Latin Scholars Research Articles

Ptolemy’s Science of the Stars in the Middle Ages edited by David Juste, Benno van Dalen, Dag Nikolaus Hasse, and Charles Burnett

This exciting collection of articles was a result of a 2015 conference by the same name, “Ptolemy’s Science of the Stars in the Middle Ages”, sponsored by the Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus (PAL). Like the entire PAL project, this work highlights Arabic and Latin scholars’ criticisms of, inquiries into, and refutations of, the Ptolemaic corpus and astrological conceptions of the universe. Consisting of 15 articles organized into three sections—“The Greek and Near Eastern Traditions”, “The Arabic Tradition”, and “The Latin Tradition”—this collection is comprehensive. It features novel, important research on Ptolemy’s works and the influence of Ptolemaic thought by top scholars in the field. The volume will be of particular value to specialists but is accessible to others interested in the history of astronomy and mathematics.

«DIALOGUE» PETER ALFONCI IN THE LIGHT OF THE THEORY OF CAPITALS BY PIERA BOURDIER

During the last 20 years, with the appearance of the “new intellectual history”, the interest in the study of medieval polemical works has increased. However, very few researches, particularly in Russian historiography, have been dedicated to studying of Petrus Alfonsi’s “Dialogue”. The aim of this study was therefore the analysis of the different forms of capital of Petrus Alfonsi in the Dialogue according to the context of its creation. Firstly, through the analysis of the few facts of Petrus’ biography and the prologue of his work, the main social relations of the author of the “Dialogue” are revealed, and also it is analyzed how the accumulated social capital (namely author’s social connections) influenced his activity both as a polemist and as a political figure at the turn of the XI-XII centuries. Secondly, through the analysis of polemist’s “library” (the books and works of Arab and Latin scholars he was familiar with) and his works, author examines the intellectual capital of Petrus Alfonsi. The study revealed that Petrus’ Alfonsi fate can serve as a good example of the operation of social and intellectual capitals at the beginning of the XII century. The author who decided to abandon his past faith, managed to reach certain heights at court and in the main business of his life — the dispute with his former co-religionists. Thus, he transformed these types of capital into symbolic capital, the most important for a medieval author.

A Case of re-translatio studiorum: the Jewish Reception of Giles of Rome from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance

From the beginning of the XIV century, many leading works by Latin scholars were translated into Hebrew only a few years after being written. This practice reveals the extraordinary process of philosophical re-acculturation that has its roots in precise ideological and social reasons: implementing contemporary Latin culture rapidly and systematically meant, for late Medieval Hebrew translators, renewing Hebrew wisdom in the light of their Christian neighbours’ thought. This was certainly the purpose of one of the protagonists of Hebrew Scholasticism, Yehudah ben Moses Romano: openly hostile to the philosophical inertia of his Jewish contemporaries, who were still convinced of being the sole holders of the truth bestowed on them from on high, he translated for his co-religionists new knowledge from his Christian colleagues. Particularly intense and sustained were the translations he made of Giles of Rome, which display transversal interests in all aspects of his work (from logic and rhetoric to physics, ethics, psychology and metaphysics). The history of the reception and success of Giles of Rome’s thought on the Jewish world goes far beyond Yehudah Romano’s intellectual project: the reference here is to Yoseph Taitazak (1480-1545 circa), who from his home in Salonica wrote the Porat Yosef, a bizarre Commentary on Ecclesiastes, in which Koholet’s words are used as an occasion for Taitazak to reinterpret the Aristotelian system through a Thomist and Aegidian lens. The inclusion of the Scholastic doctrine in Taitazak’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, however, responds to a need symmetrically specular to the work of Yehudah Romano: not to proceed with a project of updating Hebrew culture, but to show instead how the Torah is the repository of all knowledge, indeed that the Torah is the knowledge.

