Marsilio Ficino's 'Si Deus Fiat Homo' and Augustine's 'Non Ibi Legi' - The Incarnation and Plato's Persona in the Scholia to the Laws

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* I am grateful for having discussed various aspects

of this paper with M. J. B. Allen, C. Celenza, G.

Giglioni, J. Kraye, F. Pagani, P. Podolak, as well as

to the audience at the Director’s Work-in-Progress

Seminar at the Warburg Institute, where I presented

some of this material in , this Journal ’s anonymous

reviewers for their generous comments on a previousdraft of this study, and its editors for their helpful

suggestions.

All translations are mine unless otherwise indi-

cated.

. See J. Pépin, ‘Ex Platonicorum persona’. Étudessur les lectures de saint Augustin, Amsterdam .

Prosopopoeia was also an exegetical technique used

by patristic commentators to the Gospels and espe-

cially to the Psalms, where the exegete was concerned

to identify who was speaking to whom about whom,

identifying the moments when the Psalms were

pronounced in persona Christi. See C. Andresen, ‘Zur

Entstehung und Geschichte des trinitarischen Person-

begriffes’, Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissen-schaft und die Kunde der alteren Kirche, , , pp.

– ; and M.-J. Rondeau, Les commentaires patristiquesdu Psautier (III e-V e siècles), , Exégèse prosopologique et théologique (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, ),Rome .

. A small sample of the vast literature on thetopic: P.-H. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, vols, Paris

JOURNAL OF THE WARBURG AND COURTAULD IN STITUT ES, LXXV II,

MARSILIO FICINO’S ‘SI DEUS FIAT HOMO’ AND

AUGUSTINE’S ‘NON IBI LEGI’: THE INCARNATION

AND PLATO’S PERSONA IN THE SCHOLIA TO THE LAWS *

Denis J.-J. Robichaud

… sed quia verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis, non ibi legi.(Augustine, Confessions, ..)

Book . of Augustine’s Confessions contains a well-known comparison betweenthe Gospel of John and the ‘books of the Platonists’. Situated in the middle of

the Confessions, the passage functions as a central pivot in Augustine’s conversion,indicating the Platonic turn away from his past life towards a new Christian one.Yet Augustine’s message in chapter is that although the Platonicorum libri serveas an initial protreptic reorientation, they do not enable us to reach the intendedfatherland. Quoting not the Platonists themselves but John’s ‘in principio eratverbum’, Augustine tells us that in these works he read (‘ibi legi’) the reasons foundin the opening of John’s Gospel. His prosopopoeic rhetorical device, in eff ect, estab-lishes the comparison between the Johannine and the Platonic logos by expressingthe Scriptures ex Platonicorum persona. Nevertheless, the similarities end with theIncarnation. Its absence is noted in the rhetorical comparison by Augustine’sreduplicative use of ‘non ibi legi’ (.., ), the similar ‘non habent illi libri’and ‘non est ibi’, as well as the statement that the Platonists lack humility sincethey are deaf (‘non audiunt’, ..) to Christ’s teachings—all of which stronglyemphasise the essential doctrinal diff erence that the Platonicorum libri do not

mention the Incarnation.Confessions . has long been studied and debated by eminent scholars seeking

to measure the debt of Augustine’s theology to Neoplatonism, to study the placeof his Platonic readings in his conversion and to identify the exact books includedamong the Platonicorum libri . The Platonic preoccupations inherited by modern



scholars and theologians from the Church Fathers are also crucial for Marsilio

Ficino, the fifteenth-century humanist and philosopher whose scholarly laboursproduced the first full Latin translation (along with commentaries) of Plato, Plotinus

and numerous Neoplatonists. Ficino addresses the question of Augustine’s Plato-nicorum libri directly in a letter of to Jacopo Rondono, Bishop of Rimini, in

which he expresses the opinion that many Platonists who lived after Christ adoptedTrinitarian formulations from the Gospel of John: ‘For this reason, AureliusAugustine, formerly a Platonist and now deliberating about his profession of theChristian faith, says that when he encountered our books of the Platonists andidentified Christian dogmas sanctioned by them through imitation, he gave thanksto God and was at once restored, better disposed to accept Christian dogmas.’ Heclarifies his statement with care, diff erentiating the books of the Platonists fromPlato’s corpus of dialogues: ‘I therefore assert beyond dispute that the secret of theChristian Trinity is never in the books of Plato himself, but a few things are indeedsomehow similar in words, though not in sense.’ Discussing the books of Plato

and the Platonists, and Augustine’s reading of them, Ficino tells his correspon-dent that the Platonists imitate Christian ideas and that while a few of Plato’sTrinitarian expressions resemble Christianity, they are not identical. If, however,Ficino’s dogmatic orthodoxy remains safely protected in this explanation to BishopRondono, one finds that matters are not always so clear.

Edgar Wind and Michael J. B. Allen have noted how Ficino astutely observesthe similarity between certain Neoplatonic doctrines and Arian formulations of theTrinity; and Allen makes a convincing case that Ficino often used Augustine as aguide for an un-Augustinian programme to ‘accommodate the Neoplatonists andabove all the sublime Plotinus to Christianity’. In this article I propose to study

FICINO, PLATO’S PERSONA AND THE INCARNATION

; Pépin (as in n. ); P. Courcelle, Recherches surles ‘Confessions’ de Saint Augustin, Paris ; idem,‘Litiges sur la lecture des ‘Libri Platonicorum’ parsaint Augustin’, Augustiniana, , , pp. – ;G. Madec, ‘Le néoplatonisme dans la conversiond’Augustin: État d’une question centenaire (depuisHarnack et Boissier, )’, in Internationales Sympo-sium über den Stand der Augustinus-Forschung , ed. C.Mayer and K. H. Chelius, Würzburg ; idem, Saint

Augustin et la philosophie, notes critiques, Paris ;idem, Saint Augustin et la Philosophie, notes critiques,Paris ; A. Solignac, ‘Doxographies et manuelsdans la formation philosophique de saint Augustin’,Recherches augustiniennes, , , pp. – ; idem,

‘Introduction’ and ‘Notes complémentaires’, in StAugustine, Les Confessions, Paris , esp. pp. – , – , – , – , – ; O. du Roy,L’intelligence de la foi en la Trinité selon saint Augustin,Paris , pp. – ; P. F. Beatrice, ‘Quosdam Plato-nicorum libros. The Platonic Readings of Augustinein Milan’, Vigiliae christianae, , , – ; P.Henry, Plotin et l’Occident , Louvain .

. Marsilio Ficino, Opera omnia, vols, Basel

(facs. repr. with introduction by S. Toussaint, Paris) [hereafter: Ficino, Opera], , p. : ‘Quamobrem

Aurelius Augustinus quondam Platonicus et iam deChristiana professione deliberans, cum in nos Plato-nicorum libros incidisset, cognovissetque Christianaper imitationem ab his probata, Deo gratias egit, red-ditusque iam est ad Christiana recipienda propensior.’On this letter see also M. J. B. Allen, Synoptic Art ,Florence , p. ; idem, ‘Marsilio Ficino on Plato,the Neoplatonists and the Christian Doctrine of theTrinity, Renaissance Quarterly, , , pp. – (the full letter is on pp. – ), now in idem,Plato’s Third Eye: Studies in Marsilio Ficino’s Meta-

physics and its Sources, Aldershot ; A. della Torre,Storia dell’Accademia Platonica di Firenze, Florence, p. .

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Ego igitur extra contro- versiam assero trinitatis Christianae secretum in ipsisPlatonis libris nunquam esse, sed nonnulla verbisquidem quamvis non sensu quoquomodo similia.’

. E. Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance,London , pp. – ; Allen, ‘Ficino on Plato’ (asin n. ); idem, Synoptic Art (as in n. ), p. . Moregenerally on Ficino and Augustine see Allen, Synop-tic Art , the first two chapters; and P. O. Kristeller,‘Augustine and the Early Renaissance’, in his Studiesin Renaissance Thought and Letters, , Rome , pp.



DENIS J.-J. ROBICHAUD

how Ficino, in translating Plato’sLaws, wrestles with the philological and exegetical

possibilities of unearthing ‘a few things … somehow similar in words’ to the mostprofound of all Christian doctrines, the Incarnation, from Plato’s speech in hisown persona. Manuscript and textual evidence show that Ficino’s discovery ofthe Incarnation in the Greek variants of the scholia to the Platonic corpus is far

from conjectural guesswork; indeed, it remains one of his strongest attempts at arapprochement between Christianity and Platonism. If Augustine’s Platonicorumlibri —works by philosophers who lived after the advent of Christ—do not containthe Incarnation, then its discovery in Plato’s works, Ficino judges, transforms thePlatonic corpus into a sacred text of sorts.

For Ficino, the identification of the dogma of the Incarnation—the via of Christ— in the Platonic corpus is closely tied to his search for a way out of the aporeticimpasse of Platonic exegesis. In order for Ficino to locate Christian dogmas in

Plato’s teachings, he must first explain how and when (if at all) Plato off ers his ownexplicit doctrines in the dialogues. In so doing, he is responding to the perennialPlatonic question: among all the interlocutors in the dialogues, behind which maskdoes Plato’s face peer out?

How one answers the Platonic question may determine whether one interpretsthe Platonic corpus as aporetic or dogmatic. Plato mentions his name only twicein the dialogues and never as the voice of the author nor as a speaking character.

The problem is underscored by Socrates’s ironic refusal to put forward his ownpositive doctrines but his willingness to convey those of others (for instance,negatively as Protagoras in the Theaetetus, and positively as Diotima in the Sym-

posium). Alcibiades at the end of the Symposium gives a lifelike representation of Socratic irony when he compares Socrates to Silenus, whose outer hybrid grotesque

– ; M. Heitzman, ‘L’agostinismo avicennizzantee il punto di partenza della filosofia di Marsilio Ficino’,Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, , , pp. – ; – ; E. Garin, ‘S. Agostino e MarsilioFicino’, Bollettino storico agostiniano, , , pp. – ; A. Tarabochia Canavero, ‘Agostino e Tommaso nelcommento di Marsilio Ficino all’Epistola ai Romani’,Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, , , pp. – ; eadem, ‘S. Agostino nella ‘Teologia Platonica’ diMarsilio Ficino, Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica, ,

, pp. – .. More generally, Ficino’s use of Platonic scholia

has been all but ignored. An exception is M. J. B. Allen,Icastes Marsilio Ficino’s Interpretation of Plato’s Sophist ,Berkeley , pp. – . Many of the scholia fromthe Laws dealing with historical and lexical questionsare completely ignored by Ficino in his Epitomes,though they are at times taken into account in histranslations. Indeed, beyond the examples discussedin the present article, in his Epitomes Ficino only drawson the scholia explicitly on one more occasion, for

material about Diana and hermae at Laws b; seeOpera, , p. . He states explicitly, however, thathis argumenta are not commentaries, which wouldpresumably include more of the historical and lexicalmaterial found in the scholia; ibid. p. .

. For the topic see Who Speaks for Plato? Studiesin Platonic Anonymity, ed. G. Press, New York ;P. Merlan, ‘Form and Content in Plato’s Philosophy’,

Journal of the History of Ideas, , , pp. – ;L. Edelstein, ‘Platonic Anonymity’, American Journal

of Philology, , , pp. – ; P. Plass, ‘PlatonicAnonymity and Irony in the Platonic Dialogues’,ibid., , , pp. – ; idem, ‘Play and Philo-sophical Detachment in Plato’, Transactions of the

American Philological Association, , , pp. – ; L. A. Kosman, ‘Silence and Imitation in thePlatonic Dialogues’, in Methods of Interpreting Platoand His Dialogues, ed. J. C. Klagge and N. D. Smith,Oxford ; E. N. Tigerstedt, Interpreting Plato,Stockholm , pp. – .




face or mask (πρόσωπον) hides both an inner divinity and complex philosophicalproblems. Socrates stands out since it is often taken for granted that he is Plato’smouthpiece; yet not all attentive readers of the dialogues have thought this soobvious. For instance, there are two dialogues, the Laws and the Epinomis (if thelatter is accepted as a genuine work of Plato), where Socrates is not even an inter-

locutor.The third-century biographer and doxographer Diogenes Laertius records in

his Life of Plato that the ancients were aware of these exegetical difficulties:

But since there is much debate, with some asserting that Plato dogmatised and othersasserting that he did not, we now ought to make a distinction about this matter … Therefore,concerning that on which he has firm conviction, Plato reveals his position and refutesfalsehoods; but concerning unclear matters he suspends his judgement. And concerning hisown opinions he reveals his position through four characters (πρόσωπα): Socrates, Timaeus,the Athenian Stranger and the Eleatic Stranger. These Strangers are not, as some assumed,Plato and Parmenides, but are anonymous figures (πλάσµατά στιν νώνυµα). And whenSocrates and Timaeus speak, Plato is dogmatising. But when he refutes falsehoods, he

introduces characters such as Thrasymachus, Callicles, Polos, Gorgias and Protagoras, aswell as Hippias, Euthydemus and others of this type.

