The First Vernacular Caesar: Pier Candido Decembrio’s Translation for Inigo d’Avalos with Editions and Translations of Both Prologues

Abstract

Among the first humanist translations of classical Latin texts is Pier Candido Decembrio’s vernacular version of Julius Caesar’s Commentaries. While his dedication of Caesar’s Gallic Wars (1438) to Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, has long been in print, the two dedications with which he prefaced the remaining books of the Caesarean corpus, both addressed to the Aragonese nobleman Inigo d’Avalos, have remained almost unknown and accessible only in manuscript. This article presents editions and translations of these prologues, dates them (to 1438-1442, and post-1452, respectively), and identifies the Latin manuscript family from which they derive. It then reconstructs the cultural and political contexts of Decembrio’s Caesar translations, showing how these literary gifts made him a cultural ambassador for Visconti and himself. Finally, it examines Decembrio’s approach to Caesar, whom he valued not as political or military exemplar, but as writer of history. The last preface, which contains a res gest...