes (c. 1110–1185) had read at least the life of Democritus, given his use of Diogenes’ epigram about the philosopher’s death.
The bishop of Thessaloniki, Eustathius (c. 1115–1195), a contemporary of Tzetzes, had at least a limited knowledge of Lives, judging by the presence of ten or so anonymous quotations, paraphrases, and allusions to it. The life of Diogenes the Cynic, in Book 6, is the more or less distant source of the majority of these quotations, present in anecdote or apophthegmata form. A study of these passages has led me to conclude that Eustathius did not have direct access to a manuscript of the entire Lives but rather recovered these extracts from an anthology or a similar work.
A century later, the interest of Nicephorus Gregoras (c. 1295–1359) in Lives can be seen by the manuscript Palatinus gr. 129 by Heidelberg, and by Vaticanus gr. 1898. Both codices, handwritten by the same Gregoras, contain, among other things, Laertian extracts basically copied from the codex Vaticanus gr. 96 (or one of its descendants). The case of Vaticanus gr. 1898 is particularly interesting. There, a new life of Plato is created by combining excerpts from Diogenes Laertius and from the Various History by Claudius Aelianus.
Another anonymous Life of Plato was published later on and presented as a cohesive rewrite of Diogenes’ Book 3 with numerous retouches and omissions (for example, the poetic quotations and scholarly references). It can be attributed to Georgios Scholarios (known as Gennadius II, c. 1400–1473), the first patriarch of the Church of Constantinople after the taking of the city by the Turks. He copied it in the codex Parisinus gr. 1417, which dates from the mid-fifteenth century.6
During more or less the same period, between 1454 and 1466, Michael Apostolius (c. 1422–after 1474 or 1486) had worked on, but not brought to completion, a collection of proverbs. Upon his death the collected materials were passed down to his son Aristobulus Apostolius (1468/69–1535), bishop (under the name Arsenius) of Monembasia starting in 1506. He had used his father’s collection in the writings of the codex Angelicanus gr. 27 (signed by Apostolius), integrating it with a series of sayings, apophthegmata, stories, and new proverbs, and dividing all the material into four distinct sections (proverbs, sayings, apophthegmata, and stories, each one ordered alphabetically). Of this immense collection, which he called Ionia, Arsenius was able to publish only the apophthegmata—of greatest interest to scholars of Diogenes. These he had taken in particular from the works of Diodorus of Sicily, Plutarch, Clement of Alexandria, Diogenes Laertius, John of Stobi, pseudo-Maximus the Confessor, and Anthony’s Melissa. Ionia gives tangible evidence of material recovered and reused, out of context, from Lives, and represents an important moment for the dissemination of Diogenes’ work among Renaissance scholars of the Greek language.
I will not give an account of the ample mythological, archeological, and biographical compilation, also entitled Ionia, attributed to the empress Eudokia Makrembolitissa (who died after 1078), the wife of Constantinos X Ducas and later of Romanos IV. This collection, which among other things also contains various extracts from Lives, is nothing more than a sixteenth-century compilation—one in fact that was compiled by the famous scribe and able falsifier Constantinos Paleocappa, around the year 1540. Paleocappa used well-known miscellaneous materials that had already appeared in print: the Suda (printed in 1514), Diogenes Laertius (printed in 1533), the dictionary by the humanist Varinus Phavorinus Camers (printed in 1538), and the compendia of Cornutus and Palaephatus (printed in 1543).
If one reflects on the data that come out of this investigation, one gets the impression that Byzantine scholars preferred to read excerpts rather than the whole of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives, at least until the start of the Palaeologan dynasty in Byzantium in 1261.
Beginning in the first decade of the fourteenth century, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers was copied several times, in its entirety or in extensive excerpt form, and the interest in its content increased in both the East and the West. In 1533 in Basel, editor Johann Froben finally published the first printed Greek text of Lives. This edition, though based on an extremely corrupt and altered manuscript, contributed nonetheless to the knowledge that an ever-growing population had of Diogenes Laertius’ work in Greek.