Diogenes Laertius here distinguishes between an aporetic and dogmatic interpre-tation of Plato. His solution to the polemical interpretive discord is to allow forboth, by way of prosopopoeia, that is, by introducing dramatic characters or masks.Only through the interlocutors of Socrates, Timaeus, the Athenian Stranger andthe Eleatic Stranger does Plato give positive doctrines. Likewise, through othercharacters, Plato gives negative doctrines and falsehoods. The reader is left tosuppose that all other arguments voiced by unnamed characters engage withprobability, possibility and verisimilitude. Socrates, as noted above, is an obviouschoice as Plato’s mouthpiece. It is also not surprising to find Timaeus included inDiogenes Laertius’s list, since he is not so much an interlocutor in the dialoguewhich bears his name as a lecturer who delivers a long, uninterrupted monologuewhile his listeners sit in Pythagorean silence. Timaeus’s speech could, in fact, beconsidered as a suspension of the dialogue form, which is intrinsic to the aporeticinterpretation of Plato. It is also very likely that Diogenes Laertius includes Timaeusand the Eleatic Stranger in his list of Plato’s dramatic spokespersons because theyrepresent two of the major philosophies studied by Plato: Timaeus stands in forthe Pythagoreans and the Eleatic Stranger, unsurprisingly, for the Eleatic school.

. See, e.g., P. Hadot, ‘La figure de Socrate’, inhis Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, Paris ,pp. – . Πρόσωπον, meaning face or mask, is a richword and concept which is also used in Greek manu-scripts to designate characters in plays and interlocu-tors in dialogues.

. Diogenes Laertius,Vitae philosophorum, ed. M.Marcovich, , Stuttgart and Leipzig , . – :πε δ πολλ στάσις στ κα ο µέν φασιν ατὸνδογµατίζειν, ο δ’οὔ, φέρε κα περ τούτου διαλάβωµεν…

Ὁ τοίνυν Πλάτων περ µν ὧν κατείληφεν ποφαίνεται,

τὰ δ ψευδῆ διελέγχει, περ δ τῶν δήλων πέχει. Καπερ µν τῶν ατῷ δοκούντων ποφαίνεται διὰ τεττάρωνπροσώπων, Σωκράτους, Τιµαίου, τοῦ Αθηναίου ξένου,

τοῦ λεάτου ξένου· εἰσ δ’ο ξένοι οχ , ὥς τινες ὑπέλαβον,Πλάτων κα Παρµενίδης, λλὰ πλάσµατά στιν νώνυµα·πε κα τὰ Σωκράτους κα τὰ Τιµαίου λέγων Πλάτωνδογµατίζει. Περ δ τῶν ψευδῶν λεγχοµένους εἰσάγειοἷον Θρασύµαχον κα Καλλικλέα κα Πῶλον Γοργίαν τεκα Πρωταγόραν, ἔτ’ τ’ Ἱππίαν κα Εθύδηµον κα δ κατοὺς ὁµοίους.



The Athenian Stranger from the Laws, however, establishes the parameters forthe aporetic understanding of the dramatic personae of the dialogues. If Socratescan be considered one pole of the Platonic question, the Athenian Stranger canbe seen as the other, since Diogenes Laertius tells us that some commentatorserroneously equate the anonymous Stranger with Plato himself . Who, then, is the

anonymous Stranger? Identified only as ξένος, he is without a name and, beingoutside of his polis in Crete, without a law. Unlike Homeric guests who eventuallyreveal their identity to their hosts, the anonymous Stranger never divulges himself.

Quintilian confirms the use among both Greeks and Latins of prosopopoeiato understand the dialogue form and the Platonic question. In explicating theconcept in his Institutio oratoria, he associates the figure of thought with inventio:

There are some authorities who restrict the term προσωποποιία to cases where both personsand words are fictitious, and prefer to call the imaginary conversations between men by theGreek name διάλογοι, which some translate by the Latin sermocinatio. For my own part, I haveincluded both under the same generally accepted term, since we cannot imagine a speech

unless we also imagine a person to utter it.

If all speeches must belong to specific persons, as Quintilian says, and if all speecheshave fathers, as Plato says at the end of the Phaedrus, then to which character mask( persona or πρόσωπον) do the speeches of the anonymous Athenian Stranger in theLaws belong? Ficino’s answer is deceptively simple: Plato himself. Yet the identi-fication of Plato’s πρόσωπον, Ficino reasons, will reveal Plato’s docrines. On whatgrounds does he make this identification?

Ficino certainly read Diogenes Laertius both in Greek and in the Latintranslation by Ambrogio Traversari, yet in his own Life of Plato, he dissents fromDiogenes’s judgement in identifying the anonymous Stranger as Plato. Follow-

ing Quintilian’s categorisation of Plato’s dialogues as either elenctic (an aporeticdialogue which refutes sophists and/or encourages youths) or dogmatic (a dialoguewhich primarily instructs adults), Ficino writes:

What Plato said in his own voice in the Letters, Laws and Epinomis, he desires to be held asabsolutely certain; but what he argues in the other books in the mouth (os) of Socrates,Timaeus, Parmenides and Zeno, he wants to be held as having the appearance of the truth(verisimilia).

Ficino here shows his awareness of the dialogic and prosopopoeic nature of Plato’sworks by acknowledging that Plato puts arguments in various mouths. He uses the

. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, ed. and tr. H. E.Butler, vols, New York , , pp. – (.. – ): ‘Ac sunt quidam, qui has demum προσωποποιΐαςdicant, in quibus et corpora et verba fingimus;sermones hominum adsimulatos dicere διαλόγουςmalunt, quod Latinorum quidam dixerunt sermoci-nationem. Ego iam recepto more utrumque eodemmodo appelavi: nam certe sermo fingi non potest utnon personae sermo fingatur.’ I have slightly modifiedthe translation. Among Greek rhetorical works a not-able source on prosopopoeia is (Pseudo-)Demetrius

of Phalerum, On Style, ed. W. Roberts, Cambridge, p. .

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Quae in epistolis velin libris de legibus et Epinomide Plato ipse suo dixitore certissima vult haberi, quae vero in caeteris librisSocratis, Timaei, Parmenidis, Zenonis ore disputat,verisimilia.’ On the division of the dialogues into theelenctic and dogmatic see Quintilian, ... OnFicino’s Life of Plato see D. J.-J. Robichaud, ‘MarsilioFicino’s De vita platonis’, Accademia, , , pp. – , and the literature cited there.




Latin os (mouth / face / speech) in a manner more or less equivalent to the Greekπρόσωπον (mask / face), recalling the old (and likely erroneous) Latin auditoryetymology for persona as something through which a voice resounds ( personare).

Ficino, like Diogenes Laertius, also distinguishes the Socratic from the Timaeanand the Eleatic schools of philosophy (the latter two being, for him, essentially

Pythagorean). All are cast aside as presenting arguments based on verisimilitudeand not on truth itself. In this regard, Ficino is following Augustine, who, in hisContra Academicos, argues against the scepticism of the New Academy, via Cicero’s Academica, and draws a sharp division between truth and verisimilitude: between,on the one hand, a hidden esoteric doctrinal and dogmatic Plato concerned withtruth, and on the other, a false exoteric sceptical and aporetic Platonism concernedwith verisimilitude and probability. Although his interpretation of Plato is oftenesoteric, Ficino is going beyond Augustinian demarcations by looking for explicitdoctrines and dogmas.

He lists three works where Plato speaks in his own voice: the Letters, which,

as such, are not supposed to have been written in a dramatic manner; the Laws;and the Epinomis, a companion to the Laws. The Laws, divided into twelve lengthybooks, has long been considered Plato’s final composition. Its dramatic setting isthe island of Crete, where three old men, Clinias the Cretan, Megillus the Spartanand the Athenian Stranger converse during their walk from the city of Cnosus toZeus’s temple and grotto on Mount Ida, where they are headed in order to consultthe god about establishing laws for a new Cretan colony. The dialogic and dramatic


. See also the example cited below, n. ; andAulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, .; Boethius, De duabusnaturis et una persona Jesu Christi, contra Eutychen et

Nestorium, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia latina, , Paris

, cols – .. It should be noted that in other works, e.g.,De

civitate dei , Augustine is more forthcoming in recognis-

ing explicit Platonic doctrines. On the history of theesoteric interpretation of Plato see E. N. Tigerstedt,The Decline and Fall of the Neoplatonic Interpretationof Plato, Helsinki . I would add two minor reser-vations to this important work and to Tigerstedt,Interpreting Plato (as in n. ). Firstly, Tigerstedt perhapsmakes Neoplatonism as a whole too systematicallyconsistent. Secondly, he praises Luigi Stefanini for hisattempt to solve the sceptico-aporetic and dogmaticdichotomy in the interpretation of Plato by proposingthe concept of verisimilitude as opposed to the prob-

abilism of the New Academy. Although Tigerstedt hasdoubts about Stefanini’s Christian interpretation of Plato, he does not seem to acknowledge directly thatthe very concept of verisimilitude is used by Augustinein his interpretation of Platonism and in other writingsof his such as the Soliloquies. As we see in the previously

quoted passage from Ficino, the concept of verisimili-tude for the interpretation of Plato also had a historybeyond Stefanini and Augustine.

. On Ficino and the Epinomis see M. J. B. Allen,‘Ratio omnium divinissima: Plato’s Epinomis, Prophecy,

and Marsilio Ficino’, in Epinomide. Studi sull’opera e lasua ricezione, ed. F. Alesse, F. Ferrari and M. C. Dalfino,

Naples , pp. – . On Ficino and Plato’s Letterssee idem, ‘Sending Archedemus: Ficino, Plato’s Second

Letter, and its Four Epistolary Mysteries’, in Sol et Homo: Mensch und Natur in der Renaissance. Festschrift zum . Geburtstag für Eckhard Kessler , ed. S. Ebbers-meyer, H. Pirner-Pareschi and T. Ricklin, Munich, pp. – ; and Wind (as in n. ), pp. – , – , – . This account of Ficino’s exegesis of Plato’sLaws is also confirmed in book of his PlatonicTheology, where he claims that it is in the Laws where‘ipsa Platonis persona loquitur’; Ficino, PlatonicTheology, ed. J. Hankins, tr. M. J. B. Allen, vols,Cambridge, MA – , , pp. , (.. and). The most thorough study of book and the sixacademies is Allen, Synoptic Art (as in n. ), pp. – ;see also C. S. Celenza, ‘Pythagoras in the Renaissance:

The Case of Marsilio Ficino’, Renaissance Quarterly,, , pp. – . On Ficino and Plato’s Laws seealso A. Neschke-Hentschke, ‘Hierusalem caelestis proviribus in terris expressa. Die Auslegung der platonis-chen Staatsentwürfe durch Marsilius Ficinus und ihre“hermeneutischen” Grundlagen’, Würzburger Jahr-bücher für die Altertumswissenschaft , , , pp. – ; eadem, ‘Marsile Ficin lecteur des lois’, Revue

philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger , , no.

[=Les Lois de Platon], , pp. – .



elements of the work are somewhat limited when compared to other Platonic

dialogues, and the lion’s share of the discourse is given to the Athenian Stranger,who expatiates in quasi-monologues on various philosophical topics as well asactual laws. Ficino gives a privileged position to the Laws by placing it last (withthe Epinomis and the Letters) in his ordering of the dialogues—a position which is

also attested in Thrasyllus’s tetralogies, but whose organisational schema Ficinodoes not otherwise follow.

Again following Augustine, Ficino begins his commentary or Epitome on Plato’sLaws by dividing philosophy into the contemplative approach of the Pythagoreans,the moral and active philosophy of Socrates, and the combination of both, whichis the philosophy of Plato:

To what end is all this? So that we remember that since the arrangement of the present Lawsis told to us by Plato himself—neither through a Pythagorean persona nor through Socrates,as is often the case with other matters, but, on the contrary, through the very persona of Platohimself—we justifiably obtain a middle way (via) between divine and human things, so that

we are neither dragged through certain hidden or impassable ways (invia), nor still pulleddown to the realms below to more remote things. On account of this, the ten books of theRepublic are judged to be more Pythagorean and Socratic, whereas the present Laws aremore Platonic.

