This international scholarly enterprise illustrates the impact of the literary heritage of ancient Greece and Rome on the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Five authors are treated in separate articles in this volume: Catullus, Cleomedes, Irenaeus, Plotinus, and Xenophon. In each article, a historical survey indicates the influence and circulation of the author down to the present, and this is followed by an exhaustive listing and brief description of Latin Commentaries before 1600 on each of his works. For Greek authors, a full listing of pre-1600 translations into Latin is also provided. Sources of commentaries and translations include both printed editions and texts available only in medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. This type of research furnishes concrete evidence of the extent to which an ancient author was known and appreciated in monastic, university, and humanistic circles.
Volume VII demonstrates the different kinds of literature produced in the ancient and late antique world and the diverse manner in which the same work could be studied and interpreted: poetry (Catullus); science (Cleomedes); theology (Irenaeus); philosophy (Plotinus); and history and political theory (Xenophon). The volume concludes with a list of addenda and corrigenda to the previous six volumes.