—Translated from the Italian by Julia Hein
1 Vindobonensis phil. Gr. 314.
2 Guglielmo Cavallo, “Da Alessandria a Costantinopoli? Qualche riflessione sulla ‘collezione filosofica,’” Segno e Testo 3 (2005): 256–57.
3 Marwan Rashed, “Nicolas d’Otrante, Guillaume de Moerbeke et la ‘Collection philosophique,’” Studi Medievali s. 3, v. 43 (2002): 693–717; and Cavallo, “Da Alessandria a Costantinopoli?”
4 Guido Schepens, “L’incontournable Suda,” and Virgilio Costa, “Esichio di Mileto, Johannes Flach e le fonti biografiche della Suda,” both in Il Lessico “Suda” e gli storici greci in frammenti (Tivoli: Edizioni Tored, 2010), ed. Gabriella Vanotti, 1–42, 43–55. (I am not convinced of the results of Costa’s study.)
5 Ada Adler, ed., Suidae Lexicon, 5 vols. (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1928–1938).
6 See Tiziano Dorandi, “Une Vie de Plato de George Scholarios?” Byzantion 80 (2010): 121–41.
Diogenes Laertius in Latin
Tiziano Dorandi
Copies of the Greek text of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers appeared in the West in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, making the work available to scholars able to read classical Greek. But traces of a Lives had become accessible to educated readers in the West thanks to excerpts and eventually a complete text that had been translated into Latin.
Perhaps the earliest Latin translation of Diogenes Laertius may be found in Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum, attributed to Walter Burley (1274/75–after 1344) but edited by an anonymous source between 1272 and 1326 (Pseudo-Burley). Here Diogenes Laertius’ name is explicitly cited several times (“ut ait Laercius, ut narrat Laertius, ut ait Laercius in libro de vita philosophorum or ut ait Laercius in libro de vita et moribus philosophorum”), but passages from the Lives in Latin translation are often quoted without reference to their author or source.1
The first substantial Latin translation of the Lives from the ancient Greek was the work of Henry Aristippus (deceased 1162), the archdeacon of Catania, tied to the Norman court of William I (1131–1166), in Palermo. In a passage of the prologue of his translation of Plato’s Meno (prepared between the years 1154 and 1160), Aristippus informs us that he was getting ready to translate into Latin (“in Ytalicas transvertere sillabas parabam”) the Lives of the Eminent Philosophers of Diogenes Laertius (“Laertium Diogenem de vita et conversatione dogmateque philosophorum”) at the request of Emir Maio of Bari and of Hugh, archbishop of Palermo.
Aristippus’ translation (which will be referred to from here on as versio Aristippi) quickly disappeared from circulation. It survived mainly in a few fragments that were used by Pseudo-Burley and by Jeremiah of Montagnone (c. 1250–1321). Although Diogenes’ name never appears in Jeremiah’s Compendium moralium notabilium (1285), several passages of this text undoubtedly derive from the Lives. The presence of quotations deriving from the versio Aristippi is much more dominant in the Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum by Pseudo-Burley; in this regard, the chapter dedicated to the Pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus is of particular interest.
Most scholars assume that the versio Aristippi of Diogenes included a Latin translation of only the first five books of the Lives. The presence of aphorisms that Pseudo-Burley attributes to philosophers Diogenes Laertius had spoken of in Books 6–10 and whic
h are similar to those in Lives has been explained by supposing that Pseudo-Burley used as a source other Greek anthologies based on Diogenes that had been previously translated into Latin. I, however, believe that the versio Aristippi was even more limited, and included a Latin translation of only the first two books of Lives, plus a Latin rendition of Diogenes’ life of Aristotle in Book 5, with particular attention paid to biographic details and the apothegms. It is even possible that this translation was limited to a selection of excerpts, and omitted most of the scholarly details. But this is more difficult to prove: we do not possess a copy of the original translation but have only extracts, more or less altered, from two works a century and a half away from it. Between the probable date of versio Aristippi’s first appearance (in the years between 1154 and 1162), Jeremiah of Montagnone’s fragments from it (1285), and the anonymous author’s usage of it in Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum (created between 1272 and 1326), there is time enough for substantial parts of the translation to have been lost, manipulated, mutilated, or adapted. While it seems that Jeremiah’s text is closer to the translation, in Pseudo-Burley’s work small edits are evident, and it is difficult to say if they come directly from him or point to an intermediary source through which the work may have been filtered.