As Allen rightly points out, Ficino is also following Apuleius’s account, in De Platoneet eius dogmate, of Plato’s education in two disciplinary branches of philosophy: thenatural philosophy of the Pythagoreans and the dialectical method (both rationaland moral) of Socrates. It is only appropriate that Ficino draws on Apuleius’s

. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MSPlut. ., a Greek manuscript of Plato used by

Ficino in which the dialogues are in the Thrasyllanorder. The Clitophon and Letter XIII , however, areathetised by Ficino as spurious. Of the other dialoguesindicated as spurious by Diogenes Laertius—theDemodocus, the Sisyphus, Eryxias, Axiochus, Alcyon, Deiusto and De virtute —Ficino translated only Axiochus,but attributed it to Xenocrates (probably on the auth-ority of Diogenes Laertius). On Ficino’s ordering of the Platonic corpus see also J. Hankins, Plato in theItalian Renaissance, vols, Leiden , , pp. – . On MS Plut. . see A. M. Bandini, Cataloguscodicum Graecorum Bibliothecae Laurentianae, ,Florence , cols – ; L. A. Post, The VaticanPlato and Its Relations, Middletown, CT , p. ; N.

G. Wilson, ‘A List of Plato Manuscripts’, Scriptorium,, , pp. – (no. ); R. S. Brumbaugh andR. Wells, The Plato Manuscripts. A New Index, NewHaven, CT , p.; A. Diller, ‘Notes on the History

of Some Manuscripts of Plato’, in his Studies in Greek Manuscr ipt Tradition, Amsterdam , pp. –

(); G. Boter, The Textual Traditon of Plato’s Republic,Leiden , pp. – ; Supplementum Ficinianum, ed.P. O. Kristeller, vols, Florence , , p. CXLVII;idem, ‘Marsilio Ficino as a Beginning Student of Plato’, Scriptorium, , , pp. – ; R. Marcel,

Marsile Ficin, Paris , p. ; M. Sicherl, ‘Neuen-deckte Handschriften von Marsilio Ficino und

Johannes Reuchlin’,Scriptorium, , , pp. – ;S. Gentile, ‘Note sui manoscritti greci di Platoneutilizati da Marsilio Ficino’, in Scritti in onore di EugenioGarin, Pisa , pp. – (); idem, with S. Niccoliand P. Viti, Marsilio Ficino e il ritor no di Platone,Florence , pp. – (no. ). For the relationshipof this manuscript to the so-called Vatican Plato seealso below, n. .

. Ficino Opera, , p. : ‘Quorsum haec?Ut meminerimus praesentem legum dispositionem,quoniam ab ipso Platone, non per Pythagoricampersonam, vel Socratem, ut solent caetera, immo veroper propriam Platonis ipsius personam nobis traditur,non iniuria viam [Opera: vitam] quandam inter divina

et humana mediam obtinere, neque nos per abdita,et invia quaedam trahere, neque tamen ad interiora[=inferiora?] deducere. Quamobrem decem illi deRep[ublica] libri Pythagorici magis sint atqueSocratici: praesentes vero leges magis Platonicae iudi-centur.’ See Augustine, Contra Academicos, ..;idem, De civitate Dei , ..

. M. J. B. Allen, ‘Marsilio Ficino on Plato’sPythagorean Eye’, Modern Language Notes, , ,pp. – , now also in idem, Plato’s Third Eye (as inn. ); see Apuleius, De Platone et eius dogmate, ..




work when commenting on the Laws, the dialogue which he believes holds Plato’sown doctrines. Christopher S. Celenza, who looks briefly at this passage too,makes an adroit observation: one of the principal reasons why Ficino judges theRepublic to be more Pythagorean than Platonic is that its arguments on communalproperty are in agreement with the Pythagorean akousma, or precept, that ‘among

friends all things are held in common’—which is the closing phrase of the Phaedrus,whereas, as Ficino believes, in the Laws the opinion is repudiated. This is broadlyin agreement with Ficino’s strategy of protecting Plato by attributing certaindangerous opinions to a Pythagorean voice or πρόσωπον in a dialogue—as when,significantly, he attributes the doctrine of metempsychosis to Pythagoras, especiallywhen dealing with the thorny issue of souls which are reborn into the bodies of beasts.

To these comments it should be added that Ficino is also in line with Numenius

of Apamea and with Proclus, in presenting his readers with a middle way betweenthe dogmatic Pythagorean and aporetic Socratic approaches towards philosophy;

Platonic serio ludere is thus situated between serious dogmas and Socratic play.

It is not only Socratic philosophy which conveys verisimilitude for Ficino, but alsothe Pythagoreans, in that their exoteric works do not fully express their esotericdoctrines. Moreover, in saying that Plato presents a middle way between the two,Ficino uses a philosophical etymology, since the fundamental meaning of aporia(πορία) is an impassable way or invia, as Ficino says: that is, the absence of avia, or πόρος. Indeed, arguing that he is going to avoid impassable and hiddenways, Ficino seeks a hermeneutically clear path into the Platonic corpus. In thisinterpretive middle way, he identifies the Athenian Stranger as Plato’s own personaand thus argues that one can find explicit dogmas in Plato’s dialogues.

No Neoplatonist explicitly identifies the Athenian Stranger as Plato. Thereare passages in which Neoplatonic commentators quote the ‘Athenian Stranger’;and there are other moments when they say something like ‘as Plato says …’ andthen quote a passage from the Athenian Stranger. In the latter instances, however,they are never addressing the Platonic question or the prosopopoeic nature of the


. Besides Apuleius’s De Platone et eius dogmate,Ficino could have drawn on two other importantsources to find dogmas in Plato’s Laws: Alcinous’sDidaskalikos and, perhaps most significantly, Euse-bius’s Praeparatio evangelica (see below, pp. – ). Itshould be noted, however, that none of these works

identify the Athenian Stranger as Plato himself. Onthe Laws in Eusebius and its later tradition see É. desPlaces, ‘La tradition indirecte de Platon’, in his Études platoniciennes –, Leiden , pp. – . OnEusebius and Platonism see idem, Eusèbe de Césaréecommentateur. Platonisme et Écriture Sainte, Paris .

. Celenza (as in n. ), pp. – , esp. n. .The Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, ed.and tr. L. G. Westerink, Amsterdam , pp. and, distinguishes between three Platonic states corre-sponding to the Letters, Laws and Republic. See also J.

Dillon, ‘The Neoplatonic Reception of Plato’s Laws’,in Plato’s Laws and Its Historical Significance, ed. F. L.Lisi, Sankt Augustin , p. . On the tripartitedivision see also Alcinous, Didaskalikos, ch. ; for atranslation see Alcinous, The Handbook of Platonism,tr. J. Dillon, Oxford , pp. – ; and Proclus, In

rempublicam, .. – , .. On the division of Platonic philosophy into

serious Pythagorean dogmas and Socratic play seeNumenius, Fragments, ed. É. des Places, Paris ,fr. ; and Proclus, In Timaeum, .. – ... OnPlatonic serio ludere in the Renaissance see M. J. B.Allen, ‘The Second Ficino-Pico Controversy: Par-menidean Poetry, Eristic, and the One’, in Marsilio

Ficino e il ritorno di Platone, studi e documenti , ed. G. C.Garfagnini, vols, Florence , , pp. – ; andWind (as in n. ), p. .



dialogues, but merely quoting a passage from the work.The Laws, left out of thecanon of dialogues to be studied as set down by Iamblichus, does not apparentlyfigure prominently in the Neoplatonic educational curriculum. The AnonymousProlegomena to Platonic Philosophy (unknown to Ficino) relates that Proclus alsocasts out the Laws (along with the Republic) from the educational canon. Proclus’s

judgement on the Epinomis is even more severe since he considered it to bespurious. In his commentary on the Republic (first known to Ficino only in ),he describes the skopos or aim of the Laws in relation to the Republic in the followingmanner:

Therefore, through all this it is clear that the aim of the Republic is nothing other thanguidance on the best polity, just as the aim of the Laws is guidance on the laws.

This is not to say that the Neoplatonists ignore the Laws and other works of political philosophy; the work of Dominic O’Meara has punctured that scholarlyassumption. Moreover, Ficino and other readers of Proclus’s Platonic Theology

know that he focuses on the Laws in order to understand how Plato expresses thefundamental theological dogma ‘that there are gods, that they have providenceover everything, that they do everything according to justice and that none of theirinferiors turn them away from this’. As Proclus continues: ‘It is quite clear toeveryone that, among all the dogmas in theology, these are the most primaryprinciples.’

Nevertheless, the identification of the Athenian Stranger is a persistent problemin Platonic interpretation, which has vexed ancient as well as modern interpreters.

. I argue this point in relation to Proclus belowat n. .

. For Proclus’s judgement on the Laws see Anonymous Prolegomena (as in n. ), .; and Dillon,‘Neoplatonic Reception’ (as in n. ), p. . On theEpinomis see Proclus, In rempublicam .. – ; idem,De providentia, . – ; Anonymous Prolegomena, . – . Other doubts about the authenticity of the Epinomisand speculations that it was composed by Philip of Opus, Plato’s amanuensis, can be found in DiogenesLaertius, .; and Suidae Lexicon, ed. A. Alder,Leipzig – , s.v. ‘Philosophos’. See also, L. Tarán,

Academica: Plato, Philip of Opus, and the Pseudo-PlatonicEpinomis, Philadelphia ; J. Dillon, ‘Philip of Opusand the Theology of Plato’s Laws’, in Plato’s Laws: fromTheory into Practice, Proceedings of the VI Symposium

Platonicum, ed. S. Scolnicov and L. Brisson, SanktAugustin , pp. – . D. J. O’Meara, Plato-nopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity,Oxford , debunks the myth that the Neoplatonistshad no interest in the Laws and politics.

. Proclus, In Rempublicam, ed. W. Kroll, Amster-dam , ..: ὥστε διὰ πάντων εἶναι δῆλον τὸν τῆςΠολιτείας εἶναι σκοπὸν µ ἄλλον ἢ τν τῆς ρίστηςπολιτείας ὑφήγησιν, ὡς τῶν Νόµων τν τῶν νόµων.

. O’Meara (as in n. ).

. Proclus, Platonic Theology, ed. H. D. Saff rey andL. G. Westerink, Paris , .. – : τὸ εἶναι τοὺς

θεούς, τὸ προνοεῖν πάντων, τὸ κατὰ δίκην τὰ πάντα ἄγεινκα µηδεµίαν κ τῶν χειρόνων εἰσδέχεσθαι παρατροπήν.Ταῦτ’οὖν ὅτι µν ἁπάντων στ τῶν ν θεολογίᾳ δογµάτωνρχοειδέστερα, παντ καταφανές.

. The authenticity of the Laws (along with theEpinomis) was often discounted in the th centuryuntil Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff accepted itas a genuine work by Plato. The identification of theanonymous Stranger, however, has been varied, asshown by the following notable examples. F. Ast,Platon’s Leben und Schriften, Leipzig , pp. –

pointed out difficulties with the Athenian Stranger:‘Dazu gesellt sich endlich noch das Unplatonischeder äusseren Form. Die Personen des Gesprächs

sind ohne Zweifel erdichtete Namen, nehmlich derLakedämonier Megillos, der Kreter Kleinias und derathenäische Fremdling; dagegen Platon in seinenGesprächen immer, wenigstens seinen Zeitgenossen,bekannte Personen einführt. Auch das Dramatischeund die Charakterschilderung sind ganz vernach-lässigt.’ G. Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, vols, London – , , p. n., off ered

the following comments on the relationship of theidentification of the Athenian Stranger to the dramaticsetting and the dogmatic tone of the dialogue: ‘It is




Plato’s first interpreter, Aristotle, mentions that the Stranger is Socrates. Cicerotakes the identification with Plato for granted, commenting briefly, without groundsor arguments, that Plato spoke with Clinias and Megillus (the two other interlocu-tors of the Laws). As in the case of the Neoplatonists, however, neither Aristotle norCicero addresses the dialogic problem of interpreting Plato. Diogenes Laertius,

as we have seen, says that previous interpreters equated the Athenian Strangerwith Plato; but the interpreters themselves remain anonymous since he neitherquotes nor names them. What information we have on the interpretation andidentification of the Anonymous Stranger in antiquity—from Cicero, Plutarch,Diogenes Laertius and Stobaeus—is sparse, fragmentary and seldom explicit.

