Translation, philology and polemic in Denys Lambin's Nicomachean Ethics of 1558

Renaissance Studies Vol. 3 No. 3

Translation, philo logy and polemic in Denys L a m bin’s Nicomachean Ethics

of lSS8 JOHN O’BRIEN

Denys Lambin is possibly not the best-known French visitor to Italy during the 1550s, but his several journeys there are well documented. As far back as 1906, Henri Potez published substantial extracts from Lambin’s manuscript correspondence addressed to leading French humanists and celebrities and now extant in the Bibliothsque Nationale. ’ Potez later followed this up with the publication of Lambin’s love letters.* Lambin belonged to the retinue of the Cardinal de Tournon whose presence in Italy was largely motivated by Henri 11’s desire to maximize French influence in the Curia.’ Lambin did not waste his years in Italy. He prepared his major editions of Horace and Lucretius which he published in 1561 and 1563 respectively, after his return to France. Less well-known is his Latin translation of and commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, published in Venice and later Paris in 1558.4 It is a record of con- trasting scholarly outlooks towards translation and of existing and

This article was revised during the tenure of a Visiting Scholarship at St John’s College, Oxford. ’ H. Potez, ‘Deux anntes de la Renaissance (d’aprts une correspondance inCdite)’, Rev Hzjt L , 13

(1906), 458-98 and 658-92. Potez’s article is based on Bibliothtque Nationale, fonds latin, 8647. Lettres galantes de Denys Lambin (1552-1554), texte Ctabli, traduit et annotC par Henri Potez

et Francois Prexac, Publications de la FacultC des Lettres de I’UniversitC de Lille, 6 (Paris, 1941); and Potez’s earlier ‘La jeunesse de Denys Lambin’, Rev Hzjt L, 9 (1902), 385-413.

’ For greater detail than is necessary here, see M. Francois, Le Cardinal Frangozj de Tournon. Homrne d’itat, diplomate, miccdne et humanzjte ( I 489-1562), Bibliotheque des Ecoles Francaises d’AthPnes et de Rome, 173 (Paris, 1951).

‘ Arzjtotelis de moribus ad Nicomachum libri decem. Nunc pramum b Graeco & Latins d fideliter, quod vtrunque querebantur omnes praestitisse adhuc nemznem, a Dionysio Lambino ex- press2 (Venice, 1558). British Library, 520 b. 9. All further references will be to this edition, which will appear in short-title with indication of its year of publication. Lambin’s translation is briefly recorded and put in context in L’Ethique u Nicomaque, ed. R. A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif, (Louvain/Paris, 1970), 1.1, 177. C. H. Lohr, ‘Renaissance Latin Aristotle commentaries: Authors L-M’, Renazjs Q, 31 (1978), 535, gives the mistaken impression that the Parisian edition has priority. That this is not so is easily demonstrated from Lambin’s letter to Muret, dated Lucca, 1 August 1559, in which Lambin calls Muret’s attention to the fact that the Aristotle ‘has been published in Paris a little more accurately and more correctly than in Venice’ (‘scis libros de moribus ad Nicomachum Lutetiae paulb accuratitis & emendatiiis, quam Venetijs, excusos esse’). The letter is collected in Epzjtolae clarorum virorum, ed. J. M. Bruto (Lyon, 1561), 427. A similar declaration is made by Lambin in the second edition of the Ethics: ‘edideram octo abhinc annis, cGm Venetiis essem, libros decem Aristotelis de moribus ad Nicomachum . . . ijdtmque me absente non ita multis pbst mensibus Lutetiae typis mandati sunt’, Aristotelis de moribus ad Nicomachum libri decem (Paris, 1565), sig [** 4’1. Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, E.5.24.

0 1989 The Society for Renazjsance Studies, Oxford Uniuersity Press

268 John O’Brien

evolving humanist attitudes towards translation and its link with the commentary. This article will focus tightly on the 1558 edition, while drawing on material published later where necessary for the argument.

I

The genesis of Lambin’s translation of the Ethics derives from a dispute between himself and Joachim Perion, a Benedictine whose translations of Aristotle had considerable currency in the 1540s and later. Perion was an avowed Ciceronian, as is demonstrated by the very title of his 1540 treatise issued along with his translation of the Nicomachean Ethics: the treatise is headed De optimo genere interpretandi commentarzj’, a choice which alludes to the De optimo genere oratorum falsely attributed to Cicero.6 This latter work is a Latin translation of Aeschines’s I n Ctesi- phontem and Demosthenes’s De corona, of which only the preface sur- vives. Perion expressly models himself upon Cicero (‘hunc ego librum de Optimo interpretandi genere inscripsi, in quo me Ciceronem fateor imitatum e s ~ e ’ ) , ~ a decision which was not in itself fanciful in the France of 1540: it echoes, for example, the similar wish voiced by the elder Scaliger, who added that possibly Caesar might be an even more appropriate equivalent.’ In Scaliger’s case, this ambition may well have been fuelled by his bitter dispute with Erasmus over the latter’s Cice~on ianus .~ While Pkrion makes no mention of this controversy in the De optimo

Anstotelis ad Nicomachum f i l ium de moribus, quae Ethica nominantur, libri decem. Ioachimo Perionio Benedictino Cormoeriaceno znterprete. COMMENTARII eiwdem zn eosdem libros in quibw de conuertendis coniugendisque Graecis cum Latinis praecepta traduntur (Paris, 1540). John Rylands Library, Christie 27 f 24 (2). This copy does not contain the commentary, despite the pro- mise of the title-page. On PCrion himself, see C. H . Lohr, ‘Renaissance Latin Aristotle commentaries: Authors N-Ph’, Renaiss Q, 32 (1975). 574-6, with bibliography 575. The De optimo genere interpretandi is discussed in G. P. Norton, The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France and their Humanist Antecedents, Travaux dHumanisme et Renaissance, 201 (Geneva, 1984), 217-21, and Gauthier and Jolif, L’Ethique Ci Nicomaque, 174. An important discussion of PCrion is equally to be found in C. B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, Martin Classical Lectures, 27 (Cambridge, Mass., 1983). 72-6. Phion’s role in French humanist scholarship is succinctly described by A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger. A Study in the History of Classical Scholar- ship, Oxford-Warburg Studies (Oxford, 1983), I , 74-5; and for an overall appreciation of PCrion’s work, A. Stegmann, ‘Les observations sur Aristote du bCnCdictin J. Perion’, in Platon et Aristote d la Renaissance, XVI‘ Colloque International de Tours, ed. M. de Gandillac and J:C. Margolin (Paris, 1976), 377-89.

‘ On the spuriousness of this work, see M. D. Reeve in Tests and Transmissions. A Suruey o f the Latin Classics, ed. L. D. Reynolds (Oxford, 1983), 100-2.

’ Perion, De optimo genere interpretandi commentanj, preface, sig. Aij”. Bodleian Library, Bywater H.2.12 (1). A broader survey of the Ciceronian dispute than the present context requires is available in E. Sabbadini, Stonu del ciceronianismo (Turin, 1886) and the introduction to Desideno Erasmo da Rotterdam: I1 Ciceroniano o Dello stilo migliore, ed. A. Gambaro (Brescia, 1965).

* See Scaliger’s preface to his edition of Historia Animalium (c . 1538) in Prosateurs latins en France an seizi2me si2cle [ed. J. Chomarat and others] (Paris, 1987), 273, and the editors’ comparison of Scaliger’s outlook with Perion’s, 273 n. 3.

For Scaliger’s ferocious attacks on Erasmus’s Ciceronianw, see most succinctly Gambaro. I1 Ciceroniano, ci-cii.

Denys Lambin’s Nicomachean Ethics 269

genere, it remains true that stylistic criteria are paramount for him; his concern is with Cicero the translator of Plato’s Protagoras and Timaeus, or Xenophon’s Oeconomica. Indeed, Pe‘rion’s 1540 edition appended Cicero’s De universztate and the corresponding section of Plato’s Timaeus, in addition to Cicero’s translation of Aratus’s Phaenomena, in order, no doubt, for comparison to be made between his own essays in Ciceronian style and Cicero himself.

From the beginning Phion’s full-scale enterprise for a Ciceronian translation of Aristotle raised controversy. It was to be contested over a number of years by humanists from Charpentier to Vimercato, but Pe‘rion’s most vigorous early opponent was Jacques-Louis d’Estrebay (Strebaeus). l o Their particular hostility turned not on the Ethics, but on the Politics of which P6rion had hurried out a version in 1542, just as d’Estrebay was half-way through his own translation (not finally published until 1547). I ’ In a polemical pamphlet of 1543 which d’Estrebay published attacking Ptrion, he sarcastically represented Pe‘rion as the self-appointed defender of ‘Ciceroniana puritas’ and concluded ‘sic rem agit, ut omnes praeter unum Perionium Barbari sunt existimandi’. l 2 When Pe‘rion replied, after d’Estrebay’s death in 1549, he defended his cultivation of Cicero by offering the double argument that Cicero was the most perfect model for imitation, but that where Cicero failed to supply the necessary vocabulary, other Latin authors could be used, provided their material were adapted to Ciceronian periods. l 3

Lambin was not therefore by any means the first to challenge Pe‘rion’s project. Although he does not mention the Pe‘rion-d’Estrebay debate by name, Lambin’s own sense of the history of this controversy is evident from his preface to his 1558 Aristotle, which deals openly with the question of previous versions of the Ethics. Pe‘rion naturally assumes a promi- nent position and Lambin even constructs an imaginary interlocutor who objects to his attempts to detract from Pe‘rion’s renown. Lambin counters these envisaged arguments by demonstrating that Pe‘rion had himself sought to supplant Argyropylus. l 4 The brunt of criticism against Pe‘rion is, however, attributed to a consensus of scholarly opinion of which Lam- bin represents himself as the simple reporter:

l o On D’Estrebay see now K. Meerhoff, Rhitorique et pohtique au X V I e si2cle en France. Du Bellay, Ramw et les autres, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 36 (Leiden, 1986), 49- 64. D’Fstrebay’s quarrel with P6rion is related in Gauthier and Jolif, L’Ethique h Nicomaque, 174-5, and Schmitt Aristotle in the Renaissance, 76-7; the latter also gives the other major critics of Perion, 78-82.