The Epigrams of Crinagoras of Mytilene: Introduction, Text, Commentary ed. by Maria Ypsilanti

Reviewed by: The Epigrams of Crinagoras of Mytilene: Introduction, Text, Commentary ed. by Maria Ypsilanti Kathryn Gutzwiller Maria Ypsilanti (ed.). The Epigrams of Crinagoras of Mytilene: Introduction, Text, Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xi, 578. $130.00. ISBN 978-0-19-956582-5. More than a half century ago the field of Greek literary epigram was made accessible to a wider range of scholars and readers by two editions with basic commentaries: A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams (Cambridge 1965) and The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip and Some Contemporary Epigrams (Cambridge 1968). Scholarship made possible by these foundational collections has since advanced in two directions. One involves development of methods for reading epigrams as legitimate literary objects, particularly when treated in groups or in poetic contexts. The other involves publication of comprehensive commentaries on the epigrams of individual epigrammatists, which include textual issues and explanations of the finer points of poetry, as well as literary readings. The two approaches are complementary, and Ypsilanti's commentary on Crinagoras is an excellent example of blending traditional editorial subjects with literary interpretation. Crinagoras is a figure of note who should be better known to both Greek and Latin scholars. Inscriptions from Mytilene indicate that he belonged to a prominent family of Lesbos and that he made at least three trips to Rome on [End Page 233] official business between c. 48 and 25 bce. His literary output makes it likely he spent a significant amount of time in Italy, where he clearly received literary patronage from high-status Romans, including members of the imperial family. A fair number of his epigrams reflect these relationships, such as poems that accompany gifts (as later in Martial)—a silver pen, a toothpick, a bronze oil flask, and a garland of roses (3–6). Of particular interest are epigrams that concern a gift of Greek poetry: a box holding five books of Anacreon's poetry presented to Antonia (36 bce–37 ce) on a special occasion (7), and a copy of Callimachus' Hecale given to Marcellus, to encourage him to follow the example of the young Theseus (11), the latter epigram perhaps being Crinagoras' best known. The fifty-one epigrams that remain to us were preserved in Philip's Garland, intermingled with others of the Julio-Claudian era in a rough alphabetical order. Ypsilanti argues that Crinagoras' "preference for personal experiences and current events over the traditional topoi of the genre" led to a "'renovated' type of court-epigram" that breathed "new life" into the epigrammatic tradition (13). Although she does not say so, it is highly likely that Philip selected from a collection of epigrams made by Crinagoras himself, mirroring his own gifts of Anacreon and Callimachus. In her Introduction Ypsilanti presents the usual series of topics: life and work, language and style, meter, and manuscript tradition. Her presentation of the two main manuscripts from the Byzantine era is rather barebones, reasonably enough, however, since descriptions of these are available in other editions. She focuses rather on the lesser-known apographa of the Palatine Codex, manuscript copies of epigrams that were rediscovered at the beginning of the seventeenth century by Saumaise but first fully published only in Brunck's edition of 1772. The value of these apographa lies mainly in their marginal emendations, which have been but rarely acknowledged in modern editions. Ypsilanti's principal contribution to the topic is the attention she calls to Parisinus Coislinanus 352, which has escaped the notice of most other editors. She argues at length that this apographon, written c. 1633 and ascribed to Philaras, bridges the two branches of apographa, the French and the Dutch, and possibly derives directly from the famous lost copy made by Saumaise. Oddly, however, in her apparatus criticus she cites, in the traditional manner, the select apographa that were the basis for the first printed editions, when in my view it is better practice to cite the earliest apographon that contains a given reading. Quibbles with such a full and well-presented commentary are just that, and therefore I limit my examples. Three epigrams that are of doubtful authorship because of differing attributions...

Enlazando dos lenguas (separando dos culturas): la continuidad del texto sobre los crepúsculos del cadí Ibn Mu‘ād al-Ŷayyānī

