style="font-size:15px;"> Paul O. Kristeller’s pioneering work on Marsilio Ficino characterized Ficino as both a philosopher and a humanist. Yet Kristeller also differentiated Ficino from his humanist contemporaries insofar as he thought Ficino was primarily a systematic metaphysician, whereas other humanists were only thinkers of moral philosophy, one of the five disciplines in his definition of the studia humanitatis. His approach—sometimes mischaracterized and misinterpreted—is still very much present in the study of Renaissance humanism and philosophy in general, and Ficino and Plato in particular. In the hands of others, Kristeller’s categories have sometimes had the net effect of classifying humanists only as rhetoricians and of isolating Ficino.1 On the one hand, researchers of humanist rhetoric and dialogue are often too quick to cast aside Ficino the philosopher, and on the other hand, scholars of Ficino all too often neglect the rhetorical facets of Ficino’s work.2 Yet Ficino is very much invested in rhetoric, primarily in studying Plato’s own artistry and in forming his own oratorical and epistolary persona. In both cases, Ficino works with various rhetorical stratagems, but notably prosopopoeia and enargeia—in other words, the fabrication and vivid presentation of personae. If one looks exclusively for narrowly defined elegantia in humanist rhetoric, one runs the risk of being blind to the sophisticated and philosophical aspects of Ficino’s style.
These rhetorical stratagems also influenced Ficino’s hermeneutical approach to Plato’s style and corpus. Plato’s style was not only the subject of ancient interpretation; his first translators in the Renaissance also discussed his prose, often in prefaces to their Latin translations of his works. As humanists honed their skills in Greek many soon began studying Plato, whose own prose seemed to evoke equal parts admiration and confusion in his first quattrocento readers. Many humanists would pick out scattered images, sentences, or small morsels of wisdom from Plato’s dialogues for their florilegia, saving them to adorn their own writings or to support their future arguments with the weight of his authority. Others undertook a more sustained study of Plato. Leonardo Bruni, the brilliant humanist and translator of the Phaedo, Crito, Apology, Gorgias, Phaedrus, and Letters, remarked to Niccolò Niccoli (1364–1437) that Plato conveys divine opinions with a pleasant style, that nothing in his prose is forced, and that he expresses all with ease and grace.3 This kind of praise for his style was common among many translators of Plato. After all, by lauding their chosen subject they in turn basked in his reflected glow. Along similar lines, Pier Candido Decembrio (1399–1477) wrote a few lines of praise in his preface to his translation of the fifth book of the Republic while employing the trope of inviting his reader to speak with Socrates: “His eloquence is brilliant to such an extent that he is held first among the Greeks no less for the charm of his style than the weight of his thinking. But more is said about this elsewhere, let us now hear Socrates speak.”4 Antonio da Rho (c. 1398–after 1450) might have been inspired by Pier Candido’s actual opinions, since in his Dialogorum in lactantium the interlocutor Pier Candido, repeating Cicero and Quintilian’s opinions, continues to admire Plato’s prose: “Who would doubt that Plato himself was exceptional either in his sharpness of argument or in his ease of eloquence, which is a certain divine and Homeric style. For he greatly rises above the prose and style that the Greeks call pedestrian, as it seems to me that it does not come from a human ingenium, but yet from a certain Delphic oracle of God.”5 The stylistic considerations of Plato’s prose by Latin humanists largely emerged either from the practice of doing their own Greek to Latin translations of some of Plato’s compositions or from their readings of ancient opinions on Plato—for example, from Latin authors, such as Cicero and Quintilian, and Greek ones, such as Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE), Dio Chrysostom (c. 40–c. 115 CE), and other second sophistic authors—many of whom compared Plato’s abilities to Homer’s.6