” Gauthier and Jolif, L’Ethique b Nicomaque, 174. I ’ Quid inter Lodoicum Strebaeum et Ioachimum Perionium non conueniat in Politicon Aristo-

” Oratio in Iacobum Lodoicum Strebaeum, qua eius calumniis B conuitzis respondet (Paris,

’‘ Lambin, Arzjtotelis . . . libn’ decem, 1558, sig. [ * 5 7 . For a discussion of this quarrel drawing

telis interpretatzone (Paris, 1543), fol. 2”.

1551), fols 9”, 10‘.

on some of the material here quoted, see Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, 77-8.

270 John O’Brien

hoc tantum liquid6 uerCque affirmare possum, quotquot ingenio ac doctrina excellentes uiros conuenerim (conueni autem tiim in Gallia, tiim in Italia plurimos) partim eorum in Perionio diligentiam desiderare, partim illius scripta omnia uno genere circunscripta im- probare. Saepe querelis interfui Gallorum nostrorum: audiui reprehensiones seuerissimas, atque acerrimas Italorum, ciim hi Perionium in disertorum numero non haberent: illi quererentur eundem neque satis fideliter Aristotelem interpretatum esse, neque satis eleganter, aut, ut ita dicam, rotund6, graeca latin6 reddidisse.I5

Lambin’s remarks receive greater amplification from his 1572 lecture De utilitate linguae Graecae. Here he relates in detail the dispute between himself and Pe‘rion which he dates to approximately twenty years before the lecture (‘viginti fer6 ab hinc annos’)I6 - so in 1553 or 1554. During a visit paid by PCrion to the Cardinal de Tournon at Madon, Donato Gian- notti” reported Pier Vettori’s dissatisfaction with PCrion’s translation: ‘Perionij interpretandi licentiam sibi non probari, & aliquanto longius P verbis Aristotelis, atque adeo ab ipsa mente, ac sententia interdum distare esse visam.’I8 The desired co-ordination between words (verba) and meaning (sententia) (the latter being co-ordinated with intention (mens) in this extract) is the subject of wide-ranging investigation and prescription in treatises on translation of the period and points to the notorious difficulty experienced in aligning the two satisfactorily. l 9

More tellingly, Vettori’s summary judgement attacks implicitly the very arguments which Pe‘rion had himself advanced in his lengthy preface about the res-verba issue. As might be expected, Pe‘rion likewise has pro- nouncements to make on the question of how to bridge the gap separating

’ I Lambin, Aristotelis . . . libri decem, 1558, sig. [ * 6 7 : ‘I can make this one clear and candid statement, and that is that however many men I met, superior in intelligence and learning (and moreover I met a considerable number both in France and Italy), some of them found Perion lacking in assiduity, while others disapproved of the fact that all his writing falls within one style. I often witnessed the disputes of our fellow Frenchmen; I heard the very severe and sharp criticisms of the Italians, since the latter would not count Ptrion among the eloquent, while the former complained that PCrion had translated Aristotle neither faithfully enough, nor rendered the Greek into Latin in a sufficiently elegant or, I may say, well-rounded manner.’

I d Dionys. Lambin . . . de utilitate linguae Graecae, eP recta Graecorum Latin2 interpretandorum ratione, oratio (Paris, 1572), 18. For the dating to late 1553 or early 1554 and mention of the De utilitate material, see Potez, ‘Deux annees de la Renaissance’, 666. This work is also briefly mentioned by Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, 167 n. 39. Potez points out, art. cit., 664, that Lambin’s acquaintance with PCrion must have gone back to at least 1551, from which year there is a letter extant from PCrion thanking Lambin for recommending him to the Cardinal de Tournon. Potez’s source here is Bruto, Epistolae clarorum virorum, 1561 edn, 340-3.

” On this Florentine humanist, see C. Caputo, La vita e le opere di Donato Giannotti (Naples, 1967). Giannotti was a member of Tournon’s entourage: Francois, Le Cardinal Franqois de Tour- non, index, s. n..

’’ Lambin, De utilztate linguae Graecae, 19: ‘Vettori did not approve of the liberties Perion had taken in translating, liberties which seemed to be rather too far away from Aristotle’s words and sometimes indeed his very intention and meaning.’

I’) This aspect has been fully investigated by T. C. Cave, The Comucopzan Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford, 1979), especially chs 1, 3-34 and 2 , 35-77.

Denys Lam bin’s Nicomachean Ethics 27 1

original and translation. As Glyn Norton, Pe‘rion’s most recent commen- tator, observes, ‘translation is a process through which we appear to “re- invent” the source text, eradicating the space of estrangement which otherwise separates us from that text’.20 None the less, this duty of ‘re- invention’ has to be combined with the intensive study of Cicero’s works. Assimilating the text to be translated cannot proceed without correspond- ingly assimilating Cicero as the means of producing the verba with which to express the res. By this standard, Vettori’s reported complaint against Pe‘rion, brief as it is, is more than just an allegation about non-literality. It does, of course, charge Pe‘rion with a failure to seize the grammatical sense, a fundamental postulate of any translator’s task. More gravely, however, Pe‘rion fails to capture Aristotle’s meaning which, because of the equivalence which Vettori reportedly establishes between mens and sententiu, is also a failure to penetrate to the heart of the text and allow the inner meaning to emerge. The translator’s mission is to bridge those distances of syntax and meaning which separate the reader from the classical author. The resulting translation must be diaphanous, allowing the personality of the original author to emerge.*’ Accordingly, when Vettori speaks of Aristotle’s m e w and employs this term alongside sententiu, he is viewing the original text as being expressive of an immanent authorial presence recoverable through the translator’s affinity with his chosen author: the lifelikeness of the classical writer and the liveliness of the translation are indissociable, and both are undermined - in this case - by Pe‘rion’s distance from word, meaning and intention. These last three terms are all closely allied for Vettori and all are equally the victims of the distortions brought about by Pe‘rion’s inadequacies as a translator.

When Lambin himself comes to elaborate his own reactions to Vettori’s comments in the lengthy following section of the 1572 lecture, he is at once bolder and more specific in his criticisms. Quoting from his conver- sation with Pe‘rion, Lambin first forces from him the apparently innocent admission that Plato and Aristotle are different writers with markedly different styles, in order to claim that Pe‘rion has translated the latter as though he were the former:

Ctim tu Perioni . . . negare non possis, alium sermonem Platonis esse, alium Aristotelis: qubd Platonis quidem sermo, sit grandis, fusus, vber, amplus, elatus, & B poetica locutione breuissimo distans in- teruallo: Aristotelis verb, exilis, pressus, contractus, breuis, angustus,

Norton, The Ideology and Language of Translation, 219. * ’ For this standard notion of the translator’s task, see, on Montaigne as translator of Sebond, A.

Compagnon, ‘Montaigne: de la traduction des autres 2 la traduction de mi’, Lzttkratwe, 55 (1984), ‘La Farcissure. Intertextualitb au XVIe siPcle’, 42: Ye livre est personnifie; mots et choses confon- dus, il est l’expression d’une personnalitd . . . La traduction est donc un dialogue entre deux natures, non seulement deux langues mais deux hommes, deux ecrivains, c’est la Ancarnation d’un auteur du passe‘ dans une langue vivante.’

272 John O’Brien

humilis, & ad docendum, quPm ad mouendum aptior, sic Aristotelem interpretatus es, quasi Platonem interpretandum suscepisses. 2 2

The difference, Lambin goes on to explain, is not solely a question of authorial temperament, but is strictly related to a question of genres - a difference between dialogue and lecture. The Aristotelian lecture on ethics, Lambin reiterates, is ‘genus orationis subtile, contractum, pressum, & limatum, cuiusmodi genus ad docendum aptissimum est’. 2 3

To Pe‘rion’s failure to observe rigorous generic norms, Lambin adds the further qualification that the obfuscation affecting Pe‘rion’s translation is due, precisely, to the imposition on it of a Ciceronian diction (‘quod caput est, interdum ab Aristotelis sententia, dum Ciceronem tuum in- uitum ad illum transfers, longissimi. aberrasti’). 24 This remark does not receive further explanation: but when Pe‘rion endeavours to defend his Ciceronian bias by the claim that Cicero read the Nicomachean Ethics before writing the De umzcitiu, Lambin refutes this hypothesis convinc- i n g l ~ . ~ ’ What is none the less important to note at the present stage is Lambin’s recourse to a particularly bold version of the ‘immanent author’ image, by attempting to locate a fundamental error on Pe‘rion’s part in his choice of translative style. In the matching of an appropriate verbal form and the classical author it conjures, Lambin adopts the same line as Vettori, in the belief that fluctuation in the first of these elements in- evitably entails distortion in the second.