El Liber de crepusculis de Gerardo de Cremona (1114-1187) es la versión latina de un texto perdido sobre el cálculo de la altura de la atmósfera escrito por el cadí Ibn Mu‘ād al-Ŷayyānī, cuestión relacionada con temas de tawqīt (cálculo de las horas). Este artículo presenta la tradición textual árabe de este problema de óptica y las dos ramas tex- tuales principales que han transmitido el texto árabe perdido de Ibn Mu‘ād: 1) Rama latina: el De crepusculis de Gerardo de Cremona y 2) Rama hebrea: la traducción de Samuel ben Judah de Marsella. Se concluye que la alteración del texto realizada por Gerardo de Cre- mona en el proceso de traducción tuvo razones sociolingüísticas y se plantea la pertinencia metodológica de utilizar el concepto de necessitas et utilitas con el fin de alcanzar una ma- yor comprensión del proceso de traducción, no solo como cuestión lingüística que surge debido a la necesidad de los latinos de buscar el saber y el conocimiento en la baja Edad Media, sino como un proceso mixto, cultural y lingüístico, que enlazó dos lenguas: el árabe y el latín, pero que separó dos culturas.

The Palazzo Foscarini in Venice and the Celebration Honoring the Dukes of Modena (1749) in a Getty Research Institute Manuscript

The Palazzo Foscarini in Venice and the Celebration Honoring the Dukes of Modena (1749) in a Getty Research Institute Manuscript

Anna Jackson’s I, Clodia: Catullus, women’s voices, and feminist implications

Anna Jackson’s I, Clodia substantially develops Catullus’s literary reception. The collection complicates understandings of both Catullus’s poetic paramour Lesbia and the historical Roman woman Clodia Metelli. Jackson makes Clodia a poet; she thus becomes not just a receiver of the classical tradition but a participant in it. Clodia responds to Catullus’s poems with her own commentary on poetry, her own set of poetic devices, and a complex inter- and intratextuality. Moreover, Jackson makes Clodia a sensitive and literate reader of Catullus. While her Clodia takes a biographical approach to his poems, reading them as responses to their romance, she is also as attuned to his inter- and intratextual poetics as any modern Latin scholar. The poetic sequence has socio-cultural as well as aesthetic significance; by reimagining the much-maligned historical woman Clodia as an intelligent reader and a talented poet, I, Clodia serves as a feminist text. I, Clodia can be seen as part of the recent tradition of women writers reclaiming and rewriting women from the ancient world, complicating the notion that women writers now operate in a ‘post-feminist’ landscape.

Eratosthenes’ Erigone fr. 4 Rosokoki (= 22 Powell)

AbstractThe proposal I make for the restoration of fr. 22 Powell of theErigoneby Eratosthenes faithfully rewrites the manuscript tradition and does not conflict with the metre, as the line Ἰκαριοῖ, etc. (see fr. 4 R.) is balanced, thanks to the trihemimeral caesura and the bucolic diaeresis. To further my argument, I cite a series of hexameters from both earlier epic as well as that of the Hellenistic era, where the secondary caesurae (trihemimeral + hephthemimeral or bucolic) are either found alone or are reinforced, as the main caesura is absent or cannot be applied given the enclitic, preposition, and (sometimes) elision. Starting from the surviving line, I argue that in theErigonemention was certainly made of the origins of tragedy, which are located in Attica. Eratosthenes drew from a pre-existing theory and, through his authority, made it the prevailing one. This can be seen from a plethora of similar evidence, in both later Greek and Latin authors and scholars.

Stephen of Pisa’s theory of the oscillating deferents of the inner planets (1h. 12th C.)

Earlier than the Arabic-Latin transfer of Ptolemaic astronomy via the Iberian peninsula, a serious occupation with Arabic astronomy by Latin scholars took place in crusader Antioch in the first half of the twelfth century. One of the translators of Arabic science in the East was Stephen of Pisa, who produced a commented Latin version, entitled Liber Mamonis, of Ibn al-Haytham’s cosmography, On the Configuration of the World. Stephen’s considerations about the physical universe in relation to the doctrines of Ptolemaic astronomy have hitherto received but little attention. The present paper discusses Stephen of Pisa’s treatment of the planetary spheres in regard to Ptolemy’s theory of oscillating deferents. Emphasis is given to geometric arguments in Stephen’s criticism of Ibn al-Haytham’s spherical model of the inner planets and to Stephen’s own attempt at an improved theory based on additional spheres. The paper argues that astronomical studies in Antioch were of an advanced level, involving independent judgement as well as an influence of contemporary trends in Arabic astronomy.

Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome by Anthony Corbeill

Reviewed by: Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome by Anthony Corbeill Benjamin H. Dunning Anthony Corbeill Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015 Pp. 216. $45.00. In Sexing the World: Grammatical Gender and Biological Sex in Ancient Rome, classicist Anthony Corbeill delves into an aspect of gender and sexuality in antiquity that has received relatively little discussion, especially in early Christian studies: the role that grammatical gender—masculine, feminine, neuter—played for ancient people in organizing the world according to categories of sexual difference. Against the commonplace that “[t]he grammatical gender of inanimate objects . . . is a convenient linguistic convention, having no correspondence with any sort of imagined sexual characteristics of those objects in the real world” (1), Corbeill deftly demonstrates the degree to which rhetorically astute Latin speakers engaged the sexual connotations carried by grammatical gender, both shaping their speech in ways that exploited it and, in turn, producing speech always already shaped in accordance with its parameters. The larger story that the book recounts is a diachronic one, though told primarily from the perspective of Roman grammarians of the late Republic and the Empire such as Marcus Terentius Varro. Chapter One explores a problem that worried the Roman grammarians: instances of Latin nouns displaying variable or uncertain gender in texts of the received tradition. In most cases, ancient perceptions of the “nature” of a given noun (i.e., its natural sex) combined with indications from morphology and usage were enough to settle the matter. But in cases where ambiguity stubbornly persisted, the grammarians recurred to a fourth and more elusive category—auctoritas. Here, Corbeill argues, ancient Latin scholars imagined a time of primeval origins in which the gender of nouns was fluid and only came to be fixed via the wise authority of the ancestors (maiores). More contemporarily, that authority persisted in the work of the poets; thus [End Page 160] “certain poets, in particular Vergil . . . can use an uncommon gender of a noun without being accused of either ignorance or error” (38). Chapter Two explores this peculiar license of the poets in more detail, surveying a range of explanations, both ancient and modern, for the practice. Corbeill’s own proposal reinforces the previous chapter’s argument, suggesting that the poets themselves were “hoping to recall this era when genders of nouns had an inherent instability” (63)—and thereby to demonstrate a certain mastery in continuity with the more ancient ancestral authority. Chapter Three tests this hypothesis against a series of case studies. These are poetic passages (drawn from Plautus, Virgil, Catullus, and others) in which nouns are gendered in seemingly fluid or anomalous ways, evidence of “poetic exploitation” (101), so Corbeill argues, to specific semantic and other literary ends. By contrast, the remainder of the book posits a decided movement away from this earlier fluidity, charting instead a subsequent “calcification of gender boundaries” and with it “the development of a literally heterosexual worldview” (71). Chapter Four proposes an analogy to these changing attitudes towards grammatical gender—but one that “evolved in tandem” (133)—whereby archaic Roman deities of fluid or androgynous sexual status gave way (perhaps historically, but at least in the imagination of later ancient scholars) to strictly dichotomous sexed divinities. Chapter Five traces a similar narrative with respect to the figure of the hermaphrodite, this time one in which the fate of human sexual irregularity is to lose the prodigious status that it carried in the republic, becoming in the empire simply a legal problem to be managed and situated, one way or another, with respect to the increasingly rigid binary of male and female. Scholars of gender and sexuality in early Christianity will benefit from the uniquely positioned set of questions that Corbeill poses with respect to grammatical gender and its relationship to sexual difference across a range of registers (biological, social, literary, political), none of which, he compellingly shows, can be neatly separated. At the same time, things may not have been quite as straightforward throughout every corner of the ancient world as the book’s diachronic presentation could lead one to believe. Indeed, the very complexity of...

Agents of Latin

Abstract Latin has a history of being used in English translations of erotic literary works, but the process of producing and incorporating the Latin into the English target texts has so far remained largely unexplored. Based on the publisher’s archival materials, this paper uncovers the roles of and relationships between the English translator, Latin translator, publisher, printer and copyeditor for the use of Latin in Clement Egerton’s 1939 English translation The Golden Lotus of the classic Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei. I argue that pre-publication censorship was influenced by sophisticated hierarchical and horizontal networks of agents. The Latin passages in The Golden Lotus, which have always been attributed to Egerton, are revealed by the archives to be the work of an unknown Latin scholar. The use of Latin in The Golden Lotus is both reflective of the social context of the 1930s and representative of the complexity of the agential network in translation.

