[In the following essay, Berrigan looks at the Italian Renaissance tradition of teaching languages as well as morals via translations of Aesop's works.]

The Latin translators of Aesop in the first half of the Quattrocento comprise a small group of Italians, whose contributions to the field of fable literature have been the subject of study for the past century by both classical and Renaissance scholars. A particularly significant cluster of articles has been authored by Professor Chauncey E. Finch.¹ Before taking up Ermolao Barbaro and his apologues, I would like to provide the context of the Renaissance fable and the several men who busied themselves with Aesop in the early Quattrocento.

Our starting point has to be that the fable played a significant role in early Byzantine education as well as in the initial stages of a child's instruction in the medieval West.² Anyone familiar with the character, the inherent charm of apologues would acknowledge the wisdom of coating the painful first steps of acquiring Greek with the sugary delights of the Fox and the Grapes, let us say. How much more sensible this approach is than the familiar introduction of a student to Greek through Xenophon or Latin through Caesar! The schoolmasters of the early Quattrocento were intimately acquainted with the nature, goals, and methods of Byzantine education. Adapting them to the exigencies of the Italian classroom was especially the work of Guarino da Verona, who had followed Chrysoloras to Constantinople and lived in his home for several years.³ We have the firmest of evidence that Guarino employed Aesop in his introductory Greek lessons. Of this evidence more in a little while.⁴ Aesop must have had a very powerful impact upon Guarino, for he named his second son, apparently born in September of 1422, Aesop or Esopo.⁵ Filosa is surely right in pointing to the schools of Guarino and Vittorino as the centers of Aesopic diffusion.⁶ For of the six early translators or composers of apologues four are associated with these two schools: Barbaro and Valla with Guarino, Ognibene and Correr with Vittorino. The other two are apparently independent: Leonardo Dati of Florence and Rinuccio Aretino. I suppose of them all the most important is thelast, for his translation of Aesop was printed in 1474 in Milan by Buono Accursio along with the Greek text of the fables that formed the basis of the vulgate Aesop until the early nineteenth century.⁷ Rinuccio apparently translated these fables in 1488.⁸ Unlike all the other fables we are dealing with, Dati's are written in verse. They remained unpublished until 1912 when they were presented on the basis of a single, quite faulty German manuscript.⁹ They are dedicated to Gregorio Correr; this helps us date Dati's translation to the very late 1420's or early 1430's.¹⁰ Correr was working on his own fables in 1429 and was in Rome, where he could have encountered Dati, and writing his satires in 1433." What I find particularly intriguing about this connection is Dati's subsequent composition of the fourth tragedy of the Renaissance, the Hiensal, and its possible inspiration by Correr's earlier tragedy, the Progne.¹² The ring then is closed. Dati translated and versified forty fables. They turn out to correspond to the first forty-four fables of Vat. Pal. gr. 195 with the interchange of two fables and the omission of four.¹³

As Professor Finch pointed out in his article on the fables of Gregorio Correr, the two sets of apologues translated in the school of Vittorino are related to each other.¹⁴ Ognibene da Lonigo composed his set first and dedicated them to Gian Francesco Gonzaga, the lord of Mantua.¹⁵ Shortly thereafter Ognibene's fellow student, Gregorio Correr, fresh from his labors over the Progne, composed his set of fifty-nine fables.¹⁶ He claims, in his own preface, that he has composed a full sixty, but there are only fifty-nine. Subsequently, he would revise both the preface, by shortening it and excising all reference to Ognibene and his fables, and his apologues, by reducing them to fifty-three.¹⁷

