Francesco Filelfo: Euthyphro Platonis

This is the Latin translation of Plato’s Euthyphro by the humanist Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481), with a preface to a “most clement father,” evidently a pope. Filelfo recalls the custom of wise men who, when they approached the kings of Persia, brought gifts to show their devotion, and the kings, not greedy like the princes of the Odrysians but generous, gave back far more than they received. This custom, he says, has lasted to his own day, and so he offers his translation. The dialogue follows, in which Socrates questions Euthyphro on the nature of piety on the eve of his own trial. The text is about 5,600 words long.

Filelfo, who studied in Constantinople and married into a Byzantine family, was among the best Greek scholars of fifteenth-century Italy, and his translations, letters and poems made him a leading figure of humanism. His Euthyphro is part of the wave of Latin versions of Plato’s dialogues made before Ficino’s complete translation, and the edition prints it with other humanist versions of Plato. The preface, with its classical anecdote about Persian kings, is typical of the way humanists framed their translations as gifts to powerful patrons.