Juan Luis Vives: Somnium et Vigilia in Somnium Scipionis (Commentary on the Dream ofScipio). by Juan Luis Vives; Edward V. GeorgeReview by: Carlos G. NorenaThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1990), pp. 719-720Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2542225 .

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Book Reviews 719

The third volume includes Vives' manual on De Conscribendis epistolis. Fantazzi's substantive introduction reviews theories of letter-writing from Antiquity to the Renaissance and compares Vives' work to that of Erasmus. In Fantazzi's opinion Vives' work succeeded in filling "many gaps in the Erasmian exposition" and "easily occupies the second place among the Renaissance essays on the subject."

All three volumes are meticulously edited and printed by E. J. Brill. One can only hope these magnificent critical editions will soon cover some of the more substantial and mature works by the humanist from Valencia.

Carlos G. Norefa ......... University of California-Santa Cruz

Juan Luis Vives: Somnium et Vigilia in Somnium Scipionis (Com- mentary on the Dream ofScipio). Ed. and trans. Edward V. George. The Library of Renaissance Humanism, Volume Two. Greenwood, S.C.: The Attic Press, 1989. lxix + 308 pp. n.p. This volume, which is independent from the E. J. Brill series of Selected Works

of Vives (in which Professor George had already published a critical edition of the first two Declamationes Sullanae and the Pompeiusfugiens), includes a rather complex ensemble of Vives' introductions, summaries, and commentaries on an excerpt from Cicero's De Republica, Book Six: the so-called Dream of Scipio. The volume includes a substantial introduction in which Professor George, a well-recognized specialist on Vives' early rhetorical works, discusses the relations between Vives' work and that of the medieval commentator Macrobius-whose authority Vives was the first to question. The volume provides also a short biography of the Spanish humanist as it relates to the composition of this work, summarizes the content of each section, lists Vives' sources, and compares the Somnium Vivis to some satirical and playful pieces probably influenced by Vives and produced later in Louvain, such as Peter Nanning's Paralipomena Vergilii and Lipsius's Somnium.

Professor George's critical edition is based upon a textus receptus tradition that takes into account not only the first and inaccurate Antwerp 1520 edition and the stylistically richer Basel 1521 edition, but also, and for the first time, a Basel 1544 edition which is enriched by substantially rewritten passages and was, according to the publisher, postremo ab autore recognita. This edition was ignored by the editors of both opera omnia, Episcopius in 1555 and Majansius in 1784, and consequently by all modern commentators.

The title of Professor George's critical edition and translation is a compromise between the titles found in the 1520 Antwerp edition and that of the 1521 Basel edition. The reason for this compromise is that, as Professor George writes, none of the editions "provides a comprehensive title which concisely fits the entire ensemble edited here" (xxxvii, n. 29). This ensemble, which the reader has sometimes a difficult time sorting out, comprehends six different pieces.

The first is a Dedicatory Epistle which is missing in the 1544 edition. The second is the Somnium Vivis -a title which does not appear in any of the editions and was first fabricated by a modern commentator-which was called a Praefatio by Majansius. The Somnium Vivis, drawing upon Ovid's Metamorphoses, Cicero's De Natura Deorum, and Pliny's Natural History, is a fanciful narrative of Vives' own

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720 The Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXI/4 / 1990

dream about a debate on the credibility of dreams, a debate which soon raises more important questions about the role of classical antiquity in education, and leads to a conversation with Cicero himself. The outlandish character of this fiction, the abrupt transitions in the plot, the insertions of speeches, dialogues, and poetry, seem to suggest that Vives was following Seneca's Ludus as the accepted model of a Menippean satire. The 1544 edition of this work offers remarkable revisions of the original 1520 text. The Somnium Vivis is immediately followed by a summary of the Ciceronian Dream of Scipio, a summary which, to further confuse the reader, is couched in Cicero's own words. This argumentum is followed in most editions by Cicero's excerpt from Book Six of De Republica, the only part of that book that was known through the Middle Ages in Macrobius's commentary. Professor George presents here not only the critical edition of this Ciceronian text as it appears in the editions of Vives' works, but also an English translation.

The Ciceronian text is followed by another introduction, a discursive analysis of the Ciceronian excerpt where Vives-for the first and last time-speaks in his own voice. The 1544 edition differs from the rest in dropping Vives' early defense of his work as compared with that of Macrobius.

The last piece included in this volume, the Vigilia, is by far the longest and most important: Vives' commentary to Cicero's Dream of Scipio, couched in the words of Scipio Aemilianus. In fact, the commentary is nothing else but an enlarged (enarratio) version of the original Ciceronian text which allows Vives to give expression to some of his most important intellectual preoccupations: the struggle between civilization and barbarism, the makeup and harmony of the cosmos where humans reside, the contrast between earthly existence and the true glory of eternity, the relation between human perfection and devotion to civic duty. As Professor George's notes and indexes abundantly prove, Vives' Vigilia demonstrates great familiarity with Cicero, Plato (particularly the Timaeus, Phaedrus and Phaedo), Valerius Maximus, Pliny the Elder Livy, Ovid, Seneca the Young, and among Greek sources, Aristotle, Plutarch, Polybius, Appian, and Lucian.

Professor George's careful critical edition, the accuracy and richness of his English translation, the value of his indexes and notes make this book an indispensable asset to our understanding of medieval culture and Renaissance humanism. One cannot forget that the Ciceronian Dream of Scipio, as preserved in Macrobius's commentary had been "one of the principal channels through which the medieval world inherited the learning of Greco-Roman antiquity." The Dream, which had been widely used by Bernardus Silvestris, Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer, was brought to the center of sixteenth-century humanism by the brilliant work of Juan Luis Vives. This carefully produced volume is also enriched by illustrations from the title page and excerpts from the 1520, 1521, and 1544 editions.

Carlos G. Norenia .......... University of California-Santa Cruz

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