The Greek model of Aristippus’ translation is thought to be what is known as the codex of Naples III B 29 (a twelfth-century version currently known as B). This manuscript was copied in southern Italy and circulated in the Norman court of Palermo. The versio Aristippi is therefore not especially useful in trying to reconstruct the original Greek text of Diogenes’ Lives.2
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It was only in the fifteenth century that readers of Latin had access to a complete translation of Diogenes’ Lives: the famous translation produced by Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439), the so-called versio Ambrosiana.
When Traversari took on the Lives, he was already experienced in translating the Greek texts of the early Christian theologians. During the years in which he devoted himself to Diogenes Laertius, Traversari continued to work on the Greek Fathers, translating the Pratum Spirituale (Spiritual Meadow) by the Byzantine John Moschus (c. 550–619).
Traversari approached Diogenes’ text slowly, and with real hesitation. On the one hand, there were many linguistic and interpretative difficulties presented by the doctrinal summaries and citations, but also by the numerous poetic epigrams by Diogenes and other authors. (Traversari eventually decided not to translate the poetry, offering instead a paraphrase of each epigram’s content in his own Latin prose.) Religious concerns further vexed Traversari, who faced a profane text that included detailed accounts of the teachings of Epicurus and other pagan heretics.
We can reconstruct the stages that lead to Traversari’s translation by reading his letters. He first mentions Diogenes’ Lives in a letter written between 1418 and 1419 (Epistolarium 6.14 Canneti-Mehus) to Francesco Barbaro (1390–1454), thanking him for sending a Greek codex of Diogenes, among other things. The codex3 is probably the one that Demetrios Scaranos (d. 1426) had copied for Traversari, as we deduce from another letter addressed to Barbaro from Ambrogio dated November 1, 1419 (Epistolarium 6.12).
Until 1424, Traversari showed little interest in Diogenes despite insistent requests for a translation not only from Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’ Medici (1389–1464) but also from the archbishop of Genoa, Pileo de Marini (c. 1377–1429). In a letter addressed to the archbishop dated February 27, 1424,4 Traversari lists the difficulties in complying with his request: his lack of leisure time, the difficulties in carrying out such an important translation, and finally the conflict between his Christian convictions and the pagan philosophers. The archbishop persisted and asked Niccolò Niccoli (1364–1437), a humanist in the Medici court, to help persuade Traversari.
On March 16, 1424, Traversari wrote to Niccoli and stressed the many difficulties of the translation, and the time it would take (Epistolarium 8.1, 8.10). Another reason for delay appears in subsequent letters to Niccoli from May 25 and June 21, 1424 (Epistolarium 8.8–9), in which a new protagonist enters the picture: the theologian Antonio di Massa. Traversari nevertheless overcame his misgivings. And in a letter dated November 19 of that same year,5 Traversari announced to the archbishop of Genoa that three days earlier he had begun to translate Diogenes.
In the years that followed, Traversari told correspondents that he had in his possession two Greek manuscripts of Diogenes’ Lives, both unreliable.6 One of the manuscripts was copied on a codex belonging to Guarino da Verona (1374–1460), the other a version of the codex that Antonio di Massa had brought to Constantinople (perhaps the Venetian codex, Marcianus gr. 393).
Traversari understood the limitations of these two texts. Knowing that the quality of his translation would depend on the accuracy of what he was rendering into Latin, he asked his patrons to find and send him a third version of the Greek text. In a letter from July 8, 1425 (Epistolarium 6.25), Traversari stresses the difficulties he has encountered in trying to translate the philosophic passages while waiting for a third Greek codex. Several days later, the third manuscript arrives (perhaps the current Parisinus gr. 1758 or the Vaticanus gr. 140).7 Traversari immediately arranges for its collation, but the translation is slow going. A year later, in 1426 (Epistolarium 8.17), Traversari complains about the difficulty he is having with Epicurus’ texts and asks for help from Carlo Marsuppini (1399–1453), a fellow humanist who also served as a chancellor of the Florentine Republic.
