In Plotinum – Plotinkommentar

The son of Cosimo de’ Medici’s personal physician, Marsilio Ficino was commissioned at a young age to learn Greek and to translate Plato’s writings. At the suggestion of his friend Pico della Mirandola, he subsequently produced a Latin version of the work of the neo-Platonist Plotinus. He arranged Plotinus’ treatises into six nine-groups (Enneaden) and wrote a commenting introduction to each of those 54 ‘books’. With a dedication to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Ficino’s Plotinus edition was printed in Florence on 7 May 1492. Since this first edition there have been published several others, most recently in 1835 by Friedrich Creuzer. In this modern edition of the introductions, which Ficino himself described as a commentary, distributed over three volumes, a text-critical edition with a German translation is provided for the first time.