There are two other noteworthy cases, however, where the identities of theinterlocutors in the Laws is discussed. The first is Basil of Caesarea who, in hisletter , uses prosopopoeia to interpret the Platonic dialogues and mentions of its application to the Laws. He tells us:

But where he [Plato] introduces uncertain characters (πρόσωπα) into the dialogues, they are

given the conversational role of settling matters; but he does not develop anything else fromthe characters (πρόσωπα) in his thinking—as, for example, he writes in the Laws.

Basil explains that Plato forgoes rhetorical adornments and introduces uncertainor indefinite interlocutors (όριστα πρόσωπα) when getting to the heart of thematter. His reference to the Laws presumably points to the Athenian Stranger, wholacks character traits beyond his country of origin. Although Basil’s exegetical


remarkable that Aristotle, in canvassing the opinionsdelivered by the Ἀθηναῖος ξένος in the Laws, cites themas the opinions of Sokrates (Politics. ii. , b. II), who,however, does not appear at all in the dialogue. Either

this is a lapse of memory on the part of Aristotle; orelse (which I think very possible) the Laws were orig-inally composed with Sokrates as the expositor intro-duced, the change of name being subsequently madefrom a feeling of impropriety in transporting Sokratesto Krete, and from the dogmatising anti-dialectic tonewhich pervades the lectures ascribed to him. SomePlatonic expositors regarded the Athenian Strangerin Leges as Plato himself (Diogen. L. iii.; Schol. adLeg. I). Diogenes himself calls him a πλάσµα νώνυµον.’

P. Friedländer, Platon, vols, Berlin and Leipzig ,, pp. – , , and , p. , argues that Platomakes the Athenian Stranger anonymous so as todistance his person from what Socrates represents to

Plato, and sees more of Solon in him than Socrates. G.Morrow, Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretationof the Laws, Princeton , p. , says: ‘In no otherdialogue do we feel less of a dramatic screen betweenourselves and Plato. The anonymity of the Athenianmeans that there is no independent character to besustained, as is true of the Socratic dialogues, eventhe Republic; and Plato is free as nowhere else to putforward his own doctrines.’ H.-G. Gadamer, ‘Platoand the Poets’, in his Dialogue and Dialectic, tr. R. C.Smith, New Haven, CT , p. , says that it is ‘the

Athenian in whom more than anyone Plato has mostobviously hidden himself’. Describing the AthenianStranger as representing Socrates if he had fled toCrete instead of accepting his fate from Athenian

justice, L. Strauss, The Argument and the Action of Plato’sLaws, Chicago , passim, esp. pp. – , presents thedialogue’s setting as a type of counter-factual history.T. Szlezak, Reading Plato, London , pp. , – ,claims that the Athenian Stranger remains anonymousin order better to reflect his city’s culture, but thatPlato did not wish to hide anonymously behind hischaracters. More recently, both C. Zuckert, Plato’sPhilosophers, Chicago , pp. – , – , – ,and C. H. Zuckert, ‘Plato’s Laws: Postlude or Preludeto Socratic Political Philosophy?, Journal of Politics,, , pp. – , have argued that the dramaticdate of the Laws is a period between the Persianand Peloponnesian wars, thus turning the Athenian

Stranger into a figure for pre-Socratic philosophy.. Aristotle, Politics, a.. Cicero, De legibus, .... H. Tarrant, Plato’s First Interpreters, London

.. St Basil, Lettres, ed. Y. Courtonne, , Paris

, CXXXV: Ὅπου δ όριστα πρόσωπα πεισάγειτοῖς διαλόγοις, τῆς µν εκρινείας ἕνεκεν τῶν πραγµάτωνκέχρηται τοῖς προσδιαλεγοµένοις, οδν δ ἕτερον κ τῶνπροσώπων πεισκυκλεῖ ταῖς ὑποθέσεσιν· ὅπερ ποίησενν τοῖς Νόµοις.



strategy attributes clear and explicit argumentative positions to the Laws, he doesnot explicitly identify the Athenian Stranger with the persona of Plato. The safestand most satisfactory way of interpreting this passage is to read it as followingBasil’s description of Plato’s ability to write in various stylistic registers, and hischaracterisation of the lack of rhetorical figures and character development in the

Laws as examples of simplicity, brevity and clarity in speech and argumentation— stylistic traits which, as he also tells us in the letter, are appropriate to Christians.The second case is Oxyrhynchus Papyrus no. , where the Athenian Strangeris briefly named as Plato. It is obvious, however, that Ficino does not known thepapyrus fragment; and it seems unlikely that he is making use of the passage fromBasil.

Nevertheless, Ficino’s explicit identification of the Athenian Stranger as Platoin his Epitome on the Laws is not merely his own speculation. He is drawing on ananonymous introductory ὑπόθεσις or scholion to Plato’s Laws included in his Greekmanuscript of Plato’s dialogues (Fig. ). The scholion makes the identification

based on the claim that the Athenian Stranger discusses two republics whichsupposedly correspond to two dialogues: the Laws and the Republic.The evidenceof Ficino’s use of the scholion is apparent and obvious. As can be seen in hisEpitome, however, Ficino is not translating from it verbatim, but rather ad sensum,at times paraphrasing, at times removing or adding material (Table ).

What, then, are the explicit dogmas proposed by the Athenian Stranger, orPlato, in the Laws?

/

His letter of to Braccio Martelli, entitled ‘Concordia Mosis et Platonis’,underscores Ficino’s prosopopoeic understanding of Plato’s corpus. In it he

superimposes onto the image of Plato’s Academy the ancient metaphor of exegesisas progressing into a temple’s inner sanctum. Ficino and his humanist contem-poraries inherited from the ancients the practice of presenting levels of exegesisaccording to the architectural metaphor of progressing through stages of a pagantemple. This metaphor, found as early as Varro among the Latins), is usuallypresented as variations on a theme containing the following stages: popular

. On Oxyrhynchus Papyrus no. see H.Tarrant, ‘Where Plato Speaks: Reflections on anAncient Debate’, in Who Speaks for Plato? (as in n. ),pp. – ( – ).

. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MS

Plut. ., fol. v. For a transcription see ScholiaPlatonica, ed. W. C. Greene, Haverford , p. .See above, n. , for scholarship on this manuscript. T.Mettauer, De Platonis scholiorum fontibus, Zurich ,pp. – , argued that Proclus was the source for thescholion, based in part on a claim that Proclus alsoidentified the Athenian Stranger as ‘Plato ipse’ in hiscommentary on Republic .. – .. Yet Proclusdoes not seem to be addressing any kind of Platonicquestion here; he is simply quoting Plato.

. Ficino also seems to find confirmation of Plato’s identity as the Athenian Stranger through theaccounts of his travels; see his De vita Platonis, inFicino, Opera, , p. .

. See Supplementum Ficinianum (as in n. ), ,

pp. CII–III.. On the use of this metaphor in Varro, Proclus

and Poliziano see D. J.-J. Robichaud, ‘Angelo Poli-ziano’s Lamia: Neoplatonic Commentaries and thePlotinian Dichotomy between the Philologist andthe Philosopher’, in Angelo Poliziano, Lamia: Text,Translation, and Introductory Studies, ed. C. Celenza,Leiden , pp. – . Among Latin authors seethe works cited by P. Courcelle, ‘Le personnage dephilosophie dans la littérature latine’, Le Journal desSavants, , , pp. – ( n. ).




interpretation (outside the temple); grammatical readings of verba or λέξεις (thethreshold of the vestibule of the temple); the interpretation of philosophicalcontent (advancing through the pronaos into the temple itself); and finally turningto the anagogical or theological meaning of a text (penetrating into the temple’sinner sanctum, the adyton). Already in Plotinus one finds important uses of the

image of the adyton to explain henosis and, among Iamblichus, Proclus and otherNeoplatonists, it is deployed to explain the exegetical approach to the Platoniccorpus and the cursus of studies in the Neoplatonic scale of disciplines. Proclusmakes this clear, for example, in his commentary on the First Alcibiades, which hebelieves, following Iamblichus, to be the first work of the Platonic corpus and apropaedeutic introduction leading towards the final theological dialogues. Thefigurative advance through the textual temple therefore maps onto Proclus’s triadof πιστροφή – πρόοδος – µονή and is understood as the purgative conversion (πιστ-ροφή) through which the soul becomes initiated by means of the rites of minor andgreater Platonic mysteries in order to remain with the One (µονή). Augustine

employs the image in Contra Academicos in order to describe Antiochus of Ascalon’ssacrilegious introduction of certain evil Stoic ashes into the adyta, the inner sanc-tums, of Plato’s Academy. This long tradition has its roots in the very languageof mysteries which Plato himself employs —a point not lost on Ficino, whodeploys the mystagogic image of an accessus into the adyta of Platonic mysteriesin his numerous prologues and in his writings on the Platonic corpus and on Neo-platonic texts, as well as on philosophical, theological and poetic works.

The playful dramatic setting to the letter on the ‘Concordia Mosis et Platonis’is Martelli’s arrival at Plato’s Academy, where he is greeted not only by theAthenian Stranger but also by all of Plato’s dramatis personae, that is, by Parmenides,Protagoras, Laches, Phaedrus, Philebus and others, as well as by characters of Platonic myth such as Er and Diotima, and by later Platonists like Plotinus, Philo,Iamblichus, Proclus and even Augustine, all of whom guide the reader into thePlatonic mysteries. In the letter to Martelli, Ficino makes each Platonic πρόσωπονvoice specific opinions or dogmas. He concisely distils his interpretive findings inthe Laws when he presents the Athenian Stranger to Martelli as follows:

You will hear a certain old Athenian asserting that the world is arranged by the Word ofGod and that God is the measure of all things, especially if God become man (si Deus fiat homo). Just as you will hear him striking down the proud with lightning bolts as rebelliousagainst God, and approving the humble as most beloved of God. Finally, you will hear himpredicting that whether they descend into hell or ascend to heaven, they will discover divine

judgement everywhere.


. Plotinus,Enneads, ..; Proclus, Commentaryon Alcibiades, .. – ; Marinus, Vita Procli , ; seeRobichaud, ‘Poliziano’s Lamia’ (as in n. ).

. Augustine, Contra Academicos, .... See, e.g., É. des Places, ‘Platon et la langue des

mystères’, Annales de la Faculté des Lettres d’Aix, ,

, pp. – , now in idem, Études Platoniciennes (asin n. ), pp. – .

. See, e.g., Ficino,Opera, , pp. , – , and, pp. – , – , – , , ; PlatonicTheology (as in n. ), . The impact on Ficino of the

Asclepius, which depicts a theological dialogue perhapsin the adyton itself, cannot be neglected.

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Audies senem quendam

Atheniensem, verbo Dei mundum esse dispositumasserentem, Deumque rerum omnium esse mensuram,



The Stranger, here described as Atheniensis Senex, presents the following dogmas:God created and arranged the world by means of the Logos; he is the measure of all things, was incarnated into man, has no tolerance for the prideful who rebelagainst God, favours the humble and meek, and confirms the existence of divinejudgement in the afterlife. Concerning the criticism of those who rebel against God,

it seems that Ficino is interpreting the strict laws against atheism proposed by theAthenian Stranger in the dialogue. That the humble are the most beloved of God is Ficino’s interpretation of the laws which, in the dialogue, protect strangers,foreigners, guests and pilgrims (ξένοι) because they are under the guardianship of Zeus. He relates these laws to a Homeric custom of ξενία, or hospitality, which inturn is related to the belief that any stranger could be a god travelling among menin disguise or costume—a belief criticised in the Republic.

As for the remaining dogmas, Ficino finds the doctrines concerning creation,the Logos and divine judgement in his interpretation of Laws .E: ‘O men,that God who, as old tradition tells, holdeth the beginning, the end, and the centre

of all things that exist, completeth his circuit by nature’s ordinance in straight,unswerving course. With him followeth Justice always, as avenger of them that fallshort of the divine law.’ Scholars have remarked that in this passage Plato revealsa fragment of an ancient Orphic hymn, with which Ficino was clearly familiarsince he quotes it as early as in his De divino furore. As demonstrated bySebastiano Gentile, he worked with the hymn through Niccolò Siculo’s Latintranslation of the pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo. At this stage Ficino was prob-ably not making use of the Greek sources for the hymn, yet by the time he quotesit in his Philebus commentary, his Platonic Theology, his Disputatio contra iudiciumastrologorum, his commentary on Plotinus and his Epitome on the Laws, he is

maxime vero si Deus fiat homo, superbos tamquam aDeo rebelles eff ulminantem, humiles vero probantemtamquam Deo charissimos, denique omnibus praedi-centem sive descenderint in infernum, sive in coelumascenderint, eos ubique divinum iudicem reperturos.’