I1

The primary impetus behind Lambin’s own translation of the Ethics was, then, his confrontation with Pe‘rion at Madon. There was also, according to Michel Francois, a request from the Cardinal de Tournon who complained about the difficult print in Vettori’s 1547 Juntine edition.26 Potez demonstrates that the work was already in progress by the winter of 1553-4, when Lambin was charged with explaining the Ethics to the cardinal. In so doing, he compared Pe‘rion’s translation unfavourably with his own which he had been making.” Shortly afterwards, probably in

*’ Lambin, De utilitate linguae Graecae, 20: ‘Since you, Perion, cannot deny that Plato’s style and Aristotle’s style are two different things - because Plato’s style is sublime, flowing, copious, abun- dant, exalted and only a hair’s breadth away from poetic diction; whereas Aristotle’s style is spare, concise, compact, brief, succinct, low and more suited to imparting a lesson than to moving the heart - you have translated Aristotle as though you had undertaken to translate Plato.’

*’ Lambin, De utilitate, 20: ‘a type of style which is precise, concise, compact and refined, a style which is most suitable for teaching’.

Lambin, De utilitate, 21: ‘in short, you have, on occasion, strayed very far away from Aristotle’s meaning, while foisting your beloved Cicero onto him willy-nilly’.

2 1

’’ Lambin, De utilztate, 21-2. 2 6 See M. Francois, Le Ca?-dznalF?-an~ots de Tournon, 445 n. 3 and 501 n. 2. Francois quotes from

BN 8647 fol 86‘. *’ Potez, Deux anndes de la Renaissance, 664-5. Lambin’s correspondent here is Nicole Le Clerc,

to whom he subsequently wrote in March 1555 to say that six books of the translation were now ready (art cit., 665).


1555 and 1556, he had access to the Vatican Library, principally for his work on Horace, though it is more than tempting to think that he saw other material too.28 In any event, the edition was completed during Lambin’s travels around Italy with the Cardinal de Tournon, who had left Rome in 1556 after a violent quarrel with Pope Paul IV and returned only for the Conclave of 1559 which elected Pius IV. Lambin recounts the stages of their itinerary in the dedicatory letter to his 1561 edition of Horace’s Satires and Epistles; letters to correspondents written from the towns they visited are also extant.” Internal evidence in the commentary to the Ethics confirms the chronology of composition just outlined. At one point, Lambin mentions recent collation of printed editions with Muret (so shortly before publication in 1558), with Lodovico Corrado the previous year and with Adrien Turntbe in Paris two years bef01-e.~’ This brings the date back to 1556. A letter transcribed by Lambin in the commentary also shows him consulting Guglielmo Sirleto, whose reply is dated January 1557. 3 1 Further surviving correspondence, principally with Muret, finds Lambin asking Muret’s views on a difficulty in E . N . ~ . i x . 1 7 , ~ ’ and, shortly after the appearance of his translation, deciding to send the edition to Paris for a more accurate printing than it had received in Venice in May 1558.”

Even from this brief inspection, it is clear that Lambin’s 1558 Aristotle was the fruit of his close consultation with a variety of friends and col- leagues, Italian as well as French. His two constant authorities, in the course of the edition, are, however, undoubtedly Turntbe and Muret. It

” See Q. Horatius Flaccus, exfide, atque auctoritate decem librorum manu scn$torum, opera Dionys. Lambini Monstroliensb emendatus (Lyon, 1561), sig. B3‘, where Lambin speaks of his reception at the Vatican Library by the Sirleto brothers and Federico Rinaldi, as well as help from Faerno and Fulvio Orsini. ’’ Denys Lambin, Q. Horatii Flacci sermonum lzbri qzlattuor, seu, satyrarum libri. Eprjtolarum

libri duo (Lyon, 1561), 2-4. The itinerary is described in greater detail by Francois, Le Cardinal Franqok de Tournon, 339ff, 350, 355, 360, 376-7. ’’ Lambin, Arwtotelis . . . libn’decem, 1558, 306, lemma ‘Aliquanto sunt inaniores’. On Corrado,

see Lambin’s correspondence with Agostino Angelelli in Bruto, Epistolae clarorum mrorum, 2nd edn (Cologne, 1569), 180”-181’ (two occurrences).

’’ Lambin, Arktotelis . . . libn‘decem, 1558, 288-9, lemma ‘In ijs libris dictum est’, where Lam- bin calls Sirleto ‘olim Pontificis Maximi Marcelli secundi, nunc Pauli 1111 itidem familiarem ac domesticum’. After the election of Paul IV in 1555, Sirleto was named apostolic protonotary and relinquished his custodianship of the Vatican Library to his brother Girolamo. The formal transfer, however, only took place on 14 May 1557: see J. Bignami Odier, La Bibliothique Vaticane de Shte IV iC Pie XI , Studi e Testi, 272 (Citti del Vaticano, 1973), 47ff, and R. de Maio, La Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticanu sotto Paolo IV e Pi0 I V (1555-1565), Studi e Testi, 219 (Citti del Vaticano, 1962), I, 281, 282 n. 1 . ” Bruto, Epistolae clarorum vi7orum, 1561 edn, 389-90, dated Padua, 25 February, no year

[1558]. The publication of this correspondence infuriated Muret who was later to complain about Lambin, ‘confixerat eas is ipse, qui tanquam a me ad se missas divulgeraverat, homo eruditus ille quidem, sed improbus, 81 natura nocendi ac male faciendi cupidus’, Muret, Opera omnia, ed. D. Ruhnken (4 vols. Leiden. 1789), I, 407. Identifying Lambin as the ‘is ipse’ in question, Ruhnken speaks of Muret’s ‘mala fides’ (I, 407). ” Bruto, Epistolae clarorum mrorum, 1561 edn. 402-3, dated Conegliano, 12 August 1558, and

427-8, dated Lucca, 1 August 1559.

274 John O’Brien

was Muret who supplied the lengthy introduction to the commentary section of the work; it contains an attack on those who, ‘dum id agunt vnum, ne quod verbum ponant, quod non 8 Cicerone decerpserint, saepenumero longissime ab Aristotelis sententia aberrasse’. 3 4 Later in his introduction, Muret mentions Pe‘rion by name, while declining to answer any potential criticisms about the need for a new translation of the Ethics; the scholia will give ample reply to that question, he The quarrel with Pe‘rion, with which Muret willingly associates himself here, was still fresh in mind and Lambin makes reference to Pe‘rion’s inadequacies in his own preface to the reader. At the same time, none the less, he is careful to place Pe‘rion alongside Argyropylus and Perion’s own reviser, Nicolas de Grouchy, with whose work Lambin draws comparisons and contrasts before passing on to the rationale behind his own critical procedure:

Primiim Aristotelis sententiam qu2m apertissimk & fidelissimP potui, oratione latina expressi: deinde orationis genere usus sum humili, presso, subtili, tenuiter limato, & ad docendum qu2m maxime accom- modato: Thm optima & emendatissima exemplaria non solum typis excusa, uerumetiam manu scripta conquisiui, exploraui, consului: lec- tionis uarietatem diligenter consideraui, eamque in meis annota- tionibus eo consilio proposui. ut tu lector erudite de ueritate, & (ut ita dicam) germanitate scripturae iudicares: Postremb multos locos partim ueterum codicum fide ac testimonio fretus, partim coniectura quadam ductus emendaui.36

The notion of fidelity, uppermost in the report of Vettori’s criticisms of Pe‘rion, here resurfaces in a new context where it is defined by the articles of critical procedure which Lambin follows. The fidelity which aims to give ‘Aristotle’s meaning’ [‘Aristotelis sententia’] now opens out beyond the fundamental issues of sententia and verba to involve the translator in two other considerations - the first, that of rhetorical idiom, and the second and more extensive, that of textual criticism.

’‘ Lambin, Artjtotelzj . . . lib72 decem, 1558, 274: ‘while they are intent on not setting down a single word they have not derived from Cicero, have frequently strayed very far from Aristotle’s meaning’.

J’ Lambin, Anjtotelt j . . . libri decem, 1558, 276. Muret was to produce his own translation of book 5 of the Ethics, published in 1575 (it was however completed ten years before if the date of the prefatory letter is to be believed). Muret also produced a commentary on the Ethics (first published in Venice, 1583). in which he criticized Lambin’s choice of translation on a number of occasions: see Kuhnken. 1 1 1 , 142, 176-7, 244, 303, 315. 348, 423. 448, 449, 463.

l6 Lambin, Arzjtotelzs . . . libri decem, 1558, sigs [ *6 ’ ] - [*7‘]: ‘First of all, I rendered Aristotle’s meaning into Latin prose as clearly and as faithfully as I could. Next I used the type of style that is low, compact, precise, lightly polished and best suited to imparting a lesson. Then 1 sought out, looked for and consulted the finest and most error-free exemplars, both printed editions and indeed even manuscripts. I gave careful thought to variant readings and set them down in my notes, with the intention that you, learned reader, might judge the truth and, as it were, authenticity of the reading. Finally, I have emended a number of places partly by relying on the trustworthiness and witness of ancient manuscripts, partly led on by some conjecture.’

