Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Of the Nicomachean Ethics many manuscripts are in existence, thirteen in Paris, ten in Florence, six at Vienna, and so on. The smaller Italian libraries have many of them a manuscript each. Thus, there is one in the biblioteca arcivescovile of Udine, one in the biblioteca Classense at Ravenna, one in the biblioteca comunale of Perugia. These manuscripts are mostly of the fifteenth century, and their number is one of the many testimonies to the enthusiasm which the Nicomachean Ethics aroused among the scholars of the Renaissance. Unfortunately the text which they give is, as a rule, bad—full of sophistications and interpolations.
1 G., Mazzatinti, Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d'Italia, T. iii. p. 232.Google Scholar
2 Mazzatinti, op. cit. T. iv. p. 195.
3 Mazzatinti, op. cit. T. v. p. 95.
4 Gregorius Tiphernius, or Tifernas. His family name is unknown. There is a good account of him in Muzzi, G. M., Memorie civili di Città di Castello, Città di Castello, 1844, vol. ii. pp. 162–170Google Scholar. He was born in or about 1413. He devoted his youth to the study of medicine. He was thus in the line of erudite physicians, who from Master Taddeo onward have done so much for the study of Aristotle. After travelling for some years in Greece he entered the service of Nicholas V. and did translations for him from the Greek, e.g. Strabo, from Book XI. After the Pope's death he went to France, and became professor of Greek at Paris; but his salary was small and irregularly paid. So he returned to Italy, and became professor at Venice, where he died in 1463, ‘non sine veneni suspicione quo ab aemulis et invidis petitum fuerat,’ says an ancient biographer. He was short and fat—pinguis Umber—and of a cheerful countenance. His Latin poems are in print. His translation of the Eudemian Ethics is in Laur. 79, 15. So far as I know, it has never been printed.
5 It must be remembered that my results are based on a collation for A and B of only three books, I, III, VIII, and on an examination of C in certain important places. They are therefore merely provisional.
6 There are a few cases where B disagrees with Cv, e.g. 1246b 9, Cv] τροφήν B; 1247b 36, ὸγθὸς Cv' readings may have been derived from another manuscript or be due to conjecture. The cases of agreement are numerous and striking.
7 I may mention two manuscripts which so far as I know, have never been examined Ambros. E. 40 sup., and Ravenna, Bibl. Classense, 210.