. Both Celenza and Wesseling believe that, incalling him Atheniensis Senex, Poliziano is playing onthe fact that it sounds similar to the Greek Ἀθηναῖοςξένος: Celenza, in his edition of the Lamia (as in n. ),p. n. ; and Angelo Poliziano, Lamia: Praelectioin priora Aristotelis analytica, ed. A. Wesseling, Leiden, p. . I would add that it seems appropriate that,for Ficino, the Athenian Stranger should be called Atheniensis Senex if he is Plato communicating dogmas,

since Plutarch tells us (Iside et Osiride, .) thatPlato expressed his doctrines more explicitly in his oldage.

. On Ficino and atheism see J. Hankins,‘Monstrous Melancholy: Ficino and the PhysiologicalCauses of Atheism’, in Laus Platonici Philosophici , ed.S. Clucas et al., Leiden , pp. – ; and D. J.-J.Robichaud, ‘Renaissance and Reformation’, in TheOxford Handbook of Atheism, ed. S. Bullivant and M.Ruse, Oxford , pp. – .

. Plato, Republic, C-D.

. Plato, Laws, ed. G. P. Goold and tr. R. G. Bury,Cambridge, MA , E: Ἄνδρες τοίνυν φῶµεν

πρὸς ατούς, ὁ µν δ θεός, ὥσπερ κα ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος,ρχήν τε κα τελευτν κα µέσα τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντωνἔχων, εθείᾳ περαίνει κατὰ φύσιν περιπορευόµενος· τῷδ’ι ξυνέπεται ∆ίκη τῶν πολειποµένων τοῦ θείου νόµουτιµωρός …

. The Orphic fragment can be found in Orphi-corum fragmenta, ed. O. Kern, Dublin (fr. ).Kern categorises the hymn among the Fragmentaveteriora, pp. – . See also M. L. West, The OrphicPoems, Oxford , pp. – . W. Burkert, ‘DasProömium des Parmenides und die Katabasis desPythagoras’, Phronesis, , , pp. – ( n. ),

suggests that Plato may also be drawing on Orphicfragment in describing ∆ίκη as following Zeus.

. S. Gentile, ‘In margine all’epistola “De divinofurore” di Marsilio Ficino’, Rinascimento, , ,pp. – ; idem, ‘Nello “scriptorium” ficiniano: LucaFabiani, Ficino Ficini, e un inedito’, in Marsilio Ficino:

fonti, testi, fortuna, ed. S. Toussaint, Rome , pp. – ; Marsilio Ficino, Lettere, ed. S. Gentile, vols,Florence and , , pp. CCXLVI–VII, and ,pp. XL–XLII.





. Proclus, Platonic Theology, ., and In Par-menidem, . – . Dillon, ‘Neoplatonic Reception’(as in n. ), pp. – , discusses Neoplatonicreadings of this passage as well as other parts of the

Laws.. Plato, Laws (as in n. ), C: ὁ δ θεὸς ἡµ ῖν

πάντων χρηµάτων µέτρον ἂν εἴη µάλιστα, κα πολὺµᾶλλον ἤ πού τις, ὥς φασιν, ἄνθρωπος.

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Ambiguus vero hiclegitur textus. Alibi enim legitur ut traduxi. Quibusverbis Plato videtur Protagoram confutare, dicentemrerum mensuram hominem esse. Cuius error in libroDe scientia subtiliter confutatur. Alibi vero legitur, non“quam quivis homo”, sed “si quis homo”, hunc inmodum: “Deus omnium nobis est mensura, multoque

magis, si quis, ut ferunt, homo est.” Tu hanc parti-culam, “si quis, ut ferunt, homo est”, exponere potes,“si quis homo mensura est, multo magis Deus estmensura, non enim nobis, sed Deo, per quem vivimus,

debemus vivere.” Posses forsan exponere, “si Deusaliquis homo est”, id est, “si quando fiat homo”, “utferunt”, id est, “oracula Prophetarum”, quae quidemexpositio utinam, quam pia est apud multos, tamaccepta foret apud Platonicos.’ See C. Trinkaus, ‘Prot-agoras in the Renaissance’,Philosophy and Humanism:Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller , ed.E. Mahoney, Leiden , p. . Trinkaus mentionsthe passage about Protagoras but does not discussFicino’s interpretation of the variant.

drawing directly on the Greek sources. In fact, in these works he quotes the hymnalong with book of the Laws and interprets it with the help of a scholion to LawsE on his Greek manuscript of Plato, neither of which occurs explicitly withthe hymn in De mundo or in De divino furore (see Fig. and Table ).

The scholiast proposes the reading of Jove as God and as the efficient and

final cause of everything. He also indicates that the old saying mentioned by theAthenian Stranger is, in fact, an Orphic hymn about Jove. In order to confirm thatthe golden dogma of Moses is found in the Laws, Ficino follows the advice fromthe scholion in his Epitome and off ers his own reading which draws on the writingsof Hermes Trismegistus and the hymn of Nemesis. De mundo speaks of Nemesisin the same breath as the Orphic hymn, so his allusion to Nemesis is further evidence

that the work is one of Ficino’s sources. The hymn was on occasion discussedamong Neoplatonists, most notably by Proclus, who partially quotes the fragmentin his Platonic Theology and also discusses it in his Parmenides commentary; butsince Proclus does not off er a causal reading of the hymn, it is clear that Ficino, in

explaining God as both the efficient and final cause, is following the scholiast.As for the final dogma, the Incarnation, Ficino finds it shortly after thepreviously mentioned segment, in Laws C: ‘In our eyes God will be “the measure

of all things” in the highest degree—a degree much higher than is any “man” theytalk of.’ About this Ficino writes in the Epitome on the Laws:

But the text reads as doubtful here. For in one place it reads as I translated it [i.e., quam quivishomo]. With these words it seems that Plato is confuting Protagoras, who says that man isthe measure of things. His error is carefully confuted in the book On Knowledge [i.e., theTheaetetus]. But elsewhere it does not read ‘than any man’ (quam quivis homo), but ‘if a certainman’ (si quis homo), in this way: ‘God is for us the measure of all things: and much more so,if, as they say, he is a certain man.’ You could interpret this small section ‘si quis, ut ferunt,

homo est’ [εἴ που τίς, ὥς φασιν, ἄνθρωπος ] as ‘if a certain man is the measure, much more isGod the measure, for we ought not to live for ourselves but for God, through whom welive.’ You could perhaps also interpret ‘if God is a certain man’ as ‘if he were ever to becomeman’ (si quando fiat homo) and ‘as they say’ (ut ferunt [ὥς φασιν]) as ‘the prophecies of theProphets’, if only this interpretation were accepted among Platonists as pious, as it is amongmany others.



. See Plato, Theaetetus, D, where the goldenstring of Zeus is presented as an absolute measure toargue against the relativism of Protagoras’s theory of man as the measure of all things, and C, whereSocrates mocks the theory by comparing it to the ideaof pigs or baboons as the measure of all things.

. See D. J.-J. Robichaud, ‘Working with Plotinus:A Study of Marsilio Ficino’s Textual and DivinatoryPhilology’, in From Florence to Europe: Teachers, Students,and Scholars of Greek in the Renaissance, ed. F. Cicco-lella and L. Silvano (forthcoming, Leiden or).

. For this manuscript see above, n. .. The origin of the variation was perhaps an

iotacism of the comparative ἤ and the conditionalconjunction εἴ : modern philologists also change enclitic

accents on the upsilon and iota of πού τις.. The two variants found in Ficino’s manuscript,

Florence, Laurenziana MS Plut. . (c), occur inthe so-called Vatican Plato, Vatican City, BAV MSVat. gr. (O), and in Florence, Laurenziana MSPlut. . (a). This is to be expected since (c) is anapograph of (a) and, as demonstrated by Post (as in

n. ), pp. – , the text of the Laws in (a) is a veryaccurate copy of (O). The reading ἤ πού τις occurs asthe principal one in another important Plato manu-script: Paris, BnF MS gr. (A). Post, ibid., pp. – , and idem, ‘The Vatican Plato’, Classical Quarterly,, , pp. – , has demonstrated that (O) isindependent of (A) until Laws v.C, but that never-theless, numerous readings of the text of Laws, books – in (A) are found as variants in the margins of (O).The variant reading ἤ πού τις in (O) is written in a handreferred to by Greene in his Scholia Platonica as (O).Thus Greene (as in n. ), p. , lists the scholion

as: ‘c ἤ πού τις (A: εἴ που τίς O). τοῦ πατριάρχουτὸ βιβλίον· ἤ πού τις (O)’. There is an ongoing argu-ment in the literature on these manuscripts as towhether the scholia in (O) refer to a certain ‘book of the patriarch’; see, most recently and with furtherreferences, M. J. Luzzatto, ‘Emendare Platone nell’antichità. Il Caso del Vaticanus Gr. ’, Quaderni di storia, , , pp. – .

. See above, n. .. See above, n. .j


In the Athenian Stranger’s statement that God is the measure of all things, Ficinonot only reads a critique of Protagoras’s saying (notably in the Theaetetus) thatman is the measure of all things, but goes so far as to find a prophecy for the Incar-nation. His Christological exegesis is, in fact, divinatory philology (emendatio opeingenii ) and is based on his deliberations over the two textual variants found in

Greek manuscripts of the Laws (emendatio ope codicum), indicated by ‘alibi verolegitur’. We find a confirmation of the divinatory reading in Ficino’s letter toBraccio Martelli, ‘Concordia Mosis et Platonis’, where he renders the passagefrom Laws C not as ‘quam quivis homo’ (‘than any man’), as we have it in hisPlato translation, but as ‘si Deus fiat homo’ (‘if a certain man’). Both readings weresuggested to him by his manuscript of the dialogue, now Florence, LaurenzianaMS Plut. .. The text given in the main body of the manuscript is εἴ που τίς(⇒ ‘si quis homo’), above which a scholion indicates the variant reading ἤ πού τις(⇒ ‘quam quivis homo’) (Fig. ). The same two variants are, in fact, found inother Plato manuscripts. Ficino’s philological moves to interpret the passage as

prophetic are as follows: For his Plato translation he chooses the reading ἤ πού τις⇒ ‘quam quivis homo’.

In his Epitome on the Laws, he focuses on the other reading: εἴ που τίς⇒ ‘si quishomo’ ⇒ ‘si quis, ut ferunt, homo est’ ⇒ ‘si Deus aliquis homo est’ ⇒ ‘si quandofiat homo’⇒ ‘si Deus fiat homo’; and in his discussion of this passage, he considersthe interpretation of ὥς φασιν’⇒ ‘ut ferunt’⇒ ‘ut oracula Prophetarum ferunt’.

Then, finally, in his Latin translation of Laws C in ‘Concordia Mosis etPlatonis’, his Commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius and Commentary on St Paul , he hasdistilled these thoughts and settles on the prophetic reading: ‘si Deus fiat homo’.




. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MS Plut. ., fol. v, the beginning of the Laws in Ficino’sGreek manuscript of Plato’s dialogues. The opening scholion is examined in Table

SU CONCESSIONE DEL MIBACT – E’ VIETATA OGNI ULTERIORE RIPRODUZIONE CON QUALSIASI MEZZO




Marsilio Ficino, In dialogum primumDe legibus, quoted from his Opera omnia, vols, Basel (facs. repr. withintroduction by S. Toussaint, Paris ).

Quod autem personam hic Platonis subipso Atheniensis hospitis nomine, et idquidem modestiae gratia lateat, legentideinceps ex multis perspicue apparabit, exeo praecipue, quod affirmabit se geminastractavisse respublicas. (Opera, II, p. )

Atheniensis hospes, id est, Plato profectusin Cretam prope Cnosum off enditMegillum Lacedaemonium, et CliniamCretensem, quem una cum novem aliis

Cnosii accersiverant, ut coloniam indededucerent, urbem conderent, eique legesdarent. Hi ergo duo ad sacrum Iovisantrum consulturi de hoc accedebant:his factus obvius Atheniensis hospes,quidnam acturi irent interrogavit. Illileges excogitaturos esse se responderunt.Verum cum multa de legibus interrogatiab hospite, quaestionem haud satisabsolverent, et hospes illis ad legesaptissimus videretur, obsecraverunt eum,ut ad civitatem legibus instituendam una

cum ipsis adiutor accederet.(Ibid., p. )

Hic ergo non coget homines, si noluerint[voluerint sic. cod.] inter se facere cunctacommunia, permittet ut fieri solet, propriasingulos possidere. Neque tamen cautis-simus auriga noster omnino laxabithabenas. Nam praeter summam aliarum

diligentiam legum, prudentissime sanciet,ne cui liceat ultra certum, et illum quidemmediocrem terminum census amplificare,ne aliis quidem copia, nimia, aliis obsitinopia, neque cogantur, id quod miserabileesse putat, multi inter patriae suae ulnasesse mendici. (Ibid., p.)