D e n y Lambin’s Nicomachean Ethics 275

In the first place, the translator must bear in mind the rhetorical idiom of his chosen text. To some degree, of course, Lambin’s remarks on this subject overlap with his previously expressed criticisms of Perion’s version. Yet they add an important stipulation: the Ethics are now perceived as a didactic text to which the appropriate corresponding stylistic idiom is the humile genus, the ‘lowest’ of rhetoric’s three divisions of style. This con- stitutes a radical modification of the translator’s enterprise as Perion had conceived of it. Where Cicero was seen by Perion as timelessly incarnating all possible stylistic devices to which the translator might wish to resort, these criteria are henceforth embodied for Lambin in the impersonal norms of rhetorical classification. On this account, questions of idiom are no longer referred to Cicero as an automatic arbiter of acceptable style, so that vocabulary need no longer be subject to the restrictions of a specific historical period (late Republican Latin in Cicero’s case) with its inevitable discounting of linguistic development and change. Even if, in Lambin as in Perion, the criterion of stylistic value appealed to is suscep- tible of universal application, Lambin implies that the potential translator needs a lexical flexibility which Cicero alone cannot provide. Furthermore. Lambin’s major area of difference from his older contemporary is on the determining role played by textual criticism within any notion of translation. Indeed, the most substantial section of his exposition is concerned with rules of procedure for precisely that.

To link translation and textual criticism was not in itself innovative. To some degree, it would be natural for the translation to reflect the state of the textus receptus. If the text was seen or felt to be corrupt, two options - not mutually exclusive - were open to the translator: he could seek out an improved textual witness or he could attempt to set matters right by conjecture (emendatio ingenii ope, coniectura). And it was this latter course of action which, in the absence of better witnesses to a text, proved the most straightforward and, in the short term at least, most effective solution.37 Such conjectures constitute a series of local solutions to local problems; they imply but do not assume a larger view of the text and its requirements nor, a fortiori, a knowledge of the textual tradition. Moreover, in the event of conflicting testimony on the part of the edition he was following (the indication of a crux, for example), it was not un- common for the translator’s choice of reading to be based on personal preference alone. At most, a translator might include variant traditions in brief marginalia, given the physical impossibility of printing two diverse readings in the body of the translation itself. At a further and more sophisticated stage still, an accompanying commentary might include both variant readings and justify the translator’s own choice

” E. J . Kenney, The Classical Text. Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book, Sather Classical Lectures, 44 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1974), ch. 2, ‘The art of emendation: theory’, 21-46, and ch. 3, ‘The art of emendation: practice’, 47-74.

276 John O’Brien

perhaps by reference to authorial usage (usus auctoris). Within the Renaissance tradition of Aristotelian translation itself, these developments are richly exemplified. Thus the widely known versions by Leonard0 Bruni and Argyropylus, together with the vetus translatio done by Robert Grosseteste, 3 8 essentially represent independent attempts at elucidating and rendering the text of the Ethics. The efforts of these translators are appreciated by editors of the Greek text such as Vettori, for their translations taken individually constituted a valuable preliminary to an overall philological enterprise reflecting lexical choices based on an active assessment of the Aristotelian tradition. Building on this crucial early work, Lambin too sought to promote translation’s potential as a philological instrument and to cultivate the commentary in which to record and assess the validity of the readings on offer.

Viewed from this angle, it is Lambin who treats translation and commentary as an interdependent unit in the service of philology, just as it is Lambin who demonstrates most fully a sense of the tradition rather than Pe‘rion’s mere sense of author. In his methodological preface, Lambin states that he has sought out the most reliable manuscripts as well as printed witnesses and has recorded variants in his notes. The nineteenth- century editor Carl Zell, one of the few to discuss Lambin’s translation, claimed that Lambin had in fact seen only two manuscripts which he en- titled Coloniensis [sic] and Pontzj’icius. Much of the evidence on which Zell based his remarks derives from Zwinger’s 1566 edition of Lambin, itself drawn from Lambin’s own second (1565) edition of the A r i ~ t o t l e . ~ ~ In the probative instances cited by Zell, Lambin corrected or expanded information given in the first edition. Thus in the first edition, his long note on E.N. x.ix.10 (Vettori prints: hg haxouoopivov z 6 v . & ~ ~ E I X ~ V

TO& kO&oi npoqyoupkvco~) finds fault with the final word and proposes npoqypt%ov, adding ‘atque hanc meam coniectuaram codices nonnulli manuscripti comprobant & confirmant’. 40 In the later edition, the note reads as follows: ‘cGm putauissem legendum esse ~ P O T ~ ~ ~ V C O V , neque tamen ausus essem vulgatam immutare, quanuis meam coniecturam codex vnus manuscriptus comprobaret: nactus postea Romae duos manuscriptos longe optimos vnum Colonensem, alterum Vaticanum, in quibus dilucid?, & litterat? scriptum esset ~ P O T ~ ~ ~ V O V , non dubitaui iam horum codicum auctoritatem ~ e q u i ’ . ~ ’ Similarly, at E. N. iv.ii.10,

” On Grosseteste’s translation, see Gauthier and Jolif, I.i, 120ff and for greater detail, Aristoteles Latinus. Ethica Nicomachea, ed. R. A. Gauthier (Brussels and Leiden, 1972-74), vol. XXVI 1 - 3 , fasc. 3-4. ” C. Zell, Arbtotelis Ethicomm Nicomacheorum libn’ decem (Heidelburg, 1820), 2: ‘duo sunt

igitur Lambini codices, quos nominatim a se inspectos laudat, alter Coloniensis, alter Pontificius’. The third edition of Lambin’s translation and commentary came out in Bask in 1566 under the editorship of Theodore Zwinger, with a further printing in 1582. In essence, it combines the fruits of Lambin’s own 1565 edition with annotations by Zwinger himself.

Lambin, Anjtotelis . . . libridecem, 1558, 440. Lambin, Aristotelis . . . lzbri decena, 1565, commentary, fol. 61‘. no. 68: ‘I thought the read-

ing ought to be xpoqyp6vwv, yet I did not dare to alter the Vulgate, although one manuscript * ’


Lambin in 1558 records Muret’s conjecture for the passage - m p i zauz& 6e zi js hhsuOsptozqzog ol’oqs - in place of the Renaissance vulgate, oiov v6ysOoS m p i za6za zi js &uespt6zqzoS 06oqs.~~ In the second edition, this conjecture is substantiated by appeal to the corroborative reading of the papal manuscript - ‘quam scripturam ctim poste2 reperissem in codice manu scripto pontificis Marcelli 11. eam secutus sum reiecta v ~ l g a t a ’ . ~ ~ Elsewhere, Lambin provides new entries for lemmata where manuscript evidence has come to light after the first edition, as for example E.N. i.iv.7, where Lambin sets aside the Vulgate reading (dpx f j yr3p TO O T ~ ) and affirms his preference for the reading of the Colonensis, which he cites by name ( d p x d y6p TO Ozt, ‘satis est enim rem ita e ~ s e ’ ) . ~ ~ One further isolated instance is the reference to the ‘codex Amioti’, quoted in the 1558 as well as the 1565 editions of the Ethics to defend the reading npo~6tzrov~s5 against the Vulgate T C ~ O O T ~ T T O V T E ~ at E. N . iii .viii. 5. 45

Lambin’s own account of his sources complicates the position a good deal further. He himself identifies three manuscripts in the 1565 edition of the Ethics (though he supplies no real historical evidence for the superiority of the sources he cites with such a p p r ~ v a l ) . ~ ~ One manuscript belonged to Pope Marcellus 11, another to Annibale Caro. The first of these is Zell’s Pont#cius (Lambin sometimes calls it the Vaticanus); the second is not given an identificatory label by Lambin, who never mentions its owner before 1565. A third was not a manuscript as such, but a printed book ‘ C collated > with a very old exemplar’ [‘cum antiquissimo exemplari’]; it belonged to the Colonna family and is the source which Lambin always calls Colonensis. Lambin says he made a collation of these three sources, though it is unclear at what stage he did so. The reference to the manuscript of Pope Marcellus I1 (reigned 9 April-1 May 1555) sug- gests an earlier rather than a later date and so Lambin is exploiting at a later date material gathered some time before. However, his remarks on E. N . x.ix. 10, quoted above, imply that the new evidence did not come to light until after the first edition had been printed. In that case, it is possible that Lambin had been able to consult new material when he accom- panied the Cardinal de Tournon back to Rome for the conclave which

sanctioned my conjecture. Having subsequently obtained at Rome the two manuscripts which are far and away the best, the first the Colonensis and the second the Vaticanw, in which the wording was clearly and plainly npoqy~kvov, I have not now had any doubt about following the authority of these manuscripts.’ ” Lambin, Aristotelis . . . libri decem, 1558, 334-5.

Lambin, Aristotelis . . . libri decem, 1565, commentary, fol. 22*-”, no. 21: ‘since I later discovered this wording in a manuscript of Pope Marcellus 11, I followed it and rejected the vulgate’. “ Lambin, Aristotelis . . . libri decem, 1565, commentary, fols 3”-4‘, (fol 4‘) no. 19. ‘I Lambin, Aristotelis . . . libn‘decem, 1558, 325; 1565, fol 19*, no. 54. Zell, 2, correctly points

out that Lambin does not seem to have seen this manuscript himself. Lambin, Aristotelis . . . librz decem, sig. [**47. On the problems of the historical commen-

tary, see A . Grafton, ‘Renaissance readers and ancient texts: comments on some commentaries’, Renazss 4, 38 (1985), 613-49.

