Plato Latinus, Vol.

I: Meno, interprete Henrico Aristippo by Victor Kordeuter; Raymond

Klibansky
Review by: William C. Greene
Classical Philology, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 1942), pp. 457-458
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 BOOK REVIEWS 457

quotation from Aristotle; but Rose's edition of the fragmentsof Aristotle

would be preferable.
In these correctlyprintedvolumes,with few mistakeseven in the Greek
accents,the slips that I have noticedare rare: I, 71, n. 4, eighty yearsbefore
the TrojanWar is 1263, not 1243; II, 287, "lifted up Tarquinius,"an error
for "Tullius";II, 437, "uponseemingthem," i.e., "seeing."
The introductionand notes are adequate;Spelman'snotes were discarded
in totoandnewoneswereprovided. In sum, Dionysiusis makinga worthyand
a welcomeappearancein the Loebseries. May we hope that the Loebeditors
will not overlookhis rhetoricalworks?
CLARENCEA. FORBES
Universityof Nebraska

Plato Latinus, Vol. I: Meno, interpreteHenrico Aristippo. Edited by VICTOR

KORDEUTER, with a preface and commentary by CARLOTTA LABOWSKY.
("Corpus Platonicum medii aevi," edited by Raymond Klibansky, under
the auspices of the British Academy, the Warburg Institute of London, and
the International Union of Academies.) London: Warburg Institute,
1940. Pp. xxi+92. $2.50.
In 1939 Raymond Klibansky, lecturer in medieval philosophy at Oriel
College, Oxford, brought out The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition during
the Middle Ages, a slender but important volume which initiated the publica-
tion of the "Corpus Platonicum medii aevi." Since I have reviewed this work
elsewhere, I will say here merely that Mr. Klibansky has succeeded in showing
what has not hitherto been sufficiently realized: that Platonism, and not al-
ways a Platonism fused with Neo-Platonism, exerted an important influence
on the Arabic, Byzantine, and Western worlds "from later Antiquity to the
Renaissance .... as a force continuously stimulating scientific thought,
aesthetic feeling, and religious consciousness." This tradition was never com-
pletely broken, but, through translations of certain Platonic writings and
quotations in classical and patristic writings, was constantly available to
scholars and theologians. The documents on which an understanding of this
continuous tradition must rest are not equally available to modern scholars;
hence the conception of the Corpus, which is to present the Latin and the
Arabic translations, paraphrases, and commentaries, whole works as well as
fragments.
Of this ambitious project, which is under the competent direction of Mr.
Klibansky and is sponsored by the British Academy, the International
Union of Academies, and the Warburg Institute of London, the first part is-
sued is the Latin translation of the Meno made between 1154 and 1160 by
Henricus Aristippus, archdeacon of Catania and for a time chief minister
of the Norman King William I of Sicily. The same translator, familiar to
scholars from the studies of C. H. Haskins, made Latin versions also of the

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458 BOOK REVIEWS

Phaedoand of severalworksof Aristotleand other Greekauthors. His trans-

lationsfromPlato wereknownto RogerBaconand to the ParisianSchoolmen,
as well as to Petrarch,ColuccioSalutati, and many others.
To this first printededition of the translationof the Meno CarlottaLa-
bowsky contributesa preface dealing with the translator,the date of the
translationand its prologue(to a beloved friend, unknownto us, who has
asked for a versionof one of the dialogues),the five manuscripts(all of the
fifteenth century) and their relationship(the best being Ox. Coll. Corp.
Christ.243, anno 1423), the methodof the translator(whichis literal,word-
for-word),and the methods of the present editors. The preparationof the
text has been the care chiefly of Victor Kordeuter,who includes a critical
apparatusfor the Latin text and anotherfor the Greekoriginal. From the
latter it appearsthat the Greekmanuscriptused by the translatormust have
agreed now with one, now with another, of the manuscriptsor groups of
manuscriptsused by Bekker,Stallbaum,and Burnet (chieflyBTW, and F),
and rarelydisagreedwith all.' Whetherthis Latin versioncouldbe used as a
testimonium to supplementextant Greekmanuscripts,in constitutingthe Pla-
tonic text, seemsto me doubtful;not only are the divergenciesseldomimpor-
tant but they may sometimesindicatemere mistranslation.I may add that
this conclusionis similarto the impressionthat I receivedseveralyears ago,
when a cursoryexaminationof LeonardoBruni's Latin translationof the
Gorgiasconvincedme that his Greekmanuscriptwas not of a differentclass
from those representedby BTW and by F.
The chiefvalue of the presenteditionwill be for the medievalistand for the
classicalscholarwhose interest in Plato extends to the Middle Ages rather
than for the simon-pureclassicist. In additionto the evidencewhich it fur-
nishes of the fact that the MiddleAges were acquaintedwith the Meno,the
translator'sword-for-wordmethod together with the two indexes (Greek-
Latinand Latin-Greek)providedby the editorswill throwlight on the termi-
nology used by medievalwriters.
The Menothus beginsauspiciouslya serieswhich,it is to be hoped,circum-
stances will permitto go forwardin due course.
WILLIAM C. GREENE
HarvardUniversity

The Homily on the Passion by Melito Bishop of Sardis and Some Fragments of
theApocryphal Ezekiel. Edited by CAMPBELL BONNER. ("Studies and Doc-
uments," Vol. XII.) London: Christophers; Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1940.
This hitherto unknown sermon from the late second century was found
in a fourth-century papyrus shared by the British Museum and the Univer-
1 Of the same translator's Latin version of the Phaedo, Burnet remarks that it
"was made either from [WI or from a very similar Ms."

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