Like the fables of Correr those of Barbaro still remain unpublished. As far as I have been able to discover, they exist in only a single manuscript, British Museum, Additional MS 33782.¹⁸ This manuscript came to London in the very late nineteenth century from Verona. From every indication it is a holograph and therefore similar to the Marciana MS of Correr.¹⁹ Unlike Correr's fables those of Barbaro are translated directly from the Greek and therefore resemble the other collections of apologues. Before turning to the contents of the manuscript, I would like to say a few words on Ermolao Barbaro himself.²⁰ He is another of those young Venetians who left their city to study under Guarino or Vittorino. There is some disagreement over when he was born: Sabbadini suggests that he was born in 1407 or 1408.²¹ The most recent research indicates a somewhat later date, 1410.²² If we take that as the correct year, then he would have been a year older than Vittorino and only twelve when he translated his fables, for we are sure from the colophon of the manuscript that he finished this work in 1422.²³ His family, too, was quite distinguished. His uncle Francesco had studied under Guarino, too, had gone to Florence, and then written one of the important tracts of the early Quattrocento, the De re uxoria²⁴ Like Correr, Ermolao Barbaro would enter the clergy; he became a very active prelate in the service of a series of Renaissance popes. Interestingly enough, when he was not on diplomatic missions or in Rome, he lived in his episcopal city, Verona, the same city that Correr called home for most of his later life. Barbaro, too, was opposed to a world dominated by classicism and wrote a book against some of the classic poets.²⁵

The British Museum MS consists of a preface and thirty-three fables. That number should ring bells in the minds of Renaissance Aesop scholars, since it is the same number of fables that Valla would turn into Latin in 1438. The fables are dedicated to the famed scholar-monk, Ambrogio Traversari, whom Barbaro had met on a trip to Florence. Consequently, the preface has already been published in the Epistolario of Traversari, edited by Mehus in 1759.²⁶ In it Barbaro explains that Traversari had encouraged him to pursue the study of Greek and so he was dedicating these first fruits of his youthful efforts as a monument and pledge of their mutual love to Traversari. He alludes to the several other scholars who had inspired him by their example as much as their words to embark upon the pursuit of Greek. He mentions Carlo Marsuppini but particularly emphasizes the role of Niccolo Niccoli, who had played the role of a Varro to him in his generous nurturing of youthful talent. Once he had been convinced that he should study Greek, Barbaro did not have to look around for some new teacher; he had only to return to the man who had been educating him in Latin for several years, Guarino da Verona, his father, as he says, and his teacher. "Now in the same way I hoped to acquire the knowledge of Greek letters, zealously to make this knowledge part of myself, then to fix it as the basis of a good and happy life."²⁷

Barbaro then explains that he had recently translated some of Aesop's fables with Guarino and dedicated them to Traversari, not because Traversari would need a Latin translation to help him decipher the Greek but because, by sending them to Traversari, he was sure to win praise for himself. "Just as fruit placed in precious bowls or golden vessels acquire the finest embellishment from these receptacles, so if these fables are deposited and lodged with you, the most excellent of vessels, aglow with a great variety of jewels, they will be adorned, by your judgment and witness, with the choicest honor and glory."²⁸ Barbaro then appends a brief encomium of Aesop and his fables, the use that Plato and Plutarch had made of them, and their sturdy contributions to the moral character of their readers. After the thirty-three fables Barbaro concludes the work with the colophon I have already alluded to: "Here end the fables of Aesop translated by me, the young Ermolao Barbaro, a patrician of Venice, on October 1, 1422, under the supervision of Guarino da Verona, my father and teacher."²⁹ From preface, fables, and colophon we can surely make the conclusion that Guarino employed Aesop in the very early stages of teaching a boy Greek.

Barbaro had only recently decided to pursue that language, these fables were the first fruits of that study, they were written as exercises under the direction of Guarino. The place of Aesop in Renaissance Greek and subsequently Latin education was clearly established by Guarino and would have a long and happy life. In passing, I would like to mention an incident from the mid-nineteenth century, when young Milton Humphreys, subsequently to become one of America's greatest classicists, left his Appalachian home and went to Charleston, Va., as it was then before the Civil War. There he was introduced to Aesop in Latin and was so delighted that he rolled off the bed laughing.³⁰

As I have intimated, even before reading the British Museum MS my suspicions had been aroused by the number of fables translated in 1422 by Barbaro: thirty-three. I wondered if it were only a coincidence that Valla too had translated thirty-three. I am a devoted believer in serendipity but not when it comes to Renaissance Latin translations of Aesop. My suspicions this time turned out to be entirely justified, for the fables translated by Barbaro are precisely the same as the fables translated some sixteen years later by Valla. They are the same in number, in order, and in subject matter. A note on the fly-leaf of the British Museum manuscript does indeed note the relationship of the two translations and provide the equivalent references for the Hudson edition of Aesop. The note, written in a nineteenth-century hand, makes a crucial mistake, however, for it says that Valla had translated these same fables antea. Surely it was postea, around 1438.³¹

Because of their identity with the Valla fables, these efforts by Barbaro should be familiar to Aesopic scholars. There is a generous bibliography on Valla and Aesop, with the names of Achelis and Finch being the most prominent.³² Its conclusions on the Greek manuscripts of Aesop, those which are closest to Valla's translation, would also apply to Barbaro's, given the identity of the fables presented.

