When A Student Asks A Question

Our district once allowed eighth grade students to begin their world language study at the high school.  Although that opportunity has been cut, we still have a few fifth year students who began their Latin studies earlier than most, and this allows them to explore areas of academic interest outside the traditional curricula in Latin I through IV.

One of those students recently asked me if I had any Plato in the room, and this confused me, since I had tasked them with deciding on something to read in Latin.  He went on to explain that he wanted a Latin translation of Plato, and I paused.  I could think of no Latin translations of Plato, despite that the ancient Romans certainly knew his works, and so I told my student I would have to get back with him.

During my prep period I did a bit of research and found an article that explained why I could think of no Latin versions of Plato.  In "Two Thousand Years of Latin Translation from the Greek,"* Dean Lockwood observed that not only was there little need for translation since most educated Romans knew Greek, but also the Romans went in more for imitation and adaptation than straight translation.  Plautus and Terence wrote their own plays, Cicero and Seneca developed their own philosophies, and Horace and Vergil composed their own poetry, and while all of these were heavily influenced by Greek originals, it was translation by way of adaptation rather than literal translation in which the Romans engaged.

This was interesting enough, and I quickly printed the article from JSTOR to share with the students later in the day, but I had also run across references to Renaissance Latin translations of Plato, and this made me curious to find a text online.  I soon found two sources for Marsilio Ficino's Platonis Opera Omnia, which was originally published in the 1480s.  These digitized copies, here and here, are from a 1557 edition, and the second allowed for the downloading of individual pages.

Republic, Book 7, Ficino translation

I quickly printed the first two pages of Republic, Book 7, which my students had read in translation during a Greek unit in Latin II, and at that point I began wishing the hours away until the last period of the day when I would see these students.  In the meantime, I asked my department chair if she would like to sit in on that period, for I would have something exciting to share.

When the last period of the day finally rolled around, I instructed the Latin III and IV students in what to work on and then met with the Latin V students and my department chair.  I was like a kid at Christmas!  We discussed the Lockwood article and why it made sense that the ancient Romans would not have produced a translation of Plato.  We then explored the Ficino translation, observing the difficulty of reading the typeface with its ligatures and abbreviations that were holdovers from calligraphy of the manuscript days, but noting also the relatively easy reading of the Latin itself.

In the end, the students decided to read some of the Roman philosophy of Seneca and Cicero because the typeface of modern editions is easier to see, but they agreed that it was fascinating to explore this Renaissance work and to marvel at what is available to us through digitized editions of works that would otherwise rarely see the light of day.

*Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 49 (1918), pp. 115-129