Cæsar was first rendered into Italian by Agost. Ortica, the translator of Sallust. He says, in the preface, that his version was executed in a very hurried manner, as it was transcribed and printed all in the course of six months. Argelati could not ascertain the date of the most ancient edition, which was printed at Milan, but he thinks that it was as old as the fifteenth century[647]. This impression was followed by not fewer than twelve others, before the middle of the sixteenth century. A subsequent translation, by F. Baldelli, appeared at Venice, 1554. This edition was, succeeded by many others, particularly one at Venice in 1595, quarto, of which Palladio, the great architect, took charge. He inserted in it various engravings of battles, encampments, sieges, and other military operations, from plates which had been executed by his two sons, Leonida and Orazio, and had come into his hands soon after their premature decease. He prepared the edition chiefly for the sake of introducing these designs, and thereby honouring the memory of his children. To this edition there is a preface by Palladio on the military affairs of the Romans, their legions, arms, and encampments. A splendid impression of Baldelli’s version, accompanied with Palladio’s designs, was thrown off at Venice in 1619. In 1737, a translation appeared at Venice, bearing to be printed from an ancient MS. of Cæsar, in Italian, which the editor says he had discovered, (where he does not specify,) and had in some few places corrected and modernized. Paitoni has exposed this literary fraud, and has shown, that it is just the translation of Baldelli, with a few words altered at the beginning of paragraphs. In some respects, however, it is a good edition, containing various tables and notices conducive to the proper understanding of the author.
We have seen that several translations of the Latin classics were executed by order of the French king, John. Charles V., who succeeded him in 1364, was a still warmer patron of learning, and was himself tolerably versed in Latin literature. “Tant que compettement,” says Christine de Pise, in her Memoirs of him, “entendoit son Latin.” By his order and directions the first French translation of Cæsar was undertaken[648]. But the earliest French translation of Cæsar’s Commentaries which was printed, was that of Robert Gaguin, dedicated to Charles VIII. and published in 1488. Of the recent French versions the most esteemed is that by Turpin de Crissi, accompanied by historical and critical notes, and printed at Montargis, 1785.
The part of Cæsar’s Commentaries which relates to the Gallic wars was translated into English as early as 1565, by Arthur Golding, who dedicated his work to Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh. In 1695, a translation of the whole Commentaries was printed with the following title: “The Commentaries of Cæsar, of his Wars in Gallia, and of the Civil Wars betwixt him and Pompey, with many excellent and judicious Observations thereupon; as also, the Art of our Modern Training; by Clement Edmonds, Esq.” The best translation is that by “William Duncan, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen, printed at London, 1755,” with a long preliminary Discourse concerning the Roman Art of War.
CICERO.
Some of Cicero’s orations were studied harangues, which he had prepared and written over previous to their delivery. This, however, was not the case with the greater proportion of his speeches, most of which were pronounced without much premeditation, but were afterwards copied out, with such corrections and embellishments as bestowed on them a greater polish and lustre than when they had originally fallen from his lips. Before the invention of printing had increased the means of satisfying public curiosity, as no oration was given to the world but by the author himself, he had always the power of altering and improving by his experience of the effect it produced at delivery. Pliny informs us, that many things on which Cicero had enlarged at the time when he actually spoke in the Senate and the Forum, were retrenched when he ultimately gave his orations to the public in writing[649]. Cicero himself had somewhere declared, that the defence of Cornelius had occupied four days, whence Pliny concludes, that those orations which, when delivered at full length, took up so much time at the bar, were greatly altered and abridged, when he afterwards comprised them in a single volume. The orations, in particular, for Muræna and Varenus, he says, seem now to contain merely the general heads of a discourse. Sometimes, however, they were extended and not curtailed, by the orator in the closet, as was confessedly the case in the defence of Milo. A few of the orations which Cicero had delivered, he did not consider as at all worthy of preservation. Thus, of the oration for Dejotarus, he says, in one of his letters to Dolabella, “I did not imagine that I had preserved among my papers the trifling speech which I made in behalf of Dejotarus; however, I have found it, and sent it to you, agreeably to your request[650].” This accounts for many speeches of Cicero, the delivery of which is recorded in history, being now lost. It appears, however, that those which he considered deserving of his care, though they may be widely different from the state in which they were originally pronounced, came pure from the hand of the author, either in the shape in which he would have wished to have delivered them, or in that which he considered best adapted for publication and perusal. They were probably transcribed by himself, and copies of them multiplied by his freedmen, such as Tyro and Tyrannio, whom he had accustomed to accurate transcription. His orations had also the good fortune to meet, at a very early period, with a judicious and learned commentator in the person of Asconius Pedianus, a grammarian in the reign of Nero, part of whose Commentary was discovered by Poggio, along with other classical works, in the monastery of St Gall, near Constance.