4 1

46

278 John O’Brien

elected Pius IV after Paul IV’s death on 18 August 1559.47 In either case, it remains true with the solitary exception of ‘Amyot’s manuscript’, substantive references to named manuscripts occur largely after the 1558 edition. It does not follow that these were the sole manuscripts consulted by Lambin. On the contrary, he constantly notes the agreements and discrepancies between manuscript and printed editions. The following brief extract, on E . N . ii.vii.1, is characteristic of his method: ‘Aliquanto sunt inaniores] scripti codices ferP omnes, & ij qui Florentiae, Veneti.js, Lutetiae sunt excusi, habent o i P ~ V xct0Ohou X S V ~ T S ~ O ~ E ~ I : nonnulli tamen ~ o ~ v O T E ~ O I ’ . ~ ~ In order, the named references are to Vettori’s Jun- tine edition of 1547, the Aldine dating from 1536 and TurnPbe’s editions of Vettori printed in Paris in 1554 and 1555. Where the term ‘codices Germanici’ occurs, these are likely to be Rihelius’s Strasbourg editions of 1540 and 1545 (with several further re-editions and reprints). In keeping with Renaissance practice,49 Lambin uses codex or liber to denote manuscripts and printed editions alike, differentiating between the two as and when necessary by the indications ‘(manu) scriptus’, and ‘excusus’ or ‘impressus’. The vetus interpres, Bruni and Argyropylus are Lambin’s standard points of reference among the translators; among the commen- tators, Aspasius and Aquinas. Grouchy’s revisions of P6rion are also cited, but no reference is made to either Feliciano or d’Estrebay.

Lambin’s translation of the Ethics was well considered. Writing to Lambin in June 1560 after having compared the translation with the original, Paolo Manuzio praised Lambin’s industry in eradicating the errors of previous editions. j0 The translation was, moreover, to survive into the nineteenth century as a running crib for editions of the Greek text. Zell was particularly appreciative of its qualities. ‘Versio ejus [Lambini] ut plurimum satis recta est, Latina et dilucida,’ he wrote, ‘ut inprimis eorum, qui Latinas interpretationes ad sensum Graecae orationis citius explorandum consulant, usibus inservire posit’, adding however as a rider: ’Nervosam certe quidem Aristotelis brevitatem, sententiarumque adstrictam densitatem non admodum refert . ’ 5 ’ With these considerations in mind, we may turn to the versions which Lambin and Pe‘rion offer for the very opening of book I11 of the Ethics, where Aristotle is considering criteria for judging voluntary and involuntary behaviour. Here Lambin is at his most polemical and vehement:

4 ’ See Michel Francois, ‘Denys Lambin et le Conclave de 1559’. MClanges Abel Le/ranc (Paris,

4 * Lambin, Aristotelis . . . libw decem, 1558, 306. ‘’ See Silvia Rizzo, I1 lessicofilologico degli umanzsti, Sussidi Eruditi, 26 (Rome, 1973). 69; ‘Era

quindi del tutto naturale che si estendessero ai libri a stampa i medesimi termini in us0 per i manoscritti, liber, volumen, exemplar. . . e infine codex.’ On the problems that this transfer of ter- minology caused, see Kenney, The Classical Text, 26-1.

1939), 301 -6.

Bruto, Efiictolue clarorum vil-orum, 1561 edn, 337-8. Zell, Anstoteltj Ethicorum Nicomacheorum libri decem, 18. ”


Cum igitur uirtus in perturbationibus & actionibus uersetur: ij’sque rebus, quas sponte nostra suscipimus, laudes & uituperationes con- tingant, ijs autem quas inuiti facimus, uenia atque etiam interdum misericordia tribuatur: fortasse nobis, qui uirtutis uim, naturamque quaerimus, necesse est id quod sponte & id quod inuite fit, definire, ac distinguere. Atque haec oratio latoribus legum quoque tiim ad honores bent meritis de rep. decernendos, tiim ad supplicia, in im- probos constituenda, utilis est futura. Ea igitur suscipere dicimur inuiti, quae aut ui coacti, aut per inscientiam agimus. Est autem id uiolentum, cuius principium extr2 est, atque eiusmodi, ut nihil adiumenti afferat is, qui agit aut qui patitur: ut si qub uentus detulerit, aut ij homines, quorum sub potestate sumus. Quaecunque uerb maiorum malorum metu, uel honesti alicuius causa fiunt, uerbi gratia, si quis tyrannus cuius in manu parentum & liberorum uita posita sit, alicui ut turpe quippiam faciat, imperet, ita ut illi, si faciat, salui sint: sin minus, moriantur, utriim haec spontt, an inuiti? fiant, ambigi potest: eademque de iacturis quae orta in mari tempestate fieri solent, controuersia esse potest. Simpliciter enim & absolutt nemo sua sponte rerum suarum iacturam facit, sed suae ac ceterorum salutis causa, omnes faciunt, qui mod0 sanae mentis sint. Mixtae igitur sunt tales actiones: sed eis, quae sponte aguntur tamen, similiores. ’’

This translation is in deliberate reply to Pe‘rion’s, which runs as follows:

Sed quoniam virtus in perturbationibus actionibdsque inhaeret, ac in iis rebus quae voluntate suscipiuntur, laudi & vitio locus relinquitur, in non voluntariis, veniae, interdum etiam misericordiae: profectb explicanda vis est rati6que earum rerum quae & voluntate & contra voluntatem fiunt, iis praesertim, qui in virtutis cognitione versantur: quae explicatio conditioribus etiam legum ad honores decernendos, constituendfisque poenas, vtilis est. Sunt igitur ea non voluntaria, quae

Lambin, Aristotelzi . . . libn’ decem, 1558, 48: ’Since, therefore, virtue resides in passion and action, and praise and blame relate to those acts which we undertake willingly, while for those which we do unwillingly, indulgence and even sometimes forgiveness are shown: perhaps we, who are en- quiring into the import and nature of virtue, should define and distinguish what comes about of our own free will and what comes about against our will. And this lecture will be useful to promulgators of laws also both for bestowing honours on those who deserve well from the state and for determining punishment for felons. We are, then, said to undertake against our will those things which we perform either under coertion or through ignorance. Moreover, an act is compulsory whose origin is from without and of a kind that the doer or the victim contributes nothing to it: as when he is carried off somewhere by a wind or by those who have us in their power. As for those actions performed out of fear of a greater evil or with some honest objective in mind - for example, if some tyrant who holds the lives of one’s parents and children in his hands commands someone to commit a base deed, in such a way that if he does it his dependants will be spared but if not they will die - there can be some doubt about whether this is voluntary or unwilling action. The same is true for goods customarily jet- tisoned when a storm blows up at sea: this action is open to question. Simply and unreservedly, nobody jettisons his goods willingly, but so as to save his own life and other people’s, everyone does (any sane man at least). Such actions are consequently “mixed”; but are nonetheless more similar to those committed of one’s free will.’

280 John O’Brien

vi fiunt aut imprudentia: vi autem id fit, cuius causa & principium ex- trinsecus eiusmodi adhibetur, ad quod nihil adiumenti afferat is qui illud facit aut patitur. vt si qub ventus impulerit, aut potentes homines. At verb quae metu maiorum malorum, aut honesti causa fiunt, velut si quis tyrannus dominus parentum & liberorum, proponat turpe aliquid cui faciendum, hac lege, vt si faciat, incolumes sint ac salui: sin minus, interficiantur: vtrum sponte an inuitus faciat, magna est quaestio. Eadem est etiam ratio iacturarum, quae fiunt cum tempestates oriun- tur. Omnino enim voluntate sua nemo iaciat, salutis autem suae ac caeterorum causa, omnes qui quidem sana mente sint. Sunt igitur mixtae huiusmodi actiones illae quidem, sed voluntatis similiores. 53

A preference for binary and ternary cadence - characteristically Lambi- nian - is evident in this extract: ‘definire, ac distinguere’ is Lambin’s reduplication stimulated by Aristotle’s own liking for the same form. But this preference is not simply a stylistic habit in Lambin: it extends also to structural device, in the form of the assertive isocola which mark out and boldly articulate the logic of the passage: thus ‘ijsque rebus, quas sponte nostra suscipimus . . . ijs autem quas inuiti facimus’, ‘id quod sponte & id quod inuite’, ‘ttim ad homines . . . decernendos, ttim ad supplicia . . . constituenda’. Lambin regiments syntax, producing airy, balanced clausulae and sentences regularly endstopped by verbs. Yet Zell is right: Lambin’s tendency to expansiveness and clarity leads him to improve upon his original: there is an un-Aristotelian flaccidity about ‘ij homines, quorum sub potestate sumus’ and ‘tyrannus cuius in manu parentum & liberorum uita posita est’ as translations of bivOp~x0t x6pt01 OVTES and xcpto~ &v yov6ov xai ~ 6 x v o v . Pe‘rion keeps the tautness - ‘potentes homines’, ‘tyrannus dominus parentum & liberorum’. If anything, he also displays even greater delight in syntaxis: hence the ellipsis of the verb in the second main clause of the first sentence, the presence of chiasmus (‘honores decernendos, constituendPsque poenas’) and the incidence of interweaving (‘explicanda vis est ratibque’, ‘vi fiunt aut imprudentia’,

Perion, Aristotelis . . . de moribus . . . libn’decem, 35-6: ‘But since virtue resides in passion and action and in those things which are willingly undertaken, the way is left open for praise and blame, whereas in involuntary things, the way is left open for indulgence, sometimes even for forgiveness. Surely enquirers into virtue above all should explain the import and motive behind those things which come about both voluntarily and involuntarily. This explanation is useful even to framers of laws for bestowing honours and determining punishment. Involuntary things are, then, those which come about through coertion or inadvertance. Now, an action is committed under coertion whose cause and origin exhibits external influence of this kind - the doer or the victim contributes nothing to it. As when a wind drives us somewhere, or powerful men. Yet actions undertaken out of fear of a greater evil or for some honest objective - as when some tyrant with control over one’s parents or children proposes a base deed for someone to perform, on condition that if he does it they will be safe and unharmed, but if not they will be put to death - it is a considerable question whether he acts of his own free will or the reverse. The same reasoning applies to jettisoning goods - which happens when storms blow up. In general, no-one voluntarily throws away his goods, yet for his own safety and that of others, any sane man does. Actions of this sort are accordingly “mixed’, but more similar to those undertaken voluntarily.’


