‘Cose di Platone fatte Toscane’: Language and Ideology in Two Vernacular Translations of Plato Printed by Francesco Priscianese

Abstract

In 1544 two vernacular versions of Plato's works appeared in Rome from the press of the Florentine humanist Francesco Priscianese: the first was a translation of Plato's Symposium made by Ercole Barbarasa da Terni; the second, a version of Plato's Phaedrus by the Sienese man of letters Felice Figliucci. Each Platonic dialogue was accompanied by Marsilio Ficino's interpretations. Modern scholars have so far focused on Priscianese's activity as a grammarian and promoter of the vernacular, and on the role he played in the debate on language.1 However, the reasons that led him to print these two important Platonic texts have attracted little attention. Similarly, although Michel Plaisance, Brian Richardson, and others have magisterially demonstrated the importance of print in the history of vernacular culture, many aspects of this history, especially outside Florence, still remain to be studied. In particular, there is a need to reassess the way in which the political exiles in Rome, many of whom were prominent artists and scholars, produced and transmitted their works during the first years of the Medici principato, at a time when Duke Cosimo I was launching a vast enterprise of vernacularization that would serve the political ideology of his regime. The purpose of this article is to fill this gap by examining the circumstances surrounding the publication of Plato's works by one such exile: Francesco Priscianese. It will show that Priscianese's press.