All the orations of Cicero were not lost during the middle ages. Pope Gerbert, in one of his letters, asks from the Abbot Gesilbert a copy of the concluding part of the speech for Dejotarus; and he writes to another of his correspondents, to bring him Cicero’s treatise De Republicâ, and the Orations against Verres, “Comitentur iter tuum Tulliana opuscula, et de Republicâ et in Verrem[651]:” Brunetto Latini, who died in 1294, translated into Italian the orations for Dejotarus, Marcellus, and Ligarius, which were afterwards printed at Lyons in 1568[652]. These three harangues [pg A-52]being in a great measure complimentary addresses to Cæsar, and containing no sentiment but what might be safely expressed in presence of an unlimited sovereign, more transcripts had been made of them in Rome’s tyrannical ages, than of those orations which breathed forth the expiring spirit of liberty.
Cicero was the idol of Petrarch, the great restorer of classical literature. He never could speak of him but in terms of deep and enthusiastic admiration. The sweetness and sonorousness of Tully’s periods charmed his ear; and though unable to penetrate the depths of his philosophy, yet his vigorous fancy often soared with the Roman orator into the highest regions of imagination. Hence, while eager for the discovery of all the classics, his chief diligence was exercised in endeavouring to preserve such works of Cicero as were then known, and to recover such as were lost[653]. Petrarch received in loan from Lapo of Castiglionchio a copy of several of Cicero’s orations, among which were the Philippics, and the oration for Milo. These he kept by him for four years, that he might transcribe them with his own hand, on account of the blunders of the copyists in that age. This we learn from the letters of Lapo, published by the Abbé Mehus. Coming to Liege when about twenty-five years of age, that is, in 1329, Petrarch remained there till two orations of Cicero, which he had discovered in that city, were transcribed, one by his own hand, and another by a friend, both of which were immediately transmitted by him to Italy. He was detained at Liege for some time by the difficulty of procuring even the worst sort of ink. Several other orations of Cicero were discovered by Petrarch in different parts of Italy.
Dominico Arretino, who was nearly contemporary with Petrarch, declares, in one of his works, entitled Fons, that he had seen eleven of Cicero’s orations, and that a person had told him that he actually possessed and had read twenty of them[654]. It appears, however, that in the time of Cosmo de Medici those works of Cicero which were extant were very much corrupted. “Illorum librorum,” says Niccolo Niccoli, speaking of some of the works of Cicero, “magna pars interierit, hi vero qui supersunt adeo mendosi sunt, ut paulo ab interitu distent;” hence, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the discovery of a new MS. of Cicero was hailed as a new acquisition. At Langres, in a library of the monks of Clugni, in Burgundy, Poggio found the oration for Cæcina, which he immediately transcribed, and sent various copies of it to his friends in Italy. In the monasteries around Constance he discovered the two orations against Rullus, De Lege Agrariâ, and that to the people on the same subject; also the orations Pro Rabirio, and Pro Roscio. A note on the MS. copy of the oration in Pisonem, preserved in the abbey of Santa Maria, in Florence, records the fact of this harangue having been likewise discovered by Poggio[655].
A compendium of Cicero’s treatise De Inventione was well known in the dark ages, having been translated into Italian, in an abridged form, in the thirteenth century, by a professor of Bologna. This was almost the first prose work which had appeared in the language, and was printed at Lyons with the Ethica d’Aristotile, by Brunetto Latini, who also translated the first book De Inventione[656]. Lupus of Ferrieres possessed a copy of Cicero’s Rhetorica, as he himself informs us[657], but it was incomplete; and he accordingly asks Einhart, who had been his preceptor, for the loan of his MS. of this work, in order that his own might be perfected. Ingulphus, who flourished in England towards the close of the eleventh century, declares, that he was sent from Westminster to the school at Oxford, where he learned Aristotle, and the first two books of Tully’s Rhetorica[658]. Now, if the first two books of the Rhetorica, which are all that have hitherto been discovered, were used as an elementary work in the public school at Oxford, they can hardly be supposed to have been very scarce in Italy. From the jurisconsult, Raymond Superantius, or Sorranza, to whom he had been indebted for the books De Gloriâ, Petrarch received an imperfect copy of the tract De Oratore, of which the MSS., though generally incomplete, were by no means uncommon at that period. “Ab hoc [pg A-53]habui,” says he, “et Varronis et Ciceronis aliqua: Cujus unum volumen de communibus fuit; sed inter ipsa communia libri de Oratore ac de Legibus imperfecti, ut fere semper inveniuntur.” Nearly half a century from the death of Petrarch had elapsed, before the discovery of a complete copy of Cicero’s rhetorical works. It was about the year 1418, during the Popedom of Martin V., and while Poggio was in England, that Gerard Landriani, Bishop of Lodi, found in that city, among the ruins of an ancient monastery, a MS., containing Cicero’s treatise De Oratore, his Brutus and Orator. He carried the MS. with him to Milan, and there gave it to Gaspar Bazizza. The character, however, in which it was written, was such, that few scholars or antiquaries in that city could read it. At length Cosmus, a young Veronese scholar, deciphered and transcribed the dialogue De Oratore. Blondus Flavius, the author of the Italia Illustrata, who had come in early youth from his native place, Forli, to Milan, transcribed the Brutus, and sent copies of it to Guarinus of Verona, and Leonard Justiniani, at Venice. By these means the rhetorical works of Cicero were soon diffused all over Italy. The discovery was hailed as a triumph, and subject of public congratulation. Poggio was informed of it while in England, and there awaited the arrival of a copy with the most lively impatience[659].