Griechischstudium in der Renaissance: Eine Text�bung aus dem italienisch-transalpinen Griechischhum

The paper deals with the elementary education of Italian and then transalpine humanists in Greek letters and first texts that were well known to them from their Latin versions like the Pater noster, Ave Maria or Magnificat. Thus, the analysis of the endpaper of codex 3138 of the Austri-an National Library opens an additional path of research on early Greek studies in Renaissance time: learning a basic Greek knowledge, i.e. the letters, their pronunciation and first simple texts. Mainly the pronunciation of the vowels, alone and combined, demanded an explanation that the circulating Greek grammars did not offer, at least of the Greek scholars, Latin scholars became aware of this difficulty and supplemented passages on the pronunciation. Furthermore, the sheet of codex 3138 certifies a fact that can be observed in some early prints of Greek grammars as well: the basic texts for a prompt access to the language were texts well taken from (Latin) liturgy which explains why the texts appear re-translated from Latin. In determining the cultural origin of the well-trained scribe of this sheet the analysis shows – besides more or less western orthographic mistakes – typical differences as in correct accentuation and punctuation. In addition, the article intends to make researchers of Greek Renaissance humanism more sensitive for such paratexts, often transmitted only on endpapers or in free margins.

Algazel Latinus: The Audience of the Summa theoricae philosophiae, 1150–1600

The Latin translation of al-Ghazali's Maqās˙id al-falāsifa was one of the works through which scholastic authors became familiar with the Arabic tradition of Aristotelian philosophy after its translation in the middle of the twelfth century. However, while historians have examined in great detail the impact of Avicenna and Averroes on the Latin intellectual tradition, the place of this translation of al-Ghazali, known commonly as the Summa theoricae philosophiae, remains unclear. This study enumerates and describes the Latin audience of al-Ghazali by building on Manuel Alonso's research with a new bibliography of the known readers of the Summa theoricae philosophiae. It also treats Latin scholars' perception of the figure of al-Ghazali, or Algazel in Latin, since their understanding in no way resembles the Ash'arite jurist, Sufi mystic, and circumspect philosopher known in the Muslim world. Latin scholars most commonly viewed him only as an uncritical follower of Avicenna and Aristotle, but they also described him in other ways during the Middle Ages. In addition to tracing the rise, decline, and recovery of Algazel and the Summa theoricae philosophiae in Latin Christendom over a period of four centuries, this study examines the development of Algazel's identity as he shifts from a useful Arab to a dangerous heretic in the minds of Latin scholars.

Algazel Latinus: The Audience of the Summa theoricae philosophiae, 1150–1600

The Latin translation of al-Ghazali’s Maqāṣid al-falāsifa was one of the works through which scholastic authors became familiar with the Arabic tradition of Aristotelian philosophy after its translation in the middle of the twelfth century. However, while historians have examined in great detail the impact of Avicenna and Averroes on the Latin intellectual tradition, the place of this translation of al-Ghazali, known commonly as the Summa theoricae philosophiae , remains unclear. This study enumerates and describes the Latin audience of al-Ghazali by building on Manuel Alonso’s research with a new bibliography of the known readers of the Summa theoricae philosophiae . It also treats Latin scholars’ perception of the figure of al-Ghazali, or Algazel in Latin, since their understanding in no way resembles the Ash’arite jurist, Sufi mystic, and circumspect philosopher known in the Muslim world. Latin scholars most commonly viewed him only as an uncritical follower of Avicenna and Aristotle, but they also described him in other ways during the Middle Ages. In addition to tracing the rise, decline, and recovery of Algazel and the Summa theoricae philosophiae in Latin Christendom over a period of four centuries, this study examines the development of Algazel’s identity as he shifts from a useful Arab to a dangerous heretic in the minds of Latin scholars.