Anonymous scholion in Florence,Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana MSPlut. ., fol. v (Fig. ), quotedfrom Scholia Platonica, ed. W. C. Greene,Haverford .

ὁ Ἀθηναῖος οὗτος ξένος πεποίηται νταῦθα εἰςτν Κρήτην πιών, ἔστι δ Πλάτων, ὡς

κ τοῦδε φανερόν. ατὸς γὰρ ὁ Ἀθηναῖοςξένος ν τῷ.. τῶν Νόµων λέγει ὅτι ἤδη ατῷδύο πολιτεῖα προηνύσθησαν· …οὖν οδ’

δύο πολιτεῖα προηνύσθη σ… ἢ οὖν οδ’

κεῖναι Πλάτωνος, ἢ εἰ µ τοῦτο, ὁ ατὸς

ἂν εἴη τῷ Ἀθηναίῳ ξένῳ. οὗτος οὖν εἰςΚρήτην φικόµενος κα περιτυγχάνων ἔξω

πρὸ τῆς Κνωσσοῦ Κλεινίᾳ τε τῷ Κρητ καΜεγίλλῳ τῷ Λακεδαιµονίῳ, πιτετραµµένοιςµν ὑπὸ τῶν τν Κνωσσὸν οἰκούντων ποικίανποιήσασθαι κεῖθεν κα καταστήσασθαι πόλιν νόµους τ προσήκοντας τοῖς πολίταις διαθεῖναι,προσεχῶς δ’ὡρµηµένοις π τὸ τοῦ ∆ιὸςἄντρον, ερὸν τοῦτο γενόµενον ἁγιώτατον,

ν ᾧ τὰ σεπτότατα κα ρρητό τατα τῶνµ υστηρίων πετελεῖτο· περιτυχὼν δ’οὖν ατοῖςὁ ξένος, κα ταῦτα παρ’ατῶν ÷πυθόµενος,[*]

ἤρετο π τούτοις τίνες ἂν εἶεν ο νόµοι· τῶνδ µ δυνηθέντων τελείαν ποδοῦναι τν

τῶν νόµων διάθεσιν, ὁρώντων δ τὸν ξένον εὖ παρεσκευασµένον περ νόµων θέσιν, καπαρακαλούντων συλλήπτορα ατὸν γενέσθαιτῆς πολιτείας, ἄρχεται ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ξένος τῆςτῶν νόµων διαθέσεως· …διαθέσεως· οἷς δ

ξένος τῆς τῶν νόµων … ν οἷς δ οκέτι,ὥσπερ ν τοῖς τῆς µεγάλης Πολιτείας, κοινὰπάντα προστάττει, λλ’ ἑκάστῳ γρὸνπονέµει κα πρὸς τούτῳ οἰκίαν, ἔτι µέντοι κα γυναῖκα ἰδίαν κα παῖδας οκέτι κοινούς,πλν ὅτι οδ ταῦτα όριστα φῆκεν,

λλὰ τοὺς κλήρους εἰς ὡρισµένον ριθµὸνπεριέλαβεν. τεσσα ράκοντα γὰρ κα πέντε τοὺςπάντα κλήρους διανέµειν παρακελεύεται· τνδ’αἰτίαν τοῦ τοσούτου ριθµοῦ γνωσόµεθα,ὅταν ατὸς πιµ νησθῇ …

[*] Ὑπόθεσις] ÷ rasura habet A: continuat O ατῶνπυθόµενος.

(Scholia Platonica, p. )

Table . Comparison of the scholion to the beginning of the Laws in Ficino’s manuscript of the Platonic dialogues, and three passages from his Epitome of Plato’s Laws

Anonymous scholion in Florence,Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MSPlut. ., fol. v (Fig. ), quotedfrom Scholia Platonica, ed. W. C. Greene,Haverford .




. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MS Plut. ., fol. r, showing Laws D– B in Ficino’s Greekmanuscript of Plato’s dialogues. The scholion to Laws E is examined in Table and shown enlarged in Fig.




Table . Comparison of the scholion to Laws E in Ficino’s manuscript of the Platonicdialogues, and two passages from his Epitome to Plato’s Laws


Item ubi ait Deum rerum principia, etfines, et media continere, intellige Deumesse causam rerum efficientem, atquefinalem, servare omnia, omnibusque adesse.

(Opera, II, p. )

Tu vero angelica haec aureaque praeceptaservabis, alta mente reposita. Quod autemmysteria haec antiquo ait sermone constare,Mosaico possumus intelligere. Possumus

quoque et Mercuriali quodam, et Orphico,apud quos eiusmodi multa perlegimus, etilla quidem evidentissima, quae recenseregrandius iam prohibet argumentum. At siOrphicos de Iove, de lege, de iudicio, etiustitia, et Nemesi hymnos legeris, haec adverbum invenies omnia.

(Ibid.)

Anonymous scholion in Florence,Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana MSPlut. ., fol. r (Fig. ), quotedfrom Scholia Platonica, ed. W. C. Greene,Haverford .

Θεὸν µν τὸν δηµιουργὸν σαφῶς, παλαιὸν

δ λόγον λέγει τὸν ’Ορφικόν, ὅς στιν οὗτος -

Ζεὺς ρχή, Ζεὺς µέσσα, ∆ιὸς δ’κ πάντα τέτυκται·

Ζεὺς πύθµην γαίης τε κα ορανοῦ

στεροέντος.κα ρχ µν οὗτος ὡς ποιητικὸν αἴτιον,τελευτ δ ὡς τελικόν, µέσα δ ὡς ξ ἴσουπᾶσι παρών, κἂν πάντα διαφόρως ατοῦµετέχῃ. εθείᾳ δ τὸ κατὰ δίκην σηµαίνει καξίαν, κα παρεγκλίτως, κα οονε κανόνι

ἑνί. τὸ δ περιπορευόµενος τὸ αἰωνίως, τὸ εὡς αὕτως κα κατὰ τὰ ατά· ἡ γὰρ περιφορὰτοῦτο ἔχει ὡς ν αἰσθητοῖς.

(Scholia Platonica, p. )

Anonymous scholion in Florence,Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MSPlut. ., fol. r (Fig. ), quotedfrom Scholia Platonica, ed. W. C. Greene,Haverford .


. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MS Plut. ., fol. r,enlarged detail showing the scholia at Laws E and C





When, at the end of the passage from the Epitome to the Laws quoted above,Ficino speaks of the ‘many others’ who accept such a reading as pious, he isreferring to the interpretations of George of Trebizond and Cardinal Bessarion.In – , George translated Plato’s Laws, the critique of which is found in thefifth book of Bessarion’s In calumniatorem Platonis of . Ficino’s general use of

George and Bessarion’s works while translating Plato has been well established.

The following example, however, shows Ficino not just using previous translationsbut also having doubts about manuscript variants and debating their possiblereadings in a commentary. Concerning Laws C, Bessarion criticises George’stranslation:

Plato also rejects the opinion of Protagoras, who said that man is either the measure, themeasurement or the limit of all things; he also refutes the opinion in the dialogue Theaetetus,where it is written with more reasons and the best ones. ὁ δ θεὸς ἡµ ῖν φασι πάντων χρηµάτωνµέτρον ἂν εἴη µάλιστα, κα πολὺ µᾶλλον ἢ που τίς, ὥς φασιν, ἄνθρωπος. ‘Let God’, he says, ‘befor us the measure of all things, especially all the more than man, as some prefer.’ Translator

[i.e., George of Trebizond]: ‘God therefore is the greatest measure of things and much more,if he is a certain man, as is said.’ Therefore, it is said that in the view of Plato, God is a man,if the translator is to be believed. And because he is a man, he is the measure of all things,which Plato judges that it is impious to attribute to human nature. This is the way he [i.e.,the translator, George of Trebizond] knows the opinions of the philosophers. And this isthe way he understands Plato, whom he reproaches.

One can see from this quotation that Ficino quotes George verbatim in his Epitomewhen considering the correct reading of the passage. Bessarion rejects the variantεἴ που τίς and chooses ἢ που τίς. He therefore finds fault with George for acceptingthe reading εἴ που τίς in his translation; and criticises him for expressing theIncarnation in Plato’s thought, while nonetheless daring to reproach Plato as aphilosopher.

What is most important to retain from Ficino’s reading of the Greek variantsto Laws C in both the manuscript scholion and in George and Bessarion’sdisagreement is that although in his Epitome to the Laws and in his translation of Plato Ficino sides with Bessarion in adopting the variant ἤ πού τις⇒ ‘quam quivishomo’, elsewhere he adopts the second witness, εἴ που τίς ⇒ ‘si quis homo’ ⇒ ‘si


. Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (as inn. ), , pp. – ; Gentile, ‘Note sui manoscrittigreci’ (as in n. ); F. Pagani, ‘Platonis Leges GeorgioTrapezuntio interprete. Introduzione, edizione critica

e appendici’, Tesi di perfezionamento, Pisa, ScuolaNormale Superiore .

. Bessarion, In calumniatorem Platonis, Venice, fol. v: ‘Item Plato sententiam reiicit Prota-gorae, qui hominem esse dicebat modum sivemensuram aut metam rerum omnium, quamsententiam in sermone quoque, qui Theaetetusinscribitur pluribus atque optimis rationibus confutat.ὁ δ θεὸς ἡµῖν φασι πάντων χρηµάτων µέτρον ἂν εἴηµάλιστα, κα πολὺ µᾶλλον ἢ που τίς, ὥς φασιν, ἄνθρωπος.“Deus”, inquit, “sit nobis meta omnium rerum in

primis, longeque magis, quam homo, ut aliquivolunt.” Interpres: “Deus igitur omnium mensuramaxime rerum est, multoque magis, siquis, ut fertur,homo est.” Ergo Deum hominem esse fertur Platonis

sententia, si credendum est interpreti. Et quoniamhomo est, meta est omnium rerum quod Platonaturae humanae tribui nefas arbitratur. Ita hicopiniones novit philosophorum. Ita Platonem, quemreprehendit, intelligit.’

. See, e.g., a manuscript copy of George of Trebizond’s translation: Munich, Bayerische Staats-bibliothek, Clm , fol. v: ‘Deus igitur omniummensura maxime rerum est, multoque magis siquisut fertur homo est.’ It is possible that George was notaware of the dogmatic implications of his translation.



Deus fiat homo’, in order to conclude that Plato prophesised the Incarnation.Ficino thus chooses a more conservative reading of the variants in his philologicalcollation of the text when he translates it, but permits himself to push the bound-aries of orthodoxy in his exegesis of the passage’s dogmatic meaning.

I have already off ered a first instance of Ficino adopting the second divinatory

reading in his letter to Braccio Martelli, ‘Concordia Mosis et Platonis’. He confirmsthis in two other, later works. In the third chapter of his incomplete commentaryon St Paul’s epistles, on which he worked late in life, he addresses the reasons whythe Logos came to mankind:

The large epistle, too, testifies that the Word, the divine light and the life of God itself descended to human senses—ears, eyes, hands—so that men through the Son would beunited happily with the heavenly Father [ John . – ]. Certain ancient prophets seem to havedivined something similar, where they introduce some of the gods in human form, saving andhelping men. Why, however, God, having made his Son a man, wished him to be sacrificedfor mankind, we will reveal as follows with Paul. It seems also that our Plato touched in theLaws on something which pertains to the human nature assumed by God, where he says:‘Man is not the measure of all things, but God is, indeed especially if God becomes man (si Deus fiat homo).’

Ficino here quotes verbatim the divinatory reading of the Greek variant of Cto support a Pauline interpretation of the Incarnation in Plato. Likewise, in hiscommentary on Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s On the Divine Names, completed

around – , he makes use of precisely the same variant to demonstrate thatthe second person of the Trinity is proclaimed in Plato’s Laws:

After this, Dionysius says that the eternal Son of God with wonderful benevolence assumedfor himself human nature and at the same time did not change in any way. The Platonist

Amelius venerated this mystery while recalling the Gospel of John; Plato, moreover, arguingagainst Protagoras, said that ‘man is not the measure of all things, but God is, indeedespecially if God becomes man (si Deus fiat homo)’. We have also discussed the reasonsbehind this mystery in our book De Christiana religione.

. See Gentile’s discussion of Ficino’s use of twovariants in the Orphic hymn in his ‘In margine’ and‘Nello “scriptorium” ficiniano’ (as in n. ).