‘incolumes sint ac salui’). Yet Perion adds variety to his clausulae by keeping some verbs off the sentence end, so that if the final result is less readily spacious than in Lambin, it has the merit of flexibility.

By contrast with Pe‘rion, Lambin’s version is the one more conscious of the tradition of Latin translations of the Ethics. His very first verb, ‘versetur’, is found in Bruni and Argyropylus, as is the whole phrase ‘laudes & uituperationes’; while Lambin’s later phrase ‘uenia atque etiam interdum misericordia’ adds the single word ‘etiam’ to an expression occurring in Bruni. In the following sentence, Bruni’s ‘utile etiam legumlatoribus ad premia penasque constituendas’ is the nucleus for Lambin’s version, where Lambin prefers Bruni’s ‘constituendas’ to Argyropylus’s ‘instituendas’. If Lambin agrees with Argyropylus in the choice of ‘qui agit aut qui patitur’, both translators are none the less in- debted to Bruni’s ‘agens vel paciens’. Lambin borrows more directly from Argyropylus in ‘maiorum malorum metu’ (Argyropylus: ‘maiorum metu malorum’), in ‘controuersia’ (Bruni and vetus interpres: ‘dubitationem’) and in ‘simpliciter’ (also in vetus in t e rpre~) . ’~

None the less, to reduce the disagreement between the two translators to a question of cadences and figures would be to miss the point; there are further reasons behind Lambin’s expansive glossing. Hence both Lambin’s notes on this passage have Pe‘rion as their indirect target; and the brunt of their objection is precisely the ‘vocabulorum confusio’ which Lambin sees Perion sowing in the mind of his reader. Pe‘rion’s commentary on this passage had been concerned to establish that Cicero uses ‘non voluntaria’ rather than ‘involuntaria’ and had selected the first as his translation of & X O ~ ~ C X . ~ ~ In so doing, Pe‘rion had been silently correcting the tradition of the vetus interpres, reflected in Aquinas’s commentary and Bruni’s translation. Lambin has read Pe‘rion’s commentary carefully and in his reply, Pe‘rion (never directly named) is attacked as a member of a common tradition - common but erroneous - which translates T& 6xoOota as ‘voluntaria, aut voluntate suscepta’. Lambin distinguishes Aristotle’s usage of, first, PoGXqoq, npoaipeoq and kxo6otov, then &C~V,&XCOV and 06% kxCjv [‘qui sponte agit, qui inuitus, qui non sponte’, p. 3161 as a group from kxoGom, &xoikna and 06x kxoGota [‘quod sponte fit, quod inuitt., quod non sponte’, p. 3161, before finally opting for ‘sponte suscipere’ or ‘sponte facere’, a choice justified by no less than five examples from Cicero. 5 6 He concludes: ‘Postremb hoc contendo philosophiam latino sermone explicari ab eo non posse, qui vsque adeb sit

The examples from vetus znterpres, Bruni and Argyropylus are taken from Sancti doctoris: Thome de aquino: in decem libros ethicorum Aristotelis: pofundissima commentana: cum triplici textw translatione: antiqua vidilicet: Leonardi aretini: nec non Joannzj argyropili: suis locis inserta ([Venice], 1539), fols 33”-34‘.

Joachim Perion, De optimo genere interpretandi (Paris, 1540), 88. I6 The difficulties of translating these terms are well brought out by Gauthier and Jolif, L’Ethique

h Nicomaque, 11.1, 169-70.

282 John O’Brien

religiosus, ut nullum in oratione ponere nomen audeat, nisi Cicero- n i a n ~ m ’ . ~ ’ The reference is pointed and is made more so by Lambin’s defence of ‘inscientia’ as a translation of biyvota. Phion had opted for ‘imprudentia’ to translate gyvota, this choice being once more buttressed in his commentary by reference to Cicero. 5 8 ‘Imprudentia’ would have been ‘more Ciceronian’, Lambin retorts; but he notes a clear distinction in Greek philosophy between &yvotcc (zgnoruntzu, znsczentiu) and bcpp006~~ (imprudentiu). He uses this distinction to press home his argument: ‘malui minus Ciceronianus haberi, dummodb distinctius & planius Aristo- telis sententiam explicarem, neque tamen prorsus inquinat? loquerer, quPm nimio Ciceronis imitandi studio districtus totam hanc disputa- tionem ab Aristotele pulcherrim?, distinctissime, accuratissim? trac- tatam, obscurare, atque adeb p e r t ~ r b a r e ’ . ~ ~ With its sweeping wave of superlative adverbs in ternary rhythm, set off against the binary pattern of the verbs, putting beauty and accuracy in an original in tension against obscurity of a translation, this is polemic directed not against the principle of imitation as such, but rather against a particular brand of imitation - servile imitation. As Pe‘rion’s commentary underlines, lexical choices in his translation act as a form of ullusio, calling up a Ciceronian context which delineates their meaning and defends their use. Indeed, ullusio in Pe‘rion is virtually inseparable from a theory of elocutzo as such: Cicero is for him the master of all styles, just as he is the sole subtext which the reader is invited to perceive in the translation. Lambin argues the opposite case. Words must carry meanings at the expense of imitation, he insists, if such imitation gives only approximate sense to the translation: elegant Ciceronianism must give way to a respect for precise meaning. Purblind imitation makes for poor philology.

I11

Pe‘rion was not the only scholar whose credentials might have felt under threat from the publication of Lambin’s translation. The Florentine Pier Vettori, one of a long line of Italian editors of the Ethics, had produced his own edition of the Greek text in 1547.60 In his opening dedicatory

*’ Lambin, Aristotelis . . . libri decem, 1558, 312-13, 313-14: ‘Finally, my contention is that philosophy cannot be put into plain Latin prose by anyone who is so superstitious that he dares write no word of prose unless it be Ciceronian.’

l 8 Pirion, De optima genere interpretandi. 88. Lambin, Aristotelis . . . libri decem, 1558, 314: ‘Provided that I have explained Aristotle’s

meaning more distinctly and plainly, yet without speaking thoroughly corruptly, my preference has been to be considered less Ciceronian rather than being constrained by excessive zeal for imitation of Cicero and so obscuring and muddying all this argument which Aristotle has treated most beauti- fully, most lucidly and most accurately.’

For the Ethics and Italian editors, see Eugenio Garin, ‘La fortuna dell’Etica Aristotelica nel quattrocento’, in La culturafilosofica del nnascimento italiano, 2nd edn (Florence, 1979), 60-71, and Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, ‘Attivita filosofico-editoriale aristotelica dell’Umanesimo’, in Opusculu. The Latin Aristotle (Amsterdam, 1972), 483-500.


letter to his Greek-loving fellow-citizens, he enumerates the routine tasks of the editor, from restoring ‘words and entire sentences which were lacking’ [‘uerba ac totas sententias quae desiderabantur’] to correcting miss- pellings and purging the text of intrusive scribal More interesting still is Vettori’s critical appendix in which he supplies further details of his activities, particularly in relation to his sources. He reports having consulted manuscript and printed sources, notably the Latin prose translations of the Ethics. Pride of place is allotted to ‘that old, rough-and-ready and unpolished translation’ [‘uetus illa, rudis & inculta, tralatio’], since ‘it expresses everything word-for-word with magnificent simplicity’ [‘mira simplicitate uerbum ex uerbo omnia exprimit’]. Next in line comes Argyropylus, owing to his expertise in Greek philosophy, whereas Bruni enjoys no such privilege, for specimens of his conjectures, Vettori relates, indicated that Bruni had worked from an unreliable exemplar.62 Vettori thus rejects one of the principal translators on whose work Lambin was to rely. Indeed, it may be that Lambin’s use of Bruni was an attempt to rehabilitate Bruni in the face of Vettori’s criticisms.

Vettori’s edition was to achieve considerable success over the succeeding years. In 1554, for example, a Parisian edition was printed by Turnsbe who in the following year produced a Greek-Latin bilingual version of the same in collaboration with Guillaume Morel. In both editions, Turnebe included his own critical appendix alongside that of Vettori, reporting manuscript readings divergent from those adopted by V e t t ~ r i . ~ ~ Yet in neither edition does TurnPbe feel able to supplant Vettori’s readings; few of the alternatives find their way into the body of the text. It is only with Lambin’s translation that major changes of attitude appear. It is clear from Lambin’s edition that he has read Vettori attentively - or at least the body of Vettori’s edition, since not every entry in Vettori’s appendix is recorded by Lambin. Lambin’s critical reaction to his Florentine contemporary is apparent from the following extract, dealing with a phrase in E. N . vii.vii.3-4. Vettori writes as follows:

b G’axohaoro5: dvrix&mxL G. Ita sane scriptum offendi in cunctis codicib. Aspasius tamen legit dxparfis. quem sequitur Argyropylus. uetus tralatio, (nisi locus negligentia librariorum corruptus sit) uidetur ita scriptum in suo exemplari habuisse. 6 G’dxohaorog: bxohaoro~ 66 dvrix&~rat ocjqlpov~, dvrixslral 6e rcj pev dxpat&i, d iyxpctzijs.