An obvious conclusion from what I take the facts to be is that Valla got the Greek text he translated from Guarino or else accidentally came across a text that was the same as the one employed by Guarino in his teaching. I find the latter supposition untenable, particularly when we remember that Valla says that he obtained his copy of Aesop from a shipwreck.³³ Surely, from what we know, the borrowing of a codex from Guarino makes more sense than the unlikely, really unbelievable linkage of a shipwreck and the identity of manuscripts being translated. Even serendipity has its credible limits. There is nothing inherently absurd in suggesting that Valla obtained a text of Aesop from Guarino. They were very good friends. Guarino thought very highly of Valla. He wrote to the younger man upon receiving his diatribe on Bartolus, "Laurenti, laurea, et Valla, vallari corona omandus es."³⁴ We know of this cordial relationship and can point to at least one occasion, in 1433, when Valla visited Guarino in Ferrara for two days.³⁵ To summarize, we know from Barbaro and his fables that Guarino had a Greek Aesop with 33 fables; we know that Valla subsequently translated a Greek Aesop with the same 33 fables; we know that Valla and Guarino were friends and the former could very well have received the Aesop from the latter.

I do not wish to leave the impression that Valla published Barbaro's version or even used it. As you might expect, there is a great difference between the Latinity of the two translations. Barbaro was after all still a young school-boy when he did his translation, Valla was in his early thirties when he did his and he was already a master-stylist. Barbaro's fables have remained unpublished and to a great extent unread until now; Valla's enjoyed enthusiastic success throughout Renaissance Europe. There is apparently only one manuscript of Barbaro's Aesop; there are scores of copies of Valla's, both handwritten and printed.

The very uniqueness of Barbaro's translation is an argument for its being a holograph. The whole character of the manuscript supports that view. The handwriting is that of a child, perhaps a precocious child and one writing in the new humanistic style, but still a child. There are a number of misspellings, especially in the doubling or nondoubling of consonants, that bespeak its north Italian origin. There are several instances of mistranslation of particular Greek words but these are, after all, quite few in number. The remarkable thing is how close Barbaro remains to the Greek text, how clearly the Greek shines through.

Some thirty-six years later, Guarino's younger son, Battista, dedicated his own translation of Xenophon's Agesilaus to this same Ermolao Barbaro, by then bishop of Verona. In his preface he addresses Ermolao and asks, "What shall I say of your learning? Everyone knows that from your earliest years you were educated admirably, first under my father's direction and then under your uncle Francesco, in both Latin and Greek letters. From among all men I have chosen you to dedicate the first-fruits of my studies of the Greek language."³⁶ From Aesop to Xenophon, from dedicator to dedicatee, from honoring the father to being honored by the son—such is the circle of Renaissance education that appropriately begins with a fable like that of the fox and the goat.

Notes

¹ See his "The Alphabetical Notes in Rinuccio's Translation of Aesop," Mediaevalia et Humanistica, II (1957), 90-93; "The Greek Source of Lorenzo Valla's Translation of Aesop's Fables," Classical Philology, 55 (1960), 118-120; "The Fables of Aesop in Urb. Gr. 135," TAPA, 103 (1972), 127-132; "The Renaissance Adaptation of Aesop's Fables by Gregorius Corrarius," Classical Bulletin 49 (1973), 44-48.

² Norman H. Baynes, The Byzantine Empire (London: Oxford University Press, 1925), p. 153; Carlo Filosa, La Favola (Milano: Vallardi, 1952), p. 75.

³ W. H. Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897), p. 17.

⁴ See below, note 29.

⁵ Remigio Sabbadini, ed., Epistolario di Guarino Veronese, III (Venice: R. Deputazione di storia patria, 1919), p. 148.

⁶ Filosa, pp. 75-76.

⁷ Ben E. Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press; and London: Heinemann, 1965), p. xvii.