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘In epistola quoquemagna, verbum lumenque divinum et ipsam Deivitam ad sensus humanos, aures, oculos, manus,descendisse testatur, ut homines per filium cumpatre coelesti feliciter iungerentur. Simile quiddam

antiqui vates augurati videntur, ubi Deorum aliquemintroducunt sub humana figura homines salutantematque iuvantem. Cur autem Deus filium factum tamhominem, pro hominibus sacrificari voluerit, insequentibus cum Paulo declarabimus. Videtur etiamPlato noster nonnihil ad humanitatem a Deo assump-tam pertinens, in legibus attigisse, ubi ait: “Mensurarerum omnium non homo, sed Deus est, maxime verosi Deus fiat homo.” ’

. On Ficino and Pseudo-Dionysius see S.Toussaint, ‘L’influence de Ficin à Paris et le Pseudo-

Denys des humanistes: Traversari, Cusain, Lefèvred’Étaples. Suivi d’un passage inédit de Marsile Ficin’,Bruniana et Campanelliana, , , pp. – ; C.Vasoli, ‘L’Un-Bien dans le commentaire de Ficin à la

Mystica Theologia du Pseudo-Denys, in Marsile Ficin et les Platonismes à la Renaissance, ed. P. Magnard, Paris, pp. – ; M. Cristiani, ‘Dionigi dionisiaco:Marsilio Ficino e il Corpus Dionysianum’, in Il Neo-

platonismo nel Rinascimento, ed. P. Prini, Rome ,pp. – ; P. M. Watts, ‘Pseudo-Dionysius theAreopagite and Three Renaissance Neoplatonists:Cusanus, Ficino, and Pico on Mind and Cosmos’, inSupplementum Festivum, ed. J. Hankins, J. Monfasaniand F. Purnell Jr., Binghamton , pp. – .

. Ficino, Opera, , p. . This passage is alsonow available in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,De mystica theologia, De divinis nominibus, tr. MarsilioFicino, ed. P. Podolak, Naples , p. (De divinisnominibus, . – ): ‘Post hec Dionysius eternum




In the exegesis from these two later theological commentaries, then, Ficinosanctions reading the Incarnation into Plato’s dogmas through his divinatoryphilology of Laws C.

As we would expect, Ficino is also very familiar with the loci classici dealingwith the comparisons between Johannine theology and Platonic philosophy. For

this, his exegetical needs are served by Confessions . and by fragments foundin Eusebius’s Praeparatio evangelica, on Plotinus’s first pupil Amelius and hisjudgement on the prologue of John’s Gospels. In his De Christiana religione,Ficino again quotes the fragment of the Tuscan Amelius from Eusebius, but on thisoccasion he combines it with an anecdote from De civitate Dei ., about anunnamed Platonist who, as related by Simplicianus, had praised the opening linesfrom the prologue:

The Platonist Amelius read him [ John] and swore by Jove that this barbarian man, that is,this Jew, immediately understood what Plato and Heraclitus debated about the divine reason,principle and disposition of things. Simplicianus said that he heard a certain Platonist say

that the prologue of his Gospel should be written in golden letters at the apex of templeseverywhere.

Not much is known about this anonymous Platonist beyond Augustine’s anecdotebut, as Heinrich Dörrie explains, his approval of the prologue to John’s Gospel wasalmost certainly meant in an adversarial manner, his wish being to teach Christians

the true Platonic nature of their sacred texts. When we turn to De civitate Dei ., it is clear that Augustine is making a similar claim to that of Confessions .,for he states immediately afterwards that despite recognising an affinity or evenidentifying the Johannine Logos with the Platonic one, the Platonists arrogantlyrefuse to accept the Incarnation:


Dei filium, inquit, benignitate mirifica humanam sibinaturam assumpsisse nullo interim modo mutatum:mysterium hoc Platonicus Amelius Evangelium Iohan-nis commemorans veneratur; Plato quinetiam contraProtagoram disputans non hominem, inquit, essererum omnium mensuram, sed Deum, maxime verosi Deus fiat homo. Rationes autem mysterii huius inlibro De Christiana religione tractavimus.’ See DeChristiana religione, ch. XXXV (Ficino, Opera, , p. ),and the discussion below of Ficino’s use of Amelius.For Ficino’s writings on the Incarnation in general in

this work see esp. chs XV–XXIII (Opera, , pp. – ).. Ficino mentions Amelius in the following

locations:Opera, , pp. , , , , and , pp. ,, , , , ; Platonic Theology (as inn. ), ..; Supplementum Ficinianum (as in n. ), ,p. . On Amelius see esp. L. Brisson, ‘Amélius: Savie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, son style’, in Aufstieg und

Niedergang der Römischen Welt , T., Principat , Bd. .,Principate . Philosophie, Wissenschaftem, Technik; Philo-sophie, ed. W. Haase and H. Temporini, Berlin ,pp. – , and the works cited there; K. Corrigan,

‘Amelius, Plotinus and Porphyry on Being, Intellectand the One’, ibid., pp. – . On Amelius and theGospel of John see H. Dörrie, ‘Une exégèse néopla-tonicienne du Prologue de l’Évangile de saint Jean(Amélius chez Eus., Prép. év.,, , – )’, in Epektasis.

Mélanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Daniélou,ed. J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser, Paris , pp. – , now in Platonica minora, ed. idem, Munich, pp. – ; Amelius, Neoplatonici fragmenta,ed. A. N. Zoumpos, Athens .

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘quod eum legeret

Amelius Platonicus, per Iovem iuravit, virum illumBarbarum, id est, Iudaeum, breviter comprehendisse,quae de ratione divina, principio, dispositionequererum Plato et Heraclitus disputaverunt. Simplicianusait, Platonicum quendam audisse dicentem Evangeliihuius prooemium ubique in templorum apicibus literisaureis scribendum esse.’

. Dörrie (as in n. ). He compares the anony-mous Platonist with Amelius in order to present ananalogous interpretation of the Eusebius fragment.



For this reason, among the proud, God, that great master, becomes worthless because ‘theWord was made flesh and dwelt among us’; so it is not enough for these miserable ones thatthey are sick, unless they also extol themselves in their melancholy and are ashamed of theremedy which could cure them. For they do not act in order to be raised but to be afflictedmore gravely in their fall.

Ficino’s strategy remains diff erent from Augustine’s. He quotes the fragments of Amelius and of Simplicianus’s anonymous Platonist so as to underscore their assentto the mystery of the Incarnation, which, he says, made a union between the lowlyand the heavenly:

For just as they were the most mild in their way of life, and the most courageous and stead-fast in the face of trials and labours, so they were, in equal measure, humble and lofty inspeech. The philosophers think that unions of these kind are beyond nature. So, therefore,Christ, their master, as he had promised, transformed those rustics and fishermen intofishermen of men.

Appropriately enough, Ficino’s account of the Old Athenian Stranger in theletter to Martelli, ‘Concordia Mosis et Platonis’ begins with the famous quotationfrom Eusebius’s Praeparatio evangelica, where he cites the opinion of the Pyth-agorean Platonist Numenius that Plato was none other than Moses speaking inAttic Greek.The fates and reputations of Numenius and Amelius had been linkedtogether since antiquity. Porphyry tells us that Amelius, who wrote a work defending

Plotinus against the charge of having plagiarised Numenius, copied, studied andmemorised Numenius’s writings; Iamblichus seems to have associated Numeniusand Amelius in a now lost work refuting both of them; and, perhaps most import-antly for Ficino, Eusebius quotes the fragments which record the two philosophers’

. Augustine, De civitate Dei , .: ‘Sed ideo viluitsuperbis Deus ille magister, quia Verbum caro factumest et habitavit in nobis; ut parum sit miseris quodaegrotant, nisi se etiam in ipsa aegritudine extollantet de medicina, qua sanari poterant, erubescant. Nonenim hoc faciunt ut erigantur, sed ut cadendo graviusaffligantur.’

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Sicut enim in con-versatione fuerunt mitissimi, in periculis autem etlaboribus fortissimi, et constantissimi, ita in loquendohumillimi [Opera: humilimi] pariter et excelsi. Coni-unctiones huiusmodi philosophi supra naturam essecensent. Sic ergo rusticos illos, et Piscatores magistereorum Christus, quod promiserat, piscatores hominum

reddidit.’. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Numenius Pythagoricus

quem Origines non solum Pythagoricis, verum etiamPhilosophis pene omnibus anteponit, cum et Mosaicoset Platonicos legisset libros, ait se in Platone Mosemagnovisse, nihilque aliud esse Platonem, quam alterumMosem Attica lingua loquentem.’ The saying attrib-uted to Numenius of Apamea is found in Eusebius,Praeparatio evangelica, ..; and in Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, ... Ficino also quotesthis famous adage when interpreting the Laws in his

Platonic Theology (as in n. ), , p. (..).Giovanni Pico della Mirandola makes a similarequation between the Laws and the Old Testamentin his third conclusion about Plato’s doctrine; see his

Neuf cents conclusions, philosophiques, cabalistiques et théologiques, ed. B. Schefer, Paris , p. (no.). For Numenius see esp. his Fragments (as in n.); K. S. Guthrie, Numenius of Apamea, the Fatherof New-Platonism: Works, Biography, Message, Sources,and Influence, London ; E. R. Dodds, ‘Numeniusand Ammonius’, in idem et al., Les sources de Plotin:dix exposés et discussions, Geneva , pp. – ; G.Invernizzi, ‘Lo stato attuale degli studi su Numeniodi Apamea’, Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica, , ,

pp. – ; J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, Ithaca, NY, pp. – ; D. O’Meara, Pythagoras Revived ,Oxford , pp. – ; P. P. Fuentes González, s.v.‘Nouménios d’Apamée’, in Dictionnaire des philosophesantiques, , ed. R. Goulet, Paris , pp. – .Ficino mentions Numenius in the following locations:Opera, , pp. , , , , , , , , and ,pp. , , , – , ; Platonic Theology(as in n. ), .., .., .., .., ..,..; Supplementum Ficinianum (as in n. ), , p..




opinions about Christianity in close proximity in book of the Praeparatioevangelica, which contains a limited, but positive, comparison of Hebrew sourceswith the philosophy of Plato and the Greeks.The two were also closely linked byFicino, who ends his letter to Martelli with a reference to the Amelius fragment.It serves as an appropriate counterweight to the letter’s opening quotation from

the Numenius fragment:But what shall I say about Amelius? He collects into a few words and admires all of thatprologue of John’s Gospel which is read daily in sacred worship. This is what they do; butyou, Martelli, once you have entered the Academy and accepted these mysteries from theheroes inside, in addition to many other greater mysteries which a letter cannot contain,perhaps you will cry out ‘Good’ with the voice of Peter: ‘It is good to be here; let us make, tabernacles.’

When we recall that Ficino is here characterising the philosophers whom Martelliwill encounter when he proceeds through the Academy, it is striking to find Ameliussituated at the end of the list of ‘those who speak in the tongue of Plato’, reading

in common worship the Gospel of John (‘in sacris quotidie legitur’). Since theprologue of John is read ex Platonicorum persona, the scene resembles a type of communicatio in sacris with the Platonists. Nor should we pass over the fact that theletter closes with Martelli proclaiming a passage from the transfiguration (Matthew.), when Jesus, Moses and Elias appear before Peter, James and John; butwhereas Peter speaks of three tabernacles, Ficino here mentions ,.

Édouard des Places has demonstrated that Eusebius’s Praeparatio evangelicawas one of the most important ancient sources to make extensive use of Plato’sLaws, so much so that the large fragments of the dialogue preserved there areimportant witnesses to the text’s indirect traditions. John Monfasani has shown

that Ficino read George of Trebizond’s translation of the Preparatio Evangelica andthat he often used Eusebius for un-Eusebian purposes. Examining the Numenius

and Amelius fragments from the letter to Martelli, the reader is confronted withcurious pre-modern approaches to the Platonic question and prosopopoeia. For


. Brisson, ‘Amélius’ (as in n. ), pp. – ;he also notes the hypothesis that Amelius followedin Numenius’s footsteps by moving to Apamea laterin life.

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Sed quid de Ameliodicam? Hic proemium illud Evangelii Ioannis quodin sacris quotidie legitur, paucis totum colligit atqueadmiratur. Haec illi. Tu vero Martelle, postquam

academiam ingressus mysteria haec ab his heroibusintus acceperis, ac insuper alia plura atque maiora,quae non capit Epistola, forsitan Petri voce Bonumclamabis. Bonum est hic esse, faciamus tria taber-naculorum millia.’

