‘I Give You Back Plutarch in Latin’: Guarino Veronese’s Version of Plutarch’s Dion (1414) and Early Humanist Translation

Curavi ut versus illos Homeri tibi traducerem in linguam latinam. Eos tibi transmitto, in quibus nonnulla ex verbo ferme converti, quaedam summatim exposui, quod a Virgilio nostro factitatum animadverti, nam cum plura particulatim intelligenda sint, ut in pane faciundo, satis habuit dicere ‘Cerealiaque arma’ [Aeneid 1.177], ne pistoria enumerans instrumenta fastidio afficeret auditorem vel ad infima et vulgaria descendens, carmini dignitatem auferret. Homerus contra in omnibus exponendis rebus poeta diligentissimus et usque ad minutissima accuratissimus cum lecti ab Ulixe facti mentionem faceret, cuiusdam oleagini trunci delationem descripsit, deinde ad rubricam directum, tum perforatum pedibus impositis expressit [Odyssey 23.190-204]; quae singula paucis dixisse contentus particularia tacui, quocirca eos versus tibi latine [o]missos, graece scribere neglexi.

(Guarino, Epistolario Ep. 408)

‘I did translate those verses of Homer into Latin for you and I have sent them to you. Some of them I translated almost literally, of others I just made a summary, as I have noticed that our Virgil did too: when a larger number of things are mentioned one by one, as in bread-making, he found it sufficient to say “the tools of Ceres” in order not to bore the listener with a list of bakers’ instruments or, by stooping to low and vulgar subjects, destroy the poem’s dignity. Homer, on the other hand, was extremely attentive to detail as a poet when it came to descriptions, and he is accurate even in the smallest detail when he mentions the bed made by Ulysses. He relates how the olive trunk was taken down, then he tells how it was made up with red and perforated when the feet were put on. All these details I have just rendered in a few words, leaving out the particulars; therefore I did not transcribe the Greek equivalent for the verses I omitted in Latin.’

The passage above is from a letter Guarino da Verona (1374-1460),¹ one of the most famous humanist teachers of fifteenth-century Italy, sent to his friend Girolamo Gualdo in 1427. Apparently Guarino had translated some of Odyssey 23 for Gualdo—where Penelope tests Ulysses by pretending she had moved their bed—but as the translation has not survived, at least as far as I know, we cannot compare it to Guarino’s description. However, it seems clear that Guarino justifies the way he had rendered Homer by referring to Virgil, who had of course emulated Homer, and in so doing had transported not only the content of the Iliad and the Odyssey into a Roman universe, but also the style and poetics. Guarino, the translator, felt that he could do the same; he used the sense of poetic decorum learned from their Virgil, Virgilius noster, and thus allowed himself considerable freedom in the rendering of the Greek text.

The tendency to transform not only words and phrases but also style and literary form into the idioms of the ‘host’ culture is a hallmark of humanist translation, both in theory and in practice. Guarino’s revered teacher, the Byzantine Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355-1415),² taught his pupils to avoid a literal word-for-word rendering of the original (conversio ad verbum) and instead to aim at a translation that rendered both style and content (conversio ad sententiam):³

Sed ut de interpretis natura aliquid dicam, ferebat Manuel…conuersionem in latinum ad uerbum minime ualere. Nam non modo absurdum esse asseuerabat, uerum etiam interdum grecam sententiam omnino peruertere…Sed ad sententiam transferre opus esse aiebat hoc pacto ut ii qui huiusmodi rebus operam darent, legem sibi ipsis indicerent, ut nullo modo proprietas greca immutarentur; nam si quispiam, quo luculentius apertiusque suis hominibus loquatur, aliquid grece proprietatis immutarit, eum non interpretis sed exponentis officio uti.

(quoted from Bertalot)

‘But regarding the nature of translation, then Manuel…said that literal, word-for-word translation into Latin was the least useful method, because the result was harsh and disagreeable, and often failed to render even the meaning of the Greek text…Instead one should render meaning [sententiam], and those who work...