Volume 53, Number 15 · October 5, 2006
Rediscovering a Lost Continent
By Anthony Grafton
VOLUMES IN THE I TATTI RENAISSANCE LIBRARY DISCUSSED IN THIS REVIEW
Italy Illuminated
by Flavio Biondo, edited and translated by Jeffrey White
Harvard University Press,Volume 1, 489 pp., $29.95
Invectives
by Francesco Petrarca, edited and translated by David Marsh
Harvard University Press, 539 pp., $29.95
Humanist Educational Treatises
edited and translated by Craig W. Kallendorf
Harvard University Press, 358 pp., $29.95
Biographical Writings
by Giannozzo Manetti, edited and translated by Stefano U. Baldassarri and Rolf Bagemihl
Harvard University Press, 330 pp., $29.95
Commentaries
by Pius II, edited by Margaret Meserve and Marcello Simonetta
Harvard University Press, 421 pp., $29.95
Later Travels
by Cyriac of Ancona, edited and translated by Edward W. Bodnar with Clive Foss
Harvard University Press, 459 pp., $29.95
History of the Florentine People
by Leonardo Bruni, edited and translated by James Hankins
Harvard University Press, two volumes, 1,104 pp., $29.95 each
Platonic Theology
by Marsilio Ficino, edited by James Hankins with William Bowen and translated by Michael J. B. Allen with John Warden
Harvard University Press, six volumes, 2,240 pp., $29.95 each
On Discovery
by Polydore Vergil, edited and translated by Brian P. Copenhaver
Harvard University Press, 721 pp., $29.95
Humanist Comedies
edited and translated by Gary R. Grund
Harvard University Press, 460 pp., $29.95
Short Epics
by Maffeo Vegio, edited and translated by Michael C. J. Putnam with James Hankins
Harvard University Press, 184 pp., $29.95
Silvae
by Angelo Poliziano, edited and translated by Charles Fantazzi
Harvard University Press, 240 pp., $29.95
Letters
by Angelo Poliziano, edited and translated by Shane Butler
Harvard University Press, Volume 1, 362 pp., $29.95
Francis Bacon rarely found himself at a loss for words. When he wanted to say that what his contemporaries revered as 'antiquity' had been a time more primitive than his own, he expressed the thought with four lapidary Latin words: antiquitas mundi juventus saeculi—the age of antiquity is the youth of the world. Yet at times even Bacon proved willing to borrow a comely phrase or two. In the Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, he set out to describe the new kind of inquiry practiced by contemporary historians of antiquity. Their experimental, innovative research was very much to his taste. The antiquaries collected and studied the material remains of the past: ruins, inscriptions, weapons, utensils, even clothing. They preferred reconstructing past beliefs and rituals to devising the eloquent narratives that had traditionally made up the core of the historian's art. To characterize their work, radically modern in method but eternally melancholy in its pursuit of endless, elusive fragments, Bacon quoted a Latin tag, taken from a source he did not name:
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