. Ibid.: ‘hi qui Platonis lingua loquuntur.’. Although they mistakenly emend Amelius into

Aurelius (St Augustine), the translators of Ficino’sletters propose an interesting reading of his changefrom three to , tabernacles by comparing it tothe , souls converted to Christianity during

Pentecost (Acts .); see Marsilio Ficino, The Letters,, London , pp. – .

. Des Places’s various studies on the indirecttraditions of the Laws are now collected in his ÉtudesPlatoniciennes (as in n. ), pp. – .

. J. Monfasani, ‘Marsilio Ficino and Eusebius of Caesarea’s Praeparatio Evangelica’, Rinascimento, ,, pp. – . Ficino does not quote the anecdote

about Numenius from George verbatim. There arediff erences which could perhaps be explained byvariants of in the manuscripts and printed editionsof George’s text (which I have not verified). It is alsopossible that since Ficino knew the passage very well,he may have been quoting it from memory; or that,additionally, he knew the passage in Greek, from amanuscript which is yet to be identified. Monfasani’sargument is analogous to Allen’s regarding Augustine,for which see above at n. .




Eusebius, the Athenian lawgiver is inferior to the Hebrew lawgiver, whereas forFicino, both Moses and Plato are inspired mouthpieces for the prefiguration of thesame divine law.

When comparing Christianity to Platonism, Augustine sometimes uses proso-popoeic exegetical techniques similar to the one he employs in Confessions . tocompare the Gospel of John to the Platonicorum libri . For instance, in De ordine.., Augustine claims that Christ himself (‘ipse Christus’) agrees with thePlatonists regarding the distinction between the sensible and intelligible worlds,because rather than saying ‘my kingdom is not of the world’, he says ‘my kingdomis not of this world’ ( John .). In his later Retractationes, however, Augustinecensures the youthful De ordine since in it he expressed a Platonic notion ex personaChristi et Christiani , instead of stating it ‘ex Platonicorum persona’:

But it displeases me that in these books [De ordine] … I said that philosophers who were

never endowed with true piety shone with the light of virtue, and I judged that there are twoworlds, one sensible and another intelligible, not from the persona of Plato or the Platonistsbut from my own [ persona], as though the Lord also wished to say this, since he does notsay ‘my kingdom is not of the world’ but ‘my kingdom is not of this world.’

In book of De civitate Dei , Augustine famously proclaims that the Platonists,above all other philosophers, are the closest to Christianity. He also concludes theContra Academicos by proclaiming encouragingly: ‘I am sure in the meantime thatwhat I will find among the Platonists does not disagree with our Sacred Scriptures.’Ficino quotes this passage along with other loci classici in his De vita platonis, tosupport the opinion that Plato was equal to the gods in penetrating the inner

sanctum of theology (‘divinarum rerum adyta’).

Yet in the Retractationes, simi-larly to the way he faults De ordine because in it he made Christ speak Platonicdogmas, Augustine reproaches himself for having praised the Platonists in Contra

Academicos: especially since, as he now contends, it is principally against the errorsof these impious philosophers which Christian doctrines ought to be defended.

It is chiefly because of their propinquity to Christianity that Augustine believesthat the Platonists deceive and lead us astray. Verisimilitude, which he tells us is acentral tenet of the Platonists, may resemble truth but is certainly not identical toit. Yet it can still perniciously mask itself as truth.

. Augustine, De ordine, ..: ‘Esse autem

alium mundum ab istis oculis remotissimum, quempaucorum sanorum intellectus intuetur, satis ipseChristus significat, qui non dicit: Regnum meum nonest de mundo sed: Regnum meum non est de hocmundo.’

. Augustine, Retractationes, ..: ‘Verum et inhis libris displicet mihi … quod philosophos non verapietate praeditos dixi virtutis luce fulsisse; et quod duos

mundos, unum sensibilem alterum intellegibilem,non ex Platonis vel ex Platonicorum persona, sed exmea sic commendavi, tamquam hoc etiam Dominus

significare voluerit, quia non ait: “Regnum meum non

est de mundo”, sed “Regnum meum non est de hocmundo”.’ For a discussion of this passage see Pépin(as in n. ), pp. xiii, – , .

. Augustine, De civitate Dei , .: ‘eos [Platonici]omnes ceteris anteponimus eosque nobis propinqui-ores fatemur’.

. Augustine, Contra Academicos, ..: ‘…apud Platonicos me interim, quod sacris nostris nonrepugnet, reperturum esse confido’. Ficino, Opera, ,p. .

. Augustine, Retractationes, ...



There is no equivalent in Ficino’s oeuvre to Augustine’s Retractationes since

he still quotes the ‘Si Deus fiat homo’ variant from Laws C in his final work,his commentaries on St Paul. Perhaps his exhortatio to the audience for histranslation and commentary of Plotinus’s Enneads best exemplifies how Ficinotreads on the exegetical fault line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Allen rightly

notes a parallel between Ficino’s exhortatio to Plotinus and Contra Academicos.., where Augustine says:

… that expression of Plato (os illud Platonis), which is the purest and most lucid in philosophy,the clouds of error having parted, became apparent especially in Plotinus, the Platonicphilosopher who was judged so similar to him that it was thought that both lived (vixisse) atthe same time, but since so much time stood between them, one ought to think that helived again in him (in hoc ille revixisse).

Ficino, in introducing Plotinus, engages in the same kind of prosopopoeic exegesiswhich we have seen in Augustine’s Confessions ., De ordine .. and thepassage from Contra Academicos just quoted. The textual parallels are apparent:the terminology ‘os illud Platonis’ from Contra Academicos is repeated by Ficinoin the exhortatio in order to present his audience with a brief spiritual lineage,beginning with Plato, continuing with Plotinus, and ending with himself.

Firstly, all of you who come to hear the divine Plotinus, I urge you to consider that you aregoing to hear Plato himself speaking in the persona of Plotinus (sub Plotini persona). For eitherPlato was at one time reincarnated in Plotinus, which the Pythagoreans will easily grant us,or the same daemon first inspired Plato, then Plotinus, which the Platonists will not deny.It is altogether the same spirit which breathes both in the mouth (os) of Plato and in that of Plotinus … . Thus, the same divinity pours out divine oracles for mankind through the mouth(os) of both of them, and in both cases the oracles are worthy of some very wise interpreter.


. Augustine levels the accusation against Por-phyry in De civitate Dei , . See, e.g., .: ‘O theurgiapraeclara, o animae praedicanda purgatio, ubi plusimperat inmunda invidentia, quam inpetrat pura bene- ficientia! Immo vero malignorum spirituum cavendaet detestanda fallacia, et salutaris audienda doctrina.Quod enim qui has sordidas purgationes sacrilegisritibus operantur quasdam mirabiliter pulchras, sicutiste [Porphyry] commemorat, vel Angelorum imaginesvel deorum tamquam purgato spiritu vident (si tamenvel tale aliquid vident), illud est, quod Apostolus dicit:“Quoniam satanas transfigurat se velut angelum lucis”

[II Corinthians .]. Eius enim sunt illa phantasmata,qui miseras animas multorum falsorumque deorumfallacibus sacris cupiens inretire et a vero veri Deicultu, quo solo mundantur et sanantur, avertere,sicut de Proteo dictum est, “formas se uertit in omnes[Virgil, Georgics, IV.], hostiliter insequens, fallacitersubueniens, utrobique nocens”’. For Augustine, thePlatonists can cast their own nets for souls. On Augus-tine’s use of Proteus to characterise the relationship of truth and verisimilitude while discussing the Platonists

see also his Contra Academicos, .. – ..

. Augustine, Contra Academicos, ..: ‘os illudPlatonis, quod in philosophia purgatissimum est etlucidissimum, dimotis nubibus erroris emicuit maximein Plotino, qui Platonicus philosophus ita eius similisiudicatus est, ut simul eos vixisse, tantum auteminterest temporis, ut in hoc ille revixisse putandus sit.’See also Allen, Synoptic Art (as in n. ), p. .

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Principio vosomnes admoneo, qui divinum audituri Plotinumhuc acceditis, ut Platonem ipsum sub Plotini personaloquentem vos audituros existimetis. Sive enim Platoquondam in Plotini revixit, quod facile nobis Pytha-

gorici dabunt, sive Daemon idem Platonem quidemprius afflavit, deinde vero Plotinum, quod Platonicinulli negabunt, omnino aspirator idem os Platonicumafflat atque Plotinicum. Sed in Platone quidemafflando spiritum eff undit uberiorem, in Plotino autemflatum angustiorem, ac ne augustiorem dixerim, saltem

non minus augustum, nonnunquam ferme profun-diorem. Idem itaque numen per os utrunque humanogeneri divina fundit oracula, utrobique sagacissimoquodam interprete digna.’



When Ficino addresses the Platonic question, he does not limit his investigationthe dialogues. He stretches the question’s boundaries to include later writers,interpreters and commentators, so that it becomes a Neoplatonic question. Platohimself becomes the prosopopoeic mouthpiece for an anonymous spiritual ordaemonic voice which speaks in personis Platonis, Plotinique Ficini .

As we have seen, Ficino ends the letter to Martelli, ‘Concordia Mosis etPlatonis’, by modifying a quotation from Matthew .. He likewise reveals thetheological implications of his prosopopoeic rhetoric at the end of his exhortatio,by making Plato proclaim with regard to Plotinus the words from Matthew .,where a voice from the heavens reports the divine filiation in the words of Godthe Father during the Transfiguration of Christ: ‘Hic est filius meus dilectus.’

Changing a passage from the Gospels which is expressed ex persona Dei (to usepatristic exegetical terminology) so that it is voiced ex persona Platonis was too muchto bear for Ficino’s later editors, who cut and bowlderised the passage. Theπρόσωπα of the Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—are put in the mouth of

Plato, who is speaking and who is also subsumed in a Neoplatonic prosopopoeictriadic lineage of three persons: Plato, Plotinus and Ficino. In short, for Ficino,revealing Plato’s πρόσωπον as the Athenian Stranger also reveals Christ’s πρόσωπονin the Trinity in Platonism.

The dogma of the Incarnation, then, is the necessary truth of Christianity andremains the dividing line between Christianity and ancient Platonism. It stands asthe central link, or way, bridging the infinite divide between the Christian creatorand creation. Unlike late ancient Neoplatonists, Christians must face an infinitechasm between themselves and the divine—a distance produced by creation exnihilo and only mediated by the descent of the incarnate Christ and grace. As such,the Incarnation is both a historical and an ontological truth; and Ficino’s philo-logical and exegetical identification of the Incarnation in the Platonic corpus istherefore divinatory on the condition that Plato is said to have expressed this dogma(εἴ που τίς ⇒ ‘si Deus fiat homo’) in his own voice avant la lettre. Ficino likes toquote from De vera religione, where Augustine speculates that if Plato and hispre-Christian followers were to live after Christ, they would become Christians:

thus if these men [Plato and Platonists] were able to return to live again with us, they wouldsurely see whose authority is easily consulted by men and, changing only a few words andthoughts, they would become Christians, just as many Platonists have done in our morerecent age.

. Ficino, Opera, , p. : ‘Et vos Platonemipsum exclamare sic erga Plotinum existimetis: Hicest filius meus dilectus, in quo mihi undique placeo,ipsum audite.’ Cf. Matthew ., during the Baptismof Christ. See H. D. Saff rey, ‘Florence, : TheReappearance of Plotinus’, Renaissance Quarterly,, , pp. – , now in idem, Le Néoplatonismeaprès Plotin, Paris , pp. – ; Wind (as in n. ),p. .

. The Basel edition by Pietro Perna bowd-lerises the passage, changing ‘filius’ into ‘discipulum’;

see Plotinus, Opera omnia, tr. and comment. MarsilioFicino, Basel (facs. edn Enghien ), sig. ar.G. F. Creuzer, in his Oxford edition of theEnneads, replaced the passage with the Odyssey’sdescription of Tiresias: ‘He alone is wise, the othershover like shades’ (Odyssey, x.); see Saff rey, ‘TheReappearance of Plotinus’ (as in n. ), pp. – ,where Creuzer’s emendation is quoted.

. See the works cited in n. .. Augustine, De vera religione, .: ‘Ita si hanc

vitam illi viri nobiscum rursum agere potuissent,




It turns out that for Ficino, rather than a few, only one word in the Greek variantto Laws C needs to be changed in order to make Plato a Christian.

University of Notre Dame


viderent profecto cuius auctoritate facilius consu-leretur hominibus, et paucis mutatis verbis atque

sententiis Christiani fierent, sicut plerique recentiorumnostrorumque temporum Platonici fecerunt.’

Marsilio Ficino's 'Si Deus Fiat Homo' and Augustine's 'Non Ibi Legi' - The Incarnation and Plato's Persona in the Scholia to the Laws

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