The 1602 Laertius-Derived Lives at Billingbear: Parmenides and the Two Timons

Topic: The 1602 Laertius-Derived Lives at Billingbear: Parmenides and the Two Timons

Object and edition

The combined workbook identifies English Heritage object 81035055 as Le vite de filosofi cavate da Laertio et altri, nelle quali vi sono sentenze, et detti notabili, Venice, 1602, leather quarto, half-calf binding. It is marked both 1780 BRO list and UCL AEH? = 1.

The exact Google Books witness is a heavily illustrated compilation, “newly reprinted, diligently corrected and enlarged,” printed at Venice by Gioacchino Brugnolo in 1602. laertio_title_p7.png. Full-view book.

Parmenides is really present

Printed p. 64 contains a compact life headed Parmenide Eleate. It discusses his teachers, his wealthy birth, withdrawal from vice, cosmology, truth and opinion, legislation for his citizens, and Plato's dialogue named for him. laertio_p141.png.

This verifies the premise behind the existing Twelfth Night research lead: the Billingbear-listed book offers the kind of short Renaissance philosopher thumbnail that could make Parmenides a culturally available name. The 1602 date still has to be handled against the play's chronology; the present point is textual presence, not a decision about borrowing.

The Timon finding is subtler and more useful

The book's next sequence treats Pyrrho. On printed p. 65, the life says Timone afferma that Pyrrho hated sophistical fallacies. That Timon is an authority about Pyrrho, not Timon of Athens. laertio_p144.png.

The following illustrated biography is headed Timon Niceo. Its opening sentence explicitly distinguishes its philosopher from another Timon:

Timone filosofo (a differenza di quel scelerato huomo cittadino Ateniese, che non volea nè veder, nè praticare con huomo...)

Working translation: Timon the philosopher—in distinction from that wicked Athenian citizen who wished neither to see nor associate with any person.... laertio_p145.png; laertio_p146.png.

The biography then concerns a philosopher associated with Stilpo and Pyrrho, gardening, agriculture, poetry, comedy, and philosophical jesting. It is not a narrative of the Athenian misanthrope. Yet its very first sentence assumes the reader knows the other Timon as an antisocial Athenian. The volume therefore contains a brief, explicit Timon-of-Athens cultural reference while carefully differentiating him from its subject.

Folger control

Folger Timon of Athens 4.3.59–61 gives the play's identification directly:

TIMON

I am Misanthropos and hate mankind.

For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,

That I might love thee something.

The comparison should be stated precisely. The Italian book does not supply Shakespeare's plot. It does preserve, in a surviving Billingbear-listed edition, the defining association “Athenian Timon who avoids human company.” That deserves to sit beside North, Painter, Lucian, Boiardo, and the existing Neville-letter comparison.

Research directions

1. Trace the exact wording of the Athenian contrast across the 1602 compilation's earlier editions.
2. Identify “Timon Niceo” bibliographically and explain how the compiler merged or abbreviated sources.
3. Image the same leaves in object 81035055 for annotations, folded corners, and reader marks.
4. Keep the Parmenides and Timon investigations separate: the same volume supports two different name-availability questions.