Giulio Castellani and the Academica

Abstract

Though there is little doubt that Renaissance interest in ancient scepticism began in Italy, it is equally obvious that the modern sceptical movement did not flourish there to the extent that it did in northern Europe. All three of the major sources of ancient sceptical thought gained a foothold in Italy in the fifteenth century, but little developed from this and it remained for France and the Low Countries to become the centers from the time of Sanches and Montaigne onward. Before the advent of printing the Academica was more read and more widely distributed in Italy than elsewhere. The first translation of Diogenes Laertius was made in Italy around 1430 and this remained the standard one for well over a century. Essentially all interest in Sextus Empiricus manifested before the translations were printed in the 1560s is traceable to Italy.l With the exception of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, however, little attention was paid in Italy to the philosophical ideas of ancient scepticism during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.2 It is almost as though the sceptical seeds fell upon bad ground in Italy and took root only when sowed upon the more receptive soil of northern Europe.