For several years Traversari stopped mentioning Diogenes in his letters. But his work on the Latin text had to continue amid difficulties tied to obscurities in the original Greek, its proper rendering into Latin, and his unresolved religious misgivings.
At last, at the beginning of 1433, Traversari sent word to Cosimo de’ Medici in a private letter (Epistolarium 7.2) that his Latin version of Diogenes Laertius was finished. He also composed a public letter, dated February 8, 1433, to serve as a preface to the translation. A fair copy of the translation was prepared by Traversari’s collaborator and copyist, Friar Michele di Giovanni.8
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And so began in earnest the circulation in Latin of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives—at first in various manuscript copies, and later in printed form. Their sheer number suggests the popularity it enjoyed from the beginning.
The first printed edition of Traversari’s translation was published by Francesco Elio Marchese (1448?–1517), based on a copy of Michele’s manuscript. It was published in Rome around 1472, with Giorgio Lauer. A reasonably faithful version of the Latin text, the Marchese edition nevertheless made one significant change: after the preface, the publisher added an index in which the philosophers covered by Diogenes are listed alphabetically. This index even includes the names of the Stoic philosophers whose lives were covered in the missing fragment of Book 7 (an omission Traversari noted clearly in his original Latin translation).
Unfortunately it was not Marchese’s edition but Benedetto Brugnoli’s (1427–1502), printed in Venice in 1475 (with Nicolas Jenson), that led to the widespread dissemination of the versio Ambrosiana in the Western world. Marchese’s Roman edition was never reprinted, while Brugnoli’s Venetian edition was reprinted many times and made widely available.
Brugnoli viewed his publication as an improvement on the Latin of the versio Ambrosiana; he reprinted Traversari’s Latin paraphrases of the Greek poetry—but also added his own Latin verse translations of the epigrams. With successive reprints of the Brugnoli edition, the Latin of the original versio Ambrosiana grew increasingly unfaithful.
Still, the enormous success of printed versions of Traversari’s Latin translation during the Renaissance contributed to the dissemination of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives in widening circles of readers who were ignorant of Greek. The popularity of the work made Renaissance readers aware of the lives and thought of a number of previously unfamiliar philosophers and philosophical schools, including the Cyrenaics, the Cynics, the Stoics, the Pyrrhonians
, and the Epicureans.
The versio Ambrosiana should, furthermore, be considered in relation to the numerous Italian translations that were carried out in the second half of the fifteenth century (the first was published in Venice in 1480). Despite contrary declarations by the authors of these translations, it has been shown, with substantial proof, that they were based not on the Greek text but on Traversari’s Latin.
Even a subsequent and more accurate Latin translation, prepared by Tommaso Aldobrandini (d. 1572) and posthumously published by his nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (1594), never managed to replace Traversari’s as the model for the successive Latin translations that accompanied the printed Greek text of Diogenes’ Lives up through the edition first published by Carel Gabriel Cobet in 1850. It was thus through the versio Ambrosiana (however inaccurately disseminated) that the Latin West first came to know, and appreciate, the work of Diogenes Laertius in its entirety.9
—Translated from the Italian by Julia Hein
1 In the pages that follow, I pick up from what I have written in Laertiana: Capitoli sulla tradizione manoscritta e sulla storia del testo delle “Vite dei filosofi” di Diogene Laerzio (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 201–28. I also gave an account of Thomas Ricklin’s “La Mémoire des philosophes: Les Débuts de l’historiographie de la philosophie au Moyen Age,” in La Mémoire du temps au Moyen Age, ed. A. Paravicini Bagliani (Florence: Sismel, 2005), 249–310; and Thomas Ricklin’s “Vorsokratiker im lateinischen Mittelalter: Thales von Milet im lateinischen Diogenes Laertius von Henricus Aristippus bis zur lateinischen edition princeps (1472/1475),” in The Presocratics from the Latin Middle Age to Hermann Diels, ed. O. Primavesi and K. Luchner (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011), 111–56.
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