Tespesio e i luoghi dell'aldilà. Riflessioni sul contributo esegetico ed ecdotico delle traduzioni del XVI secolo a due passi del De sera numinis vindicta (566 A e 566 B)

In an essay written a few years ago, Aurelio Pérez Jiménez analysed Tespesio's celestial journey in the final part of De sera numinis vindicta. My paper is dedicated to two steps of Plutarch myth, the Lethe (566 A) and ‘The cup of the dreams’ (566 B): the text of both passages has been subject to some textual and exegetical discussions, which only in a single case (566 A) produced a solution commonly accepted by scholars. The article reconstructs the ecdotic and exegetical history of the two texts from the early printed translations. Although interpreters such as Pirckheimer, Xylander, Amyot and others have not proposed acceptable and definitive solutions, their approach to these passages shows how the humanists understand the textual difficulties and try to overcome them. Therefore the comparison between the different 16th century translations appears fundamental in the history of the De sera’ text; moreover, it is also useful for those who want to better understand approaches and outcomes of recent textual criticism.