‘’ Aristotelis de morib. ad Nicomachum filium libri decem, ed. Pier Vettori (Florence, 1547), ZT-”. For a recent case-study of Vettori as an editor, see A. Porro, ‘Pier Vettori editore di testi greci: la “Poetica” di Aristotele’, Italia Medioevale e Umanzjtica, 26 (1983). 307-58, with extensive bibliography nn. 1 and 4.

6 2 Vettori, Aristotelis . . . libn’decem, appendix, sig. ****I. 6’ Aristotelis de Moribur ad Nicomachum libri decem (Paris, 1554); Aristotelis de Moribus ad

Nicomachum, lib. X (Paris, 1555).

284 John O’Brien

uel potius, cum utroque mod0 auctor ipsius in diversis codicib. legi animaduertisset, ambas ut solet, lectiones e ~ p r e s s i t . ~ ~

Lambin in turn comments: .

sic Arist. TOV 6q h q 8 h w o v ro pEv pahaxia5 &05 pahhov, 6 6’&xparfi5. atque haec est Vera & incorrupta scriptura, quamuis libri Floren. habeant d 6’&xohao~o5. vetus interpretatio autem hoc loco plan2 corrupta- est. nanque eius autor praeter cetera mala, videtur legisse X C X X ~ C C ~ 81605. sed Argyropylus, & Aspasius perspicu2 probant eam lectionem quam secuti sumus. [. . .] sed quid Argyropyli, quid Aspasij auctoritate opus est? ipsa se ratio ac nuda veritas tueri ac probare potest.65

If moreover Lambin does not by any means dissent from Vettori on every occasion, his attitude can at times seem remarkably cavalier. At E.N. v.v.14, Vettori prints r6 6q voptopa 607c~p pEoov, noting also pkrpov, the marginal reading adopted by Grosseteste and Argyropylus. 66 Drawing on the same evidence, Lambin reaches the opposite conclusion: ‘ ~ E T ~ o v probaui, pEoov reieci’, yet goes on to add: ‘quod si quis hoc illi anteponat, equidem cum eo non pug nab^'.^' Or again, for E. N . vii.vi. 1, Eira &papz6vouot rijg Z ~ I ~ ~ E C O S , Vettori records the alternative 7cpoor&~~05 but argues against emending the received tradition. ‘* Lambin likewise prints 7cp6€,~0~, but notes the alternative on which he comments: ‘quam scripturam non improbo’.6’ At one and the same time, Lambin opens up for the reader an alternative reading of the textual tradition and holds out an irenic hand to conservative forces. He offers his reader, but does not force upon him, an anti-traditional standpoint which leaves rival positions as a matter of the reader’s personal preference.

Lambin’s open support for Turn2be’s emendations of Aristotle was a further respect in which Vettori was likely to disapprove of Lambin’s

‘‘ Vettori, Aristotelis . . . libri decem, 1547, appendix, sig. **** iii’: ‘0 G’axohaoroc: &VTixElTal6&. This indeed was the wording I came upon in all manuscripts. Aspasius however reads &xparfi;. He is followed by Argyropylus; the old translation (unless this place is corrupt through scribal carelessness) appears to have had the following reading in its exemplar o G’hxolaaroj: &xohaaroS 66 hVTiXElTa1 ohppovt, &vrixsirai 6& T@ pEv ixxparci, 6 EyxparGj. Or rather, since its author noticed either reading in different manuscripts, he as usual expressed both.’

‘’ Lambin, Aristotelis . . . lz’bri decem, 1258, 385, lemma ‘Eorum igitur qui supri’: ‘Thus Aris- totle: TOv sfl h&X@&VToV TO p&v pahaxiaj & k h S pGhhov, 6 G’&xpari5. And this is the true and un- corrupt reading, although the Florentine editions have o G’axohaaToj. The old translation moreover is ckarly corrupt at this point, for its author in addition to other errors appears to have read xaxia; ~iSo5. But Argyropylus and Aspasius sanction that reading which we have adopted. But what need is there of the authority of Ar\gyropylus and Aspasius? Reason alone and simple truth can defend and prove themselves.’

6 6 Vettori, Aristotelis . . . libri decem, appendix, sig. **** ii”. 6 7 Lambin, Aristotelis . . . lzbri decem, 1558, 352, lemma ‘Tanquam mensura quaedam

6 8 Vettori, Arktotelis . . . libri decem, appendix, sig. **** iii‘. ‘’ Lambin, Anjtotelis . . . libri decem, 1558, 384, lemma ‘Deinde ab actione aberrant’.

communis’.


project. Moreover, Lambin’s adoption of Turnsbe’s readings is habitually more systematic and more adventurous than T u r d b e himself in either of his two printings of Vettori’s editions. On the eight principal occasions on which Lambin has cause to cite Turntbe’s emendations against the received text,70 Lambin is also, if implicitly, disagreeing with Vettori. Often this is covered by registering disagreement with an edition rather than a scholar, but the upshot is plain enough, as on E . N . iii.xi.8, 0b6’ htOup~i , Yj p ~ ~ p i c o s obSC piihhov 6 6ci 066’ OTE pij 6 ~ i ob6’ i j h q rov zoto6tov o&SEV~. Here Lambin comments: ‘delenda est autem vox O&EV~, quae sequitur in omnibus fert codicibus etiam Florentinis, praeterquiim in Parisiensibus. sic enim se reperisse scriptum in quodam codice manu scripto testatur Adrianus Turnebus 0b8E p6hh0v ?j 6 6 ob6’ OTE pij 6&i, ob6’ ohws ~ d v T O ~ O ~ T O V O ~ ~ E V ~ S . 7 1 Elsewhere he is more plain-spoken: ‘secutus sum librum Par[is]ien. Adriani Turnebi opera & diligentia emendatum, in quo ita scriptum est oios pfl 6th TO ~ E R E ~ O ~ U ~ .

quam scripturam confirmat vetus interpres. nam Flor. Vene. & alij men- dosP habunt oios 6tc TO pq &c’.’‘

Vettori did not immediately reply to the approaches and preferences delineated in Lambin’s translation of the Ethics. When he did take up a cudgel, he did so on two separate occasions and by two distinct means. Twelve years after Lambin’s death, in 1584, Vettori produced a new edition of the Ethics in which he mentions Lambin ten times altogether, all but once slightingly. The brunt of his objections, so it seems, is that Lam- bin has been too ready to alter the lectio communis. Vettori’s criticisms by no means arise from the Aristotle dispute alone (!,ambin’s 1565-6 edition of Cicero was a greater source of crucial disagreement), but they are none the less symptomatic of Vettori’s overall retrospective assessment of the French humanist’s character as a scholar and philologist. The following is characteristic:

fuit ille [Lambinus] quidem magni ingenij vir, & valde disertus, sed nimis liber in varianda, contaminandaque scriptura antiquorum auc- torum, quam consuetudinem ipsius probari non posse puto, recipique, nisi ab illis qui eandem licentiam sibi concedi volunt, cum damno magno, pernitie‘que veterum, & Graecorum, & Latinorum scriptorum. 73

’O Lambin, Aristotelis . . . l ibridecem, 314, 318, 328, 338, 380, 386, 388. 400. ” Lambin, Arzstotelis . . . lzbri decem, 328, lemma ‘Neque magis quam debet’: ‘Delete the word

ou6~vi which follows in almost all editions, even the Florentine. The exception is the Paris edition. For Adrian TurnL.be vouches for the fact that he found this version in one manuscript: 0b6E puhhov ij 64, ob6’ %a p+ 6 E i , o&’Ohwy, riiv soioOswv 0 6 6 ~ v o j . ’

7 2 Lambin, Aristotelis . , , lzbri decem, 386, ad E. N. vii.viii.4, lemma ‘Vt non quid ita sibi? ‘I have followed the Paris edition carefully corrected by Adrien TurnPbe, in which the text runs: oioy, p?j 6th TO mmloOat. The_old translator confirms this version. The Florentine, Venetian and other editions erroneousiy have oios 6 ~ a TO p+ etc.’

’) Pier Vettori, Commentarzzin X. libros Aristotelis de morzbw (Florence, 1584), 293: ‘He [Lam- bin] was a man of great intelligence, and very eloquent, but too free in varying and defiling the wording of classical authors, a habit of his which I do not think can be approved and accepted, except by

286 John O’Brien

The simple fact that Lambin is willing not simply to countenance, but indeed to practise emendation is sufficient ground to provoke Vettori to criticism. This concerted attack on Lambin had already been preceded by a no less scathing evaluation of the Frenchman during the latter’s own lifetime. In Vettori’s augmented Vuriue Zectiones of 1568, Lambin gains one particularly lengthy entry, when Vettori comments on E. N. vi.vii.3 (lectio recepta: &oz’ Liq ?tv 4 oocpicl vovs xcli kmoziipq xcli &amp x~cpahfiv & X O U O ~ , b ~ ~ o ~ l j p q TOV TL~COT~TC O V ) . ’ ~ Lambin had corrected x~cpahfiv to x~cpahfi. Here Vettori’s arguments against emendation are based on two considerations: consensus of manuscript evidence and the demands of sense. Close and detailed exegesis of the passage then follows, with Vettori adducing as additional proof a parallel expression in Posterior Analytics. (He misses, however, the fact that the phrase ‘knowledge having as it were a head’ is copied from Plato Gorgius, 505D.) Vet- tori supplies a painstaking analysis of Aristotle’s thought, not least the nature of the image on which the disputed reading turns. Vettori is clear that wisdom is the product of intelligence and knowledge combined. Knowledge is thought of as having a head, Vettori argues, since principles of knowledge are only conceivable and perceptible through intelligence, through the mind. The function of the image in the passage is therefore a conventional one: it creates immediacy (‘ante oculos rem constituit’, in Vettori’s phrase). Changing x~cpcthfiv to xscpahfi, Vettori concludes, simply distorts the sense: and the subsequent editorial tradition, we might notice, has been on Vettori’s side.

