At some time of unknown date Peter was in Sardinia, where he says he saw a case of poisoning from “Pharaoh’s fig,”[2766] and at Constantinople, where he discovered a volume of the Problems of Aristotle, which he translated into Latin for the first time. It was probably there too that he saw a Greek version of Dioscorides arranged alphabetically—his own edition of Dioscorides follows another text, the medieval Latin version—and secured the works of Galen and other treatises which Michael Savonarola[2767] says that he translated from Greek into Latin. Peter is also said to have visited Spain, England, and Scotland, but I have found no proof of this, although allusions to such visits may possibly occur somewhere in his voluminous works.
At Paris.
A number of years of Peter’s life were spent at the University of Paris, where Michael Savonarola states that he was regarded as a second Aristotle and called “the great Lombard.” There he wrote his work on Physiognomy (liber compilationis phisonomie) which he dedicated to Bordelone Bonacossi who was captain-general of Mantua from 1292 to 1299. In the version which has reached us and which is dated 1295 Peter alludes to an earlier draft which had gone astray and had failed to reach its destination in Italy.
His Latin version of Abraham Aben Ezra.
In 1293 Peter found astrological writings of the Jew, Abraham Aben Ezra, who had flourished at Toledo in the twelfth century, defectively translated from Hebrew into French,[2768] and therefore published a Latin revision of his own, apparently also adding treatises which had not been included in the previous translation.[2769] This raises the question whether Peter was acquainted with Hebrew and Arabic,[2770] or whether he may have used a Greek version of Abraham’s treatises in correcting the French one. At any rate Peter’s Latin version of Abraham’s astrological works had a widespread influence, as it was retranslated into various European vernaculars and apparently even back again into Arabic.[2771]
Conversation with Marco Polo.
Peter talked with the famous oriental traveler, Marco Polo, at some time between the latter’s return to Venice in 1295 and the completion of the Conciliator, in which he cites Marco’s statements to him concerning tropical countries near the equator.[2772]
Translations from the Greek.
A translation of the Problems of Alexander medicus is ascribed to Peter in the list of his works in a fifteenth century manuscript.[2773] This can hardly refer to Alexander of Tralles. Perhaps what is meant is a translation of the Problems of Alexander of Aphrodisias, of which I know only one manuscript where it is dated 1302. Savonarola, however, states that Peter translated the Aphorisms of Alexander and also the Rhetoric of Aristotle, but the latter translation does not seem to be extant. Some at least of Peter’s translations of Galen’s works would appear to have been executed before 1303, since they are referred to by him in the Conciliator. Also two of them are found in manuscripts dated as early as 1304 and 1305, the latter containing Peter’s completion of the translation of Galen’s Therapeutic Method begun by Burgundio of Pisa.
Did he teach at Bologna?