Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer: Introduction, Texts, Translations.
by: Michael J.B. Allen

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 274 pages. The great Florentine Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), published his commentary on Plato s Phaedrus in 1496. Though incomplete, it was the culminating attempt in a series ot analyses of one of the most memorable episodes in all Greek literature, Plato s myth of the souls as charioteers ascending through heaven to gaze upwards at the Ideas in the "superheavenly" place. The commentary contains some of Ficino's latest and most speculative thought on Platonic theogony and mythology; on the metaphysics and the epistemology of beauty; on the soul s ethereal vehicles; on its flight tall, and immortality; and on the origins and natures of the four divine madnesses, preeminently the poetic and the amatory. It also betrays some fascinating misconceptions of the Phaedrus, since Ficino, assuming it was the first of Plato s dialogues, thought it especially indebted to Pythagorean ideas and motifs, on the one hand, and to the poetic madness on the other. Along with a comprehensive historical introduction and notes, Mr. Allen has given us critically edited texts and translations of the commentary and its accompanying summae, and of Phaedran passages embedded in earlier works. Also included is the text of Ficino s Latin translation of the dialogue s "mythical hymn," on which the bulk of the commentary and summae was based. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.