Studies in the Text of the Nicomachean Ethics

Abstract

Messer Giannozzo Manetti—if we may give credit to his enthusiastic biographer—was accustomed to say that there were three books which he had got by heart from long handling—Saint Paul's Epistles, Augustine's De civitate Dei, and (among the heathen) Aristotle's Ethics. There may be some exaggeration here; but there is no doubt that Manetti, from the beginning to the end of his long literary career, was deeply interested in the moral writings of Aristotle. Vespasiano tells a story of him in the early period of his studies. He used to give a Latin Ethics to somebody, and taking the original himself, would reel it off so fast in Latin that his hearer was unable to follow him.