'We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece', the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote. It is in Greek that the questions which shaped the destiny of Western culture were asked, and so were the first attempts at an answer, and the search for a method of investigation. This book tries to rediscover the propulsive force that for over two millennia spread, and still lives in our system of thought. By systematically (...) quoting the very words of the leading actors and by tracing their sources, it leads the reader along a path where they will be able to observe the establishment of philosophical ideas and language, in an updated and balanced picture of archaic lore, of the thought of the classical and hellenistic ages, and of the philosophy of late antiquity. The book looks closely at the progress of scientific thought and at its increasing autonomy, while following the evolution of the fruitful yet problematic relationship between the Greek world and the Near East. (shrink)

The Aldine edition of Galen, awaited for more than 25 years, was perhaps the most risky enterprise in the whole history of the publishing house, and it almost brought Aldus' heirs to bankruptcy. Although the editors were among the most renowned specialists of the time, the edition was harshly criticized by one former friend and collaborator of Aldus, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. Why? Was the edition so bad, were the manuscripts on which the edition was based responsible for its quality? (...) Or were there other reasons for Erasmus' complaint? This paper tries to give some hints in order to answer such questions, arguing that the role of Erasmus in the assessment of the value of the edition should take us into Aldus' house in the period of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, and into the political and religious debate of the time. (shrink)

The article proposes a correction of a passage of Galen’s De indolentia, alternative to the one accepted so far. The correction ἐν ἓξ βιβλίοις is proposed, as alternative to the text hitherto accepted, itself due to a conjectural intervention, ἐν ἑξακισχιλίοις στίχοις : the manuscript Vlatadon 14 bears an impossible ἐν ἑξακισχιλίοις βιβλίοις. At issue is the length of the epitome made by Galen of the lexicographical works of Didymus on the terminology of ancient comedy. The paper argues that the (...) error of the manuscript could be due to the habit of writing numerals as a single letter accompanied by an apex, and that, when referring to his own works, Galen normally uses the book as his unit of measurement. Finally, it is hypothesized that a length of six thousand stichoi might have been too short for an epitome of the work of Didymus. (shrink)