IV

Lambin’s Aristotle thus stands at the crossroads of a number of distinct traditions and interests. Its primary importance lies in the development of translation, in that the latter can now be firmly associated with the exercise of philology. Bolder than Vettori and more consistent than Turnsbe, Lambin uses translation, at this stage in his career, to reflect primary types of philological reading - emendutio ope ingenii and emendutio ope codicum. Translation and commentary stand at this point in close prox- imity to full-blown edition and commentary. Commentary emerges from this exercise with enhanced status and power. It has already represented for Ptrion a powerful instrument for self-justification and more especially for the demonstration that his translation is imitative in its reliance on direct or reworked quotation from Cicero. Ptrion works to revitalize the commentary’s role by intensifying its focus on literature in such a way as to invite the reader to make the connections from his translation back to

those who want the same liberty to be granted to themselves, to the great detriment and jeopardy of classical Greek and Latin writers.’ Vettori mentions Lambin on pages 14, 120, 121, 125, 195, 198. 293, 403, 407, 600.

’4 Pier Vettori, Vuriurum lectzonzlm X I I l nom’ l267i (Florence, 1568), 239-40.


the myriad Ciceronian subtexts which his commentary then holds up for inspection and appreciation. This is the view of the commentary which Lambin sets himself to correct and surpass. PCrion’s imitative disquisi- tions are by no means eliminated, but none the less first subjected to scrutiny for simple grammatical accuracy before being integrated by Lambin into an ambitious enterprise which synthesizes recension, emendation and exegesis. To read Lambin after reading Pe‘rion is not simply to read a humanist with more and better Greek. It is also to see that Lam- bin’s rejection of Pe‘rion’s objectives itself betrays a desire for rivalry, a wish to supplant his successful contemporary’s version by his own as well as to prove superior in philological technique.

It is possible to see the projects of Pe‘rion and Lambin as running athwart each other through being only ostensibly sighted on the same objective. Pe‘rion’s technique would be immediately recognizable to a Zittirateur. Pe‘rion begins with the perspective of an imitator, Lambin with that of a philologist, systematically recording the testimonia, weighing the competing evidence. Pe‘rion and Lambin clash over the matching of original and interpretation. Whatever the meaning of any Aristotelian term, a term of equivalent meaning will be extant in Cicero: this is the nub of PCrion’s argument which Lambin controverts by countering either that Pe‘rion has misunderstood his Greek author or that no such term is in fact extant in Cicero. Lambin’s Pe‘rion is either an in- competent translator or a blinkered imitator, often both. For Lambin as for Vettori, author and style are intimately linked, fluctuation in the latter immediately entailing distortion in the former. This is the common ground of their objections (not otherwise similar) to PCrion. Vettori’s view of PCrion is straightforward: as reported by Giannotti, it is that Pe‘rion distorts the sententiu of his author. Lambin goes further. He implies that in Perion’s hands, translation becomes a false, enslaved form of imitation. It misapprehends its object - Aristotle’s Greek - inasmuch as it characterizes Aristotle by a uniform style evocative of a quite different author. At first sight, there is nothing to prevent a translator adopting this view of the res and verba relationship, for translation may well appear to be pre-eminently an area in which the res are given and rely only on their illustration through elocutio. This automatically emphasizes colours and textures. Yet these in turn equally imply variety (and variegatedness); the condition of existence of such translations appears to be contaminatio rather than the steady concentration on a single author acting as paradigm. In some way that is not always easy of conceptualiza- tion, but is none the less readily felt, it is rather as if, for contemporaries such as Lambin, Pe‘rion’s Aristotle read like some unknown or sup- posititious work by Cicero rather than a pre-eminent work by a Greek philosopher.The res of the Ethics fail, on this view, to emerge with sufficient clarity in Pe‘rion’s translation because the reader’s eye is constantly drawn, by intrusive allusion, to the verba of which the text is made.

288 John O’Brien

Insistent res without well-tended verba produce a stilted translation; over-tended verba, and an accompanying desire to fit one’s chosen text to a narrow linguistic range, produce the opposite effect - an elision of res and a distortion of sententia, with which Vettori, after Lambin, reproaches Perion.

What had begun, in Lambin, as a decision to rectify an erroneous translation now raises further questions about the role of philology in the translator’s work. Vettori’s subsequent comments on Lambin’s own endeavours open up this new area of reflection about translation. Like Lambin, Vettori believes that Aristotle’s text can be restored to its authentic sense, a sense which it possesses innately. However; Vettori and Lambin differ in the means to achieve that end. Vettori is undoubtedly more inclined to remain close to the manuscript tradition, as Antonietta Porro underlines: ‘I1 Vettori t. sicuramente convinto che non si debba dubitare infondatamente delle iezioni dei ~0dici . I ’~ But she adds immediately, ‘quest0 atteggiamento non coincide comunque con il pi6 rigido con~ervator i~mo”~ and she illustrates how Aristotle’s Poetics benefit from Vettori’s conjectures where such conjectures require mini- mum palaeographical adjustment to the manuscript tradition. In his edition of the Nicomachean Ethics, Vettori thus relies, quite properly, on textual witnesses such as the vetus interpres in order to reach the best reading offered by the tradition. By contrast, in admitting emendations into the text, even the text of a translation, Lambin is, in Vettori’s view, supplanting the weight of historical evidence by his own judgement, by his own idea of what is suitable for Aristotle. Through the exercise of emendation, Lambin is shortcircuiting historical evidence as represented by the combined forces of the manuscript tradition and distinguished in- terpreters such as the vetus interpres and Argyropylus. The cautiousness of Vettori’s position can be gauged from Kenney’s apposite observation that Lambin is in point of fact no wild, free-ranging emendator. His nor- mal practice is to base himself upon some reading available in the existing editorial or manuscript edition. ’’ But Vettori’s target is Lambin’s audaciousness (in his view) as an exponent of emendation by conjecture; as his comments in 1584 make clear, Vettori had not changed his opinion even a number of years after Lambin’s death.

One final factor needs to be mentioned. This is the role enjoyed by exegesis of Graeco-Latin source material in Lambin’s work. For it is noticeable that Vettori’s 1547 Aristotle contains little exegetical material and is content to record, and record baldly, the agreement of the lectzo recepta with the codices he has consulted and with a choice of translators. For Vettori, the correct medium for such comparative work is the book of Variae lectiones. Consequently, it is no surprise to find programmatic ’’ 7 6

.’ Kenney, The Classical Text, 6 5 .

Porro, ‘Pier Vettori editore’, 343. Porro, ‘Pier Vettori editore‘, 444.


statements about precisely this subject in the preface to his 1554 Vuriue Zectiones.’* Statements of this kind are nevertheless almost endemic to Vuriue Zectiones as a genre and could be paralleled elsewhere. Pe‘rion represents another tendency. He aims to teach an art of translation through his own practice and mobilizes the resources of the commentary as an instrument of elucidation and justification. Lambin draws on both these traditions. He combines knowledge of translators, translations and manuscripts (within some limitations), with analysis and exegesis of parallel textual instances (indeed, the very first commentary entry, a three-page excursus on the term ~~poaipsot~ , is a virtuoso demonstration of Lambin’s prowess as an e~egete) . ’~ In this respect, the 1558 Aristotle is directly preparatory of the 1561 Horace and the 1563 Lucretius, where Lambin focuses his principal attention on the investigation and elucidation of the Greek sources behind his chosen Latin poets.” And Lambin’s sustained cultivation of translation throughout the 1560s (his most fertile period) acts sometimes as a preparation for his activities as an editor and teacher, sometimes as a reflection of them. In 1564 ,ome versions of Demosthenes’s De corona and Aeschines’s In Ctesiphontem (also works which P6rion had translated and so no doubt a further challenge to Pe‘rion on Lambin’s part). The second edition of the Nicomucheun Ethics dates from 1565. Two years later, Lambin produces translations of Aristotle’s Politics and Alcinous (Albinus Platonicus). The presence of these translations should not be ignored. Yet their character and force remain to be evaluated.

University of Liverpool

Pier Vettori, Vanarum lectionum libn’ X X V , 2nd edn (Lyon, 1554), e.g. sig a iiij”: ‘studui autem ea potissimhn 8 reconditis Graecorum literis tanquim 8 fonte omnium scientiarum, haurire, quae sententiam aliquam Latini scriptoris ornarent’. ’’ Lambin, Aristotelzj . . . libn’decem, 1558, 278-80.

This point is forcefully and ably put by Grafton,Joseph Scaliger, 80-2.

Translation, philology and polemic in Denys Lambin's Nicomachean Ethics of 1558

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