Hebrew and Latin astrology in the twelfth century: the example of the location of pain

The formative period of Latin and Hebrew astrology occurred virtually simultaneously in both cultures. In the second quarter of the twelfth century the terminology of the subject was established and the textbooks which became authoritative were written. The responsibility for this lay almost entirely with two scholars: John of Seville for the Latins, and Abraham ibn Ezra for the Jews. It is unlikely to have been by coincidence that the same developments in astrology occurred in these two cultures. John of Seville and Abraham ibn Ezra were both brought up within the Islamic culture of Spain, and their astrology was Arabic astrology. Moreover, some scholars have thought that John’s origins were Jewish, while Ibn Ezra is known to have collaborated with Latin scholars (whose names are not recorded). It cannot be a coincidence that they forged the science of astrology for their respect co-religionists at almost the same time. Yet, very little research has been done on the possible relations between the two scholars. The purpose of this paper is to begin to explore this relationship, and to illustrate it in particular by their shared doctrine concern the location of pain.

When the First World Becomes the Third: The Paradox of Collapsed Borders in Two Novels by Gabriela Alemán

There are concrete reasons why students of literature or Latino/a studies may not have read either of Gabriela Aleman's two novels: neither has been translated into English and Aleman does not fit into pre-established categories of either US of Latina writers. A native of Ecuador, Aleman has published five books of fiction--two novels and three collections of short stories--all of which were written in Spanish. One could imagine Aleman's work appearing in a Spanish class on contemporary Latin literature, but certainly not in a class on Latino/a studies or literature. However, as a writer who is deeply immersed in Latin tradition of writing and actively engaged in realities of development and power, Aleman provides an excellent test for pushing against more traditional conceptualizations of both and Latino/a Literature. She not only explores fluidity of form and genre, but also offers an ambitious conceptualization of contradictory and paradoxical nature inherent to borders of all types. While recent conference and panel themes at Studies Association, Modern Language Association, and Latin Studies Association suggest that inter-American studies is a recent, pressing issue, scholars throughout Americas have for two to three decades considered national borders of United States as both outdated and even misguided when thinking about and examining conceptual paradigms such as Studies. US and Latin scholars such as Jose Saldivar, Donald E. Pease, Sophia A. McClennen, Daniel Mato, Nestor Garcia Canclini, and Jesus Martin-Barbero have long questioned emphasis Studies places on US national borders as legitimizing force behind what we understand as American studies. Under rubrics of inter-American, hemispheric, transamerican, transnational, and postnational studies--all terms that are intimately connected to what is now generally referred to as transnational turn--scholars have argued that Studies is a field of inquiry that extends far beyond national borders of United States. McClennen suggests that one of most encouraging aspects of inter-American studies is its potential for critically engaging previously marginalized works such as those by Brazilian and indigenous writers. McClennen favors an inter-Americanist approach because of its ability to put pressure on nationalist and cultural essentialist epistemes by focusing on ways that culture often transgresses borders, both geographic and identitarian (393). The benefit of inter-American studies is its inherent ability to go beyond stolid, overly determined, and outdated borders while simultaneously turning attention to marginalized voices. For other scholars, such as Debra A. Castillo, turn toward inter-American conceptualizations of literature and culture reflects certain key, hard-to-ignore demographic realities (for example, presence of at least forty million Latinos/as presently residing in US). Castillo suggests that to speak of US without addressing Latin America is to dangerously ignore this undeniable demographic shift. The recent patterns of migration that have brought millions of Latin Americans to United States have had profound implications in Latin America as well. Castillo argues this point by citing work of Garcia Canclini, who writes that the actual condition of latin America exceeds borders of its territory.... latin America is not complete in Latin America. Its image is reflected back by mirrors dispersed throughout archipelago of migrations (qtd. in Castillo 4). (1) Castillo's citation of Garcia Canclini draws attention to notion that a collective understanding of identity is a process that transcends geography. As an idea, Latin America is manifest in lives of Latin Americans in Latin America, but idea is incomplete without consideration of Latin lives developing beyond geographical confines of region. …

An Encyclopedia in the Margins: Catena Commentaries, Marginal Glosses, and the Decline of Platonic Studies

