Verso l’edizione critica delle Historiae Peloponnensium di Lorenzo Valla: una nota sui manoscritti Corsiniano 43 E 23 (1372), Guarneriano 114, Marciano lat. X 147a (3785) e Vaticano Chig. I VIII 276

Lorenzo Valla translated the work Historiae Peloponnensium of the Greek historian Thucydides between 1448 and 1452; his translation – commissioned by Pope Niccolò V for the Vatican Library – has been its most important translation for centuries, and it represented the main introduction of Thucydides’ work in Europe during the Renaissance. It immediately enjoyed a wide circulation: the twenty-seven extant manuscripts date mostly to the second half of the XVth century. Although Valla acknowledged the dedicatory copy, now Vat. Lat. 1801, as the official exemplar of his translation, the copy he worked on, which was probably an autograph, is the archetype of the manuscript tradition. The paper focuses on four copies of Valla’s translation that are especially noteworthy for the constitutio textus in creating a critical edition: mss. Cors. 43 E 23 (1372), Guarn. 114, Marc. lat. X 147a (3785) and Vat. Chig. I VIII 276. These manuscripts have been demonstrated to be copies of the same model (β), which derives from the archetype and hence occupies the same level in the stemma as the dedicatory copy. Among their characteristic readings are variants attributable to the translator himself, as well as errors that appear to outline an early stage of Valla’s work on Thucydides’ text and can give light on Valla’s translation approach.