A sample page with ms. annotations from Luciani Erasmo interprete Dialogi ….([Paris, 1514]).
The Book of the Month for May is Erasmus’ and More’s translation of the works of Lucian. See below for details.
Lucian of Samosata. [Selections. Latin. 1514].
Full title reads:
Luciani Erasmo interprete Dialogi & alia emuncta : quorum quaedam recentius qu[a]edam annos abhinc octo sunt versa sed nuper recognita : vt indice ad finem apponendo declarabimus : quaedam etiam a Thoma Moro Latina facta & quaedam ab eodem concinnata. (Parrhisiis : Ex officina Ascensiana rursus, tertio calen[das] Iunius anno MDXIIII [30 May 1514]).
Imprint from colophon; imprint on t.p.: V[a]enundantur in [a]edibus Ascensianis.
Pagination: CXXXV, [1] leaves
Sgnatures: a-r⁸.
Shortly after the completion of his Moriae encomium (tr. In Praise of Folly), Erasmus sent a letter to his close friend Thomas More. In that letter, dated 9 June [1511], he commented on how he thought his latest work would be received:
They will loudly accuse me of imitating the Old Comedy or some kind of Lucianic
satire, and of attacking the whole world with my teeth. (Letter 222 in the Collected
Works of Erasmus. vol. 2, p.163).
The whole world would take notice, and some would even connect Erasmus with the second century Greek satirist — and so they should, as Erasmus and More had already translated several of Lucian’s works. Beginning in 1506, Erasmus gave Josse Bade some of his own translations along with others by More. Soon thereafter Erasmus sent additional translations to the same Parisian printer, and all of these were included in the 1514 edition, the same edition featured here.
One of the reasons for translating Lucian was because his works were largely unknown to sixteenth-century readers. As Erika Rummel notes: "Lucian’s works, lost after the fall of Rome and unknown to the medieval West, were reintroduced to Italy in the first quarter of the fifteenth century"(49). While early printed editions were produced in Rome and in Florence between 1470 and 1500, it was with the first Aldine edition in 1503 that Lucian became widely disseminated throughout northern Europe. (Thompson, xxi-xxii). Erasmus’ and More’s translations thus coincided with what was still, in 1506, a new interest in the Greek writer.
Another possible motive for Erasmus’ and More’s translation was their own preference for Greek over Latin. In the first years of the sixteenth-century Erasmus became acquainted with More, and partially because of that friendship he returned to England off and on over the next decades. It was during these years, as Eric Nelson explains, that More, Erasmus and many of the Oxford-London academic community participated in a "sixteenth-century Greek revival in England" (889, 897). Indeed, many members of this community defended Erasmus’ decision to use the Greek New Testament to correct the vulgate. More’s and Erasmus’ translation might therefore be seen as part of this particular humanist initiative.
Erasmus, Desiderius. "Letter 222/To Thomas More" in The Collected Works of Erasmus. Letters 142 to 297 (1501-1514). Trans. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F. S. Thomson and Annotated by Wallace K. Ferguson (Toronto, 1975). 2:161-164.
Nelson, Eric. "Greek nonsense in More’s Utopia," Historical Journal. 44.4 (2001) 889-917.
Rummel, Erika. Erasmus as a translator of the classics (Toronto, 1985).
Thompson, Craig R. "Introduction to Translations of Lucian" in The Collected Works of Sir Thomas More. Vol. 3 Part 1. (Yale, 1974) xvii-lxxii.