Few texts in the Western Canon are as badly in need of a commentary as Plato’s Timaeus. Geometry, arithmology, biology, astronomy, harmonics—these represent only a sampling of the number of disciplines Plato touches upon in the terse and densely packed monologue he puts into the mouth of Socrates’ interlocutor Timaeus. So in 1363, an anonymous scholar, writing perhaps in France, but more probably in Italy, set down to compose a commentary on Plato. No Latin scholar, he complained, since Calcidius himself, had bothered to compose an exposition of the Timaeus. Why? Because Plato’s enigmatic style dissuaded them.1 This is a very strange claim. No fewer than

Arianna Borrelli. Aspects of the Astrolabe: “Architectonica Ratio” in Tenth‐ and Eleventh‐Century Europe. (Sudhoffs Archiv, 57.). 270 pp., illus., apps., bibl., indexes. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008. €44 (cloth).

The primary transmission of mathematics and astronomy from the Islamic world to medieval Europe took place in the form of Latin translations from Arabic made in the twelfth century a.d. The book under review concerns the history of the astrolabe in Christian Europe before the twelfth century. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the astrolabe was well known in the Islamic part of the Iberian Peninsula, and two splendid examples from the 1020s survive today. Knowledge about the astrolabe had trickled down to Christian Europe, and the instrument is described in a corpus of brief and disorganized, mostly eleventh‐century Latin texts, which ultimately go back to Arabic sources. Some of the texts contain very interesting diagrams. One may wonder to what extent the astrolabe was understood by the authors of these texts and why Latin scholars were interested in this instrument at all. Aspects of the Astrolabe is devoted to these questions.

Las <i>Opiniones sacadas de los más auténticos y antigos philósofos que sobre la alma escrivieron i sus definiciones</i>, de Daniel Arón Afia.

Included in a volume published in 1568 in Venice alongside the first Spanish translation of Leon Hebreo’s Dialogos de amor, the Opiniones sacadas de los mas autenticos y antigos philosofos que sobre la alma escrivieron y sus difiniciones , were written by Aron Daniel Afia, an important Latin and Philosophy scholar in the Salonika of the second half of the 16th c. Descendant of a Converso family returned to Judaism after settlement in Ottoman lands, his short twelve folio work is a compendium of definitions of the soul proposed by thinkers from Antiquity to Renaissance, being a precious example of the intellectual activity (in Latin, Spanish and Hebrew) of the Conversos who chose exile in the Levant. The volume, dedicated to Philip II, shows the attachment of former Conversos to Spanish culture.

Aristarchus's On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon: Greek and Arabic Texts

In the 1920s, T. L. Heath pointed out that historians of mathematics have "given too little attention to Aristarchus" (Heath 1921, vol. 2, 1). This is still true today. The Greek text of Aristarchus's On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon has received little attention; the Arabic editions virtually none.1 For these reasons, much of what this text has to tell us about ancient and medieval mathematics and the mathematical sciences has gone unnoticed. When one considers that many of Aristarchus's arguments are obscure and much of his mathematics cumbersome, the persistent interest in this text during the medieval and early modern periods is remarkable. It was edited and studied by Arabic scholars long after all of its mathematical methods and most of its astronomical results had become otiose. Copies of the Greek manuscripts were still being made by Latin scholars in the 17th century, well after the ascent of printed text.2 The work begins with a series of hypotheses that are at once crude and contradictory and yet refreshingly bold. From these, by great labor, Aristarchus derives a few precise statements about objects far outside our common purview, displaying an incisive ability with theoretical modeling. The text is a fine example of that style of Greek mathematics which produces, from seemingly intractable quagmires, results that are simple and clean. All of these features must have delighted the many generations of mathematicians who studied On Sizes. But perhaps they were struck by something simpler than the detailed arguments and the actual results. Perhaps they were struck by the work's fundamental, unspoken claim. On Sizes implies, unequivocally, that the world is mathematical; not just in a vague qualitative way, but in a precise quantitative way. It demonstrates that by starting from a few simple and readily obtainable statements one can, through the