The Sibyl in Ficino's Oaktree

Abstract

In recent bibliographical note, Professor Frederick Purnell apparently solved translation crime first detected by Francesco Muti in 1588.' Briefly, Purnell argued that Marsilio Ficino had not intended to translate the reference to divination dia druos in the twelfth treatise of the Hermetic Pimander (XII. 19)2 as per sibyllam, as in the first, the 1471 edition printed in Treviso and in all subsequent editions bar two. Rather, he had intended to translate it as per silvam, as in the second edition printed in Ferrara in 1472, and in at least two authoritative manuscripts, as well as in Benci's vernacular rendering which was prepared in 1463 but not published until 1549.3 The variation is critical since per sibyllam (especially as it was perpetuated in the popular French rendering by Gabriel du Preau) provided proof that Hermes, the pristine Egyptian theologian, knew about Sibyls; proof which critics like Genebrard could turn to their own advantage to question the authenticity of the Hermetica, until countered by Muti's discovery of Ficino's mistranslation4; mistranslation from which Purnell has now exonerated Ficino. But the fundamental question as to the origin of the error remains, as Purnell freely admits: How did Ficino's phrase referring to divination with trees come to be taken as reference to Sibylline prophecy? (p. 309). His two suggested answers-that it resulted from a simple slip on the part of scribe or typesetter, or from a conscious emendation on the part of learned reader with no access to the Greek original (pp. 309-310)-seem far less likely than third possibility I wish to explore here: namely, that Ficino himself either introduced or combined the alternatives per silvam and per sibyllam. This would help to explain the otherwise extraordinary fact that per sibyllam was neither emended to per silvam in the four subsequent editions published in Ficino's own lifetime (Venice 1481, 1491 and 1493, and Paris 1494) nor in seventeen posthumous editions, even though Ficino constantly revised and corrected his other translations, as not only the corrigenda attached to his 1484 Platonis Opera Omnia testify but also the extended revisions to the same edition that he included at the end of all the summae in his 1496 Commentaria in Platonem.