Two of Ficino’s closest interlocutors, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano, also made similar comparisons between the stylistic qualities of Homer and Plato. Pico wrote to Ermolao Barbaro that Plato and Aristotle agree in doctrine but differ in style.7 Ficino too says something similar in his preface to his commentary on Priscian Lydus on Theophrastus, claiming that he learned of their agreement from Themistius.8 For his part, Poliziano, employing architectural metaphors in the preface to his Latin translation of the Charmides, writes that Plato is similar to ancient poet-theologians whose writings permit one to penetrate into the inner sanctum or adytum of wisdom:
But this is certainly why those ancient theologians, Homer, Orpheus, Hesiod, Pythagoras, and also he himself about whom we are speaking at present, Plato, and many other divine mouthpieces of the true wisdom of the muses communicated that complex knowledge of all of philosophy through certain myths and symbols, as well as through concealing and disguising words (involucra and integumenta), and it is as though they barricaded their meaning with certain cancelli (or church screens), lest the religious mysteries of the Eleusinian deities become profaned, and lest they were to throw pearls to swine, as one is wont to say. For what the Pythagorean Lysis writes in his letter to Hipparchus is most true: “One who would intermingle divine speeches and thoughts with corrupt and obscene disturbances, acts in a contrary manner no less than one who pours out the most pure water into a muddy well; in disturbing the mud he contaminates the purity of the water.”9
These quattrocento praises of Plato’s writing refer to ancient comparisons between Plato’s and Homer’s abilities to tell readers that both ancient Greeks are capable of speaking from the perspective of the gods. Indeed, these comparisons from antiquity do nothing more than turn Plato’s own judgment on its head regarding the poet’s ability for divine prosopopoeia, that is, for speaking in the person of the Olympian gods. This is why Plato’s ingenium is said to be their mouthpiece, like the Delphic oracle. Poliziano’s metaphors from religious architecture reinforce this interpretation of Plato. A lexical or grammatical interpretation of Plato’s text will always remain at the threshold, Poliziano reasons, while figurative readings enter into the edifice but also establish boundaries, rood or chancel screens (cancelli), protecting the philosophical or even anagogical meaning of the dialogues (the Platonic adytum and altar, so to speak).10 But, as Poliziano’s metaphors imply, everyone knows that oracles do not speak clearly; they require interpreters. Or if one wishes to transpose the metaphor into Christian terms, as Poliziano himself does, intercessors or priests are required to serve as mediators with the divine.
Very early on in Plato’s reception in the quattrocento, Latin humanists needed to address why, despite Plato’s stylistic merits, so many of his interpreters debated his meaning. As we saw, one strategy was to turn any confusion into a positive judgment on his Homeric style, his divine ingenium, his oracular nature, or (as Poliziano mentioned) his Pythagorean wisdom. Yet not everyone was so easily convinced. Antonio Cassarino, for instance, who also translated the Republic into Latin, feared that few would appreciate Plato’s style, since it is pleasing neither to humanists educated in the Latin eloquence of Cicero and Livy nor to scholastic philosophers accustomed to the clear precision and brevity of Aristotelian terminology.11 The humanists not only had ancient examples of praise of Plato’s eloquence, they also had ancient precedents that judged his style to be confused. The most common of these would have been Augustine. In the De civitate Dei, after stating that Plato joined Socratic practical philosophy with Pythagorean theoretical philosophy, Augustine writes that Plato’s confused use of dialogic personae conceals his true doctrines: “For since Plato aspired to preserve the most notorious practice of hiding his knowledge and opinions of his master Socrates, whom he makes an interlocutor in his books, and because this Socratic practice pleased Plato, the fact remains that it is not easy also to uncover Plato’s own doctrines on important matters.”12 Augustine’s response to Plato’s style is essentially to characterize it as esoteric—although this intentional concealment does not have the same positive connotations as are seen in Poliziano’s preface. Augustine famously praises Plato’s preeminence over other pagan philosophers, and claims that among all philosophers the Platonists are the closest to Christianity. Yet Plato’s confused esoteric style is also exceptionally dangerous insofar as it became a model for later Platonists’ esoteric strategies. Platonic verisimilitude, Augustine writes, might resemble
