Filelfo and the Spartans

Filelfo and the Spartans James Hankins In an essay first published in 1974, Arnaldo Momigliano said, of the Latin translations of Greek historians made in the Quattrocento, that “the whole series of translations was potentially the most revolutionary event in historiography since Fabius Pictor introduced Greek historiography into Rome at the end of the third century bc. But nobody has yet discovered what happened as a conse- quence of this: Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Strabo and Appian suddenly becoming available in the language of educated people.”1 Despite the size of this intellectual opportunity, however, there have been surprisingly few explo- rations since Momigliano’s essay was published of how these and other Greek historical writings were received in the Latin West. Important exceptions exist: Marianne Pade’s monumental two-volume study of the reception of Plutarch’s Lives is surely a major advance in knowledge, and some basic research on the reception of Agathias, Arrian, Herodotus, Polybius, Thucydides and Xenophon has been completed as well.2 The important work of Gabriele Pedullà on the presence of Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the early modern historical imagination, and especially Machiavelli’s encounter with the Greek historian, brilliantly illustrates the profit historians of political thought can derive from reception studies.3 But much remains to be done. In particular we lack as yet focused studies of how received understandings of key figures, events, political institutions and other cultural phenomena of the ancient world were trans- formed by the humanist rediscovery of classical sources. A great deal has been written, to be sure, about how ancient Rome, its history and culture, inspired the humanist revival of classical antiquity. But we are less well informed about how the memory of Athens and Sparta was reshaped by humanists as a result of their exposure to newly-available sources in Greek. The narrative of Rome – its origins, the downfall of its kings, its vast expansion during the mid- dle Republic, the corruption and violence of the late Republic, the monarchy of 1 Momigliano 1980, originally published in the Entretiens Hardt in 1974. 2 Pade 2007. Detailed information about the Renaissance reception of the various Greek historians mentioned above can be found in the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, 11 volumes to date, as follows: Agathias (vol. 10, 239–272), Arrian (vol. 3, 1–20), Polybius (vol. 11, 1–60), Thucydides (vol. 3, 103–181); Xenophon (vol. 7, 75–196 and 8, 341–344. Cited hereafter as “CTC”. On Herodotus see Pagliaroli 2006 and Gambino Longo 2013. 3 Pedullà 2010, Pedullà 2011. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004382190_007 82 Hankins the emperors, and the eventual fall of the Empire – was known to all educated people and haunted the Western political imagination down to modern times. But what of the narratives of other ancient states like Athens and Sparta? What lessons did humanist scholars draw from their histories? How did they weld together the historical materials at their disposal to buttress their moral and political teachings? The present study focuses on the ancient state of Sparta, whose story (or myth) has long been recognized as a powerful presence in the historical memory of the West.4 Like Rome, Sparta from the beginning of the fifteenth- century Greek revival provided a repertory of exemplary individuals, customs and institutions that humanist writers and educators held up for admiration and imitation. Sparta influenced humanist political thought as well, particu- larly its conception of the role of the state, political virtue and corruption, attitudes to wealth, the rule of law, and the mixed constitution. And Sparta is highly relevant to the subject of this volume as it was Francesco Filelfo who played the leading role in making the Greek sources for Spartan history available in Latin. Thanks largely to the recent editions by Jeroen De Keyser – of the 48 books of Filelfo’s Collected Letters as well as his editions of the Commentationes Florentinae de exilio, the Sphortias, and three of Filelfo’s translations of Spartan material – it is much easier to assess his role in forg- ing some key themes of humanist Laconism.5 It should go without saying that what Filelfo and the humanists made of Spartan sources is quite different from the reconstructions by modern scholars of ancient Spartan history and soci- ety, and different again from what modern scholars describe as the ancient 4 There is a useful sketch in Rawson 1969, 130–157, who discusses the influence of Sparta on education in the fifteenth century and on political thought in the sixteenth, beginning with Machiavelli; she does not discuss the Laconism of Filelfo or Thomas More however. Marsh 1991 discusses and edits Lilius Tifernas’ translation of Xenophon’s Lacedaemoniorum respublica. In general the Italian fifteenth century is neglected in the reception history of Sparta. See, e.g., the article in Der Neue Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike, Rezeptions – und Wissenschafts-geschichte 15.3 (Stuttgart-Weimar: 2003), 154–182, which covers Renaissance reception of Sparta in a single paragraph. Paul Cartledge’s entry on Sparta in The Classical Tradition (Grafton 2010), 898–901, has one sentence on the fifteenth century and a paragraph on Thomas More’s Laconism; see also Cartledge 2006 for a page on Pletho and Sparta. Vlassopoulos 2012 starts his discussion of early modern Laconism with Machiavelli. An exception to the general neglect of Sparta in the Quattrocento is Noreen Humble’s article in this volume, and her 2012 essay on the Renaissance Reception of Xenophon’s Spartan Constitution. 5 Filelfo 2012, Filelfo 2013, Filelfo 2015, Filelfo 2016..

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