James Hankins is Professor of History at Harvard University and founder and General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library. He is the author of Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, winner of the Marraro Prize and a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, and Plato in the Italian Renaissance; and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy. Widely regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on Renaissance philosophy and political thought, he is also a Corresponding Member of the British Academy.
Bruni, in trying to demonstrate that Florence could trace its
legitimate republican tradition back to deep antiquity, wrote a
history of his city on the model of the ancient history of Rome by
Livy. As he did so, he read Livy's eloquent, stagy book in a very
imaginative, critical way. From the ancient historian's idealized
account of virtuous Romans, Bruni reconstructed the virtuous and
powerful world of their enemies, the Etruscans--from whom, he
claimed, the modern Tuscans were descended. In Bruni's historical
imagination, Livy's stories of Horatius, heroically defending the
bridge across the Tiber, and Mucius Scaevola, thrusting his hand
into the fire to show his contempt for death, metamorphosed into
instances of Roman weakness, superstition and dishonesty.
*New York Review of Books*
The Loeb Classical Library...has been of incalculable benefit to
generations of scholars...It seems certain that the I Tatti
Renaissance Library will serve a similar purpose for Renaissance
Latin texts, and that, in addition to its obvious academic value,
it will facilitate a broadening base of participation in
Renaissance Studies...These books are to be lauded not only for
their principles of inclusivity and accessibility, and for their
rigorous scholarship, but also for their look and feel. Everything
about them is attractive: the blue of their dust jackets and cloth
covers, the restrained and elegant design, the clarity of the
typesetting, the quality of the paper, and not least the sensible
price. This is a new set of texts well worth collecting.
*Times Literary Supplement*
An aristocratic devotion to our culture continues to manifest
itself even today in the most prestigious centers of study and
thought. One has merely to look at the very recent (begun in 2001),
rigorous and elegant humanistic series of Harvard University, with
the original Latin text, English translation, introduction and
notes.
*Il Sole*
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