Book Description

Considered a definitive source for scholars and students, this highly acclaimed series illustrates the impact of Greek and Latin texts on the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In publication since 1960 and now in its eighth volume, the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum furnishes concrete evidence of when, where, and how an ancient author was known and appreciated in monastic, university, and humanist circles. Each article presents a historical survey of the influence and circulation of a particular author down to the present, followed by an exhaustive listing and brief description of Latin commentaries before 1600 on each of his works. For Greek authors, a full listing of pre-1600 translations into Latin is also provided. Sources of translations and commentaries include both printed editions and texts available only in medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. In the newest addition to the series, Volume VIII, six authors are treated in separate articles: Damianus, Geminus Rhodius, Hanno, Sallust, Themistius, and Thucydides. This volume is especially notable for its variety. Thucydides and Sallust were major historians and the interest their works generated -- in such diverse figures as Macchiavelli, Thomas More, and Thomas Hobbes -- has continued unabated. Damianus and Geminus Rhodius influenced optics and astronomy. Themistius provided a useful service to later students of Aristotle by paraphrasing Aristotle's treatises on logic, psychology, and natural science. Hanno's account of a voyage around the coast of West Africa has been regarded as a motivating factor behind the explorations of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral and was cited in controversies involving the Portugueseand Spanish claims to the coasts of Africa and America. A list of addenda and corrigenda to four previously published articles (Columella, Tacitus, Vegetius, Xenophon) concludes the volume.