Ficino's Marginal Notes on Olympiodorus in Riccardi Greek MS 37

Abstract

Marsilio Ficino is one of those scholars of whose habits and methods we can now form a fairly complete picture, thanks to the increasing accessibility of library materials. Besides autograph copies of his own work, we possess a great many books he used, and in most cases annotated extensively. The number of Greek manuscripts known to have been handled by him rose from seven in 1937 (Kristeller's Supplementum Ficinianum) to sixteen in 1962, when M. Sicherl reported on the state of the question in Scriptorium. Prof. Sicherl is continuing his research and preparing a comprehensive study of the subject; the present article, a by-product of my occupation with the text of Olympiodorus and Damascius, is concerned only with Ficino's marginalia to the commentaries on Plato's Phaedo and Philebus in Riccardianus gr. 37. For a correct understanding of the character of these texts and the relationship between them, a short outline of their history will be useful.