⁸ T. O. Achelis, "Die Hundert asopischen Fabeln des Rinucci da Castiglione," Philologus, 83 (1928), 60.

⁹Rheinisches Museum, 67 (1912), 285-299.

¹⁰ T. O. Achelis, "Zu den asopischen Fabeln des Dati und Corraro," Rheinisches Museum, 70 (1915), 387; Otto Tacke, "Eine bisher unbekannte Aesopubersetzung aus dem 15. Jahrhundert," Rheinisches Museum, 67 (1912), 280.

¹¹ J. R. Berrigan, "Gregorii Gorrarii Veneti Liber Satyrarum," Humanistica Lovaniensia, 22(1973), 10.

¹² J. R. Berrigan, "Latin Tragedy of the Quattrocento," Humanistica Lovaniensia, 22 (1973), 1-9.

¹³ Paul Marc, rev. of "Eine bisher unbekannte Aesopubersetzung aus dem 15. Jahrhundert," by Otto Tacke, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 21 (1912), 566.

¹⁴ Finch, "Corrarius," 45.

¹⁵ In his presidential address to the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in 1963 Professor Finch stated that it would not be difficult to establish the classification of the manuscript upon which Ognibene da Lonigo's version rests. Thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation and the kind assistance of the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University, I have been able to do so relatively simply. Vat. Ottobon. lat. 1223 contains the fables by Ognibene from f. 73r through f. 87r; his preface to Gian Francesco Gonzaga, the lord of Mantua, occupies f. 72, to f. 73r. Ognibene provides forty fables, and my examination of their sequence shows that they follow the order of Hausrath's Class Illa manuscripts. Even more specifically, they occur in the pattern of Vat. Barb. gr. 105. I hereby append the sequence in which these forty fables appear in the Barb. gr. MS: 1-1, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5, 5-6, 6-7, 7-8, 8-9, 9-10, 10-12, 11-13, 12-19, 13-21, 14-24, 15-26, 16-27, 17-29, 18-30, 19-31, 20-32, 21-33, 22-35, 23-36, 24-38, 25-41, 26-42, 27-43, 28-45, 29-47, 30-53, 31-57, 32-65, 33-71, 34-73, 35-78, 36-79, 37-87, 38-98, 39-99, 40-113. Both the Ottob. lat. and the Barb. gr. MSS were placed at my disposal in microfilm copies and are available in the Knights of Columbus Film Library at Saint Louis University.

¹⁶ Ottob. lat. 1223, ff. 92^r-93^v.

¹⁷ J. R. Berrigan, "The 'Libellus Fabellarum' of Gregorio Correr," Manuscripta, 19(1975), 131-138.

¹⁸ Sabbadini, p. 142.

¹⁹ Berrigan, "Liber Satyrarum," 12.

²⁰ Other than Sabbadini, p. 142, there is the recent brief biography of Barbaro by E. Bigi in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 6(Rome: Enciclopedia italiana, 1964), pp. 95-96.

²¹ Sabbadini, p. 142.

²² Bigi, p. 95.

²³ See below, note 29.

²⁴ Most conveniently accessible in Eugenio Garin, ed., Prosatori latini del Quattrocento (Milano: Ricciardi, 1952), pp. 103-137.

²⁵ Bigi, p. 96.

²⁶ Sabbadini, p. 142.

²⁷ B.M., MS Add 33782, f. 4^r.

²⁸Ibid., f. 5^r.

²⁹Ibid., f. 39^v.

³⁰ Typescript autobiography, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, p. 124.

³¹ T. O. Achelis, "Die Aesopubersetzung des Lorenzo Valla," Munchener Museum, 2(1913), 242.

³² Finch, "Valla," 118-120; Achelis, "Die Aesopübersetzung," 239-278; Achelis, "Aesopus Graecus per Laurentium Vallensem traductus Erffurdiae 1500," Munchener Museum, 2(1913), 222-229; Achelis, "Die lateinischen Aesophandschriften der Vaticana und Laurentiana," Münchener Museum, 3(1914), 217-225.

³³ Achelis, "Dati und Corraro," 387.

³⁴ Sabbadini, p. 299.

³⁵Ibid., p. 300.

³⁶Ibid., p. 504.